The contest department of the Tree of Life WikiProject aims to motivate increased quality in Tree of Life articles by offering a form of friendly competition for project members making improvements to them. The scope is basically any article about organisms, individual creatures, and any phenomena that could reasonably be included within the Tree of Life. The primary contest available is a simple rolling competition that awards points for improving articles, as originally developed by the LGBT studies WikiProject and following the format established by the Military history WikiProject.

How it works[edit]

Instructions for contestants

The contest is simple in structure and administered by the contest coordinators. The following instructions apply:

1. The contest runs from the first to last day of each month. At the start of the month, editors may pre-emptively nominate the articles they intend on improving (and then have until the end of the month to make the improvements), or they may simply list the articles that they have worked on at the end of the month.
2. Points are awarded based on an article progressing up the assessment scale. To be eligible, articles should be re-assessed within the scoring period.
3. The claiming editor must have made a meaningful change to an aspect of the article that leads directly to an increase in its assessment rating. Such improvements can be focused on one or more aspects of the B-class criteria. For instance, adding references, improving structure or grammar, adding images, or expanding content; these changes should be significant and incidental changes should not be claimed. The claiming editor will be the main contributor (or co-contributor) to the article for the month.
4. As articles are improved throughout the month, contestants should update their articles according to the criteria at the assessment subpage for re-assessment.
5. Once an article has been re-assessed, contestants are expected to update the entries subpage with the improved assessment class and the claimed points, based on the points table (see below).
6. At the end of the month, no new entries should be added to the entries subpage until it has been reset by a project coordinator as part of the closing process (detailed separately in the instructions to coordinators).

Prizes

1. Each month, the participant with the highest number of points will be awarded the Barn Owl Barnstar.
2. The editor who has the highest accumulated total of points over the course of the entire year of contests (January to December inclusive) will be awarded the Tree of Life Barnstar.

If you would like to participate, please copy the blank table below into a new subsection of this section with your username as the title.

Contest entries[edit]

The beginning class of the article is the classification at the beginning of the month. Please add entries in alphabetical order by user name in the following form:

| [[User:Username|]] || [[Talk:Article name]] || Entry class || End class || Points || Checked
|-

Nominees should track their own entries, updating the table with the new classes and points claimed/earned as articles are reclassified (to avoid month-end congestion). This is self-scoring (but not self-assessing) so requests for assessments should be made through the normal channels, although nominees may self-assess articles up to B-class at discretion. Experienced members may check entries for the significance of a nominees contribution and the points they have claimed; if they are satisfied they should sign the "checked" box. Entries may be progressively checked through the scoring period. If a "checked" nomination is upgraded, the nominator must remove a notation that the nomination has been checked. At month end, the closing coordinator will check the total points claimed and update the yearly scoreboard.

Cumulative scoreboard: Tree of Life Contest 2024[edit]

• Note: Entrants should not update this during the contest scoring periods. The co-ordinator who closes the contest will update the scoreboard at the end of each month once entries have been verified.
• Updated as of: 01 May 2024

For the scoring period ending 31 May 2024[edit]

Current contest scoreboard[edit]

• Entrants should update this during the contest scoring periods when adding entries.

User[edit]

• 24 Sep-31 Oct 2019 Spooky Species Contest
• 08 Nov 2019-06 Jan 2020 Decemberween
• 24 Jan-10 Mar 2020 Holi