We are down to our final 16: the 2013 semi-finals are upon us. A score of 321 was required to survive round 3, further cementing this as the most competitive WikiCup yet; round 3 was survived in 2012 with 243 points, in 2011 with 76 points and in 2010 with 250 points. The change may in part be to do with the fact that more articles are now awarded bonus points, in addition to more competitive play. Reaching the final has, in the past, required 573 points (2012, a 135% increase on the score needed to reach round 4), 150 points (2011, a 97% increase) and 417 points (2010, a 72% increase). This round has seen over a third of participants claiming points for featured articles (with seven users claiming for multiple featured articles) and most users have also gained bonus points. However, the majority of points continue to come from good articles, followed by did you know articles. In this round, every content type was utilised by at least one user, proving that the WikiCup brings together content contributors from all corners of the project.

Round 3 saw a number of contributions of note. Figureskatingfan (submissions) claimed the first featured topic points in this year's competition for her excellent work on topics related to Maya Angelou, the noted American author and poet. We have also continued to see high-importance articles improved as part of the competition: Ealdgyth (submissions) was awarded a thoroughly well-earned 560 points for her featured article Middle Ages and 102 points for her good article Battle of Hastings. Good articles James Chadwick and Stanislaw Ulam netted Hawkeye7 (submissions) 102 and 72 points respectively, while 72 points were awarded to Piotrus (submissions) for each of Władysław Sikorski and Emilia Plater, both recently promoted to good article status. Collaborative efforts between WikiCup participants have continued, with, for example, Casliber (submissions) and Sasata (submissions) being awarded 180 points each for their featured article on Boletus luridus.

A rules reminder: content promoted between rounds can be claimed in the round after the break, but not the round before. The case in point is content promoted on the 29/30 June, which may be claimed in this round. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. We are currently seeing concern about the amount of time people have to wait for reviews, especially at GAC- if you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 09:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

23:04, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Manned mission to Mars. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 21:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

We are currently running a study on the effects of adding additional information to SuggestBot's suggestions. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information on the SuggestBot study page.

IMPORTANT CHANGES: We have modified the selection of articles SuggestBot suggests and altered the design to incorporate more information about the articles, as described in this explanation.

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information.

Views/Day	Quality	Title	Content	Headings	Images	Links	Sources	Tagged with…
16		Hylotelephium telephium (talk)						Add sources
49		Quebracho tree (talk)						Add sources
1		Acacia lingulata (talk)						Add sources
3		Acacia cardiophylla (talk)						Add sources
134		Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down (talk)						Add sources
8		Acacia plumosa (talk)						Add sources
29		United Nations Billion Tree Campaign (talk)						Cleanup
20		Fab Tree Hab (talk)						Cleanup
52		Forest farming (talk)						Cleanup
12		Acacia cultriformis (talk)						Expand
2,110		Taiga (talk)						Expand
13		Index of forestry articles (talk)						Expand
17		Jakob Lorber (talk)						Unencyclopaedic
41		Plastician (talk)						Unencyclopaedic
198		The Simpsons Arcade Game (talk)						Unencyclopaedic
59		Forest fragmentation (talk)						Merge
89		Non-timber forest products (talk)						Merge
546		Stoma (talk)						Merge
32		Tree height measurement (talk)						Wikify
5		Wanskuck, Providence, Rhode Island (talk)						Wikify
609		Snob (talk)						Wikify
2		Acacia cremiflora (talk)						Orphan
1		Parkia balslevii (talk)						Orphan
1		Senna socotrana (talk)						Orphan
1		Leslie Pedley (talk)						Stub
2		Acacia aneura var. macrocarpa (talk)						Stub
1		Acacia aneura var. pilbarana (talk)						Stub
2		Canopy seed bank (talk)						Stub
10		Chloris (plant) (talk)						Stub
3		Cydia illutana (talk)						Stub

We have changed the number of suggested articles and which categories they are selected from. The number of stubs has been greatly reduced, the number of articles needing sources doubled, and two new categories added (orphans and unencyclopaedic articles). We have also modified the layout of the suggestions and added sortable columns with various types of information about each article. The first two columns are:

Views/Day

Daily average number of views an article's had over the past 14 days.

Quality

Predicted article quality on a 1- to 3-star scale. Placing your cursor over the stars should give you a pop-up describing the article's quality (Low/Medium/High), current assessment class, and predicted assessment class.

The method we use to predict article quality also allows us to assess whether an article might need specific types of work in order to improve its quality. The work needed might not correspond to cleanup tags added to the article, since our method is not based on those. We have added five columns reflecting this work assessment, where a red X indicates improvement is needed. Placing your cursor over an X should give you a pop-up with a short description of the work needed. The five columns seek to answer the following five questions:

Content

Is more content needed?

Headings

Does this article have an appropriate section structure?

Images

Is the number of illustrative images about right?

Links

Does this article link to enough other Wikipedia articles?

Sources

For its length, is there an appropriate number of citations to sources in this article?

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:27, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. We're organizing an office hours session with the Teahouse to bring in mentors from across the wiki to try out Snuggle and discuss it's potential to support mentorship broadly. The Snuggle team would appreciate it if you would come and participate in the discussion. We'll be having it in #wikimedia-office ^connect on Wed. July 17th @ 1600 UTC. See the agenda for more info. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)}, Technical 13 (talk), TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Please note that this page is listed for speedy deletion. This may or may not be due to inadvertent use of a CSD template. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:19, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah yes, students' mistakes. I've {{tl}}d them out. Sir Rcsprinter, Bt (constabulary) @ 22:31, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Should Hayfield link to River Kinder? Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 21:51, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably, somewhere. Sir Rcsprinter, Bt (Gimme a message) @ 22:20, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors July 2013 backlog elimination drive mid-drive newsletter Participation: Out of 30 people who have signed up for this drive so far, 18 have participated. If you have signed up for the drive but have not yet participated, it isn't too late. If you haven't signed up for the drive, sign up now! Progress report: Thus far we have reduced the number of May/June 2012 articles to just 124 articles, so we're on the right track. Unfortunately, for the first time in GOCE history, the number of articles in the backlog has actually gone up during this drive. While all participants are currently doing a fine job, we just don't have as many of them as we have had in the past. We have over 500 editors on our mailing list, but only 18 editors who have done a copy edit for the drive. If you're receiving this newsletter, it's because you have an interest in copy editing. Join the drive! Even if you only copy edit one article, it helps. Imagine how much progress we could make if everyone chipped in just one article. – Your drive coordinators: Torchiest, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, and The Utahraptor. >>> Sign up now <<< To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 21:52, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

We are currently running a study on the effects of adding additional information to SuggestBot's suggestions. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information on the SuggestBot study page.

IMPORTANT CHANGES: We have modified the selection of articles SuggestBot suggests and altered the design to incorporate more information about the articles, as described in this explanation.

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information.

Views/Day	Quality	Title	Content	Headings	Images	Links	Sources	Tagged with…
10		Panda (plant) (talk)						Add sources
408		Conifer cone (talk)						Add sources
69		Social recruiting (talk)						Add sources
1,467		Tree of life (talk)						Add sources
1		Eucalyptus zopherophloia (talk)						Add sources
41		Tristania (talk)						Add sources
36		Cupressus arizonica (talk)						Cleanup
646		Nashik (talk)						Cleanup
4		Louisiana Highway 112 (talk)						Cleanup
5,303		League of Legends (talk)						Expand
17		Historic roads (talk)						Expand
3		Sierra Juárez and San Pedro Mártir pine-oak forests (talk)						Expand
4		Dhollywood (talk)						Unencyclopaedic
164		Post-scarcity economy (talk)						Unencyclopaedic
28		Internet recruiting (talk)						Unencyclopaedic
30		Syzygium aqueum (talk)						Merge
865		Mistletoe (talk)						Merge
41		Court of public opinion (talk)						Merge
2		Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario (talk)						Wikify
12		Rocky Mountain Research Station (talk)						Wikify
4		Kilokaiser (talk)						Wikify
0		Eucalyptus obstans (talk)						Orphan
1		Eucalyptus fruticetorum (talk)						Orphan
11		Uttara Model Town (3rd Phase) (talk)						Orphan
2		Eucalyptus bancroftii (talk)						Stub
28		Serra da Capivara National Park (talk)						Stub
3		Louisiana Highway 17 (talk)						Stub
9		Quercus dumosa (talk)						Stub
2		Eucalyptus viridis (talk)						Stub
2		Louisiana Highway 9 (talk)						Stub

We have changed the number of suggested articles and which categories they are selected from. The number of stubs has been greatly reduced, the number of articles needing sources doubled, and two new categories added (orphans and unencyclopaedic articles). We have also modified the layout of the suggestions and added sortable columns with various types of information about each article. The first two columns are:

Views/Day

Daily average number of views an article's had over the past 14 days.

Quality

Predicted article quality on a 1- to 3-star scale. Placing your cursor over the stars should give you a pop-up describing the article's quality (Low/Medium/High), current assessment class, and predicted assessment class.

The method we use to predict article quality also allows us to assess whether an article might need specific types of work in order to improve its quality. The work needed might not correspond to cleanup tags added to the article, since our method is not based on those. We have added five columns reflecting this work assessment, where a red X indicates improvement is needed. Placing your cursor over an X should give you a pop-up with a short description of the work needed. The five columns seek to answer the following five questions:

Content

Is more content needed?

Headings

Does this article have an appropriate section structure?

Images

Is the number of illustrative images about right?

Links

Does this article link to enough other Wikipedia articles?

Sources

For its length, is there an appropriate number of citations to sources in this article?

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:33, 25 July 2013 (UTC)