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I know we have a while yet in the cup, but it seems important to build consensus early for any cup changes. As a first-time cup participant, I have mixed feelings about the new "no eliminations" structure:

• Positive: This structure encouraged me to participate for the first time. I felt like it was OK if I wasn't ready at the start of the year, and I was excited that I would definitely be allowed to compete during my "best" time of July/August.
• Positive: This cup seems to be encouraging A LOT of participation and incredible improvements to the encyclopedia.
• Negative: It was surprisingly demoralizing to score lots of round points, only to get 0 tournament points. My odds of winning the whole thing are just as low as they would be in any year, but there's no intermediate victory of "surviving another round".
• Negative: There's an incentive to hoard points for "a really good round". I got covid in round 2 and couldn't write for six weeks, which made my other efforts in that round feel "wasted". I "should" have scored 0 and kept all my new articles in draftspace until a luckier round, but that's worse not better for the encyclopedia.
• Unsure: I'm wondering if the high volume of work is increasing participants' chance of burning out.

Honestly, it's possible that the first positive -- "this structure encouraged a cup-curious editor to actually try it for the first time" -- is good enough to outweigh the rest. But I am curious about how others are experiencing the cup, especially those for whom it's not your first rodeo. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 17:48, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for both starting the topic and the detailed share. I am mildly puzzled about part of your point 4: how is this "worse for the encyclopedia"? Cheers. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:30, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, good clarification. I've struck and revised to "not better": holding back new writing doesn't make the encyclopedia worse (it remains at status quo) but in my view it artificially delays readers' access to improvements. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 18:45, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Got you. Thank you. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:30, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for starting this discussion. I think we will need another one from the perspective of those who are playing to win (where things like the bonus points for best in category will be important; currently a lack of second and third prizes for these keeps me from even trying). As someone who has participated for a few years and never played to win, I would also like to share my perspective on the scoring system and how it motivates me (or not).

• I share the frustration of lots of round points, zero tournament points. 250 round points should not be worth nothing at all. Perhaps scoring only the top 16 is not optimal; either score more positions or do not completely discard round points.
• Basically, with the amount of wikitime I have this year, I can only get tournament points in rounds where I can score a FA. That incentivises trying to score points for lesser things (like DYKs and GAs) in the same round if possible, to get a higher ranking.
• I agree that it is nice to be able to continue participating (I would have been kicked out in the third round this year under previous rules).

So overall it seems I pretty much agree with @LEvalyn. But I am very curious to hear what the top finishers will have to say after the end of the contest, and how this year's contest will compare with other years in terms of overall content created. —Kusma (talk) 21:09, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The change doesn't address the underlying problem of the WikiCup, which is that I don't have much control over when I get points. I can put the work into an article, but depending on which process I send it through, I could be waiting weeks or even months before it's worth anything. The actual productivity isn't necessarily the deciding factor in whether you win. You also need a good amount of luck and at least some level of exhausting horse-trading or social engineering to get your content moved up. If that sounded appealing to me, I'd stop writing on Wikipedia and go to business school. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:25, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is worth thinking about the length of a round. Two months is not a lot of time compared with how long some FACs take (and even DYK takes a month). I have been working on a method to get GAs reviewed without a long wait, see User:Kusma/Pledge. —Kusma (talk) 05:58, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the record there are ways to get your GAs reviewed faster (WP:GARC being the main and biggest onr) though somewhat unreliably Olliefant (she/her) 06:12, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I am trying to establish a system that is faster and more fun than GARC. —Kusma (talk) 07:32, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Coming back to your point of depending too strongly on luck or social engineering: that is exactly the reason why I am not playing to win. I still find it fun to score points and get some amount of adrenaline kick from progressing / scoring tournament points. —Kusma (talk) 07:49, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Re Kusma's first two bullet points and LEvelyn's third, can I propose that all participants get a tournament point for every 50 round points or part thereof at the end of each round? This is going to make little difference to the top 5 or 6 scoring contestants, but does reward those who put in the impressive amount of work to get 250 round points - or even 50. I also agree that the all or nothing nature of the end of tournament category points ia a bit dramatic. I suggest 2nd and 3rd placed contestants also getting tournament points for each. Perhaps 64 and 32 respectively? Gog the Mild (talk) 13:13, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I would support Gog the Mild’s suggestion in a case of it being tiered, these numbers don’t have to be the same, it is just an example, anyone who scores above 50 gets 10 tournament points, above 100 gets 25, and above 250 gets 50. This would stack with the top 16’s points, so if 16th place currently got 1 tournament point with 300 round points. They would get an additional 50 for a total of 51. History6042😊 (Contact me) 13:54, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually I agree with Gog the Mild's, I misread their response. History6042😊 (Contact me) 14:28, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• This cup structure encouraged me to stop hoarding my potential FACs, so that I nominated them in January instead of waiting for a later round where I would need more points to advance. I think this spread out the nominations and I did not feel like there was much of a "cup dump" at the beginning of later rounds that I've seen at DYK, GAN and FAC in past rounds. I would be in favour of extending the distribution of points to 24, but going much further creates a "no one can catch up" feel that the points was supposed to eliminate.

Perhaps we could also have multiple editors get some of the lower-value awards. One proposal: anyone who gets any round points gets 1 tournament point, the 28-32 get 4, 24-27 9 points, 20-23 get 16, and 16-19 get 25, 15-14 get 36, then 13-12 gets 49, 11-10 get 64, 9-8 get 81, then continue up the points the same as it is now. Z1720 (talk) 19:51, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Proposal award bonus points for reviews of fellow Wikicup submissions. So right now, a review gets you 5 points, but if you review an article from a fellow Wikicup participant, you get 10 points (or something like that). This does a few things: it incentivizes reviews; it incentivizes Wikicup participants to limit the burden on general reviewers, freeing them up to review other articles; and it produces comradery between participants. One benefit too is that since the writer is a participant, there is strong incentive to provide a good review. Thoughts? « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 19:43, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It is an interesting idea, but I am slightly worried to make the Cup more insular by encouraging reviews to be traded among Cup participants. Also, anybody can sign up at any time, so "Wikicup participant" isn't necessarily very meaningful. I would generally suggest to increase the points given for GA reviews (and I would like to see more points for thorough reviews of long articles or articles that have been waiting for reviews for long). —Kusma (talk) 20:21, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I’m intrigued by the bonus points idea. I tried reviewing from the back of the GA queue a bit and there’s a big difference between Talk:Heya (sumo)/GA1 or Talk:Ayesha Takia/GA3 (both long and old) and something like Talk:Regional Workers' Center of Paraguay/GA1. I think the most important thing is to raise the baseline GA point value but if the bot could handle it a bonus for reviewing articles over X threshold of length could be nice. I hesitate to add an age bonus here because the Cup isn’t primarily about managing backlogs, it’s about doing good content work; reviewing a long GA is more content work (like writing a longer article for DYK is more content work) whereas reviewing an old GA may not be. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:36, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Kusma you are right that anyone can sign up for the Wikicup at any time. That said, its unlikely someone is going to sign up for the Wikicup just to review articles. I think the outcome I am looking for is that reviews are given a greater reward and that Wikicup participants reviewing Wikicup material helps avoid the Wikicup being the cause (or perceived cause) of review backlogs. I agree with the encouragement of more points for GA reviews, long reviews, etc. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 21:00, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Right, but if a nominator being in the WikiCup gives them a chance to get a review more quickly, this could encourage people to sign up for the WikiCup just to skip some of the GA backlog. As for causing backlogs, I do hope that more points for GA reviews will do the trick, but if all else fails we could consider only scoring GAs when the Cup participant has a corresponding number of GA reviews. —Kusma (talk) 21:16, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Why would it be bad for more people to sign-up for the Wikicup? « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 21:30, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The problem inst more people signing up for the cup, its more people signing up for the cup so they can get faster GA reviews and then not playing. That being said I don't think there would be that big of a problem with people joining and then not competing in good spirits Olliefant (she/her) 22:27, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Now I don’t think this is the best idea but it might work, what if we award something like ten bonus tournament points per round in which you have more reviews than promotions? History6042😊 (Contact me) 23:49, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Maybe not that specificity but there could be some merit to a system involving task-based bonuses, like if you review X number of other competitors content you get 15 points or something like that. They could be year long, change round to round or some blend of the two Olliefant (she/her) 02:58, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• FP proposal Not a participant but have been watching. There have been discussions about Featured Picture points in the past, and this year there has been just one (Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Mongol warriors in pursuit). The current 30 points may not reflect the effort needed, it's hard to get a good photo! But aside from that, I would like to propose a second points tier for FP, similar to how DYK has two tiers (10 points and 5 points for differing effort). The current (30 point) tier is for photos which an editor themselves has uploaded/scanned/restored/otherwise put significant personal work into. Perhaps a lower tier (say 5 points) could be added for FPs which are nomination only. There's still a little work in sifting through photos and making nominations, and the result still has some value as FPs are listed in WikiProjects etc. so a successful nomination makes the photo more visible to those interested in the wider topic. CMD (talk) 03:29, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I wasn't a judge when the point rules were first codified, but I assume that nominators aren't given FP points if they didn't work on the image, for the same reason drive-by GANs and FACs are ineligible for points. Successfully nominating a FPC could definitely have a positive impact on the photo, its subject, or relevant wikiprojects. But at the end of the day, giving points for nominating an FPC without working on the actual image is not only giving points to a drive-by nom, it might also overload the FPC process with drive-by noms, which could be problematic. (We've already had sone complaints that the WikiCup is encouraging people to game the system with regard to GAN/FAC, so adding FPC to the mix would complicate things.) Epicgenius (talk) 04:26, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Valid caution, although GANs and FACs require continued engagement with the content, which FPCs do not, so the impact of driveby noms is likely not as problematic. I was toying with the idea of a cap on noms per round as part of the idea, which would help if drive-bys do become an issue, but it didn't seem necessary given the baseline is currently close to zero.

  FP is the only non-topic category (and in some years the only category) to have zero points in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020. The exceptions to the trend, most recently 2019, suggest the 30 points FP is highly specialized. A lower bar might encourage non-specialized editors to dip their toes into the process. CMD (talk) 04:51, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So I'm really excited to see, judging from discussion above, that the system I proposed for this year has mostly been working. I also see a number of ideas for how it can improve. The biggest thing seems to be that doing a lot of work and simply getting a 0 is discouraging. The challenge, then, is how to solve that in a way that doesn't turn into just "add all the points up", which we had consensus last year would be counterproductive because people get demotivated if someone seems impossible to catch up with.

So what I'd like to propose is this: Each round, in addition to any placement-based points, a contestant gets tournament points equal to the floor of the logarithm, base 2, of their round score. If that sounds too mathy, all that means is, whatever power of 2 you last passed, you get that exponent as tournament points. If that still sounds too mathy, here's a table:

RP	5[α]–7	8–15	16–31	32–63	64–127	128–255	256–511	512–1023	1024–2047
TP	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
^ Lowest possible nonzero round score

From a game design perspective, this borrows an approach used in ranking systems for a lot of video games, making it easy to get a small number of points but progressively harder to get more. So 2 tournament points is your "thanks for playing"; a single GA would get you 5; and last round's leading 1,175 RP would get 10. The jump from 5 to 6 is roughly one GA; the jump from 8 to 9 is roughly one FA. This works out nicely because, by the time you're at 8 TP (256 RP), you're almost certainly in the top 16 and no longer care as much about the logarithmic TP. In other words, these logarithmic points can function as a gentler ladder for contestants to climb, propelling them toward the true fight for the placement-based points.

Here's how last round's TPs would change if this system were used:

User	RP	Actual TP	Modified TP
BeanieFan11	1175	256	266
Arconning	1090	225	235
AirshipJungleman29	854	196	205
Gog the Mild	755	169	178
History6042	701	144	153
Sammi Brie	635	121	130
Thebiguglyalien	512	100	109
Pokelego999	491	81	89
Reconrabbit	414	64	72
PCN02WPS	370	49	57
TheDoctorWho	332	36	44
Yue	322	25	33
LEvalyn	299	16	24
Cathodography	277	9	17
Kusma	264	4	12
Hey man im josh	252	1	8
vigilantcosmicpenguin	225	0	7
Vanderwaalforces	176	0	7
TheNuggeteer	165	0	7
Jolielover	132	0	7
NegativeMP1	108	0	6
Riley1012	91	0	6
Kingsif	89	0	6
OlifanofmrTennant	71	0	6
Pbritti	70	0	6
Vestrian24Bio	65	0	6
Jon698	62	0	5
Z1720	50	0	5
Ollieisanerd	24	0	4
The C of E	12	0	3
CatchMe	10	0	3
ViridianPenguin	5	0	2

-- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 07:55, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No opinion on the actual proposal, though at this point, we'd probably need LivingBot to actually start updating the TP scores automatically. – Epicgenius (talk) 13:11, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this will make it feel significantly less frustrating than the current structure (5 round points is still next to nothing compared to the winner bonus points). Perhaps if you multiply the logarithmic points by 5 or 10 we can get somewhere.

Another thing I'd like to discuss is second and third prizes for the bonus categories; all-or-nothing isn't so much fun. (It would be fine for a game you play for one board game night, but not so much for a year-long contest). —Kusma (talk) 13:56, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it’s a tough question, how to make the competition maximally fun for people who have no real chance of winning. Something I like about Tamzin’s new proposed scale it that it makes it possible to still try to get higher in rank over time, ie trying to go from 30th place to 29th, whereas the current approach leaves all the lower rankings totally equivalent. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:03, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it is an improvement, but I don't think it goes far enough. —Kusma (talk) 19:59, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just bumping this now that this year's cup has concluded. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 16:43, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I support this proposal. Z1720 (talk) 23:12, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I feel a need to repeat [Wikipedia talk:WikiCup: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia my two proposals from above] which attracted some support. An extract

can I propose that all participants get a tournament point for every 50 round points or part thereof at the end of each round? This is going to make little difference to the top 5 or 6 scoring contestants, but does reward those who put in the impressive amount of work to get 250 round points - or even 50. I also agree that the all or nothing nature of the end of tournament category points ia a bit dramatic. I suggest 2nd and 3rd placed contestants also getting tournament points for each. Perhaps 64 and 32 respectively?

Gog the Mild (talk) 15:08, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Gog the Mild and @Tamzin, I recommend possibly moving this to a new level-2 section. I think people are going to miss this discussion just because it's a subsection of another section. – Epicgenius (talk) 15:40, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How about we keep the current 16 place point system with the additional points as bonuses? So you'd get X amount of points per round with an additional y per 50 round points scored Olliefant (she/her) 16:01, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that is what Gog the Mild was suggesting, bonuses rather than replacing the current scoring. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:24, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely like the idea of points for 2nd or 3rd. The categories give a fun extra dimension of the game which I think would be enhanced by the points scale you propose. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:25, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found myself curious how this year's competitors would have fared if we used a simpler scoring system of adding up each round's points. This graph shows how the 35 folks who scored Tournament Points would have ranked by cumulative points total. (I also included the two editors who were in the top 35 by raw point totals (#30 and #33 respectively) but did not score any Tournament Points.) The "top three" wouldn’t change at all scoring by raw points, though the lower ranks do have a fair bit of shuffling.

The most dramatic jump -- an editor placing 14th by Tournament Points but 32nd by cumulative total points -- is also one of the few editors who joined midway through the competition, so this may be evidence that Tournament Points are working as intended to keep a more even playing field. At the same time, only 9 people joined in a round later than the first, and of those 9, 5 did not score a single point. Only 2 late-joiners scored any Tournament Points, and the other ranked #20 by TP and #18 by raw totals, so only one late-joiner actually ranked higher in the TP system.

Relatedly, in the full data I see a few folks who scored the majority of their Tournament Points in the final round— but they would still have ranked in the top 35 by cumulative total points (and in some cases, would have placed higher!)

I appreciate the game design rationale behind Tournament Points, but I’m not sure that the levelling effect is adding as much fun as the "scoring nothing" is removing. There's also a virtue in simplicity. I think we could consider switching to a flat cumulative points total (though I'd advocate for keeping category bonuses). Thoughts? I'm happy to share my data or make additional charts if folks are curious.

If I recall correctly, there were concerns that some contestants would be able to quickly amass a huge number of round points (the same thing as the "cumulative total points" you're talking about), making it hard or impossible for others to catch up. I can't find the exact discussion right now, but that would not be an unfounded concern. An extreme example of this would be round 4 of the 2018 Cup, where the highest scorer got 4,869 points, whereas the next-highest scorer got "just" 1,155 points. If we were to count round points/cumulative total points, that person would've had a lead of several thousand points for the rest of the Cup. This would probably not be that fun for everyone else involved, unless they liked fighting for second, third, etc. – Epicgenius (talk) 02:46, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]