Wikipedia:WikiCup/History

This page documents the history of the annual WikiCup, a content-increasing event for editors of Wikipedia. The competition began in 2007, and was originally based on an association football contest, with the primary criteria being edit counts and unique page edits. The first Cup had 12 participants and was taken by Dreamafter after a win against Sunderland06 in the final. The 2008 contest had a slightly more healthy competitor count at 24, and the format was still heavily edit count based. This was won by jj137, again beating Sunderland06 in the final round.

In 2009, the format was changed significantly before and, often controversially, during the contest. The focus was shifted from edit counts to content creation, offering substantially fewer points for mainspace edits than for audited content. As well as the familiar featured articles, lists and pictures, along with good articles, In the News and Did You Know?, points were awarded for lesser-known areas of Wikipedia's audited content; featured and good topics, featured sounds and featured portals. This change drew the contest away from merely an edit count and encouraged higher quality contributions. Edits outside of the article (and, later, portal) space counted for nothing, and edits made with automatic tools such as Twinkle, Huggle and AutoWikiBrowser were ignored. By the 2010 competition, edit count no longer counted for points, regardless of whether or not it was in the mainspace.