2014 WikiCup enters round three

The views expressed in this report are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section.

Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain. Pool G's Adam Cuerden (submissions) was Round 2's highest scorer, with a large number of featured picture credits. In March/April, he restored star charts from Urania's Mirror, lithographs of various warships (such as SMS Gefion) and assorted other historical media. Second overall was Pool E's Godot13 (submissions), whose featured list Silver certificate (United States) contains dozens of scans of banknotes recently promoted to featured picture status. Third was Pool G's ChrisGualtieri (submissions) who has produced a large number of good articles, many, including Falkner Island, on Connecticut-related topics. Other successful participants included Cliftonian (submissions), who saw three articles (including the top-importance Ian Smith) through featured article candidacies, and Caponer (submissions), who saw three lists (including the beautifully-illustrated list of plantations in West Virginia) through featured list candidacies. High-importance good articles promoted this round include narwhal from Reid,iain james (submissions), tiger from Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and The Lion King from Igordebraga (submissions). We also saw our first featured topic points of the competition, awarded to Czar (submissions) and Red Phoenix (submissions) for their work on the Sega Genesis topic. No points have been claimed so far for good topics or featured portals.

192 was our lowest qualifying score, again showing that this WikiCup is the most competitive ever. In previous years, 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) or 100 (2010) secured a place in Round 3. Pool H was the strongest performer, with all but one of its members advancing, while only the two highest scorers in Pools G and F advanced. At the end of June, 16 users will advance into the semi-finals.

Of course this is not a complete list of content produced by any contestant; consider this a bite-sized sampling of their work.

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  FP from his GA, Urania's Mirror, by first-place Adam Cuerden. One of thirty-four featured pictures restored by him in round two.
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  Second-place Godot13 created the FL Silver certificate (United States) – and a set of thirty-three featured pictures to go in it.
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  The Great Captain Island Light was one of third-place ChrisGualtieri's twenty-seven GAs
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  Fourth-place Sturmvogel 66 worked on battleships, such as the FA Japanese battleship Nagato
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  Musca (constellation) was made an FA by fifth-place Casliber, seen here under its former name, Apis, in its first depiction in a celestial atlas.
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  Sixth-place Cliftonian had an impressive three FAs, including Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia that led the country to independence.
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  Getting the top-importance tiger up to GA gave seventh-place Cwmhiraeth a ton of bonus points.
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  As they work mainly on pop-music articles, the FL List of songs recorded by Sky Ferreira is one of the few bits of eighth-place WikiRedactor's work I have a freely-licensed image for.
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  Ninth-place Red Phoenix got Sega 32X up to FA, as part of the Sega Genesis featured topic.
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  Tenth-place Caponer produced on Virginia- and West-Virginia-centric GAs and FLs, including Colross.
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  Hurricanehink unsurprisingly works on hurricanes, such as his GA, Typhoon Fitow.
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  Go Phightins! had an FA on Jim Thome.
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  The C of E had masses of DYKs, and a GA on The Oval (Belfast).
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  ThaddeusB had masses of DYKs and ITNs, including one on the bizarre Blood Moon Prophecy, yet another attempt to predict the end of the world.
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  Raising Kylie Minogue's Spinning Around to FA gave WonderBoy1998 lots of points.
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  The film Girl with a Pearl Earring was raised to FA by Ruby2010.
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  List of songs recorded by Natalia Kills was raised to FL by Prism
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  The area around Somerset in England was the subject of beautifully-illustrated GAs by Rodw (Pumps dealing with the winter flooding of 2013–14 on the Somerset Levels shown)
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  12george1 is another hurricane expert, with six GAs, including Tropical Storm Andrea.
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  The Sip 'n Dip Lounge, in which women dressed as mermaids swim in an aquarium-like pool, was raised to GA by Montanabw, alongside two other GAs and an FA.
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  Czar created an FA on a video game peripheral, the Menacer, as part of the Sega Genesis featured topic.
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  You know how I keep mentioning that someone's name meant they'd obviously work on the type of content they did? That's not always the case: CycloneIsaac's points came from raising articles on highways to GA. (View from Nebraska Highway 88 shown)
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  Vern Bickford (left) was one of Secret's four GAs on various subjects.
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  Sven Manguard got several video-game articles up to GA, including Charlie Murder. Thanks to his work getting video game companies to release screenshots, we can even show you what he worked on.
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  Wizardman brought baseball player articles to GA. (Fred Dunlap shown.)
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  Because it has a better illustration than their GA, have a look at the lead image for Cloudz679's DYK, Vysočina Region (in the Czech Republic).
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  Another hurricane expert, Yellow Evan got four 1982 typhoons to GA. (Typhoon Andy shown.)
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  The Bolshoy Ice Dome was a GA for Bloom6132.
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  Sibyl Hathaway is one of the varied GAs by Matty.007.
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  Igordebraga has GAs on The Lion King and Iron Man 3. I'm only allowed to show free-use images here, so here's a picture of Robert Downey, Jr., Iron Man 3's star.

Just because they didn't pass to Round 3 doesn't mean there wasn't some excellent content created by the participants. This section features some of the work by people who had a damn good try at a place. As before, they all did a lot more work than the sample featured.

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  Dana boomer raised the gorgeously-illustrated List of National Natural Landmarks in Colorado to FL
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  DendroNaja worked on snake articles. Forest cobra, now a GA, shown.
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  Evan Gattis (pictured) and two other baseball articles were brought to GA by Muboshgu
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  Jamesx12345 brought about some excellent GAs, such as Titan Clydebank .
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  Newyorkadam brought two episodes of Lost to GA (director of the pilot shown).
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  Hahc21 started the article Flotilla (video game) and raised it to GA status.
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  Piotr Konieczny, one of last year's finalists, raised Jan Zamoyski to GA.
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  It will be no surprise that Wrestlinglover created GAs on wrestling, such as Genesis (2005).

In this issue

7 May 2014 (all comments)

News and notes

Traffic report

In focus

WikiCup

In the media

WikiProject report

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• Good to see ChrisGualtieri's Great Captain Island Light article which I reviewed. Keep the good work up Chris! Acalycine^{(talk/contribs)} 10:12, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• I have to rejoin the real world in an hour, so I don't have time for these. The longer I wait, the more I have to delay watching shows on two TiVos. And the longer I wait, the more I risk losing something.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:49, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Today I had already finished up on Wikipedia, and I was able to do other stuff while waiting for these to load. Good photos!— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:31, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]