Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Regional contests

Looking around some articles this morning I see that the majority of articles are neglected for Wales. Notable towns in places like Ceredigion and Anglesey still stubs or unsourced. Areas badly in need of development and an injection of good sourcing and research, even very basic work to get things up to minimum standards. What I envisage is this Dragon project hosting county contests and then an overall one. I think for this to be a major success we need greater numbers at the local level. I think there's so many neglected articles and lack of numbers that we need to regularly hold contests, even if two week drives to focus on getting every article for Wales up to half decent status. Not just writing good articles, I mean the really basic wiki gnoming and minor improvement like sourcing and cleanup to make even the stubs look more reasonable, and an overall greater consistency in articles. I'm giving it some thought, but my thinking is that you could have core lists by county going into more depth, and you could run something like this with a focus on a given area of Wales. I think it would generate a similar interest and participation if there was a decent prize and organization as with this one, and might be fun to have some targetting a specific area in more detail. You could hold week-long contests and give prizes to people who destub/improve the most articles by county. Eventually every area of Wales would become gradually more consistent. There could be an annual rota, and week slots given to a county of Wales with drives, but something which makes basic improvement work challenging and fun to participate in. They would compliment the main dragon competition as an ongoing development. Setting up this page for some brainstorming and discussion. Anybody is welcome to join in and identify weak areas for Wales and comment on what they would be interested in doing.

County structure

Preserved counties

1. Clwyd
2. Dyfed
3. Gwent
4. Gwynedd
5. Mid Glamorgan
6. Powys
7. South Glamorgan
8. West Glamorgan

Modern counties

1. Anglesey
2. Blaenau Gwent
3. Bridgend
4. Caerphilly
5. Cardiff
6. Carmarthenshire
7. Ceredigion
8. Conwy
9. Denbighshire
10. Flintshire
11. Gwynedd
12. Merthyr Tydfil
13. Monmouthshire
14. Neath Port Talbot
15. Newport
16. Pembrokeshire
17. Powys
18. Rhondda Cynon Taf
19. Swansea
20. Torfaen
21. Vale of Glamorgan
22. Wrexham

Blaenau Gwent † Bridgend (Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr) † Caerphilly (Caerffili) † Cardiff (Caerdydd) Carmarthenshire (Sir Gaerfyrddin) Ceredigion Conwy † Denbighshire (Sir Ddinbych) Flintshire (Sir y Fflint) Gwynedd Isle of Anglesey (Ynys Môn) Merthyr Tydfil (Merthyr Tudful) † Monmouthshire (Sir Fynwy) Neath Port Talbot (Castell-nedd Port Talbot) † Newport (Casnewydd) † Pembrokeshire (Sir Benfro) Powys Rhondda Cynon Taf † Swansea (Abertawe) Torfaen (Tor-faen) † Vale of Glamorgan (Bro Morgannwg) † Wrexham (Wrecsam) †

Areas marked † are county boroughs, while unmarked areas are counties. Welsh-language forms are given alongside the English where they differ.

22 counties. To hold a contest/editathon for each county would take a long time. Even 2 week contests, one within each month would take nearly two years. Now if we held a drive for a week for each one or even one weekend, with a prize for whoever destubs/improves/creates the most articles at the end, and a daily winner, you could probably cover the lot in a year. Or if you held the Dragon contest one month, you could have one day dedicated to each county. Perhaps if we went by the rough preserved county area, that would be eight main areas, probably easier to deal with. If you scrapped the points system and simply made it an article count of who improves the most articles overall then you would simply have lists of contestants and then # their improved/created entries each day. Obviously some assistance in planning and running them, sharing the load, would make such a thing easier, but I think it would be quite possible to do this. For a start, it might be best to look at one or two counties which really need the most work, or might have the most interest for a more localised focus. I really think for something like this to start to get all of the articles we have up to half decent status there needs to be careful thought put into regional areas like this and targetting the average article which rarely ever gets touched.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:22, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

I think I might do a trial for a few days later next week with a specific focus on Gwynedd (pre 1996 area) as part of this contest. It would include the current county and Anglesey. A mixture of destubbing/core improvement and article creation.

Mmm what I was planning with 10/10 I think I'll now do as Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Stub Obliteration/The Preserved County Challenge later next week... It will be a miniature drive of what you could do larger scale for a longer duration. But I see so many crappy stubs that I think on this we should devote the county challenge to simple destubbing work.

One thing to consider is how the various lists and categories are structured. I think that there were a few modern counties that didn't have any relevant, or very incomplete, lists and cats when I was trying to get all 22. Forex, I was hunting for one for Caerphilly, but ended up in Newport because of all the border changes. So I don't know if it's better to expand those ahead of time, or to make it a minor part of the contest as an incentive to improve them.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:33, 3 May 2016 (UTC)