Conservapedia:Team Contest

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The Team Contest on Conservapedia has been in the planning since June 29^[1] by the administration of CP. As such, it is one of the more official special events, just like the Sysop Contest or the spontaneous attempts at breaking the article creation record. However, unlike these other events, the Team Contest is not free for all. As the name implies, it will be a cooperative effort, pitting two teams against each other. Each team has a Captain and 7 other team members, thus limiting the number of active participants to 16.

The contest will run for seven days (starting July 10, 12:01am NY time), during which the two teams will try to get the highest score, based on things they do (editing, blocking, welcoming users, and so on).

Participation updates:

• Karajou joins Team One! No comment on why he didn't join the team led by Sharon, who had asked him first.^[2]
• Conservative isn't exactly thrilled by the apparent amount of organization required. He'd rather just do his thing as usual^[3] - a recommendable strategy for those who care more about the site than about scoring points!
  • However, it should be noted that Andy is not exactly thrilled with this.^[4]
  • Update: DeborahB. replaces Conservative and promptly copies^[5] from the resource BethanyS copied from! But they're on the same team, so it most likely won't lead to finger-pointing.
• RobS joins Team Two! Let's hope that he and TK will remember that they're on the same team before engaging in Sysop revert wars^[6] next week...

Contents 1 Scoring 2 Rules 3 Restricted Area 4 Suggested strategy 5 Other Teams 6 Play-by-Play 6.1 Live commenting 6.2 In-detail comments 6.3 Misc. 7 Winner 8 See also 9 Footnotes

[edit] Scoring

The official scoring table (as of July 7, roughly 10pm German time, updated July 12/13 (but some finer sub-rules are currently missing)) is given on the right-hand side.

Comparing those items will quickly show that the scoring system is extremely lacking in terms of balance.

The reward for high-quality editing is too low when compared to normal editing, and the reward for normal editing is too low when compared to assorted tasks (for example, inserting "{{welcome}}" on 10 new user pages equals the creation of one quality entry).

This encourages participants to make smaller and more trivial contributions instead of quality ones. Andy said that invested time is not the only consideration in the system, but it's apparently not even a major consideration. For example, it took me several hours to rewrite Origin of the Moon, which I would consider to be a quality article now.^[7] In that time, I could have spellchecked a few dozen entries. Even if we count a rewrite from scratch as a new article, I would have received 10 points instead of (for example) 24 points for spellchecking a dozen articles (which is WAY less work).

Additionally, giving points for blocking is way off, given Conservapedia's "Shoot first, check for guilt only once the victim complains to the right people" attitude (which results in people being banned for disagreeing with sysops, for trying to correct articles, for joining at the wrong time, for living at the wrong place, or simply because their name is vaguely similar to somebody else's name). Despite what Andy claims on the contest talk page, blocking on CP doesn't take skill. Only a few healthy doses of paranoia, ruthlessness, and bad faith. Another argument is that blocking five people for example equals the creation of one high-quality article. Again, this doesn't exactly encourage participants to invest hours into creating a new (but good) article. Instead, it's smarter to keep an eye on the User Creation Log while making small edits and to stalk whoever joins in the hope of finding an excuse to block (for an even smarter strategy, scroll down). Related to the "points for blocking" issue, Andy has said that non-sysops would get blocking rights. This of course means that only "trusted non-sysops"^[8] will be allowed to participate.

Things get worse when one compares "Any new entry: 6 points" with... uh... ANYTHING. For example, on June 23, Andy, Crocoite, and DeborahB. alone created 112 new articles which were either useless index pages or copy-pasted from government sites.^[9] Collective worth: 672 points. What sounds easier? Creating 112 new articles via copy-paste (of glossaries, "About us" pages, or of a template string to create an index), or creating 67 quality articles (let's say this means articles with good sources, more insight instead of just a one-paragraph definition, and maybe even pictures)?

Update: Uploading images now gives 2 points. And using images gives another 2 points. And another 2 points if it's a really good image.

...well, that certainly explains why there have been 150+ image uploads between July 13 and July 15 alone...

[edit] Rules

Most of the rules are fairly standard stuff and/or have been mentioned in the sections above.

However, one rule sticks out: "A team shall not work on any pages which the other team is working on."

This is a fairly interesting rule since it suddenly turns a collaborative project into a divided one, especially since the participants are pretty much the most active editors on the site these days.

Since there currently is no clarification saying otherwise, I have to assume this means that (for example) Crocoite would not be allowed to touch an article Andy started/touched, even if the edit would be to insert wikilinks and/or categories. Alternatively, he maybe can do it, but he won't be allowed to count that towards the score.

Not quite the spirit of a wiki project, I think.

[edit] Restricted Area

Both teams received their own namespaces ("Team1" and "Team2"). As with the new "Sysop" namespace, articles in there are only available to authorized users (in this case, the members of the team).

This is a somewhat odd turn of events, considering that there should be no real need for secrecy. For now, it's possible that the members are merely discussing recruitment options, though. Time will tell how frequently these namespaces will be used. However, Team Two already has a "Strategy" page...

At the very least, it's apparent that Andy goes all out for this contest: The team namespaces were created even before the still long-awaited "Debate" or "Essay" namespaces.^[10]

Also, the Judges^[11] have their own namespace now.

A full copy of the hidden namespaces, at the time of the last update, can be found through Conservapedia:Hidden namespaces.

[edit] Suggested strategy

Based on all of the above, there is a very clear way to boost your team's score:

1. Google for glossary .gov
2. Pick any result that has many entries (and which doesn't overlap with many existing articles - so the glossaries used on June 23 for example would not be good candidates)
3. Memorize these hotkeys: CTRL-C to copy, CTRL-V to paste.
   • If you want to be fancy, also memorize the hotkeys to create and cycle through tabs and to access the URL bar.
   • If you want to be VERY fancy, create a local HTML page with links to all articles you want to create^[12]
4. Reserve a block of a few hours to do nothing but editing.
5. Start new article, copy, paste, submit. Rinse, repeat. Each submit step gives your team 6 points. If you do one article per 3 minutes (factoring in load times and maybe even light rephrasing to make the pasted text fit into a rough article format), you alone can score 480 points in 4 hours.^[13]

And keep these things in mind:

• The day has more than just four hours.
• The contest goes on for seven days.
• There are quite a few government glossaries and other government sources.

Yeah, sure, it's not the best for the site (even though Andy sees nothing wrong in doing basically just that), but it's pretty much the best points-per-hour strategy you can do since you (1) don't have to spend time on finding articles you could edit and (2) don't have to rely on vandals joining the site so you can wield the ban hammer. You can just do your thing without interacting with anybody AT ALL. Even a well-trained monkey could do your job - it's practically idiot-proof.

Update: On 7/9, Andy (of Team Two) recommended to Joaquín Martínez (Team One Captain): "Joaquin, one good type of resource that I want you to be aware of is this: United States government websites. Because we funded those websites as taxpayers, there is no copyright protection and we can almost always copy information from them without attribution or restriction."^[14] Joaquín Martínez promptly started to make a list of Public Domain material^[15].

[edit] Other Teams

It has been suggested in some quarters that all the smart people who left Conservapedia (in disgust or due to banning) should also be allowed to field their own eight person team. If such a team indeed exists, we will be eagerly awaiting reports of their relative success, especially since they won't be able to score points by blocking. Go Team!

[edit] Play-by-Play

[edit] Live commenting

And, they're off! - 00:00, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

• 00:04 - Joaquín Martínez has welcomed six users and made one edit in four minutes! he would have welcomed seven, but Kangaroo banned one. Pass the coffee, Juan.
• 00:30 - Crocoite is nestled in for the duration with a government (it's ours! - A.S.) glossary about volcanoes. Andy woke up and started writing about slander. Writing too many words to make good use of his time, however. Martinez has welcomed another handful of new users. RobS is, what else - writing a history of espionage! Martinez is busy reverting edits by the, um, "new users" he has welcomed. Don't you get the same number of points for banning?
• 00:37 - Bohdan unblocks two users - "hasty". No points. Unless he reblocks them...
• 00:40 - "Joaquín Martínez uploaded "Image:Adrenaline.png": Source: Wikipedia GNU Free Documentation License." Trouble in paradise! Copyright law violation in aisle six!
• 00:50 - Aschlafly - "New page: The Social Security Administration (SSA) is the federal agency which administers the national social security program. Category:government" Attaboy Andy! Tautologies get E11even points!
• 01:00 - One hour update. Crocoite has been methodically creating a new article every two minutes.
• 01:05 - Aschlafly has created five new articles in two minutes, setting a new standard for thoroughness copying and pasting!
• 01:16 - Martinez welcomes new user "ThatSpongeCakeBrand". Pull up some hospi-tali-tea!
• 01:18 - Martinez bans new user "ThatSpongeCakeBrand" - vandal! Whodathunkit?
• 01:27 - Aschlafly reverted edits by (random vandal welcomed a few moments ago). Oops, no points for that.
• 01:40 - The pace is slacking off! We're down to about one edit a minute total. (Yawn). Time to watch some rodeo.
• 06:23 - SharonS replaces an article on mineral fractures with one on bone fractures^[16]. Score one new quality article?
• 13:00 - Checking back in, it seems that Fox is going to make CP the "go to" place to learn your shipping terms! Learn Together, meanwhile is adding some sort of history/battle articles left and right, and setting up juicy redirects wherever convenient.

(Note: This intrepid reporter got bored due to the lack of a scoresheet and the high intellectual level of the competetition.)

[edit] In-detail comments

Article creations that happened during the first 12 hours are covered in this article. The analysis also shows how the vast majority of articles are simple copy-paste jobs.

[edit] Misc.

• Ohhhh... sabotage within team ranks! BethanyS copy-pastes a boat article, but Fox decides to kill it! Oh, wait. He just put it into the Witness Protection Program and gave it a new identity! As long as Fox and Bethany don't BOTH count that as an article creation, that's okay then. Kudos to Fox for the mass move of the ships, by the way!
• Andy demonstrates how the scoring system dictates the actions: "Aschlafly - 33 new pages, 10 edits, 1 category - slow start, I need to pick up some blocks!" ^[17]
• Opportunity costs in action: Reverting edits counts as editing an article because "it was anti-vandal work that prevented us from doing other edits".
• I'm sure you could make a joke about Spawn Camping here: TK asks a non-competing member not to add the "welcome" template to user pages because the contest is running.
• Joaquín Martínez does what CP sysops do best: He makes up a new rule on the fly. This time, his copyright-violating baseball glossary articles may not be deleted while the contest is still running. Afterwards is fine, though. Keep in mind that the contest is supposed to improve CP, not to spam it with garbage you don't care about.

[edit] Winner

On July 24, the winner was declared to be Team One (Joaquín's team). The judging apparently took slightly longer than the entire contest had taken. No score was published^[18].

[edit] See also

• Conservapedia:Team Contest two
• Conservapedia:Team Contest three
• The informal office pool on the outcome of TC3.
• Conservapedia:Team Contest four
• Conservapedia:Team Contest five

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ Creation date of the Team Contest article
2. ↑ Post on User talk:Karajou
3. ↑ Post on User talk:Conservative
4. ↑ Post on User talk:Aschlafly
5. ↑ Active-I and Acubens at the moment
6. ↑ Example article history
7. ↑ Even though Ed thinks I'm not a good editor. Woe is me ;)
8. ↑ That's a fancy way of saying "productive yay-sayers".
9. ↑ Conservapedia:Article Creation Record Attempt (June 23)
10. ↑ Granted, this is a question of incentives. Right now, all debates and essays count towards the "over X educational, clean, and concise entries". So removing them will lead to a decrease in the article count. As such, creating these namespaces will most likely be a low-priority task, despite the fact that their creation would make life considerably easier for readers and editors.
11. ↑ At the moment, only TerryH, Geo.plrd and Hojimachong are confirmed judges. It is unknown how three judges will properly judge 16 editors who have all the wrong incentives and way too much energy.
12. ↑ The URL pattern for the links is http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=PAGE_TITLE&action=edit
13. ↑ 20 articles per hour * 4 hours * 6 points
14. ↑ Post on User talk:Joaquín Martínez
15. ↑ Post on User talk:Karajou
16. ↑ http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Fracture&diff=224338&oldid=176522
17. ↑ This should be a permalink.
18. ↑ Diff of the announcement