Welcome to my talk page. Please adhere to the talk page guidelines and particularly the following: Please post your new topic at the bottom of this page. Please sign and date your entry by inserting "~~~~" at the end. Please specify a descriptive "Subject/headline" for a new topic and separate subtopics by ===heading=== lines, if needed. Please indent your posts with one more ":" than what you are replying to, i.e. begin with ":" if replying to an existing topic and "::" if replying to a reply. I will generally respond here to comments that are posted here, rather than replying via your Talk page (or the article Talk page, if you are writing to me here about an article), so you may want to watch this page until you are responded to, or specifically let me know where you'd prefer the reply. ⇒ Start a new Talk topic.

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Courcelles (submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 147 GAs, 111 GARs, 9 DYKs, 4 FLs and 1 ITN. Our finalists were as follows:

1. Courcelles (submissions)
2. Kosack (submissions)
3. Kees08 (submissions)
4. SounderBruce (submissions)
5. Cas Liber (submissions)
6. Nova Crystallis (submissions)
7. Iazyges (submissions)
8. Ceranthor (submissions)

All those who reached the final win awards, and awards will also be going to the following participants:

• Cas Liber (submissions) wins the FA prize, for three featured articles in round 2.
• Courcelles (submissions) wins the GA prize, for 92 good articles in round 3.
• Kosack (submissions) wins the FL prize, for five featured lists overall.
• Cartoon network freak (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 30 articles in good topics overall.
• Usernameunique (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 24 did you know articles in round 3.
• Zanhe (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 17 in the news articles overall.
• Aoba47 (submissions) wins the GAR prize, for 43 good article reviews in round 1.

Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition.

Next year's competition begins on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; it is open to all Wikipedians, new and old. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2019 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email) and Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email).

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2. With 56 contestants qualifying, each group in Round 2 contains seven contestants, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for Round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• L293D, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with ten good articles on submarines for a total of 357 points.
• Adam Cuerden, a WikiCup veteran, came next with 274 points, mostly from eight featured pictures, restorations of artwork.
• MPJ-DK, a wrestling enthusiast, was in third place with 263 points, garnered from a featured list, five good articles, two DYKs and four GARs.
• Usernameunique came next at 243, with a featured article and a good article, both on ancient helmets.
• Squeamish Ossifrage was in joint fifth place with 224 points, mostly garnered from bringing the 1937 Fox vault fire to featured article status.
• Ed! was also on 224, with an amazing number of good article reviews (56 actually).

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews on 143 good articles, one hundred more than the number of good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Well done all!

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk).

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with anyone scoring less than 673 points being eliminated. It was a high scoring round with all but one of the contestants who progressed to the final having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

• Epicgenius, with 2173 points topping the scores, gained mainly from a featured article, 38 good articles and 9 DYKs. He was followed by
• Sammi Brie, with 1575 points, gained mainly from a featured article, 28 good articles and 50 good article reviews. Close behind was
• Thebiguglyalien, with 1535 points mainly gained from a featured article, 15 good articles, 26 good article reviews and lots of bonus points.

Between them during round 4, contestants achieved 12 featured articles, 3 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 126 good articles, 46 DYK entries, 14 ITN entries, 67 featured article candidate reviews and 147 good article reviews. Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them and within 24 hours of the end of the final. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

I will be standing down as a judge after the end of the contest. I think the Cup encourages productive editors to improve their contributions to Wikipedia and I hope that someone else will step up to take over the running of the Cup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk), and Cwmhiraeth (talk)