The 50,000 Destubbing Challenge is a long term challenge to destub 50,000 articles on English Wikipedia for every country and topic. It began on March 1, 2020 with the Wikipedia:The Great Britain/Ireland Destubathon and opened as a global editathon on March 31. It may take decades to accomplish, it may take ten years, it all depends on how many people actively contribute. A long term framework which will hopefully be speeded up by running Destubathon contests and hopefully something people will find motivating and enjoyable to participate in long term. Given that well over half of all Wikipedia articles are stubs it's one of the most important things we can do to make a difference to the overall quality of the encyclopedia. It's a substantial goal but let it roll I say! There are more than 3,800,000 stub articles on the English Wikipedia, more than half of our articles. It needs to be drastically reduced somehow! Ideally we need a 1 million Destubbing Challenge!

Percentage of target reached for 2024:

Note: The first article destubbed in 2024 was number 4611.

• To expand 50,000 stubs by December 31 2029, aiming for an average of 5000 destubs each year and 13-14 destubs a day on average. In doing so we hope to make a considerable difference to the average article quality and consistency.
• Give a small weekly prize (£10-20 Amazon vouchers) for most articles destubbed in one week, enough to buy up to 50 books a year to invest back into developing the site.
• To cover over 200 countries and entities, every country on the planet, and every topic we currently have articles on.
• 5000 articles destubbed on Women biographies
• 10,000 articles destubbed on geo features
• To find articles wrongly assessed as stubs and remove stub tags/update talk pages to start class

• The Great Britain and Ireland Destubathon (March 2020) - 1036 articles destubbed from 137 counties and areas

If we can get more editors running Destubathon contests and editathons for their geographical and topical areas it may be possible to ramp up the timescale in which this challenge can be achieved.

Destubathon contests are currently only envisaged (but not yet planned) over the next ten years for the following areas.

Regional world contests

• The European Destubathon - covers all European nations and the UK.
• The Asian Destubathon - covers the Middle East and Russia through to Japan in the east, all Asian nations. - recommended one month contest. Possibly November 2020, coinciding with Asian Month.
• The Latin American Destubathon - covers Mexico down to Chile and the Caribbean - recommended one month contest.
• The Pacific Destubathon - covers the Pacific Island countries of Oceania
• The Far East Destubathon - covers China, Japan, eastern Russia, North and South Korea, Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau

National contests

• The United States Destubathon
• The Canadian Destubathon
• The Australian Destubathon
• The New Zealand Destubathon
• The Indian Destubathon

Subject contests

Some initial possibilities which might have the editors needed to sustain running them:

• The World Destubathon - a gigantic contest covering every country and topic, aiming to destub 5000 articles.
• The World Geo Destubathon
• The World Women Destubathon
• The World Architecture Destubathon
• The World Nature Destubathon
• The World Sports Destubathon
• The World Military History Destubathon

The Summer World Destubbing Challenge

The Summer World Destubbing Challenge is running from May 1 to July 31 2020. £250 (c.$310) worth of prizes will be rewarded in early August for most articles destubbed. Prize claims are to be made here, but there won't be the regular monitoring and prompting you get in contests. The prize winners will simply be announced at the beginning of August. Editors are expected to follow the guidelines as closely as possible to be eligible. Please try to source every claim, no unsourced paragraphs. Try to write a minimum of 1.2 kb of readable prose (not including lists), but aim for no less 1.5 kb unless you genuinely can't find enough material. List articles on the main list here as you do regularly. No target will be set each week for number of articles. Keep it relaxed and free, but let's try to get a minimum of one article improved from every country or county/state.

• £25 - England
• £25 - Wales
• £25 - Scotland
• £25 - Ireland/N. Ireland
• £25 - Europe
• £25 - Africa
• £25 - Asia
• £25 - Latin America/Caribbean
• £25 - North America
• £25 - Oceania

All articles from sub challenges will be tipped into here every 100 or so.

• The 1000 Destubbing Football Challenge

Anybody who is interested in destubbing articles long term or for any of the weeks allocated for the Summer Focus sign up here. Articles done for the regional world challenges may also be placed here.

You can check your entries using this tool before submitting here. The article readable prose, excluding sources and lists should be a minimum 1200 bytes (1.2 KB) and ideally 1500 bytes (1.5 KB).

What would make it easier on this is if everybody programs their common.js in their preferences to contain:

importScript('User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js'); // 
User:Dr pda/prosesize

Instructions:

1. Go into your preferences, click on the "Appearances" tab
2. Where it says "Shared CSS/JavaScript for all skins:", click "custom javascript"
3. Paste the command given above into that and save.
4. Select it at the "Browsing" section of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets ( direct link), and then save.
5. Now approach an article and look in the tools section on the left. You should see "Page size". Click that for each article and you'll quickly get a reading without having to paste text all of the time and look externally.
6. Look out for where it says, for example: "Prose size (text only): 1310 B (xxx words) "readable prose size" ". That's what we're looking for on this, that has to read over 1200 B when finished.

• Articles related to every topic and nation are welcome here. When listing try to add the relevant county and country it is applicable to. If it is a biography, the county and country of birth.
• All articles submitted here must be a minimum of 1.2 kb (1200 bytes) of readable prose. This is the bare minimum to accommodate for the fact that a lot of smaller localities and landmarks are difficult to write fuller articles on but are very worthy of including and having a reasonable basic entry on in their own right. Always aim for at least 1.5 kb (1500 bytes) of readable prose for a "destub" unless you're genuinely struggling to find enough to reach it.
• All paragraphs must be fully sourced, with appropriate title, publisher, author, date information where relevant, no bare urls or poorly formatted sources which include publisher and title etc in one link etc. Be consistent in the sourcing and formatting and be careful of sourcing claims lower down in paragraphs and ensure that the sources verify all of the information given above.
• All content submitted must have been checked and verified. If there are claims which are not verifiable in an existing stub or article, delete those claims before submitting.
• All articles are expected to be free of copyright issues and plagiarism.
• All talk page tags are expected to be updated from being classed as stubs. Remember to remove the stub tag at the bottom of the articles.
• If you come across articles which are clearly no longer stubs and don't need much or any sourcing work or expansion, kindly remove the stub tag and update the tags on the talk page to reclassify it.

1. Columbia Station (Washington), Washington,   United States - destubbed by SounderBruce
2. Icicle Station, Washington,   United States - destubbed by SounderBruce
3. Seattle Center Monorail, Washington,   United States - destubbed by SounderBruce
4. 1994 FIFA World Cup qualification (CONCACAF–OFC play-off),   Australia and   Canada - destubbed by HawkAussie
5. French cruiser Victor Hugo,   France - destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
6. French cruiser Jules Ferry,   France - destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
7. Taruni Sachdev,   India - destubbed by CAPTAIN MEDUSA
8. Fiji at the 1976 Summer Olympics,   Fiji - destubbed by HawkAussie
9. HMS Mashona (F59),   UK, - destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
10. Japanese destroyer Keyaki (1944),   Japan, - destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
11. Japanese destroyer Tsubaki (1944),   Japan, - destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
12. Japanese destroyer Hinoki (1944),   Japan, - destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
13. Japanese destroyer Nara (1944),   Japan, - destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
14. Laos at the 2012 Summer Olympics,   Laos, - destubbed by MrLinkinPark333
15. Fraternal fruit-eating bat,   Peru - destubbed by AryKun
16. Saffron-crowned tanager,   South America - destubbed by AryKun
17. Emerald tanager,   South America - destubbed by AryKun
18. Blue-and-black tanager,   South America - destubbed by AryKun
19. Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics,   Tuvalu - destubbed by AryKun
20. Bailey Dale,   Australia - destubbed by Doggo375
21. Letterpress (video game),   United States - destubbed by TrademarkedTarantula
22. Courtois-Suffit Lescop CSL-1,   France – destubbed by Sturmvogel_66
23. Menemerus animatus,   Algeria – destubbed by simongraham
24. Afraflacilla braunsi,   Saudi Arabia – destubbed by simongraham

See Wikipedia:The 50,000 Destubbing Challenge/1–1000

See Wikipedia:The 50,000 Destubbing Challenge/1001–2000

See Wikipedia:The 50,000 Destubbing Challenge/2001–3000

See Wikipedia:The 50,000 Destubbing Challenge/3001–4000