User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Backlog drive checklist

Pros and cons of backlog drives

Burnout (the top people may be burned out for months afterward)
Gamification may encourage sloppy editing/reviewing/whatever the drive is rewarding (but this con is often exaggerated, and can be mitigated with a re-review system)

Pick a duration (week, two weeks, month)
Pick dates
Find a backlog drive coordinator
Find a backlog drive bot operator. (A bot is needed to convert actions into points and update the leaderboard daily. If a re-review system is being used, the bot can also assist with creating re-review pages, which are pages containing all the user's diffs/actions during the drive.)
Decide if we're doing re-reviews or not and how that will work (copy previous)

Create drive page (copy/paste/tweak an old backlog drive page)
Create a page to collect signups. Can do with a bulleted list, or using content model MassMessageListContent (MassMessageListContent creation link for non-admins)
Create draft of WP:MMS message (copy/paste/tweak an old MMS message)
Around two weeks before the drive, start marketing it
- WikiProject talk page posts
- MMS message blast
- Watchlist notice - set it to run for a week before your drive. so if your drive is on June 1, run it from May 25–31.
  - Don't skip the watchlist notice. Not only is it a great tool for your backlog drive, it may also be the best recruitment tool of the year for your WikiProject.

Why reinvent the wheel? Use these pages as templates if you want. If copy/pasting, please provide edit summary attribution.