Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors

Small articles, a new campaign type to reduce the backlog total

Dear friends, I've noticed a possibly fairly recent trend that many of the newly added copy edit tags in our backlog are very short articles (petscan). Because I didn't have all the know-how to dig into the petscan data properly, I instead did a little experiment in last month's Drive to see how many of these really short articles I could knock off, and if I could make a dent in the numbers. The results were encouraging; I managed 44 articles only between 18–25 May, without really breaking a sweat. Most of them were tagged in May or April 2025. What could we achieve with 20 or 30 editors working on it for a whole month? Therefore, I propose another type of Blitz or Drive, where we simply list articles in order of size. Now, a few of these articles were of dubious notability, spurious origin, AI noise, and perhaps could have been dealt with even quicker; but it remains true that a campaign of this sort would work wonders on our seemingly Sisyphean backlog, and if nothing else, it will improve our morale. And that is a thing worth doing, I think. — Jon (talk) 02:47, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

We can have themes for blitzes and drives that are not "the oldest backlog articles and all requests", the latter having been the rule lately. Someone would have to make up a list of eligible articles and post it so people can tick off the articles they have copy edited. Dhtwiki (talk) 08:24, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Okay. When I'm better in a week or two, can I ask you more about it? I'm not familiar with all the machinery, but I'm happy to help with updating lists (wikitable?) from petscan. The volume is such that it would need a daily update; 2-3 new ones appear each day. We might need to experiment a bit to estimate numbers, etc. — Jon (talk) 00:04, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for posting that petscan link. I have modified it a bit to produce a list of the 100 smallest articles needing copy edit. I don't know about having it as the target of a drive (a blitz might be fun), but I'm definitely keeping it around for future reference. Sometimes I just want to drop the backlog count by doing some quality edits that don't take much time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:57, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

That's exactly right. A week-long blitz of (say) 500 articles, every now and then. Last one to the end misses out on ice cream. If I can manage 44 in a week, I'm pretty sure if 20-30 people pitched in we could make a massive dent in it. — Jon (talk) 13:02, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

The 500th-shortest tagged article, Directorium, is 1,752 words, according to the page size script. That's not all that short. I suspect that I'm not the only one who sometimes trolls for short articles during the drives, just to get the count lower. I'm not ashamed of this cherry-picking. I've done a Magna Carta or two in my day. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:32, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

The June blitz will probably run from the 15th to the 21st, although we haven't begun to discuss that. So, setting up short articles as a special blitz theme should happen soon if it's to be for June. Dhtwiki (talk) 07:58, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

I've been out of action with a brain hæmorrhage, so I'm not really in a fit state to help with June, but I should be okay by August. Perhaps we can define "short" as being word count ≤ 500 words, or some other agreed value, and see how many there are. Also note that while I was doing the experiment, one or two new articles would appear somewhere on the petscan list each day. — Jon (talk) 01:32, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

That is fine, as I am setting up the June blitz with emphasis on the backlog and requests, per usual. I hope you are feeling fine in time for August. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:36, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, at this writing, the entries at 98–100 on the petscan list above are about 500 to 600 words long at this writing. There are not very many super-short articles in the backlog. I'll definitely be looking at that list in July. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:36, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

WP:Backlog drive schedule

Hi members of the guild! I have created Wikipedia:Backlog drive schedule to help editors keep track of the various backlog drives going on at various times. I have listed your monthly drives on the page already; if there is anything else missing, I'd love if someone familiar could take a look and add them. (And if you know of other, non-GOCE backlog drives going on, those can be added, too!)

And a massive thank you for all the hard work you guys do :) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 22:45, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, HouseBlaster. You're probably safe to list ours for 2026 as well. We have had the same schedule since 2011, and I don't recall any conversations about changing it. Would you mind spelling out "Guild of Copy Editors"? I think it would be easier for readers to understand. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:41, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

 Done and  Done :) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 19:08, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

July 2025

i created a draft at Draft:Liz (South Korean singer). i think it needs copyediting for tone drinks or coffee ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ 17:31, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Please see #How to deal with drafts above. When it's in mainspace, you can request a copyedit. All the best, Miniapolis 23:30, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Replacement of Graph with Chart

Should I replace the Graph with a Chart? It is located in Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/July 2025 Toffee Dude ^talk 22:38, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your offer. There's a specific chart extension we need to use which is apparently live now but is (God knows) beyond my ken. Pinging Jonesey95, who may be able to help. Thanks and all the best, Miniapolis 12:51, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

I looked at the new chart extension, and it looks like a royal pain in the tuchus. I have not played with it to see if I am wrong. I am hoping for some smartypants to make it easier with a template or module here on en.WP. If Toffee Dude wants to try it, they should go ahead. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:20, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, Jonesey. I couldn't make head or tail out of it, and can't see ordinary editors like me using it in its present form. Maybe they need to know that :-). All the best, Miniapolis 02:06, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

India FAR — lots of prose issues

I have nominated India for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. JDiala (talk) 08:28, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

NB in addition to the boilerplate notice above (which I posted on many other talk pages too), I would like to strongly urge regular copy-editors in particular to get involved in this discussion, if they have the time, as the FA review significantly involves prose quality and other copy-editing related issues. And it's a pretty important article! JDiala (talk) 12:01, 7 July 2025 (UTC)