Wikipedia:Contribution Team/Backlogs

The Great Backlog Drive is a project started by the Wikipedia Contribution Team. Our mission is to clear out Wikipedia's backlogs. We set ourselves some big targets, hoping to clear some backlogs completely, and reduce others by thousands, all while maintaining a high quality of edits. Ultimately, during the 2011 cleanup drive, over 33,000 article issues were fixed but there's still lots to do!

Competition
We ran a competition every week with the opportunity to win an exclusive Wikipedia t-shirt. There were two categories; Best Overall Contributor and Best Newcomer. The winners each week received a special barnstar and were invited to send their address in to claim their shirt. Although this competition is now over, we hope to send out additional shirts to those lucky few who made a truly incredible impact, and contributors are still encouraged to tackle the remaining backlogs.

The current status of all the backlogs is shown below. Good luck!

Notes on specific backlogs:


 * The backlog "Needs to be wikified" is worked on by WikiProject Wikify. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the WikiProject for additional announcements, status updates, elimination drives, and awards.
 * The backlog "Needs copy edit" is worked on by the Guild of Copy Editors. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the Guild for additional announcements, status updates, elimination drives, and awards.
 * The backlog "Needs size reduction" is worked on, in part, by DASHBot, an automated program. DASHBot will resize any images in that category each night, but cannot resize sound or video files. An editor with that capability is needed, as videos can go months without being handled.
 * The backlog "Is orphaned" is worked on by the WikiProject Orphanage. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the WikiProject for additional support.
 * The backlog "Needs to be merged" is worked on by WikiProject Merge. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the WikiProject, which has a sub-drive focusing on articles to be merged as a result of AfD.


 * September 2011's focus marked the first time that the Contribution Team's collaboration of the month was tied to another WikiProject's backlog drive. WikiProject Images and Media organized a drive to clear out the backlog of manually tagged items at Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons. The month started with 18918 items, and ended with 14404 items, a 24% reduction. Another drive is planned in January 2012.
 * August 2011's focus, Category:Articles with incorrect citation syntax, started at 1448 items. The month ended with 1194 items remaining, a 17% reduction.
 * July 2011's focus, Category:Wikipedia license migration needs review, started at 1504 items. The month ended with 237 items remaining, meaning that the backlog cleared of 84% of the items that were there at the beginning of the month. By the end of August 2011, the backlog was completely, and in all likelihood permanently, cleared.
 * June 2011's focus, Category:Infobox album with reviews, started at 52,700 items. The number of items at the end of the month was not recorded, but the number at the end of July was 38,355 items, a 27% reduction over two months.