Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives

The Copy Editing Backlog Elimination Drives are one-month-long efforts of the Guild of Copy Editors to reduce the backlog of articles that require copy editing, signified with the copy edit tag. The goals for each drive are listed on the respective drive page. Awards will be given out to those individuals who help reduce the size of the backlog.

The coordinators for each drive are listed on each drive page. If you have any questions, please first consult our FAQ page, which has answers to some commonly-asked questions. If that doesn't help, you can leave a message on the drive's talk page; someone will be happy to help you.

Please make sure that you know how to copy edit and that you are familiar with the Wikipedia Manual of Style before you begin copy editing.

Instructions for participants

 * 1) Sign up for the drive. On the drive's page, find the "Signing up" section and press the "Create your articles list" button. This will create a subsection of the page where you will record your copy edits.
 * 2) *If you participated in the previous drive, add any Rollover words you may have earned. You'll find this number on the "Barnstars" page—follow the link in the "Signing up" section of the current drive's page. In the "Totals" table, find the number in the column marked "New rollover words". Place this number on the "Rollover words" line in your subsection of the current drive page. You do not perform any calculations with this number; coordinators will add the rollover words to your total at the end of the drive.
 * 3) Find an article to copy edit: see the "Finding Articles" section below. Articles listed on the Requests page also count towards your drive totals—these higher quality articles don't usually have copy edit tags. Follow all Requests page instructions.
 * 4) Verify that no other participant is editing the article. Check the page history and look for "in use" (in the article) and "reviewed" (in the talk page) tags.
 * 5) Obtain the article's word count: install this script (see below), then click the "Page size" link in the Tools menu.
 * 6) Record your work in the "Totals" section of the drive page. Your subsection is automatically populated with and :
 * 7) *Place the title of the article you're copy editing on the line in wikilinks . List the article's full title, not an abbreviated version.
 * 8) *The article's word count goes in round brackets.
 * 9) *If the article is from the GOCE Requests page, place after the word count. If it was tagged in the "earliest-tagged articles" months listed at the top of the drive page, place  after the word count.
 * 10) Remove the copy edit tag from the article. Optionally, place a tag on top of the article, to inform other participants and editors that you are editing it.
 * 11) Copy edit the article. If you have any questions, ask on the current drive's talk page.
 * 12) Remove the tag (if used) when you've finished.
 * 13) Optionally, place a tag in the article talk page to inform you edited the page and to promote GOCE.
 * 14) Record your completed work in the "Totals" section of the drive page by changing the to  on the line with the article's title. Place any comments between the article title and the word count. Check using the "Show preview" button, then save it. Articles not logged or improperly logged will not be credited. Properly completed records look like this in the edit window:
 * and like this on the rendered page:
 * 1) Recalculate your article total and word total in the "Totals" section of the drive page. That is, take the new article you just recorded, and add it to your totals.
 * 1) Recalculate your article total and word total in the "Totals" section of the drive page. That is, take the new article you just recorded, and add it to your totals.
 * 1) Recalculate your article total and word total in the "Totals" section of the drive page. That is, take the new article you just recorded, and add it to your totals.

Dos and Don'ts

 * Don't "rubber-stamp" articles. Be thorough and complete in your copy edits, working to the end of the article. The prose in copy edited articles should comply with the Manual of Style and be free of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors. Rejected work will not count towards your total and you may be penalized for it.
 * Don't create extra work; don't copy edit any articles to which you have recently added a tag.
 * Don't count what you haven't copy edited. Sometimes articles or sections are unsuitable for copy editing or may not need any work. Don't count words in articles or sections that you have not copy edited.
 * If, after examining an article, you find that copy editing is inappropriate or cannot be completed due to other issues, you may consider removing extant copyedit tags and taking extra actions&mdash;like placing GOCEreviewed on the talk page, deleting inappropriate material, reporting suspected copyright violation and so on.
 * Do have fun; we're here to help bring these articles to their fullest potential and improve the overall quality of the encyclopedia. If you don't enjoy doing that, there is no motivation to improve these articles and the encyclopedia as a whole.

For new copy editors
The backlog elimination drive welcomes and encourages Wikipedians who are new to copy editing or who are out-of-practice to join the drive. You may copy edit as many—or as few—articles as you wish. If you want someone to review your work, feel free to ask on the current drive's talk page and one of the coordinators will gladly assist.

Useful tags
While we do our best to copy edit articles, this is not always achievable. Articles may be unstable, have confusing text or need attention from experts in that subject area. In these instances we can use a tag to attract such help for the article. Some useful tags are:

off-topic ~ Expert-verify ~ Expert-subject ~ contradict ~ confusing ~ refimprove ~ nofootnotes ~ notability ~ original research ~ crystal ~ POV ~ unreferenced

See WP:TC for a full list of cleanup template messages.

Word counting script
See Prosesize for instructions on how to install the prosesize gadget.

To test the script, go to a random article, look under the Toolbox menu on the far left of the screen and find the link for Page size. The backlog elimination drive uses the number of words listed under Prose size (text only). Note this script does not:


 * parse prose text in lists and tables; or
 * give an accurate word count in articles with significant amounts of mathematical notation.

In the cases listed above, you may need to copy/paste into a word processor such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice Writer. In these cases, you should remove the table of contents, mathematical notation and any other non-copy-editable prose.

Finding articles
Some copy editors enjoy taking a random dip in Category:All articles needing copy edit and learning about something completely new along the way. Others prefer editing articles in a field they already know about. Such articles can be found using categories:

This example will find articles tagged with copy edit in Category:Books, as well as its sub-categories, sub-sub-categories, and so on down to sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-categories.


 * You can also cross-reference to a wikiproject talk page banner. Click here to see the completed form for this example.

Rollover words
Rollover words are words from your drive total that did not count towards an award. These are carried forward—or "rolled over"—to the next drive. For example, if Example copy edits 25,436 words, they will receive the Tireless Contributor Barnstar (20,000 words). Their remaining 5,436 words are rolled over until the next drive, where they can be added to his/her total word count. If Example copy edits 2,800 words in the following drive, they will receive the Working Wikipedian's Barnstar (8,000 words) and 236 rollover words (5,436 plus 2,800, minus 8,000).

Rollover words are valid only during the next drive. If Example earned 14,000 roll-over words in a March drive and did not participate in the May drive, they cannot use them in the July drive; their rollover count will return to zero. Rollover words do not apply to the Gold Star Leaderboard awards.

Awards
The following awards will be given out for the drive.

Total word count awards
Awards will be given out at the conclusion of the backlog elimination drive as follows:

Leaderboard awards
Five prestigious Guild of Copy Editors' Gold Star Awards are awarded after each drive to the copy editor at the top of the leaderboard in each of the following copy editing categories: highest total article count, highest total word count, most articles of more than 5,000 words, most articles from the oldest months, and longest article.

GOCE Silver Star Awards are presented to all editors who are listed in the remaining four leaderboard slots in each of the above categories.

10k award
An editor who copy edits an individual article of more than 10,000 words that does not make it to the leaderboard in the "longest article" category will receive The 10k Copy Edit Barnstar.