Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Membership/News/2014 Annual Report

Report by Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Baffle gab1978. | December 31, 2014

Introduction 

Thanks for another good year! Over the last few months, your coordinators have been cleaning up and copy editing most of our own pages, most of which we adapted from Wikiproject Military History. Several obsolete Guild pages have been deleted or merged. The Drive and Blitz pages, the Requests page, the Coordinators' page, and several others have been redesigned and largely rewritten. You'll notice clearer, more concise instructions and text, and a neater, more unified layout. We're sure you have noticed the changes to our home page.

We have also designed new templates to help expedite common coordinator tasks, such as setting up drive and blitz pages, and distributing barnstars. A lack of participants led to the formal closure of the Guild's mentorship program in August.

Membership
GOCE membership is open to all editors in good standing who are interested in copyediting. Please see our membership page for details about signing up (and remember to add your username to our mailing list to receive Guild news).

Requests page
As always, activity at the Requests page has been brisk. We put together a summary of requests activity for 2013; one for 2014 will be available in a month or so, after all requests made in 2014 have been completed.

Fifteen requests were declined for various reasons, and one of those articles was deleted.

On March 16, we reduced the number of outstanding requests per editor from three to two. During the September drive, the backlog of requests fell to 21 and we had a nice cup of tea. There are currently 36 requests awaiting attention.

Coordinator elections
The new tranche of coordinators elected for the first half of 2015 are:


 * Lead Coordinator:
 * Miniapolis (talk · contribs)


 * Assistant coordinators:
 * Jonesey95 (talk · contribs)
 * Philg88 (talk · contribs)
 * Biblioworm (talk · contribs)

Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate. You can view the results of the election here. The next planned election will be held in June; all Wikipedians in good standing are welcome to nominate themselves or others.

Backlog Elimination Drives
At the beginning of the year, there were 2,922 articles in the Copy edit backlog. At year's end 2,198 articles remain, and we continue to maintain a backlog of just over a year.

January 2014 drive
 * In the first month-long Drive of the year, 27 editors eliminated 145 articles from the backlog, removed all copy edit templates added in the target months October and November 2012, and completed 44 Requests.

March 2014 drive
 * March's Drive saw 28 editors remove 259 articles from the backlog, and 27 from the Requests page.

'''May 2014 drive
 * In May, 25 requests were completed and 898 articles were removed from the backlog by 33 editors.

July 2014 drive
 * 22 editors helped remove 419 articles from the backlog in July's Drive, and 30 requests were fulfilled.

September 2014 drive
 * September's Drive saw 24 editors remove 199 articles from the backlog, and copy edit 30 articles from the Requests page.

'''November 2014 drive
 * 26 editors removed 509 articles, including all those added during July 2013, from the backlog during the year's last Drive. We reached an all-time low of 1,974 articles in the backlog. 26 requests were completed.

Blitzes
We ran six one-week Blitzes in 2014, in alternating months with the backlog drives.

'''February 2014 blitz
 * Between February 9 and 15, seven editors took part in the year's first Blitz, removing 16 articles from the Requests page.

'''April 201 blitz
 * The April Blitz, which ran from April 13 to 19, again focused on requests. Eight editors removed 28 articles from the Requests page.

'''June 2014 blitz
 * June's Blitz focused on politics. Twelve editors took part, removing 22 articles and over 61,000 words from the backlog.

'''August 2014 blitz
 * August's Blitz, again focusing on the Requests page, saw 16 editors remove 22 articles between August 24 and 30.

'''October 2014 blitz
 * October's Blitz themes were Music albums and History. Between October 19 and 25, 14 editors removed 26 articles from the backlog.

'''December 2014 blitz
 * The final Blitz of 2014, which ran from December 14 to 20, was themed around the subject of Religion. 11 editors removed 20 articles from the backlog.

Plans for 2015
Happy New Year to all from Miniapolis, your incoming lead coordinator. Many thanks to outgoing lead coordinator Jonesey95 for keeping the Guild a drama-free zone (less drama equals more productivity), and for streamlining the barnstar-award process; to Baffle gab78 for overhauling the project pages and working past the end of their term to make my learning curve as shallow as possible; to Biblioworm for jumping right in to help with housekeeping, and to Philg88 for giving us a fourth coordinator (which we haven't had in a while; that's important, since our time available for WP ebbs and flows and it's good to return and find the work done).

There's been some discussion of the future of the blitzes. Since I've been bitching and moaning about them for a while, I was surprised to find myself agreeing with Baffle that the blitzes' usefulness as a recruiting tool may outweigh the time involved running them; although our membership is large, the number of active copyeditors at any given time is not. Since it's never prudent to make wholesale changes right after beginning a job, I think it's best to let the blitzes' level of participation determine their future.

Enjoy another year of helping to improve Wikipedia!