Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/February 2014 backlog reduction drive

Welcome to the Military history WikiProject's February–March 2014 backlog reduction drive.

About the drive
2014 will be the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. A global war that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918, it resulted in over 38 million combatant casualties, and profoundly impacted upon the course of the 20th century.

In an effort to focus the Military history WikiProject's attention on this event and improve our coverage of the conflict ahead of the anniversary, project members are invited to take part in a backlog reduction drive early in the new year. This drive is a six-week effort to reduce the backlog of World War I military history articles needing attention and military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists. These articles have been flagged as needing particular types of improvement to achieve B-Class status; by reducing the backlog, the drive will simultaneously help the project achieve its 10% B-Class milestone target. The drive starts at 00:01 UTC on 1 February 2014 and runs until 23:59 UTC on 15 March 2014.

A brief explanation of the B-Class criteria is available here, and more detailed information on meeting the criteria is available in this FAQ.

Scoring
You will receive points for each article you improve, based on the category in which it is listed. If an article is listed in more than one category, you can submit it multiple times, once for each category of improvement you make. You will receive points for each category so long as it is assessed as meeting the B-class criteria for that category following your improvements. As such, once you have improved an article, it should be listed at WP:MHA for independent assessment. Please do not self assess articles you have improved.

To qualify for the points detailed above for the first six categories, you must have contributed to the article content within the scoring period. For the sixth category, 5 points are awarded for improving an article to any extent that sees it removed from the stub category (e.g. regardless of whether it becomes a start, C or B class article it will attract the same score). Points are also offered for articles that are removed from the seventh, eighth, nineth and tenth categories by assessment action only (i.e. you complete an incomplete B class checklist, assess an unassessed article or one that has been listed at WP:MHA, or you add a task force to the talk page (if an article meets both of these criteria, you may list it twice). In this regard, 5 points are offered per article you assess against the B-class criteria during the drive.

The final category listed above, number 11, is a special bounty category. There are currently four World War I-related articles listed as Vital Articles here: Balkans Campaign (World War I), Eastern Front (World War I), Italian Front (World War I), Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. These are currently rated between start and C class. As a special incentive for members to work on these articles, 150 points are offered for any editor who can improve these to B class standard or higher during the drive period.

Awards
As a token of our appreciation for your efforts, the coordinators will be presenting service awards and barnstars based on the number of articles you improve. The awards will not be cumulative, rather each participant will qualify for a single award based on the total number of points you accumulate.

The coordinators will post awards to your talk page within a few days of the end of the drive. If you'd like yours earlier, please ask one of the coordinators.

How to participate
To take part in the drive, please [ add your name] to the list of participants; the exact syntax will be displayed when you edit the section.

Then, in alphabetical order, please [ create a new worklist section for yourself]; as before, the exact syntax will be displayed when you edit the page.

Now you can begin working on articles in the categories listed above. For each article: If you fix an article that's listed in multiple categories, please list it separately under each applicable category.
 * 1) Fix the listed problem by editing the article or update the assessment checklist in the WPMILHIST tag on the article's talk page;
 * 2) If you have improved the content of the article, request assessment at WP:MHA once you have completed your improvements (not required for minor technical fixes such as adding a photograph - in this regard, just remove the photo request from the talkpage yourself); and
 * 3) List the article under the appropriate category in your worklist section.