Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-05-31/WikiProject report

On 29 March 2020, the number of unreviewed good article nominations reached 715, an all time high. This number was sufficiently high that the page listing good article nominations reached its maximum size, and could not transclude any more reviews, resulting in some nominations failing to be listed on the page. started a discussion on the GAN talk page, and as a result a backlog drive was begun that has brought the number of unreviewed nominations down to 232, as of publication.

Background
As long as there have been good article nominations, reviewing backlogs have been a concern. In 2007, the Signpost noted rather drearily that "backlogs continue to grow", and by May a relatively informal backlog drive was in progress. The drive ended in June and another was quickly begun in July. That drive alone claimed to have resulted in 406 good article reviews, driving the backlog down to 82 outstanding and 54 unreviewed nominations. A third drive that year, planned for September, was cancelled after it was determined "more time was needed to avoid reviewers suffering from burn out". Ten subsequent drives from October 2008 to August 2016 saw varying amounts of success.

After a three year break, another drive was organized in September 2019, with and  acting as coordinators. On 1 September the backlog hit 626 nominations and 533 unreviewed. By 1 October, the totals were down to 463 and 337, respectively. As with all drives, after its success, the backlog again began to climb. By 1 February 2020 it had reached 629, surpassing the total before the drive. WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives

The drive
As the number of outstanding nominations peaked at 715 on 29 March, a backlog drive set for April and May was organized by Harrias. Harrias and Lee Vilenski agreed to serve as coordinators.

After beginning on 1 April, the number of outstanding nominations was already down to 693. The number of unreviewed nominations dropped from 605 to 519, or a 14.9% change in only two days. In the first six days, the number of unreviewed nominations dropped by more than twenty per day, peaking at 50 on 3 April. It was then above ten every day until 16 April. Throughout April the drive saw general success – as of 22 April, there were only 426 outstanding nominations and 243 unreviewed, a drop of 362 articles, or 59.8%.

As of 27 May, 1079 good article reviews had been conducted by 147 users, bringing the backlog of unreviewed nominations down to 215 (a drop of 64.5%) and the number of outstanding nominations to 340.

A staggering nineteen users have completed at least 15 reviews, fourteen at least 20, eight at least 40, and five over 50. The Rambling Man, who alone conducted over 100 reviews, considers that "the drive has taken advantage of the pandemic, many of us have more time on our hands to get cracking with reviews and that it coincides with a massive backlog at GAN was somewhat fortuitous."

Lee Vilenski and Harrias spoke to the Signpost about the success of the drive:

Long-term solutions
'Note: The transclusion count can count articles with multiple issues multiple times. Numbers therefore represent an approximation.'

The good article project no-longer seems to have formal leadership to ensure quality. The associated WikiProject has been tagged as inactive, meaning that the very project that "is designed to maintain the Good articles list and oversee all other GA related tasks" is not carrying out its function. There is no way of ensuring uniform quality reviews other then editors checking each other's work. Though GA sweeps were conducted in 2010, 31% of all good articles currently have a cleanup tag.

What solutions will work to keep the backlog manageable in the future is "The million dollar question!" Harrias wrote:

Though backlog drives serve well to keep the number of nominations manageable, the general trend is that the number of nominations goes up quickly after a drive is concluded.

The only thing that has become abundantly clear is that something needs to change to allow the GA project to function efficiently and effectively. Steps to take may include:
 * 1) Reactivation of the associated WikiProject, which was marked as inactive on 21 February. Many users are already active in GA-space, and will serve as a starting point for larger change.
 * 2) Conduction of broad GA sweeps. While there's not enough energy to review every single good article, reviewers should check articles with long standing, major cleanup tags, put them up for a brief review, and have authority to demote them.
 * 3) Appointment/elections of co-ordinators for the project. While several users function unofficially in this capacity, it will be useful to have several users who have the responsibility for following up on stale reviews, making sure every question gets a prompt answer, guiding editors, spot-checking new reviews, and spearheading change. This doesn't have to be a terribly time consuming role, especially if the responsibility is spread out among several users.
 * 4) A new bot. Legobot has not been edited for a long time, and a new bot could incorporate new features. Lee Vilenski spoke further on the topic: "Legobot has done a fantastic role for us for many years, but the lack of changes that can be made have made the need for a new bot a necessity. This would allow us to further split down our nominations into subtopics stating where our backlog is, and put additional work into. I'd also suggest ratio of nominations/reviews shown against any new nomination rather than just reviews as is done currently."
 * 5) A newsletter to keep interested users up to date on potential drives and the state of GA.