Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-15/In focus

The Good Article process relies on reviewers, who assess whether nominations fit the criteria and help improve articles to the point they can become GAs. One regular initiative is backlog drives, a concentrated month-long effort to review as many articles as possible with barnstar rewards. Backlog drives have a real impact on the process -- for example, the January 2022 drive took GAN from 462 unreviewed nominations to 165, a reduction of 64.3%! Despite the success of the practice, no drives ran for over a year after the end of the June 2022 drive, and various changes to the GA process in the interim resulted in a spiralling backlog.

The August 2023 drive is now nearly two weeks in, and so far has been a great success! As of press time, we're at a 43.7% reduction and not yet slowing down. The backlog has gone from an almost unheard of 638 down to 359, and every eligible nomination that had gone without a reviewer for 180 days or more at the start of the drive is now reviewed.

Nonetheless, there are still plenty of articles to review, and signups are still open! Anyone interested in participating in the drive is encouraged to do so, and any review started at the beginning of August or later can be submitted for points. We've been heartened to see the enthusiasm for the drive and the work that's been done to solve the backlog, and we'd appreciate any more help possible. If you've ever benefitted from the existence of the Good Article process, why not give back?