Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/September 2017

LeaderBoard
If two editors have edited the same number of articles how do are they placed on the leaderboard.I have arranged them as first come first serve basis .Please change if nesscary110.225.26.127 (talk) 05:46, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
 * We put both editors on the same line of the table, separated by a tag. See WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/July 2017 for an example. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:17, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Inflated "Total articles" number tonight
I added the new numbers to the leaderboard for September 2, but was surprised by the enormous increase in articles needing copyediting (there were 56 for the month of September as of 00:38 on September 3). Further investigation revealed that a rangeblock-skipping IP had managed to tag 12 typeface-related articles with copyedit templates in seven minutes before they were blocked; I have since reverted the addition of all of these templates plus their edits under an IP address from earlier, also blocked by the same admin.

What I'm not sure of is whether it makes sense to reduce the 1488 total by 12 to 1476 (I'd made the final reversion at 00:57), or to leave it as is. I'll let the coordinators decide. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:26, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't worry about it. Tomorrow's count will fix it. With transient numbers like this, it's better to keep moving forward than to try to perfect history. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:10, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * On a similar note, I just reverted the spamming of copy edit tags on over 100 articles. It was done by an IP, but I believe that the tagging was performed by our friend Punyaboy, based on the content (mostly railways in India). I am sure that one or more of these articles need copy editing, but I believe that this sort of spamming should not be encouraged. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:57, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Thanks for taking care of that, Jonesey. Tdslk (talk) 15:35, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but it has to be done carefully, Jonesey95. It's been over a week in some cases since the copyedit tags were added, and there have been significant edits to some articles in the interim; instead of simply removing the tag, you've undone all the work since. One was copyedited by Lfstevens—I've reverted that one—and other editors have restored other articles. I think we need to make these articles whole again wherever necessary. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:03, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like I was overzealous. I think I have caught and fixed all of my errors. Thanks to and  for each catching at least one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:13, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * All good. Cheers! bd2412  T 02:44, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Happy to do it. I've subsequently found another five to adjust, and I think everything's set now. Great job in finding these; I hope this is the last we hear from this particular serial template tagger. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:32, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Jonesey95, there's a new editor, Penestowed, who is working in the same area and has tagged five articles so far, including Central line (Mumbai Suburban Railway) (newly tagged) and Kolkata Metro and Mumbai Monorail (both previously tagged by 103.203.66.215 on September 18 before being undone). If you think these are all by the same person, perhaps it's time for an SPI filing? (I haven't actually checked the articles to see whether I agree that they need copyediting or not.) BlueMoonset (talk) 04:15, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Said editor, like Punyaboy, has "retired" from Wikipedia; I have reverted virtually all of the Penestowed tags, including all of those that had been reversed earlier by Jonesey95. The reversions were too late for today's numbers (up 20), but should help tomorrow's numbers. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:47, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Copy edited my first article
I request to review my first copy editing effort on the page Handwara. I will be open to feedback and suggestions, while I look at other pages that require copyediting. RajkGuj (talk) 17:43, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi RajkGuj. Thank you for asking. I took a look and made some changes, including for punctuation, excess capitalization, and regional spelling. Also, although it's beyond the scope of copy editing, I moved a section to a different article where I felt it would be more appropriate. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! I would be happy to review another article for you if you would like. Cheers, Tdslk (talk) 00:44, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi . Thank you for your feedback. I looked at the changes you made and will try to incorporate the same in future. I am trying to contribute to the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/September 2017 and have copy edited three more pages: JLA: The Nail series, Kathri, Sindh and Chorachiwadi. I am adding the edits made by me under my name but not sure if I should add myself to the leaderboard.
 * Hi, RajkGuj! I went ahead and updated the leaderboard.  You should feel free to add/update the leaderboard, but be sure to preview as it is easy to make a mistake with the table formating.  Thanks for your contributions to the drive! - Reidgreg (talk) 12:28, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Turnaround
OK, folks, how do we turn around this disastrous drive? So far, we've increased the backlog by >100. That's not how we want to finish. I can hit the shorties, but I wasn't planning to do that until November. Ideas? Lfstevens (talk) 09:54, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've been pretty busy for the first half of the month but should be able to pick it up for the next two weeks. I may also review the tagged articles to see if any don't really need the tagging. There was an editor who had been dropping tags indiscriminately that I talked with. They are on a Wikibreak now, so we won't have any more inputs from them. Beyond that, I'd say to just keep calm and carry on. Tdslk (talk) 13:33, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * We haven't increased the backlog, the new-page patrollers and AFC approvers have. It's much easier to tag than it is to fix, and we have no control over what they do. I was thinking of leaving a note on their talk pages, but couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound like sour grapes. I wouldn't like to see this project go the way of WikiProject Wikify, which was crushed by its own tags; the task became so Sisyphean that most editors (including me) gave up.  Mini  apolis  15:25, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it's more important to focus on the length (in months) of the backlog than on the overall size, and to focus on the size of the backlog over a long time scale rather than day-to-day. It's useful to skim through the current month to make sure that articles are properly tagged, but I think the best thing for morale is to focus on reducing the total number of months in the backlog.


 * For reference, when I started participating in copy-editing drives in January 2013, at the end of the drive there were 12 months in the backlog and 2,900 articles (down from 4,000 a year earlier). At the end of this drive, we are likely to have eight, or even seven, months in the backlog, and about 1,600 articles. The total hasn't been over 2,000 for a year and a half. That is quite an improvement, given that something like 400+ articles are tagged every month. We will probably never be completely caught up, but we are improving the English Wikipedia. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:03, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I can understand September being a slow month for some volunteers. I could see our month totals drop a bit, but I'm not panicking. Even if the backlog grows a little (and I'm not saying it will) we're still improving articles.  For the tagging, I see a some articles tagged for multiple cleanup issues, and those really need to be dealt with before the ce. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:01, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

...A drop of 55 in one day. Well, that was a turnaround. Feeling better, Lf? Tdslk (talk) 02:33, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Slip concerning Oldest articles
Hi! I just realized that Cyborg 009, which I copyedited part of, was an Oldest article; however, I forgot to note this in my Completed list. If any of the statistics should be changed due to this realization, please let me know. Thanks! Noah Kastin (talk) (🖋) 19:06, 5 October 2017 (UTC)