Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Membership/News/2024 Annual Report
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Introduction
Welcome to the Guild of Copy Editors' (GOCE) annual report for 2024, a summary of activity in our Drives and Blitzes, and our Requests page. Thank you to everyone who has helped improve the standard of Wikipedia articles by making them "say what they mean and mean what they say". In 2024, editors working with the Guild helped remove well over xxxx articles from the {{copy edit}} backlog and responded to almost 400 requests for copy edit.
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The backlog is edging towards 2,600 articles because each month, about 200 or more articles are added to the tracking category and as we write, the Requests page has a five-month backlog. The Requests page is as busy as ever, though waiting times have reduced somewhat since peaking at 130 days in October.
Thank you all for your hard work throughout 2024; we hope you'll continue to be enthused and inspired to improve the standard of prose in Wikipedia. Happy editing!
Membership
[edit]GOCE membership is open to all editors in good standing who are interested in copy editing. Please see our list of participants for information about signing up, and remember to add your username to our mailing list to receive Guild news. Guild membership is voluntary and informal, and editors do not have to be members of the Guild to participate in its activities. Many editors perform copy editing outside our organized events but we have no means of tracking such efforts.
At the end of 2024, there were 2,463 pages populating the Guild's membership category, 758 names on the Guild's list of participants and 789 names on the mailing list. This is a respective growth of (reveal hidden formulae when completed) from the end of 2023. Since we don't actively monitor or audit these lists, they include many inactive and deceased editors, and some whose accounts are blocked or banned.
The best way to know when the GOCE's bimonthly Drives and Blitzes are happening is to add Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Ombox to your watchlist.
Coordinators
[edit]The GOCE coordinators play an important role in the Guild. They are responsible for coordinating Guild activities, maintaining our pages, organizing Drives and Blitzes, looking after the Requests page, and performing other maintenance tasks that keep the Guild running smoothly. Coordinators are chosen twice a year through consensus voting.
| Term | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1 – June 30 | July 1 – December 31 | January 1 – June 30 | |
| Election | December 2023 | June 2024 | December 2024 |
| Lead coordinator | Dhtwiki (talk) | Dhtwiki (talk) | Dhtwiki (talk) |
| Coordinators |
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Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate. Elections are scheduled for June and December each year. All Wikipedians in good standing are welcome to nominate themselves or others with their permission. Please consider helping out if you can.
Requests page
[edit]Requests for copy editing are one of the Guild's main activities. In 2024, our ever-busy requests page saw about the same level of activity as in 2023. In 2024, 351 requests were submitted, and 21 were declined or withdrawn. 48 copy editors completed the 347 remaining requests, which were submitted by 185 editors. There were 53 pending requests at the beginning of 2024 and 28 pending requests at the end of the year.
Compared with 2023, 0.3% more requests were made and 2.1% more requests were completed.1 We copy-edited 347 (94.0%) of the 369 requests we processed; the remaining 22 (6.0%) were declined or withdrawn. As of xx February 2025, requests from 2024 are still being processed or are awaiting attention from a copy editor.
A full list of the year's requests will eventually be available at our 2024 archive page.
Any editor with good English-language skills can accept requests, but we prefer those who are new to or inexperienced with copy editing on Wikipedia to gain experience with articles in the backlog before handling requests—particularly those for GAN, ACN and FAC.
In 2024, 54.4% of submitted requests were for Good Article (GAN) or Featured Article (FAC) nominations. Among the requests received were:2
- 133 for GAN
- 2 for GAR
- 58 for FAC
- 2 for FAR
- 1 for FLC
- 7 for PR
- 5 for ACN
- 0 for ACR
- 4 for BCN
- 1 for CCN
- 11 for DYK
- 4 for TFA
- 0 for section copyedits
- 9 declined
- 12 withdrawn
- 110 unspecified
| 2024 Month | Requests | Mean days to completion[a] | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Received[b] | Processed[c] | Completed [d] | ||
| January | 33 | 20 | 18 | 53.6 |
| February | 28 | 25 | 24 | 76.4 |
| March | 45 | 57 | 55 | 44.8 |
| April | 24 | 29 | 27 | 60.5 |
| May | 35 | 27 | 25 | 49.2 |
| June | 30 | 26 | 23 | 66.7 |
| July | 23 | 20 | 18 | 60.9 |
| August | 26 | 20 | 19 | 75.3 |
| September | 23 | 23 | 22 | 100.1 |
| October | 27 | 44 | 41 | 130.1 |
| November | 24 | 35 | 34 | 56.4 |
| December | 33 | 43 | 41 | 31.4 |
| Total | 351 | 369 | 347 | 67.1 mean days |
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- Notes
- ^1 Figures were arrived at by exporting tables from the relevant request archives into a spreadsheet for analysis.
- ^2 Some requests were made for multiple reasons; these were listed in each applicable category.
- ^3 Figures for completed requests omit any requests that were declined or withdrawn. Figures for requests submitted, received and processed include requests that were ultimately declined or withdrawn.
- Past performance
| Year |
Requests | Mean days to completion[a] | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Received[b] | Processed[c] | Completed [d] | ||
| 2013 | 535 | 554 | 546 | xxx |
| 2014 | 489 | 502 | 486 | xxx |
| 2015 | 542 | 557 | 537 | xxx |
| 2016 | 690 | xxx | 665 | xxx |
| 2017 | 588 | 603 | 573 | 26.0 |
| 2018 | 692 | 669 | 649 | 15.4 |
| 2019 | 616 | 634 | 607 | 18.5 |
| 2020 | 752 | 720 | 684 | 23.4 |
| 2021 | 644 | 635 | 596 | 35.0 |
| 2022 | 397 | 374 | 340 | 67.7 |
| 2023 | 350 | 360 | 340 | 66.0 |
| 2024 | 351 | 369 | 347 | 67.1 |
- ^ a b Mean average days to completion for requests we completed that month (year). Includes all requests we received that year, and excludes declined and withdrawn requests. Rounded to one decimal place.
- ^ a b "Received" means all requests we received between 1 January and 31 December, inclusively.
- ^ a b "Processed" includes requests remaining from the previous year. It also includes declined and withdrawn requests, but excludes all requests that were processed the following year.
- ^ a b "Requests completed" excludes all requests we declined or were withdrawn. Requester-blanked requests are not always archived.
Backlog Elimination Drives
[edit]The Guild's main efforts toward reducing the number of articles tagged with {{copy edit}} were six backlog-elimination drives held every other month, starting in January. At the beginning of the year, there were 2,419 articles in the backlog and 2,499 articles at year's end.
- January Drive: 46 editors signed up and 32 of them copy edited at least one article, with a total of 289 articles, comprising 626,729 words, being copy edited. Barnstars and data are here.
- March Drive: 53 editors signed up and 34 of them copy edited at least one article, with a total of 300 articles, comprising 587,828 words, being copy edited. Barnstars and data are here.
- May Drive: 58 editors signed up and 33 of them copy edited at least one article, with a total of 251 articles, comprising 475,952 words, being copy edited. Barnstars and data are here.
- July Drive: 38 editors signed up and 59 of them copy edited at least one article, with a total of 293 articles, comprising 482,133 words, being copy edited. Barnstars and data are here.
- September Drive: 67 editors signed up and 39 of them copy edited at least one article, with a total of 507 articles, comprising 682,696 words, being copy edited. Barnstars and data are here.
- November Drive: 54 editors signed up and 31 of them copy edited at least one article, with a total of 151 articles, comprising 432,320 words, being copy edited. Barnstars and data are here.
Drive totals for the year: xx editors claimed credit for removing xxx articles from the backlog and the Requests page for a combined total of xx,xxx,xxx words. The Guild awarded xxx barnstars for participation in Drives in 2024.
- Notes
- ^1 Month-end backlog totals were taken from the drive pages. Participation was taken from the blitz and drive pages and their respective barnstar pages. Numbers for requests were taken from historical versions of the Requests page. Some of the tables were exported and merged in a spreadsheet for easier counts and analysis.
- ^2 These figures show articles for which editors took credit on the Drive page. Additional articles are removed during drives by editors who do a quick or minor copy edit and don't record it on the Drive page, remove a copy-edit tag because it is inappropriate or no longer needed, or nominate an article for deletion.
Blitzes
[edit]We ran six one-week Blitzes in 2024, alternating months with the backlog drives.
- February Blitz: The year's first blitz focused on requests, with an additional theme of Africa and the history of the African diaspora. 18 editors signed up and 13 of them copy edited 32 articles, including four requests, comprising 100,293 words. Results are here
- April Blitz: 14 editors signed up and 9 of them copy edited 20 articles comprising 55,853 words. Results are here.
- June Blitz: 25 editors signed up and 13 of them copy edited 41 articles comprising 169,404 words. Results are here.
- August Blitz: 15 editors signed up and 10 of them copy edited 31 articles comprising 71,294 words. Results are here.
- October Blitz: 15 editors signed up and 13 of them copy edited 35 articles comprising 76,776 words. Results are here.
- December Blitz: 23 editors signed up and 16 of them copy edited 46 articles comprising 143,417 words. Results are here
Blitz totals for the year: xx editors completed xxxx requests and articles from the backlog, for a total of xxxxxx words. The Guild awarded xx barnstars for participation in Blitzes in 2024.
Closing thoughts
[edit]The new or returning Lead Coordinator writes something deep and meaningful here (we hope!).