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November 2024 Backlog Drive Planning

Watchlist notice and invitations

Would like to post a watchlist notice (text ad at the top of every editors' Watchlist), with the words the "November 2024 Unreferenced Articles Backlog Drive has begun. How is it done? Cielquiparle (talk) 08:27, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @The wub, @DreamRimmer, @ARandomName123, @Kazamzam. Cielquiparle (talk) 08:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cielquiparle: If you'd like to request a watchlist notice, you can do so at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages. Just a quick note: we can only display a watchlist notice once per event, and it stays up for seven days. Since we already displayed one for this drive from 20 October to 28 October, we won't be able to request it again. – DreamRimmer (talk) 09:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For info: I put a short invitation note on the Talk pages of four of the large WikiProjects from here (Germany, Military history, Football, and Albums) with a link to bambots' /bycat/[WikiProject]#Cites no sources. Turtlecrown (talk) 13:05, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Review page instructions

Again, very late here. But I'd like to change the review page instructions to the following, which:

presents the process as ordered steps,
tells reviewers what to check,
distinguishes between 'submission' and 'reference',
gives more prominence to the Tool (which many missed at the start),
and (optionally) covers a couple of FAQs (well, once-asked, but still good to know).

Part of the reason it's so late is that I was slow to understand the process at the start of the drive.

Welcome to the reviews page. Your role on the drive is extremely important and we are glad that you dedicated your time to do this grunt work. Each reviewer should create their own dedicated section for reviewing.

It is mandatory that you don't review your own submissions (obviously) and it is recommended that you spread out your reviews to many participants. Here is the procedure for reviewing a submission.

Find a submission from the drive. A tool is available to locate unreviewed submissions (credit: ARandomName123). Submissions can also be found via the "Tally" link for a participant in the Leaderboard.
Review the submission. Check that the article was unreferenced and the submission contains an inline citation from a reliable source, and verifies the immediately preceding sentence.
- Use of primary sources is permitted, so long as it follows WP:PRIMARY.
- If the citation only verifies part of a paragraph, a {{citation needed}} should be added to the prior part.
- Duplicate #NOV24 tags will be caught by the bot and don't need to be flagged in review.[1]
- In a submission with multiple references, a Y may be given if one citation passes these criteria, as long as any other errors are addressed.[2]
(recommended) Cleanup and refinement. If you need to make any adjustment to the article, you can prefix your edit summary with #NOV24REVIEW. Warn editors about their mistakes and sloppy work; if needed, you can raise concerns at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles. Consider re-reviewing user corrections to submissions made within the drive period.[3]
Document your findings in this page. Use the Wikitext format:

# [[<article>]] – [[User:<username>]]: [[Special:Diff/<ID>]] {{y}}/{{n}}

(the tool also provides this in a handy format to copy and paste)

Example output:

Happy reviewing!

I think the change is still worth making as it could make the review process more accessible and encourage more people to give it a go, but due to the timing I'll just leave it here and let organisers @User:Kazamzam, @User:Cielquiparle or @User:ARandomName123 decide whether/how much to include. Turtlecrown (talk) 10:12, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Turtlecrown, go for it! – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:57, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Turtlecrown: I think that looks great, thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 14:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Turtlecrown (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unreferenced articles by number of views?

Hello. I'm new to the project, and wondered whether it was possible to get a list of unreferenced articles sorted in descending order of page views. Maybe one already exists and I just haven't found it yet!

The idea being that then one could choose to work on articles that are looked at a lot, and ensure that they are decently referenced. Thanks, and pleased to be part of the project. SunloungerFrog (talk) 09:02, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SunloungerFrog, welcome to Wikipedia, and thanks for joining this WikiProject! You can use this tool to find unreferenced articles with page views. Just add a category, for example Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2024, to see the list of articles with views in that category. – DreamRimmer (talk) 09:20, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah perfect! That is just what I wanted. Thanks @DreamRimmer SunloungerFrog (talk) 09:30, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SunloungerFrog - welcome and very glad to have you with us! We’re preparing for the November 2024 Backlog drive if you’d like to be involved. @DreamRimmer @ARandomName123 do you think we could do with a beta tester or two? Kazamzam (talk) 12:12, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kazamzam I am certainly looking forward to taking part in the November Backlog drive as much as I can. SunloungerFrog (talk) 12:57, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note that this tool is broken at the moment, but it appears @SunloungerFrog: already filed a report on meta wiki. --Engineerchange (talk) 17:39, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Engineerchange @SunloungerFrog - much obliged, thank you! Kazamzam (talk) 19:37, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

October 2024

Quick update as we get ready for the November 2024 Backlog Drive, and happy 67th anniversary to Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth!^[1]

Headline: Smaller decrease in articles than usual. Nevertheless, we cleared 2821 articles! For yourself and your fellow editors, please clap.
Minutiae: For anyone interested in a more detailed breakdown of the numbers - average was 21.0 articles or a 5.40% decrease; median 15; mode 14.

Highlights: October 2008 is in the dustbin of history! November 2023 dropped by exactly 100 articles, from 407 to 307, and everyone's littlest friend, December 2023, further decreased from 73 to 48, a 34.25% decline.

Low-hanging fruit: Other than December '23, November 2008 is still loitering about with 45 articles left, dangling precariously like a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Give it a nudge.

High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category), December 2009, is a svelte 11,115 articles as of this writing - officially below the 90% completion point! The other high-hanging fruit are, still, the Frustrating Five (name open for revision): January 2013 (1,103), April 2019 (998; below 1,000 for the first time!), May 2019 (2,038), June 2019 (4,311), and September 2020 (1,365). This time, January 2012 had the lowest percentage of change between updates. Godspeed to anyone working on these.
Announcements: URA Drive #2 is in the works and we want YOU to volunteer as an co-organizer and/or reviewer of submissions! Comrade-in-arms @DreamRimmer is doing the noble work of running the bot to keep track of submissions using the hashtag #NOV24. We will begin 1 November 2024 and end 30 November 2024, with a proposed extra week for review where participants can earn extra points. The planning is active and ongoing so please feel free to get involved.
New challenge: two ties this update! January 2024 and February 2024 are 301 apiece and December 2015 and January 2016 are 323. This could be something to highlight for the drive if anyone finds this at all compelling (or wants a picture of my cat, Jellybean, in her special hat). As a personal challenge, I would like to see 2008 done by the end of the year, so we can have a backlog that's only, uh....16 years.

There will be a post-mortem for the drive - given the success of the last one, I'm personally hoping to hit 20,000 articles - and then regular updates will resume in January 2025. Thanks, as always, for the amazing work! Kazamzam (talk) 16:52, 4 October 2024 (UTC) Kazamzam (talk) 16:52, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Burgess, Colin; Hall, Rex (2009). The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Their Lives, Legacy, and Historical Impact. Berlin: Springer. p. 1. ISBN 9780387848235. LCCN 2008935694.

Thanks, Kazamzam! That's us at 81,934 - perhaps we will get under 80,000 during the November backlog drive. It's heartening to see the numbers still going down. Boleyn (talk) 08:16, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

80,998! Boleyn (talk) 17:31, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General References question

Just checking: if an article has no in-text citations, but it *does* have a list of general references, then it doesn't count as unreferenced for this drive? Fluorescent Jellyfish (talk) 06:49, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is likely somewhat controversial, but I would be inclined to say: If it was already tagged as "Unreferenced" despite having the list of general references, and you actually add an inline citation, it should count. Cielquiparle (talk) 08:11, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would disagree with that; an article having {{no footnotes}} is a separate issue from one being {{unreferenced}}, even if the former is erroneously tagged as the latter. When I came across such articles in the FEB24 drive I just corrected the tags.

The point of the drive is to cite information that is uncited, and if there is a non-inline reference, there's a good chance that it is backed up by a citation (though ofc ideally it should be made inline so it's possible to verify efficiently). novov talk edits 09:38, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the first sentence as a general rule.

I just think in the case of a Backlog Drive, we should reward good-faith addition of inline citations, rather than splitting hairs over whether an external URL or book title which already appeared on the page qualified as viable references or not, etc., etc. It gets slippery and is a buzzkill.

Most important thing is that in-line citations are added, referencing reliable sources...as we bring down the overall backlog by at least 10,000. Let's do it. Cielquiparle (talk) 13:39, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is what we did with the last drive. If an article had general references and the unreferenced tag, but no reflist or in-line citations, and the user added at least one in-line cite, it would count towards the drive. The sentiment was it's better this happens than just moving it to the {{no footnotes}} queue. As one of the users who did a lot of this type of thing last drive, it didn't boost my numbers by any means since there was still a lot of editing being done to add the in-line cites, as appropriate. --Engineerchange (talk) 21:20, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:DreamRimmer/DriveEditSummary.js

Hello everyone, I have created a user script called User:DreamRimmer/DriveEditSummary.js. This script adds a +NOV24 button right above the Save, Preview, and Changes buttons in the source editor. Clicking this button automatically inserts a preloaded edit summary with the #NOV24 hashtag. Please note that it only works in the source editor, not in the visual editor. I hope you find it useful! – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:41, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks for this tool. Just did an extra page to try it. (Success!) Just a thought: "Adding reference(s) ... using" does make it sound like the script was used to add the references rather than the edit summary. Turtlecrown (talk) 03:45, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I have removed the script link. – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 03:55, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Under 80,000!!!

79,959 - lovely to see it still declining. Boleyn (talk) 10:33, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

78,995!!! Boleyn (talk) 13:58, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

77,989!!! Boleyn (talk) 20:44, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Should we consider posting these in the milestones section like we did in February? JTtheOG (talk) 21:41, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hoaxes at the November 2024 drive

Did you come across something unsourceable that looked like a hoax? Kamini Yacht Club, a 15+ years old article, is up for discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kamini Yacht Club. Sam Sailor 14:14, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't come across full hoaxes in the drive, but I've found false peak positions of songs such as at Do Me Wrong. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:14, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not tagged?

There are some unreferenced articles (see 1987 Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks season and many more), but they aren't tagged with the unreferenced maintenance tag. If I add references to them, will I receive points for that? TheBirdsShedTears (talk) 19:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@TheBirdsShedTears: Yes, you will receive points. As stated in the rules, “Untagged, but unreferenced articles are also acceptable”. Cheers,ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 20:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sigcawu family

~~I've been grinding away at the articles from 2008 and everything remaining except for the following five articles is now on AfD:~~

~~- Gwebi'nkumbi Sigcawu~~

~~- Sigcawu kaSarili~~

~~- Daliza Sigcawu~~

~~- Ngangomhlaba Sigcawu~~

~~- Zwelidumile Sigcawu~~

I'm not sure if these ones should also be AfD'd - sourcing seems to be pretty sparse on the ground, but I'm wondering if it's a transliteration/spelling issue? They're notable figures and I can find oblique references to them here and there, and there are more recent figures in this royal family. So I'm not sure what the best way to proceed is here. Thoughts? Smallangryplanet (talk) 11:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Nevermind, this has now been resolved. :) Smallangryplanet (talk) 20:20, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We love to see it! @Smallangryplanet, just a note, can you be sure to post question like this on the talk page for the drive itself? That will hopefully help more participants see any issues as they pop up. Kazamzam (talk) 20:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kazamzam Oops, I thought this was the talk page for the drive itself! I think I got turned around because the "Discussion" tab on the drive links to this page, not the drive's talk. Is that correct or should I change it? Smallangryplanet (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallangryplanet - ah sorry for the confusion! The Discussion tab on the drive is the same one as on the main page so I'm hesitant to change it. @DreamRimmer, do you think we can change this temporarily? Kazamzam (talk) 20:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What about just adding (talk) to the drive tab? I'm not bold enough to change the template but made this draft to show what I mean. Turtlecrown (talk) 19:38, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why only inline citations?

Why is the drive only rewarding editors for adding inline citations? General references are a legitimate citation style according to policy, preferred by many for short articles (and preferred for everything on some sister projects, e.g. dewiki), and have the same result of removing the article from the "unreferenced" backlog. – Joe (talk) 09:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How else can we attribute specific statements to their source?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, with in-text or parenthetical citations. But more to the point, it is not a policy requirement that we attribute specific statements to their source except in limited circumstances. This is "WikiProject Unreferenced articles" not "WikiProject Articles with no footnotes". – Joe (talk) 10:23, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Joe Roe - that's a great question and a very interesting point that I have wondered about myself. I have definitely added footnotes in addition to (and sometimes instead of) inline citations, but I do then add the 'no inline' clean up tag. The following are my personal thoughts and not necessary those of the project. Happy to discuss further and take this as feedback for the URA and future drives going forward!

Short answer, per WP:INTEGRITY and WP:GENREF: The point of an inline citation is to allow readers and other editors to see which part of the material is supported by the citation. The disadvantage of general references is that text–source integrity is lost, although this is sometimes mitigated if the article is very short and the general references is very direct. General references are frequently reworked by later editors into inline citations; it saves time to just do it now.

Longer answer: Looking over the WP:MINREF guidelines, I think the URA is holding up articles to a higher standard than might be strictly necessary by focusing on inline citations. And mulling it over in the pre-caffeine morning, I am largely fine with this. The guidelines note that "it is typical for editors to voluntarily exceed these minimum standards", and I'm pleased that we are going above and beyond with this drive. Editors both in and out of the project can help add citations to articles as they see fit but we are choosing to exceed that minimum and reward to that effort for this drive; there's no prescription against general references, in-text, or parenthetical citations. But more importantly (in my opinion) is the following statement: "any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source". Yes, general references and non-inline citations might be sufficient in some cases and maybe would solve a lot of headaches around tiny stubs of German streams and rivers, but I think we are a) holding ourselves as a project to a higher standard that is ultimately beneficial to the encyclopedia and b) mitigating the need for future work by providing inline citations to statements that will hold up when editors are inclined to delete statements or articles that are unreferenced or only ("only") have footnotes.

Beyond the perspective of the drive, because the URA will still be here with tens of thousands of articles when this is over, adding general references is quite common but from a clean-up perspective, it punts the article from "unreferenced" to "lacking inline citations" and this, given the existence and widespread use of that specific tag, seems to be considered insufficient by the community. I think many if not most of us are here to improve Wikipedia, not shuffle articles from our preferred category to someone else's. If we're going to improve the encyclopedia by cleaning up these articles, we should actually do that rather than shuffling things around and hoping no one notices the level of untidiness is actually unchanged.

There's more to say on this and doubtless other people will have different opinions but those are my two cents (or with inflation, 12 cents). Again, this is a great question and thank you for raising it. I hope we have some really excellent discussion as a result. Cheers, Kazamzam (talk) 13:10, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think "shuffling things around" is an accurate description: you're moving something from one of our most pressing cleanup categories ({{unreferenced}}) to a less severe one ({{no footnotes}}). That is an improvement to the encyclopaedia. It's also not a given that the article with general references will or should be tagged with {{no footnotes}}: a stub with no quotes or potentially controversial claims, for example, will not benefit from inline citations unless and until it is expanded.

URA participants are of course welcome to pursue a higher standard than that required by policy or what a literal reading of the name of the project would imply. It just seems inefficient to me. One of the things I really like about this project is that it is tightly focused on one problem, rather than trying to 'tidy' everything about an article at once. – Joe (talk) 13:26, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Backlog

74,999! Boleyn (talk) 15:42, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

73,996! Boleyn (talk) 18:30, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Main tasks

Now that it seems that Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2009 has no more articles in it lacking sources, is it time to remove it from main tasks? EytanMelech (talk) 02:36, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@EytanMelech: Yep, just did that, thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:50, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Glad I could bring attention to it. EytanMelech (talk) 02:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 2024 update

That's a wrap on the November 2024 drive! Thanks to all participants for their help; details on progress and benchmarks reached can be found on the drive page. Help is still needed on reviewing, so please sign up if you are interested! This update covers the changes since October so the totals are a little different.

Headline: We cleared 10,489 articles and are now officially below 72,000! For yourself and your fellow editors, please clap.
Minutiae: For anyone interested in a more detailed breakdown of the numbers - average was 114.8 articles; median 40; mode 39.

Highlights: the entire year 2008 is in the dustbin of history, along with January and February 2009! With the heroic work of editor in arms, @Turtlecrown, the stubborn, German river-centric category of September 2020 saw a 25.3% drop. And everyone's littlest friend, December 2023, further decreased from 48 to 37, a 22.9% decline.

Low-hanging fruit: Other than December '23, June 2024 is a skinny 115 articles, dangling precariously like a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Give it a nudge.

High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category), December 2009, is a lean, mean 9,568 articles as of this writing - bringing all categories to under 5 digits. The other high-hanging fruit are, still, the Frustrating Five (name open for revision): January 2013 (1,039), April 2019 (875), May 2019 (1,822), June 2019 (3,915), and September 2020 (1,020). This time, January 2013 had the lowest percentage of change between updates. Godspeed to anyone working on these.
Challenge results: February 2024 beat January 2024 264 to 270, and December 2015 sneaked a win from January 2016, 286 to 289. Live sports are just riveting, aren't they.
New challenge: No ties this time. Have a wonderful end of 2024 and I hope to see you all in 2025!
Announcements: Something discussed prior to the drive was building a regular, semiannual schedule for drives, which would put us on target for May 2025. I see this as a reasonable amount of time to prepare and make adjustments based on editor feedback about the strengths, weaknesses, and areas of opportunity for improvement. However, I see no reason to rush this as we are still tallying this drive's results. If this date is amenable to people, we can get started on a draft page in January. I would especially like to address the points raised by @Joe Roe about the prioritization of inline citations and how we can address this in the future.

Thanks, as always, for the amazing work. Have a wonderful end of the year and happy holidays to all. Best, Kazamzam (talk) 15:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I had a great time working on citations during this drive. Thanks to everyone working to organize these events. See you all in the field between now and the next drive! I will defeat December 2023!! Gnisacc (talk) 19:03, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kazamzam Thanks for the extra exciting update! I think a semiannual schedule could work...but my !vote is against May as it is exam season in a lot of places. Cielquiparle (talk) 03:20, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I take it back. Let's have as many backlog drives as we can in 2025 and clear the backlog. Why not schedule 3–4 next year? February, May, August, November. Cielquiparle (talk) 13:09, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Cielquiparle - I LOVE this attitude. Personally I'm open to it but I wonder if, by having (too) many drives, we run the risk of diminishing returns via lower editor engagement/participation. We cleared fewer articles in the November compared to the February drive but we also had a much larger backlog. February started with 111,643 and cleared 14,300 (12.8%); November started with 80,645 and cleared 8,511 (10.5%) - not much of a difference proportion-wise, plus we are probably clearing out the easier articles sooner and so what's left are the tougher nuts to crack. My concern is that if we did a drive every few months, would the proportion drop to more like 5-6%? How to do we make sure to encourage and sustain engagement throughout the drive? We definitely lost momentum by the halfway point of both drives, so I think making sure that we keep that up (somehow) for future drives is a concern to prioritize and I'm worried that might be difficult if we do 4+ drives a year. I think it's doable, but we have to be smart about it. Setting smaller goals that are likely to be met through the drive to keep momentum up is probably a good idea; at the same time, we can't have a party every time we go down 100 articles.

Maybe this is the point when we start organizing off-wiki. I also agree with your point that May might not be a good idea for exam reasons (excellent foresight!). Personally April is a wash for me but I could be game for June. Cheers, Kazamzam (talk) 16:52, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm good for June as well! My exams are in April, so I wouldn't be able to do much prep work before a drive in May. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Updates like these are the type of stats I love to see and make these things much more fun to participate in. Any chance that you have stats on the biggest decrease for categories by topic? Wozal (talk) 16:18, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Wozal - I wish :/ the way that the search function assigns categories by "topic" is pretty hit or miss. For example, if you try to filter the All articles lacking sources category for Biography, the first five results (by "relevance"): Fourth Dynasty of Egypt family tree, List of monarchs of Pontus, Single suiter, Quantitative notrump bids, and Entry-shifting squeeze. Not until you get past the first 20 hits do you get an actual biographical article of an actual person (Avgust Tsivolko, for anyone curious). So providing the stats on decrease by topic, let alone 200+ categories by topic, would be an incredibly time-consuming task. But this raises the larger issue of how the articletopic search function is basically useless; I think this is detrimental to potential WP members who might be really passionate about, say, Ancient Roman history or wetlands or Judaism or whatever but get frustrated and turned off by this filter that is supposed to be helpful. It's something I'm hoping we can address before the next drive, either to improve or replace it with something better.

Thanks for the ask and glad to know someone (besides me) is enjoying the updates :) all the best, Kazamzam (talk) 16:42, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I enjoyed the update very much, and always do. Thanks for all the hard work. And well done on the backlog drive, everyone!

My two cents on inline citations is that they make sense as a backlog drive task because of a need for what I'll call "meta-verifiability" - the ability to check each other's work and see if it does what it says it does. I've also seen a fair few articles in the wild that use only general references in which the article topic is not mentioned, and hunting down these resources, where possible, is time-consuming, and I don't want to assume intent but it can make content seem more reliable than it is. Maybe it pays in general to emphasise the difference between {{no footnotes}} and {{unreferenced}} though. Turtlecrown (talk) 23:10, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kazamzam thank you for the update. As a new editor, I really enjoyed working on the drive, and I learned a lot of things by reading through and adding references to a fairly broad selection of articles about different topics. I was always pleasantly surprised when it turned out that there was an interesting twist on an otherwise unprepossessing-looking article, and it was very satisfactory to be able to keep them in the encyclopedia. On the flip side, I was rather surprised to come across a few dreadful articles of almost no merit that had hung around for a long time; it was equally as satisfying to get those into the various deletion processes and bid farewell to them.

I was particularly pleased that we reduced the known backlog of unreferenced BLPs to zero, and I firmly think that, in time, (and maybe it is not as far off as we might fear), we can do it with the general unreferenced article base too.

On the issue of how the articletopic search function is basically useless, I note that our sibling project Unreferenced BLP Rescue have set up various Petscan searches to do this for Unreferenced BLPs. Maybe that is an approach that we could consider adopting, and I would be happy to do what I can to help set it up.

Cheers SunloungerFrog (talk) 23:56, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A marathon, not a sprint

Would there be interest in organizing a year-round "marathon" for Unreferenced articles in 2025? It could run in parallel with the June 2025 Backlog drive (or take a break in June).

What would make it different from general project participation would be: We'd have a leaderboard and tally – just so we have visibility into volunteers who are active and what they have been up to. I think it would just help our loose community of year-round contributors feel a bit more plugged in...so you're not just having to constantly check Bambots to work out what articles are getting referenced.

It might also encourage more discussion or coordinated efforts to focus on specific categories or topics. Or is it too much overhead to set up and run...? Cielquiparle (talk) 04:02, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would definitely be game for that. Seeing monthly updates would be great motivation. It would raise the visibility of the project as well, especially if we are able to bring back the hashtags to include in edit descriptions. JTtheOG (talk) 07:04, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JTtheOG @Cielquiparle - the edit description that I've been using for a few years now is the following: WikiProject Unreferenced articles; you can help!

I think it's pretty straightforward and to the point, plus it directs people to the project webpage. We could make something specific for the "marathon" but I would want something that casual editors can use to go directly to the URA page rather than just a hashtag for points tracking purposes. There's also a talk page banner that someone created way back when but I don't think it gets a lot of use - maybe we want to change that? Cheers, Kazamzam (talk) 18:20, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kazamzam I think we could do any number of things like "Get involved with Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles #MONTH25" Cielquiparle (talk) 20:46, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Cielquiparle - YES, THAT IS THE ONE!!!!! Kazamzam (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would definitely be helpful for me. I wasn't able to participate as much as I would have liked in the recent drive because of other commitments. So a more generalized tracker that I can do any time would be more beneficial. Silver seren^C 17:31, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of a year long marathon, with a leaderboard etc. I also saw that the Guild of Copy Editors hold week-long blitzes which might be worth considering as a complementary activity, for example based on a theme or other subset of unreferenced articles. Maybe we could more explicitly tie those in with other WikiProjects, for example a blitz on unreferenced women's biographies in tandem with WP:WIRED. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 08:24, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure about a marathon, but a monthly leaderboard would be nice. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 08:25, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ARandomName123 Could the monthly leaderboard exist somewhere on the main URA page so as not to detract from casual participants (but also encourage such participants to sign up)? Or would it need to be separate? Cielquiparle (talk) 20:48, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Graph of historical data

If anyone's interested, I've graphed the backlog data from the earliest available archive of Category:All articles lacking sources to today via snapshots from archive.org. Looks like we peaked at over 300k in 2011, and have been on a steady decline since. Cheers, ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 08:24, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quality control concerns for URA drives

Hi all! I was doing some work on January 2010 and found this article, Puccio Pucci (politician), which was edited as part of our November drive. I'm concerned about two things in this edit - one, the use of Geni as a reference and two, the lack of a references section. I'm less concerned about the points of the drive and more concerned about ensuring that what we do as a Project is a net positive - not that this article is worse off for the edits, but imho it wasn't really improved. I'm wondering if it's possible to make a filter for reviewers to ensure that people are not getting points for adding "references" from sites like Geni, Goodreads, IMDb, etc. I think we can work this into the next drive (June 2025?) but I'm wondering if it's a bot-problem or something that needs human eyes and reviewers. Thanks, Kazamzam (talk) 16:40, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Burgess, Colin; Hall, Rex (2009). The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Their Lives, Legacy, and Historical Impact. Berlin: Springer. p. 1. ISBN 9780387848235. LCCN 2008935694.

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