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The Guild of Copy Editors

Guild of Copy Editors
2023 End of Year Report


Report by Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Jonesey95, Miniapolis, and Wracking | March 15, 2024.

Introduction

Welcome to the Guild of Copy Editors' (GOCE) annual report for 2023, 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 2023, editors working with the Guild helped remove well over 1,000 articles from the {{copy edit}} backlog and responded to 360 requests for copy edit.

Because the Wikimedia graphs extension was disabled at the time of writing, we have not used any graphs in this report, aside from the manually generated image below. We hope this does not detract from its usefulness.

Line graph showing a boomerang trend
Let's make that backlog count trend downwards again!
Outstanding tags at the
end of each month
2022 2023
January 966 1,861
February 1,133 1,952
March 1,022 1,751
April 1,304 2,024
May 1,276 1,820
June 1,506 2,113
July 1,432 1,926
August 1,774 2,146
September 1,580 1,935
October 1,936 2,243
November 1,967 2,072
December 1,923 2,419

The backlog numbers greater than 2,000 articles, as each month about 300 or more articles are added to the tracking category, slightly more than the guild handles; and, as we write, there is more than two months' worth of requests.

A sudden jump in the backlog in December was caused by the addition of articles that were marked with the templates {{Repetition}}, {{Repetition inline}}, {{Repetition section}} and {{verbosity}}, which were added to Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit. Those granular templates now redirect to {{copy edit}} and {{copyedit inline}}.

Thank you all for your hard work throughout 2023; we hope you'll continue to be enthused and inspired to improve the standard of prose in Wikipedia. Happy editing!

Membership

GOCE membership is open to all editors in good standing who are interested in copy editing. Please see our membership page for information about signing up, and remember to add your username to our mailing list to receive the Guild's quarterly newsletters. Guild membership is voluntary and informal, and editors do not have to declare their membership 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.

As of 08:18, 26 January 2024 (UTC), there were 2,356 pages populating the Guild's membership category, 663 names on the Guild's list of participants and 762 names on the mailing list. This is a respective growth of 140, 57 and 291 from the end of 2022. Because we do not 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, and elections of coordinators are happening is to add Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Ombox to your watchlist.

Coordinators

The GOCE coordinators 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. They are chosen twice a year through consensus voting.

Term 2023 2024
January 1 – June 30 July 1 – December 31 January 1 – June 30
Election December 2022 June 2023 December 2023
Lead coordinator No lead coordinator Dhtwiki Dhtwiki
Coordinators

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.

Obituary: David Thomsen (Dthomsen8)

By Guild of Copy Editors coordinators and Baffle gab1978. Originally published in The Signpost on 17 July 2023.

A smiling man with white hair wearing bifocals
Dave in 2012

David died on November 25, 2022, at the age of 83.[1] He was a prolific editor and a self-declared gnome who added to articles on Philadelphia, United States, and created many new articles.[2] David lived in Fairmount, Philadelphia. After earning a degree at Lafayette College and serving for two years with the US Army in West Germany, he worked for 27 years as a computer programmer for Sunoco.[2][3]

A man and a woman at a computer
Dave instructs a new editor at GLAM Cafe in 2015

David began his post-retirement Wikipedia career on March 13, 2008; five years later, he had made 100,000 edits, mostly through wikignoming. As of July 17, 2023, he was the 52nd-most-active editor in Wikipedia. David was a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, and took part in its monthly drives and blitzes. He was also part of the Article Rescue Squadron, saving uncited-but-promising articles from deletion.[2] David was openly proud of his Wikipedia-editing activities, and he even designed his own Wikipedia-themed caps, which he wore to Philadelphia wiki-meetups and gave away to his fellow Wikipedians.[2] Outside Wikipedia, David was a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.[3]

Dthomsen8 has left an indelible legacy at Wikipedia, and the encyclopedia and editing community are poorer for his loss. Messages of condolence can be left on his talk page.

  1. ^ "David Thomsen Obituary 2022". Cremation Society of Philadelphia. November 25, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d Schleifer, Theodore (September 2, 2013). "Philadelphian is a king of Wikipedia editors". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on June 30, 2023. Retrieved July 6, 2023.
  3. ^ a b Ha, Yoona; Wilson, Jacob (October 14, 2014). "On Philadelphia's birthday, a look at how it came alive on Wikipedia".

Requests page

Requests for copy editing are one of the Guild's main activities. Compared with 2022, our ever-busy requests page saw slightly fewer submissions and a minor decrease in the mean request-completion time. We received 11.8% fewer requests and completed the same number of requests as in 2022.1 The Guild received 350 requests in 2023, 54.6% (191) of which were for Good Article or Featured Article nominations. We copy-edited 340 of the 360 requests we processed; the remaining 20 (5.6%) were declined or withdrawn.

Any editor with good English-language skills can accept requests, but we prefer those who are new to or inexperienced with copy editing to gain experience with articles in the backlog before handling requests—particularly those for GAN, ACN and FAC.

Among the requests received were:2

  • 125 for GAN
  • 3 for GAR
  • 66 for FAC
  • 1 for FAR
  • 4 for FLC
  • 9 for PR
  • 0 for ACN
  • 0 for ACR
  • 2 for BCN
  • 0 for CCN
  • 12 for DYK
  • 1 for TFA
  • 0 for section copyedits
  • 10 declined
  • 6 withdrawn
  • 126 unspecified

Monthly breakdown
2023
Month 		Requests Mean days
to completion[a]
Received[b] Processed[c] Completed [d]
January 19 20 17 108.6
February 29 31 29 104.8
March 27 26 24 74.0
April 28 38 38 57.1
May 27 39 39 62.3
June 24 21 21 65.4
July 43 30 29 48.7
August 29 25 23 61.6
September 37 53 47 50.0
October 33 28 26 51.7
November 33 26 24 53.5
December 21 23 23 54.8
Total 350 360 340 66.0 mean days
  1. ^ Mean average days to completion for requests completed that month. Includes requests made in 2022, and excludes declined and withdrawn requests. Rounded to one decimal place.
  2. ^ "Requests received" between 1 January and 31 December 2023, inclusive.
  3. ^ "Requests processed" includes 68 requests made in 2022 and completed in 2023. Includes withdrawn and declined requests. Excludes all requests received in 2023 and processed in 2024.
  4. ^ "Requests completed" excludes all withdrawn and declined requests.

Note that because some requests are declined or withdrawn, the overall received requests will always be slightly higher than those completed.

Some analysis and comparison to previous years:

  • 340 requests were completed3 in 2023 compared to 340 in 2022, 596 in 2021, 684 in 2020, 607 in 2019, 668 in 2018, 571 in 2017, 665 in 2016, 537 in 2015, and 486 in 2014.
  • 350 requests were received in 2023 compared to 397 in 2022, 644 in 2021, 752 in 2020, 616 in 2019, 690 in 2018, 588 in 2017, 690 in 2016, 543 in 2015, and 489 in 2014.
  • The average completion time was 66.0 days. Previous averages were 67.7 days in 2022, 35 days in 2021, 23.3 days in 2020, 19 days in 2019, 15 days in 2018, 26 days in 2017, 17 days in 2016, 30 days in 2015, and 41 days in 2013.

There were 72 pending requests at the beginning of 2023. There were 53 pending requests at the end of the year.

In 2023, 350 requests were submitted[a], and 16 of those were declined or withdrawn. Forty-three (43) copy editors completed the remaining 334[clarification needed] remaining requests, which were submitted by 165 editors.

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.

As of the date of this report in February 2024, requests from 2023 are still being processed or are waiting for an available copy editor. A full list of the year's requests will eventually be available at our 2023 and 2024 archive pages.

  1. ^ "Requests received" between 1 January and 31 December 2023, inclusive.

Backlog Elimination Drives

The Guild's main efforts toward reducing the number of articles tagged with {{copy edit}} and its sister templates were six backlog-elimination drives held in alternating months, starting in January. At the beginning of the year, there were 1,923 articles in the backlog, and 2,419 articles at year's end.

  • January Drive: Of the 21 editors who signed up, 14 claimed at least one copy edit. They copy edited 170 articles, totaling 389,737 words. Barnstars awarded are here.
  • March Drive: Of the 65 editors who signed up, 36 claimed at least one copy edit. 278 articles were copy-edited, totaling 633,739 words, including 25 requests. Barnstars and data are here.
  • May Drive: 52 editors signed up for our May drive; of these, 31 copy-edited at least one article. 180 articles were copy-edited, totaling 465,752 words, including 29 requests, and 62 articles from our oldest months being removed from the backlog. Barnstars and data are here.
  • July Drive: For our mid-year drive, 34 of the 51 editors who took part copy-edited at least one article. They copy edited 276 articles, totaling 683,633 words. Barnstars awarded are here.
  • September Drive: Of the 69 editors who signed up, 40 copy-edited at least one article. They copy edited 290 articles, totaling 661,214 words. Barnstars awarded are listed here.
  • November Drive: In the last drive of the year, 38 of the 58 editors who signed up copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 234 articles, totaling 458,620 words. Barnstars awarded are listed here.

Drive totals for the year: 111 editors claimed credit for removing 1,428 articles from the backlog and the Requests page for a combined total of 3,292,695 words. The Guild awarded 194 barnstars for participation in Drives in 2023.

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

We ran six one-week Blitzes in 2023, in alternating months with the backlog drives. Reports and statistics are taken from our newsletters.

  • February Blitz: The year's first blitz focused on requests made in October and November 2022, and articles tagged for copy-edit in March and April 2022. Of the 14 editors who signed up, nine claimed at least one copy-edit and between them, they copy-edited 39,150 words in 22 articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
  • April Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our April Blitz, nine completed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 24 articles totaling 53,393 words. Barnstars awarded are here.
  • June Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our mid-year Blitz, 12 copy-edited at least one article. 70,035 words comprising 26 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are here.
  • August Blitz: Participants in our August blitz copy-edited 79,608 words comprising 57 articles. 13 of the 16 editors who signed up worked on at least one article. Barnstars awarded are available here.
  • October Blitz: Of the 22 editors who signed up for the October Blitz, 13 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 109,327 words in 52 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here.
  • December Blitz; for the year's final blitz, we worked on backlog articles tagged in September, October, and November 2022, and requests. Of the 17 editors who signed up, 13 copy-edited at least one article, and between them they copy-edited 45,678 words comprising 30 articles. Barnstars are here

Blitz totals for the year: 34 editors completed 211 requests and articles from the backlog, for a total of 397,191 words. The Guild awarded 69 barnstars for participation in Blitzes in 2023.

Closing thoughts

By Baffle☿gab and Dhtwiki

A warm welcome to editors who have joined the WikiProject in the past year or so. Also, thanks to outgoing coordinators Baffle gab1978 and Zippybonzo for their excellent work here.

The project has gone back to having a lead coordinator, although the team spirit of the Guild remains.

The Requests page and the backlog are longer than they've been for a while. It must be frustrating for requesters to watch their posts slowly work their way up a several-months-long list. On our side, seeing an accumulation of work in one's in-basket can also be dispiriting; the work is piling up ... will it ever get done? Well, we've done it before so surely we can do it again, and there's no deadline in Wikipedia—with enough willing and able volunteers, it'll be sure to get done eventually!

The Guild continues to assume responsibilities for several copy editing chores, through template redirects and resolving bot-discovered typographical errors, which add to the copy editing backlog.

Wikipedia always need more active copy-editors. Copy-editing is a skill, it does need practice and it involves more than just fixing typos. If you're new to copy-editing, or perhaps uncertain about your abilities, why not work on some articles from the backlog and ask us for feedback at the GOCE talk page? You can also use the basic tutorial and the more-advanced tutorials by Tony1. As you build your skills, consider accepting a request or two. You'll get to work on some interesting and usually well-written articles, improve them for our readers and have fun fixing those errors.

We also need more editors to involve themselves in coordinating the WikiProject. If you're interested in becoming a coordinator, you're welcome to post on the coordinators' talk page or any of our other project talk pages. Our next election of coordinators takes place in June; we announce these on our Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Ombox, which you can add to your watchlist. Coordinators are elected on an approval basis and usually serve a six-month term.

From the first 2024 coordinator team, thank you to everyone who has helped out at the GOCE in 2023; be it copy-editing articles, helping out with Drives and Blitzes, or simply looking after the Guild's pages. Your help is always appreciated. One way or another, you're helping to improve Wikipedia, and to make its articles say what they mean and mean what they say. We wish everyone an excellent year in 2024; have fun and happy (copy) editing.

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