One of the major backlogs on Wikipedia is new page patrol. Basically, as new pages get created they get added to a log. They need to be checked to make sure they meet our criteria--a worrying number are attack pages, hoaxes, yet another MySpace band, etc. The problem is, the log can only hold so many, and once a page is more than 31 days old, it vanishes. And new pages being what they are, the likelihood of seeing them again is pretty low. This can allow for some pretty bad/dumb stuff to sit around in mainspace effectively forever, when it should be removed. I think it would be great for you to get involved in patrolling a few new pages every day. Here's my process:
- I click here. It takes me to the back of the log, the oldest pages, which is where all patrolling should happen.
- I open up all five pages in new tabs
- Click the 'mark as patrolled' link at the very bottom-right of every page immediately. This gets it out of the log.
- Click on 'page' after the 'This page has been marked as patrolled' page loads to get back to all five pages
- If something seems off with how it's written, copy/paste the text into this, which does a fast Google search for copyvio/plagiarism
- Mark for speedy deletion or AFD (using Twinkle) if appropriate, otherwise
- Edit:
- grammar
- spelling
- MOS
- tidy up web-based references using thislink. I have another version that I use, it's a javascript bookmarklet in my toolbar, automatically fills in the pagename and stuff. Let me know if you want it.
- Remove unreliable refs, etc.
And finally tag (using Friendly or Twinkle) for cleanup, unreferenced, refimprove, etc etc, for any issues I don't feel like handling immediately