Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/November 2019

Backlog

The backlog has dropped dramatically since the start of the drive, and yet there are only a few articles that have been recorded on the actual drive page. I think there was a similar discrepancy in the last two drives I participated in.

After a bit of digging around, I took a look at @Lfstevens's contribs, and I think they are the primary culprit. They also have a table on their userpage titled "Off-book copy edits", and each month links to a subpage by month. They seem to be single-handedly responsible for hundreds of copy edits every drive, which is absolutely insane plays a big role in reducing the total backlog, yet are not recording them on the drive pages. With all due respect, as they are the first GOCE Hall of Fame inductee, I want to know why they're doing huge amounts of work off-book. Unless there's a good reason for keeping them off-book, I think these copy edits should be recorded so reviewers have an easier time finding them. Bobbychan193 (talk) 06:22, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Bobbychan193: @Lfstevens: Bobbychan193 it is common practice (and polite) on WP to include the subject of your post in the conversation so they are aware of it. Obviously I cannot answer for Lfstevens but I would certainly not refer to them as a "culprit". What they choose to include in their drive list is entirely up to them. It is not mandatory that drive participants record any article they copy edit unless they wish to do so. We should be grateful for the quality work Lfstevens does. Please remember most of us at the GOCE do not edit articles on Wikipedia to "win" a competition. We do it for the love of the work. And, why would reviewers ever want to find them anyway? Cheers, Twofingered Typist (talk)

We are all volunteers here. Bobbychan193, please keep in mind that you are asking a busy volunteer to do additional volunteer work that they may be unwilling to do. If you really feel the need for an answer, the most direct way to ask for one is to post on User talk:Lfstevens, not here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:13, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Twofingered Typist and Jonesey95: So I posted here because I viewed it more of a systemic GOCE Drive topic (as in, the whole point of Drives is to reduce the backlog). I also wanted to see if any of the older GOCE members had any additional insight, and I appreciate the points both of you raised.

Just to clarify, I have no problems with Lfstevens recording or not recording their copy edits. I was just curious. And perhaps "culprit" wasn’t the right word; I simply meant that they were responsible for huge amounts of work and putting massive dents in the backlog. Bobbychan193 (talk) 19:43, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Hello, everyone. I don't record these articles here because they are so short. I select the shortest articles in the backlog and gradually work my way up to longer ones as I run out of the shortest ones. When I began doing this some years back, the backlog of trivial articles was immense. I was killing the guild page by doing so many updates and making it huge. It used to take me the entire month to get through the 5k-byte articles, and that could involve 800 or more. Now the backlog is much shorter, so getting to 5k is now a matter of a day or two. Last drive I reached 11k or so and this time I expect to go even further, given the few articles that remain from September. Given my strategy it also seemed unseemly (heh) to win contests just by picking the lowest-hanging fruit. This year I have typically hit a single non-shortest article and log that one on the main page. Of course, all are welcome to edit as many shorties as you like, without regard to what I'm doing. Cheers and thanks for all your efforts! Lfstevens (talk) 01:18, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Appreciate the response. Thanks for all the work that you do! Bobbychan193 (talk) 05:10, 5 November 2019 (UTC)