Wikipedia:Contribution Team/Backlogs

Great Backlog Drive 2011

We're cleaning up the town!
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Come join the great drive!

The Great Backlog Drive is a project started by the Wikipedia Contribution Team. Our mission is to clear out Wikipedia's backlogs. We set ourselves some big targets, hoping to clear some backlogs completely, and reduce others by thousands, all while maintaining a high quality of edits. Ultimately, during the 2011 cleanup drive, over 33,000 article issues were fixed but there's still lots to do!

Competition

We ran a competition every week with the opportunity to win an exclusive Wikipedia t-shirt. There were two categories; Best Overall Contributor and Best Newcomer. The winners each week received a special barnstar and were invited to send their address in to claim their shirt. Although this competition is now over, we hope to send out additional shirts to those lucky few who made a truly incredible impact, and contributors are still encouraged to tackle the remaining backlogs.

The current status of all the backlogs is shown below. Good luck!

2024's focus is "Articles lacking sources from December 2023": 91.8% complete

Click any linked number for that category's articles prioritized by their number of incoming links.

Backlog categories

• General
• Administrative
• Assessment
• Stub sorting
• Template parameter

Lacking references

• Needs references: 75,667
• Needs references (BLP): 105
• Needs more references: 471,581
• Needs more references (BLP): 42,094
• Needs in-text citations: 105,520
• Needs reliable references: 90,533
• Has unsourced quotes: 1,249
• Has unsourced statements: 533,287
Fix one!

Accuracy

• Uses broken or outdated citations: 259
• Needs factual verification: 11,114
• Needs references list: 19
• Needs references clean up: 1,916
• Accuracy disputes: 15,745
• Neutrality disputed: 7,451
• Needs updating: 39,798
• Has original research: 16,564
• Self-contradictory: 771

Content

• Copied and pasted: 103
• Needs context: 2,758
• Needs coordinates: 84,795
• Too technical: 3,409
• Uses improper non-free content: 89
• Uses in-universe perspective: 1,122
• Plot summary needs attention: 7,194
• Has trivia sections: 345
• Of unclear notability: 56,589
• Popular low quality articles (top 5000 by pageviews with low ORES class predictions)

Links

• Has dead external links: 315,526
• Needs external links cleanup: 2,264

Layout

• Needs expansion: 66,153
• Needs to be merged: 1,346
• Needs to be split: 810

Style

• Needs clarification: 5,702
• Needs copy edit: 2,480
• Has peacock terms: 2,833
• Uses promotional tone: 22,630
• Has weasel words: 18,764
• With style issues: 19,498

File description

• Copy to Wikimedia Commons: 91,542
• Needs author: 6,301

File quality

• Has inappropriate JPEG compression: 2,374
• Logos that should be in SVG format: 2,928
• Should be in PNG format: 223
• Has watermarks: 113

Non-free file use

File licensing

• Has disputed copyright information: 461

Meta

• Biographies without "living" parameter: 2,815

Quality content

• Featured article candidates: 37
• Featured article review: 21
• Featured list candidates: 24
• Unreviewed good article nominations: 515

Other

• Needs cleanup: 34,135
• Needs cleanup (disambiguations): 4
• Needs expert attention: 1,327
• Needs infobox conversion: 293
• Is orphaned: 53,113
• Needs to be wikified: 27,806

New articles

• Articles for creation: 1,207

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Notes on specific backlogs:

• The backlog "Needs to be wikified" is worked on by WikiProject Wikify. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the WikiProject for additional announcements, status updates, elimination drives, and awards.
• The backlog "Needs copy edit" is worked on by the Guild of Copy Editors. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the Guild for additional announcements, status updates, elimination drives, and awards.
• The backlog "Needs size reduction" is worked on, in part, by DASHBot, an automated program. DASHBot will resize any images in that category each night, but cannot resize sound or video files. An editor with that capability is needed, as videos can go months without being handled.
• The backlog "Is orphaned" is worked on by the WikiProject Orphanage. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the WikiProject for additional support.
• The backlog "Needs to be merged" is worked on by WikiProject Merge. Users interested in working on this backlog should consider signing on with the WikiProject, which has a sub-drive focusing on articles to be merged as a result of AfD.

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Previous collaborations of the month

September 2011's focus marked the first time that the Contribution Team's collaboration of the month was tied to another WikiProject's backlog drive. WikiProject Images and Media organized a drive to clear out the backlog of manually tagged items at Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons. The month started with 18918 items, and ended with 14404 items, a 24% reduction. Another drive is planned in January 2012. August 2011's focus, Category:Articles with incorrect citation syntax, started at 1448 items. The month ended with 1194 items remaining, a 17% reduction. July 2011's focus, Category:Wikipedia license migration needs review, started at 1504 items. The month ended with 237 items remaining, meaning that the backlog cleared of 84% of the items that were there at the beginning of the month. By the end of August 2011, the backlog was completely, and in all likelihood permanently, cleared. June 2011's focus, Category:Infobox album with reviews, started at 52,700 items. The number of items at the end of the month was not recorded, but the number at the end of July was 38,355 items, a 27% reduction over two months.