Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/July 2024

The July 2024 GAN Backlog Drive is a one-month-long effort to reduce the backlog of Good article nominations and to mentor editors who are new to reviewing. The co-ordinators for this drive are asilvering, Ganesha811, and Vacant0. If you have any questions, leave a message on this drive's talk page.

Please ensure that you familiarise yourself with the Good Article review process before starting to review an article, and that you are familiar with the GA criteria and the Manual of Style. Also, it is recommended that you read the essays What the Good article criteria are not and Reviewing good articles.

The ultimate goal of this backlog elimination drive is to encourage participation in GA reviews by editors who are not already heavily active in this part of Wikipedia. Awards will be given based on total score (see scoring system below). Regular GA reviewers are welcome to participate and perform reviews by themselves as normal, but are highly encouraged to assist less-experienced reviewers as well. Not sure how many reviews you've done? Find your name on the list here!

Guidelines

Log completed GANs here. If you complete a GAN for an article, don't forget to list it here so that you can get credit for the review.
No rubber-stamping GANs. Good Article nominations tend to result in even better improvements if a reasonable amount of issues are brought up in a review. This can be especially useful when approaching Featured Article standing. Quick-fails are allowed if the article is in exceptionally poor shape or per the GA criteria page. Reviews and articles will be checked by the co-ordinators to ensure that rubber-stamping does not happen. If a participant is found rapidly rubber-stamping GANs that do not meet the criteria, they may be disqualified and possibly reported to the administrators' noticeboard for disruptive editing.
Minimum quality. Only reviews of a sufficient quality will be counted. This is subjective, and coordinators reserve the right to credit or discredit individual reviews. Reviews that are shorter than 1000 bytes are unlikely to be counted.
Provide constructive criticism. If you see a problem or problems in a certain article you're reviewing, don't be afraid to point that out and indicate to the nominator what's wrong. However, be sure to guide the nominator to possible ways of fixing those problems. Similarly, if the article is not of Good Article quality yet, don't be afraid to fail, but make sure you provide guidance as to how to get the article up to GA quality.
Stick with it. An article isn't improved if it remains on hold for months. Instead, make the smaller corrections, make sure the primary writer is actively editing, and make the pass/fail judgement if concerns are/are not addressed in a timely matter.
Have fun. We're here to help bring these articles up to their fullest potential and hence improving the overall quality of the encyclopedia. If you do not enjoy doing that, then there is no motivation to improve these articles and the encyclopedia as a whole.

Newbie reviewers (<6 completed reviews)

The aim is that every review by a newbie reviewer will have some degree of oversight by an experienced reviewer. Please do not close your review (ie, pass, fail, or quickfail it) before an experienced reviewer has had a chance to check it.
If you have completed a review and want to close it, but no experienced reviewer has joined in, please post on this drive's talk page and say so.
- You may formally request a mentor at WP:GAMENTOR if you so desire, but please understand that those mentors are independent of this backlog drive and may find themselves over capacity as a result of this drive.
Many newbie reviewers burn out immediately because they try to do too many reviews at once. (Many experienced reviewers have done this too!) Please do not open multiple blank reviews at a time. You are welcome to review multiple nominations at once, but please complete a significant portion of one review before opening another.
This is for your sake, so please ask questions if you have them and don't worry too much about being difficult. The experienced reviewer who offers their opinion is here to help you, so please take any criticism from them with that in mind. If you feel that someone has been overly WP:BITEy to you as a result of this backlog drive, please contact the co-ordinators.

Mentoring newbie reviewers

If you are an experienced reviewer, you are encouraged to assist newbie reviewers with their reviews. The aim is that every review by a newbie reviewer will have some degree of oversight by an experienced reviewer. You will receive one point for each review you assist with.
Please make, and sign, a note at the top of the review stating that you are going to take part as an experienced reviewer for the purposes of this backlog drive.
- You are encouraged to sign up as a mentor at WP:GAMENTOR, if this interests you.
Assisting reviewers should be willing to answer any questions the newbie reviewer has, and are expected not to WP:BITE the newbies when responding.
Assisting reviewers are expected to satisfy themselves that the newbie reviewer has correctly performed a full review, and to communicate on the review page that you have done so and agree with the result.
- You are encouraged but not required to do an abbreviated review of your own to be sure. For example, you might do a source check for only the most frequently cited source.
In the event that you find your newbie reviewer is completely unready to be doing GA reviews at this time, please communicate that to them (gently!), assist as much as you are willing, and suggest that the nominator put the review up for a formal second opinion. You are welcome to take on the review yourself if you like. (You will get points both for the assist and the review.)

Awards

To receive an award, please include your name and the number of reviews you have completed as part of this drive. The co-ordinators will award you points based on those reviews. Awards will be given by the co-ordinators after this drive ends.

This is the scheme for the awards:

At least 3 points: The Minor Barnstar

At least 7 points: The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar

At least 12 points: The Reviewer Barnstar

At least 20 points: The Premium Reviewer Barnstar

At least 30 points: The Multiple Good Article Reviewer Barnstar

At least 40 points: The WikiProject Good Articles Medal of Merit

At least 60 points: The Order of the Superior Scribe of Wikipedia

In addition, the person who accumulates the most points during the backlog elimination drive will receive the Content Review Medal of Merit

Additional scheme for assistant reviewers:

At least 5 points: The Assistant Reviewer Barnstar

At least 12 points: The Premium Assistant Reviewer Barnstar

Scoring

The July backlog drive works on a points system. The basic points are as follows:

Two points per review, if you have completed five reviews or fewer in total. (That means five reviews ever, not five reviews in this drive, specifically.)
One point per review, if you have completed six or more reviews in total. (Again, not six or more reviews in July, six or more reviews ever.)

There are also bonus points available:

One half-point per 2000 words/article (measured by prosesize). (So a 2000-word article gets +0.5, a 4000-word article gets +1, and so on.)
One point per review, for experienced reviewers (10+ reviews in total) who assist newbie reviewers (<6 reviews in total).
Coordinators may choose at their discretion to award additional points to reviews considered of especially high quality. This is determined on a case-by-case basis. Nominators or reviewers can suggest reviews they think may be candidates. Experienced reviewers are encouraged to point out especially well-done reviews by newbie reviewers.

Progress

Numbers are reported as described here.

Date	Outstanding nominations	Old unreviewed nominations	Change since previous day^{[N 1]}	Change since beginning^{[N 1]}
1 July 2024	TBD	TBD	—	—

^ ^a ^b Change refers only to old unreviewed nominations.

Reviews that need an experienced reviewer

Newbie reviewers: if you have claimed a review (by creating the review page) and it is not yet spoken for by an experienced reviewer, you may add it to the list below by adding the following to the bottom of the list below. (Be sure to swap in the correct information!)

#[[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] ~~~~

Experienced reviewers: when you claim one of the reviews listed below, please simply remove it from the list.

Example entry asilvering (talk) 02:49, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Participants and reviews tracker

Keep track of the articles you review in the Participants section below by creating a list below. Only passes and fails will be recognised as completing a review. If necessary, you can put the article on hold if the article needs to be edited further to be passed. Each of your reviews should be included in your list. Article reviews started before 31 July but completed after that date can be included, but aim to be prompt to avoid leaving nominators hanging. Reviews started before 1 July do not count; this includes all reviews for which the nominator created the relevant page pre-1 July. Please state if the article is a pass, fail, or on hold.

A sample review section is below; all sections start with a fourth-level header containing the editor's username and the {{Div col}} and {{Div col end}} templates. Between those templates, each article reviewed is given its own line. Use the "GA" icon line for an article that passes, the "FGAN" icon line for an article that fails, the "GAH" icon line for an article where the initial review is complete and has been placed on hold, and the "GAN" icon line for an article where the review has started but has not yet been placed on hold. (Change "GAN" and "GAH" to "GA" or "FGAN" when the article passes or fails.) After the article name is a parenthetical for the number of words in the article.

Following the {{Div col end}} template are three lines to tabulate each participant's total number of articles reviewed, total number of reviews assisted, and running points total. While you should feel free to update the article totals, please do not update the points total yourself - a coordinator will update that number after checking reviews and assists.

====[[User talk:Username|Username]]====
'''Reviews'''
{{Div col}}
#{{icon|GA}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words)
#{{icon|FGAN}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words)
#{{icon|GAH}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words)
#{{icon|GAN}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words)
{{Div col end}}
'''Assists'''
{{Div col}}
#{{icon|GA}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words) 
#{{icon|FGAN}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words)
#{{icon|GAH}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words) 
#{{icon|GAN}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words)
{{Div col end}}
'''Articles reviewed:'''
<br />'''Assists:'''
<br />'''Running points total:'''

Participants (alphabetical order)

Example

Reviews

Articlename (# words)
Articlename (# words)
Articlename (# words)
Articlename (# words)