Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Membership/News/2021 Annual Report

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The Guild of Copy Editors


Report by Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Dhtwiki and Tenryuu. | ddd mmm 2022.

Introduction

Welcome to the Guild of Copy Editors' (GOCE) annual report for 2021, a summary of membership activity, progress on the copy-editing backlog, and throughput of our Requests page.

Membership

A big welcome to everyone who joined us in 2021. 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 Guild news. Guild membership is voluntary and informal, and editors do not have to be members of the Guild to participate in its activities. Many editors perform copy editing outside of our organized events but we have no means of tracking such efforts.

At the end of 2021 there were 2,088 pages populating the Guild's membership category, 489 names on the Guild's membership list, and 703 names on the mailing list. Since we don't actively monitor or audit these lists, they include many inactive or deceased editors, and those whose accounts are blocked or banned.

Of the approximately 126 editors who are listed as having joined the Guild in 2021,

  • 29 completed a copy edit with a Guild-organized activity during 2021, including:
    • 21 who participated in one or more Drives
    • 14 who completed at least one Request
    • 7 who participated in one or more Blitzes
    • 2 who participated in all three activities.

If you were one of these new editors, thank you, and welcome!

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 2021 2022
January 1 – June 30 July 1 – December 31 January 1 – June 30
Election December 2020 June 2021 December 2021
Lead coordinator Jonesey95 Jonesey95 Reidgreg
Coordinators

Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in the elections and thanks to our coordinators for their diligent, drama-free volunteer labor. Elections are scheduled for June and December each year; links to the election pages are posted in the Guild's message box (add it to your Watchlist). All Wikipedians in good standing are welcome to nominate themselves or others. Please consider helping out if you can.

Requests page

Requests for copy editing are one of the Guild's main focal points. Our Among the 648 requests received in 2021 were:2→

  • 252 for GAN
  • 9 for GAR
  • 115 for FAC
  • 3 for FAR
  • 17 for FLC
  • 8 for PR
  • 13 for ACN
  • 30 for DYK
  • 1 for OTD
  • 1 for TFA
  • 179 unspecified
  • 34 declined
  • 6 withdrawn
Monthly breakdown
2021
Month 		Requests Mean days
to completion[a]
Received[b] Processed[c] Completed
January 82 75 72 19.2
February 67 76 73 24.6
March 72 48 40 27.1
April 55 70 65 26.9
May 66 70 62 29.5
June 56 45 44 37.7
July 48 42 41 42.6
August 46 52 52 43.6
September 35 43 43 39.9
October 49 53 47 38.7
November 33 36 36 47.8
December 35 24 21 41.7
Totals 644 635 596 419.9
Average 54 53 49.7 35.0[d]

  1. ^ Does not include requests made in 2020 or rejected requests. Rounded to one decimal place.
  2. ^ "Requests received" between 1 January and 31 December 2021, inclusive.
  3. ^ "Requests processed" includes 48 requests made in 2020 and completed in 2021. Includes withdrawn and declined requests. Does not include requests received in 2021 and processed in 2022.
  4. ^ 35.0 using the rounded figures in this table. If all 596 accepted are averaged together; 31.4.

Note that because some requests are declined or withdrawn, over time there will be more requests received than completed.

Some analysis and comparison to previous years:

  • 596 requests were completed3 in 2021, compared to 684 in 2020, 607 in 2019, 668 in 2018, 571 in 2017, 665 in 2016, 537 in 2015, and 486 in 2014.
  • 644 requests were received in 2021, compared to 752 in 2020, 616 in 2019, 690 in 2018, 588 in 2017, 690 in 2016, 543 in 2015, and 489 in 2014.
  • The mean completion time was 35 days. Previous averages were xxx:nbsp;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.
  • 401 requests waited more than 26 days, which was the average wait time in 2017. 331 requests waited longer than 30 days, and 171 waited longer than 40 days. Three requests waited longer than 80 days and the longest wait was 92 days.

Distribution of time-to-completion of requests (in days) from 2018 (light green) to 2021 (dark green)

At the beginning of 2021, there were 55 pending requests and at the year's end there were 63 pending requests.

Of the 644 requests submitted in 2021, 40 were declined or withdrawn. 55 copy editors completed the 604 remaining requests, which were submitted by 247 editors.

Notes
^1 Figures were arrived at by exporting tables from the request archives for respective years into a spreadsheet for analysis, particularly for completion periods.
^2 Some requests were made for multiple reasons; these were listed in each applicable category.
^3 Figures for completed requests discount any that were ultimately declined or withdrawn; these requests are included in the statistics for requests that were received and processed.

A full list of 2021 requests is available at our 2021 archive page.

Backlog Elimination Drives

Outstanding tags at the
end of each month
2020 2021
January 323 52
February 477 290
March 118 171
April 365 537
May 156 329
June 534 875
July 255 598
August 438 931
September 371 878
October 548 1,134
November 481 946
December 311 1,177

The Guild's main efforts toward reducing the number of articles tagged with {{copy edit}} were six backlog-elimination Drives held in alternating months, starting in January. At the beginning of the year, there were 311 articles in the backlog. A record low of 52 articles was achieved at the end of January. However, the backlog experienced steady gains in non-Drive months and had increased twenty-fold by the end of December, reaching a three-year high of 1,177. The backlog had also extended from one month to seven months.

  • January Drive: 28 editors completed 324 copy edits totalling 714,902 words. This was our most successful drive of the year, with a lot of enthusiasm for bringing the backlog down to double-digits. (full results)

Drive totals for the year: 67 editors removed xxxx articles from the backlog and copy-edited xxx articles from the Requests page for a total of 1,361 recorded copy edits or 2,932,008 words.

28 editors participated in two or more Drives, 17 editors participated in three or more Drives, and 7 editors participated in all six: thanks to Dhtwiki, Jonesey95, Lfstevens, Miniapolis, Reidgreg, Tenryuu, and Twofingered Typist! 128 barnstars were awarded for contributions to Drives.

Notes: About 300–400 articles are tagged with {{copyedit}} every month, so around 3,300 tagged articles were processed despite the net gain to the backlog. The number of articles formally listed as copy-edited during each Drive includes only articles for which editors took credit on the Drive page. Additional articles are removed from the backlog by editors who do a quick or minor copy edit and don't record it on the Drive page, edit during non-Drive months, remove a copyedit tag because it is no longer needed or not applicable, or nominate the tagged article for deletion.

Blitzes

The Guild organized six one-week Blitzes in 2021, in alternating months with the backlog drives. Each of these blitzes focused on requests and the oldest two months of the backlog.

  • February Blitz: The previous drive was so successful that the backlog months (we couldn't call them "old months") for this drive were January and February. Fifteen editors completed 48 copy edits for a total of 142,788 words. (full results)

Blitz totals for the year: 31 editors completed xx requests and xxx articles from the backlog for a total of 147 copy edits (417,403 words).

8 editors participated in two or more Blitzes, 7 editors participated in three or more, and 3 editors participated in all six: thanks to Dhtwiki, Jonesey95 and Miniapolis! These 3 editors also participated in the Guild's six Drives, achieving a perfect 12 for 12!

The Guild awarded 54 barnstars for contributions to Blitzes.

Annual Leaderboard

The following table records the top contributions for combined activity in the Guild's Drives and Blitzes and on the Requests page throughout 2021. We appreciate the many hours of volunteer work represented here. Will you be on this table in 2022?

1 2 3 4 5
Total
Articles 		Twofingered Typist (447.5) Tenryuu (301) Lfstevens (164) Baffle gab1978 (144.5) Miniapolis (126.5)
Total
Requests1 		Twofingered Typist (248 and 7 assists) Baffle gab1978 (143 and 6 assists) Miniapolis (33 and 1 assist) Dhtwiki (21)
Tenryuu (21) 		Mcguy15 (15)
Blitz and
Drive Totals2 		Tenryuu (280) Twofingered Typist (196) Lfstevens (188) Miniapolis (93) Shotgunscoop (83)
Oldest
Articles2,3
incomplete 		Tenryuu (275) Lfstevens (164) Miniapolis (76) Shotgunscoop (60) Dhtwiki (42)
Total
Words2 		Twofingered Typist (738409) Tenryuu (641408) Miniapolis (256730) Dhtwiki (198080) Lfstevens (196107)
5k+
Articles2,4 		Twofingered Typist (62) Tenryuu (42) Dhtwiki (22) Reidgreg (21) Miniapolis (19)
Longest
Article2 		Reidgreg (50,737) Miniapolis (32,668) Tenryuu (24,601) Dhtwiki (22,495) AnApple47 (21,413)
Leaderboard
Awards5 		Tenryuu (27) Twofingered Typist (23)
Miniapolis (23) 		Dhtwiki (16)
Reidgreg (16) 		LFstevens (10) Shotgunscoop (5)
Contrawwftw (5)
Gold
Awards5 		Tenryuu (15) Twofingered Typist (4) LFstevens (3) Reidgreg (2)
Shotgunscoop (2) 		Miniapolis (1)
Dhtwiki (1)
AnApple47 (1)
Prairie Astronomer (1)
Notes
^1 Requests completed in 2021, counting a half-point when credit was split.
^2 Includes Blitzes and Drives only.
^3 Articles from the oldest or target backlog month(s) of each Drive and Blitz.
^4 Number of articles of 5,000 words or more. An article of 10k+ words counts as 2, of 15k+ as 3, etc.
^5 Awards from Drive leaderboards only.

In Memoriam

By coordinators of the Guild of Copy Editors. Originally published in The Signpost.

Wikipedian Christopher Kent Keen (Twofingered Typist) of South Bay, Ontario, died on November 19, 2021. He was a prolific copy editor and longtime member of the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors (GoCE). A childhood interest in music led to his writing music reviews for the student newspaper at Victoria University, Toronto. As a teenager, Christopher took a part-time job at a Toronto bookstore, beginning a career that led to his becoming an executive at the Canadian publishing house McClelland & Stewart and his involvement with the Canadian Booksellers Association.

As a Wikipedian, he primarily worked on requested copyedits; starting in 2015, he fulfilled over 200 such requests annually. In 2018, he became one of just eight editors who have been enshrined in the GoCE's Hall of Fame for "his unfailing, enthusiastic participation in all drives and blitzes for several years, and outstanding assistance on the requests page". Twofingered Typist continued as a copy editor at a high level of productivity for three more years, submitting his final copy edits on the day before his death. He also served four half-year terms as a GoCE coordinator, from July 2019 to June 2021.

In addition to his Wikipedia work, Christopher volunteered on Prince Edward County's library board.[1] He also took an interest in ornithology; he participated in bird-population counts and banded birds at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory.[2] Twofingered Typist will be greatly missed by the Wikipedia editing community. Condolences and tributes can be left at his talk page.

Sources

  1. ^ "Obituary in Picton Gazette". November 23, 2021.
  2. ^ Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory (November 28, 2021). "Facebook". Facebook.

Plans for 2022

The Lead Coordinator writes something positive and uplifting here, we hope.

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