Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/January 2025

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The January 2025 GAN Backlog Drive is a one-month-long effort to reduce the backlog of Good article nominations. 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 co-ordinators for this drive are DoctorWhoFan91, IntentionallyDense and Ganesha811. If you have any questions, leave a message on this drive's talk page. The drive begins on 1 January 2025 at 00:00:00 (UTC) and ends on 31 January 2025 at 23:59:59 (UTC). Sign up below.

The ultimate goal of this backlog elimination drive is to cut the number of outstanding GANs, especially those over 90 days old. Awards will be given out to those individuals who do the most work in helping reduce the size of the backlog and reach milestones related to the number, age, and size, of articles reviewed. The drive is intended to promote a faster rate of decreasing backlog while maintaining quality reviews.

This is the first of three GAN backlog drives for the year; we will be happy for glad if you return for the other two, in May and September as well. Some similiar groups and competitions include Women in Green, with an emphasis on women, and the WikiCup, which rewards all kinds of high-standard content. Consider signing for them too. Happy reviewing!

Basic guidelines

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 manner.
6. 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.

Progress

Numbers of all GANs and of old GANs are reported as described here and here.

Date	Outstanding nominations	Unreviewed nominations	Change since previous day	Change since beginning
1 January 2025	TBD	TBD	—	—

Date	Outstanding old nominations	Unreviewed old nominations	Change since previous day	Change since beginning
1 January 2025	TBD	TBD	—	—

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

Scoring

The backlog drive works on a points system, to help incentivize quality reviews and focus on articles that may be neglected.

• One point is awarded for every article reviewed.
  • For each 90 days an article has been in the backlog, an additional half-point is awarded (so a 90-day-old nomination receives 1.5 points, a 180-day-old nomination 2 points, etc). This is measured by the date at which the review begins, and not the timestamp.

Days ago	Points	Timestamp
90	1.5	19 September 2024 (UTC)
180	2	21 June 2024 (UTC)
270	2.5	23 March 2024 (UTC)

• Since reviews of long articles tend to be more work than reviews of short ones, participants will also receive an overall bonus of one point per 2500 total reviewed words. Please round the wordcount to the nearest 500, for the sake of the co-ordinators' sanity. For quickfails and insubstantial reviews (at co-ordinators' discretion), only the review point will be rewarded, and no bonus points.

List of qualifying old articles

A list will be added shortly before the drive begins (and updated throughout the drive), containing all nominations over 90+ days old. Nominations 180+ days old will be bolded, and nominations 270+ days old in bold italics.

• After starting a review of one of these articles, please remove it from the list.
• This list is manually updated as additional nominations reach eligibility, and automatically formats nominations that age into the 180+ and 270+ sections.

Participants and reviews tracker

NOTE: To participate in the drive, add your username, as mentioned in the instructions below, and update your reviews as they come through.

Detailed Instructions

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 January but completed after that date can be included, but aim to be prompt to avoid leaving nominators hanging. Reviews started before 1 January do not count; this includes all reviews for which the nominator created the relevant page pre-1 January. Please state if the article is a pass, fail, or on hold. Make sure you follow up on reviews that you have started or placed 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. Please round the wordcount to the nearest 500. Participants who make repeated rounding errors will be hit with a wet trout. If the nomination is 90 or more days old when you begin your review, add "90+", "180+", or "270+" (as relevant) after the number of words. Following the {{Div col end}} template are three lines to tabulate each participant's total number of articles reviewed, total number of old nominations reviewed, and running points total. ====[[User talk:Username|Username]]==== {{Div col}} #{{icon|GA}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words) (90+) #{{icon|FGAN}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words) #{{icon|GAH}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words) (180+) #{{icon|GAN}} [[Talk:Articlename/GAn|Articlename]] (# words) {{Div col end}} '''Articles reviewed:''' <!-- Please leave this for co-ords to update --> <br>'''Old nominations reviewed:''' <!-- Please leave this for co-ords to update --> <br>'''Word count total (bonus points):''' <!-- Please leave this for co-ords to update --> <br>'''Running points total:''' <!-- Please leave this for co-ords to update -->

Coordinators will update the totals for you as they check reviews. Best of luck to all participants!

Participants (alphabetical order)

DoctorWhoFan91

1. Articlename (# words)
2. Articlename (# words)
3. Articlename (# words)
4. Articlename (# words)

Articles reviewed:
Old nominations reviewed:
Word count total (bonus points):
Running points total:

Grk1011

1. Articlename (# words)
2. Articlename (# words)
3. Articlename (# words)
4. Articlename (# words)

Articles reviewed:
Old nominations reviewed:
Word count total (bonus points):
Running points total:

IntentionallyDense

1. Articlename (# words)
2. Articlename (# words)
3. Articlename (# words)
4. Articlename (# words)

Articles reviewed:
Old nominations reviewed:
Word count total (bonus points):
Running points total:

Reidgreg

1. Articlename (# words)
2. Articlename (# words)
3. Articlename (# words)
4. Articlename (# words)

Articles reviewed:
Old nominations reviewed:
Word count total (bonus points):
Running points total: