Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/July 2026

The following event is now closed. Please do not modify this page, unless you are a participant adding your final statistics within 24 hours of the closure. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate talk page.

This Copy Editing Backlog Elimination Drive is a one-month-long effort of the Guild of Copy Editors to reduce the backlog of articles that require copy editing: those carrying the {{copy edit}} tag (also {{copy edit section}}, {{copy edit inline}}, {{inappropriate person}}, {{cleanup tense}}, and their redirects) and those listed on the GOCE Requests page. It will begin on 1 July 2026, 00:00 (UTC) and will end on 31 July 2026, 23:59 (UTC). The goals of this drive are:

to reduce the backlog by as many articles as possible, especially the earliest-tagged articles (those tagged in January, February, March, April, and May 2025);
to complete all requests on the GOCE Requests page dating from May, June, and July 2026.

Drive participants can earn barnstar awards based on the number of articles—and the word counts of the articles—they copy edit. Articles listed on the Requests page count towards your total; these articles are generally higher in quality than those tagged with {{copy edit}}. You will receive a bonus score of 50% over the article's word count for articles that were tagged with {{copy edit}} in January, February, March...2026, and for articles listed on the Requests page. Awards will be given out once the drive has finished.

The drive is open to all Wikipedians; you don't have to be a member of the Guild of Copy Editors to participate. You must, however, be competent in your use of English grammar, spelling and punctuation. We strongly advise you to read Wikipedia's guide to basic copy editing before you begin working. If you're unsure about spelling, grammar or punctuation, consult the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Skilled use of English is especially important for articles listed on the Requests page.

Drives are under the purview of the Guild's coordinators. The drive's lead coordinator is Dhtwiki (talk), who is assisted by GoldRomean (talk), Miniapolis (talk), Mox Eden (talk), and TNM101 (talk). If you have any questions, leave a message on the drive's talk page.

For brief instructions on recording your work, see below. For full instructions, visit the main drive page. Further details can be found on the drive FAQ page.

Full instructions, tips, and awards

Full instructions for participants, tips, help for new copy editors, useful tags, and details of the many barnstars available for the drive can be found on the main drive page. Please read this page carefully before you begin. To sign up, please use the form in the Signing up section below.

Progress

(Please update your own figures)

Leaderboard

More information Total Articles, Total Words ...

**Gold Star Award Leaderboard**
	1	2	3	4	5
Total Articles	11achitturi (40)	Dropbear2 (31)	GentleHillRacer (27)	Jayowyn (19)	Pac Veten (17)
Total Words^{[n 1]}	Pac Veten (73,807)	Jayowyn (60,674)	Dropbear2 (49,742)	Lfstevens (41,490)	Dhtwiki (32,322)
5k+ Articles^{[n 2]}	Pac Veten (7)	Lfstevens (6)	Jayowyn (5)	TNM101 (3) Dhtwiki (3) Mox Eden (3)	Other justin (2) Miniapolis (2) Augnablik (2)
Oldest Articles^{[n 3]}	Dropbear2 (31)	GentleHillRacer (18)	Pac Veten (17)	11achitturi (15)	Miniapolis (14)
Longest Article^{[n 1]}^{[n 4]}	Dhtwiki (15,399)	Other justin (13,519)	Miniapolis (12,724)	Mox Eden (12,438)	Jayowyn (11,798)

[1]
For requests and older articles, please include only the actual word count, without the 50% bonus.
[2]
Number of articles of 5,000 words or more. An article of 10K+ words counts as 2, of 15K+ as 3, and so on.
[3]
Oldest articles are those tagged in January, February, March, April, May 2025.
[4]
The number of words in the longest article you copy edited. Only one entry for any editor.

Progress chart

More information Progress graphs ...

Progress graphs

Raw data [edit]
Chart

[edit]

Raw data [edit]
Chart

[edit]

More information Date ...

Progress chart
Date	Old articles Jan–May 2025	Outstanding tags	Change since previous day ^{[N 1]}	Change since beginning ^{[N 1]}
30 June 2026	239	1,717	—	—
1 July 2026	231	1,712	5	5
2 July 2026	227	1,699	13	18
3 July 2026	219	1,680	19	37
4 July 2026	209	1,668	12	49
5 July 2026	200	1,619	49	98
6 July 2026	197	1,603	16	114
7 July 2026	188	1,590	13	127
8 July 2026	178	1,575	15	142
9 July 2026	166	1,543	32	174
10 July 2026	161	1,539	4	178
11 July 2026	157	1,542	3	175
12 July 2026	152	1,549	7	168
13 July 2026	145	1,558	9	159
14 July 2026	140	1,548	10	169
15 July 2026	139	1,547	1	170
16 July 2026	133	1,557	10	160
17 July 2026	131	1,562	5	155
18 July 2026	127	1,559	3	158
19 July 2026	118	1,554	5	163
20 July 2026	113	1,558	4	159
21 July 2026	106	1,552	6	165
22 July 2026	100	1,549	3	168
23 July 2026	97	1,545	4	172
24 July 2026	84	1,540	5	177
25 July 2026	82	1,532	8	185
26 July 2026	74	1,517	15	200
27 July 2026	67	1,499	18	218
28 July 2026	63	1,507	8	210
29 July 2026	59	1,507	0	210
30 July 2026	50	1,504	3	213
31 July 2026	40	1,499	5	218

[1]
Change refers only to outstanding tags.

Reviewing

GOCE coordinators and other experienced Guild members will carry out random checks to ensure that copy edits are of a satisfactory standard. If you are willing to help with reviewing, please sign up below.

10% of each participant's copy edits from the backlog should be checked, and all copy edits from the Requests page should be reviewed, time permitting. Please choose articles at random and do not inspect your own copy edits. After checking articles, place a {{checked}} template after the article on the listing and sign your username with four tildes (~~~~). If a rough consensus finds that a copy edit is not of an acceptable standard, the tag will be re-added and the editor will be penalized 1,200 words plus the word count of the reviewed article. The reviewer may give advice on how the edit could have been improved without penalizing the editor. Please raise any questions on the Coordinators' talk page.

Reviewers sign-up

Signing up

To sign up for the drive, click the button below. This will create a subsection in the Totals section where you will record your copy edits. Rollover totals from the previous drive are located here.

This drive has now concluded and is no longer open to sign-up.

Totals

How to record articles you have copy edited:

Remove any extant {{copy edit}} tags from the article.
When you sign up, your section is automatically populated with # {{Working}} [[]] () and # {{Completed}} [[]] ():
- Article titles go in wikilinks [[]]. List the article's full title (not an abbreviated version) and avoid piped links, quotation marks and italics.
- Article word counts go in round brackets (): use this script to get the page's word count. Count the words in the version of the article that existed before you started editing. These brackets should not contain anything other than this number; do not use additional brackets for comments. Avoid long calculation strings (more than one line) in your word total.
Place the article you are editing on the {{Working}} line. Only work on one article at a time. When you've finished your copy edit, change {{Working}} to {{Completed}}.
If the article is from the GOCE Requests page, place *R (using plain text) after the word count. If it was tagged in January, February, March...2026, place *O (using plain text) after the word count.
Place any comments between the article title and the word count.
Do not list articles on which you have placed {{GOCEreviewed}} instead of copy editing them, or which needed no copy editing.
Do not add the 50% bonus for Requests or Oldest articles—a coordinator will apply the bonuses after the drive is over.
If you want your work checked, you can request this on the drive talk page.

Properly completed records look like this in the edit window:

# {{Completed}} [[Dark chocolate]] (1,234) *O

and like this on the rendered page: