Featured Editorial: A Matter of Time: The Future of Backlog Elimination Drives
by
Hahc21
Main article:
Requests for comment: Future of GAN Backlog Elimination Drives
June - July 2012 GAN backlog elimination drive chart
Backlog elimination drives have been a part of the Wikipedia community as a whole since several years ago. Many WikiProjects use this method to bring their members on a collaborative effort to reduce the workload and, additionally, to share a very interesting and passionate time with fellow Wikipedians. The
Good article process
have been the subject of hard criticism: Several users have expressed their dissatisfaction with the quality of reviews and the useless backlog reduction, which immediately climbs to its original levels after the drive is finished.
The issue is that consensus apparently still supports the existence of the backlog elimination drives at GAN and recently, most of the GA community voted to keep making drives, although a proper consensus was not reached from such discussion.
Malleus Fatuorum proposed an amendment to the good article criteria that would eventually fix the need of drives by including two new quickfail criterias about prose quality and coverage issues. Community rejected the proposal arguing that it was way too narrowly designed to be included as quickfail criteria.[2] One month prior, I proposed several changes for the drives structure that were considered too bureaucratic and with too many restrictions to have a positive impact. Despite of this, several recommendations were made and accepted by community, like the elimination of the barnstars, among others.[3]
In a summary of recent events, the
June-July 2012 GAN backlog elimination drive
brought several queries to the GA community as a whole: Do we need backlog elimination drives? Can we fix the issues that had split community over the drive usage in the past? How do we deal with "rubber-stamp" reviews? Well, by the fact that it has been quite difficult to reach consensus to date, a request for comment will be held this November to see how community answers those questions. First, the RFC will determine the future of the drives: Is community still interested in having backlog elimination drives inside the Good article Wikiproject? And if the answer is yes, How would we tweak the current backlog elimination drive system to make it compliant of what it is supposed to do and avoid all the issues that had split community before. Several proposals included in the RFC are the introduction of a qualifying process, The inclusion of daily review limits, an established disqualifying process and an additional proposal related to how often should drives be held. Of course, additional proposals might be added from fellow Wikipedians who would participate in the process.
^Hahc21 (1 August 2012). "A proposal for future drives". Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 27 October 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
