Welcome to the Guild of Copy Editors' annual report for 2015. It's been another successful backlog-busting year at the Guild; our Blitzes and Drives have been popular, as has our Requests page. Your coordinators have also been active behind the scenes, helping the Guild to run smoothly.

Our regular backlog reduction drives and blitzes continue to keep the backlog trending downwards (see graph to right); albeit with a pronounced yo-yo pattern reflecting the every-other-month schedule of our drives. Much progress has been made this year; we started 2015 at 2,198. According to our monthly records, the level peaked at 2,627 in April, fell to 2,022 in May, bounced to 2,557 and plummeted to a new all-time low of 1,849 at the end of November. Hopefully our regular assaults on this Mount Analogue will help keep the backlog to a reasonable size.

Our week-long blitzes focused primarily (and successfully) on reducing the backlog on our copy-editing Requests page, with an occasional diverting excursion into topic-based groups of articles, including biographies and food and drink.

Behind the scenes, we have completed work to restructure the archives of the Guild's various talk pages. The archives had been organized using different systems across our pages; some were in monthly archives and some were archived ad hoc into numbered archives. We've consolidated these pages into annual digests, making finding specific conversations—including those that occurred over multiple months—easier and presenting a more contextually complete record of Guild history. We will continue using bots to archive talk pages, reducing manual intervention and easing future maintenance tasks.

Outstanding tags at the
end of each month

	2014	2015
January	2,777	2,186
February	2,915	2,432
March	2,902	2,423
April	2,987	2,627
May	2,236	2,022
June	2,400	2,216
July	2,199	2,188
August	2,411 (est.)	2,322
September	2,384	2,336
October	2,483	2,557
November	1,974	1,849
December	2,198	2,019

GOCE membership is open to all editors in good standing who are interested in copyediting. Please see our membership page for details about signing up (and remember to add your username to our mailing list to receive Guild news).

The Requests page has been very popular this year; in 2015, the Guild dealt with 557 ^{[n 1]} copy-editing requests, including some made in 2014; of these: ^{[n 2]}

In 2014, we dealt with 503 ^{[n 1]} requests, including some added in 2013; a full breakdown of these is not available. Jonesey95 analyzed the statistics relating to requests made in 2014; he found that:

• We completed 489 requests in 2014 and 2015 that were requested between January 1 and December 31, 2014 (compared to 527 requests submitted in 2013). This includes Declined requests;
• The average completion time was 30 days, down from 41 days for 2013 requests. (The median time was 32 days, down from 42 in 2013.);
• The longest wait was 83 days; only 21 articles waited more than 60 days and only 3 waited more than 70 days. This is down from 51 articles waiting more than 70 days in 2013.

For a full analysis, a histogram and a link to the 2013 statistical analysis, please see the original post.

Thanks to the dedicated work of our regular copy-editing team, and of those who participated in our Drives and Blitzes, the number of extant requests fell from our typical 30–60 pending requests to just six requests on December 16; an unprecedented low! The coordinators thus decided to increase the maximum requests-per-user from two to three, the limit before March 16, 2014. We also decided a level of 60 requests would trigger a return to a two-request limit, but that this change should not be automated and that extant coordinators should alter the limit at their discretion (after reaching a consensus among themselves, of course).

The importance of communicating with Guild members was highlighted in September when a discussion about clutter on the page—which one editor found intimidating—led to the addition of a button simplifying the addition of requests and easing the process for editors who are unfamiliar with wiki-markup. The instructions for requesters were also simplified, another blurb was hidden away, and the nagging footer was removed. Striking a balance between ease of use and nuanced instructions that is acceptable to all can be difficult; however, the feedback we received on the talk page (see link above) indicates that we have made the page friendlier. If you think any areas of the Guild could be improved, please feel free to let us know how we can help.

For the first half of 2015, our lead coordinator was Miniapolis, assisted by Philg88, Jonesey95, and Biblioworm.

For the second half of 2015, our lead coordinator was Jonesey95, assisted by Baffle gab1978, KieranTribe, Pax85, and Miniapolis.

The new tranche of coordinators elected for the first half of 2016 are:

Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in the election. You can view the results of the election here. The next planned election will be held in June; all Wikipedians in good standing are welcome to nominate themselves or others.

At the beginning of the year, there were 2,198 articles in the {{ Copy edit}} backlog. At year's end, 2,019 articles remain, ^{[* 1]} and we continue to maintain a backlog of about sixteen months.

January 2015 Drive

In the first month-long Drive of the year, twenty-one editors removed 178 articles from the backlog, ^{[* 2]} removed all {{ copy edit}} templates added in the target months of August, September and October 2013, and completed twenty-six Requests.

March 2015 Drive

March's Drive saw eighteen editors credited with removing 172 articles from the backlog and sixteen from the Requests page. The target months were October, November and December 2013.

May 2015 Drive

In May, twenty-one requests were completed and 152 backlog articles were cleaned up by twenty-nine editors. Target months were December 2013, and January and February 2014.

July 2015 Drive

Seventeen editors helped remove 129 articles from the backlog in July's Drive, and twenty-nine requests were fulfilled. January, February and March 2014 were the target months.

September 2015 Drive

September's Drive saw eighteen editors remove 139 articles from the backlog and copy edit twenty-two articles from the Requests page. Target months were March, April and May 2014.

November 2015 Drive

Eighteen editors removed 195 articles, including all those added during June 2013, from the backlog during the year's last Drive. Thirty-six requests were completed. Target months were June, July and August 2014. At month's end there were 1,849 articles in the backlog.

We ran six one-week Blitzes in 2015, in months alternating with the backlog reduction drives.

February 2015 Blitz

Between February 15 and 21, eight editors took part in the year's first Blitz, removing sixteen articles from the Requests page.

April 2015 Blitz

The April Blitz, which ran from April 19 to 25, again focused on requests. Six editors removed eleven articles from the Requests page.

June 2015 Blitz

June's Blitz focused on requests. Eight editors took part, removing fifteen articles and over 41,000 words from the backlog between June 21 and 27.

August 2015 Blitz

August's Blitz, focusing on biographical articles that had been tagged for copy editing for over a year, saw eleven editors remove twenty-four articles between August 16 and 22.

October 2015 Blitz

October's Blitz again focused on requests. Between October 18 and 24, seven editors removed twenty-four articles from the Requests page.

December 2015 Blitz

The final Blitz of 2015, which ran from December 13 to 19, was themed around food and drink. Seven editors removed twenty-seven articles from the backlog.

This year we hope to keep whittling away at the copyediting backlog, with the year-end total and the number of months in the backlog substantially lower than it is now. Although the Requests page is currently in good shape, it can lengthen with alarming ease without adequate attention. We will continue to watch the Guild's talk pages, respond promptly to posts and keep the membership updated with regular newsletters.

Many thanks to our members for a splendid effort during 2015. Unlike a number of other WikiProjects, the GOCE is alive and kicking, but we can always use more help; if you enjoy working in a drama-free zone to improve the encyclopedia, tell your friends. We wish you all a happy, peaceful and healthy 2016, and hope to see you here often this year!