Round imbalance

The Problem

There is currently an unequal amount of work to do between the various rounds on the site and the gap is getting wider. As of this writing there is much more work to do in the P2, P3, and PP rounds than in rounds such as P1. Many folks working in P1 aren't aware of the discrepancy (possibly because they're not active in the forums outside of the project threads).

The Workaround

In an attempt to educate people about this problem, two graphs (round_backlog and round_backlog_days) have been created to try and convey the information. As of this writing these are posted as news items on the P1 and Activity Hub pages. The goal is to encourage people currently working in P1 to move up to P2 or P3, people in P2 to move up to P3, and for everyone to become aware that PP needs people too. See Round backlog graphs for more information on them.

The Solution

There are many thoughts as to an actual solution to this problem. One approach is to restructure how pages flow through the rounds (see Round-balancing proposals, Round reform, and Roundless System). To that end a group of people are working on an algorithm to detect when a page is "finished" to remove redundant proofing of a page. See Confidence in Page analysis for the results of this working group.