diff --git a/doc/devel/release_guide.rst b/doc/devel/release_guide.rst
index 48350c79d02b..83990e4c7a19 100644
--- a/doc/devel/release_guide.rst
+++ b/doc/devel/release_guide.rst
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ GitHub Stats
 
 We automatically extract GitHub issue, PRs, and authors from GitHub via the API::
 
-  python tools/github_stats.py --since-tag $TAG --project 'matplotlib/matplotlib' --links > doc/users/github_stats.rst
+  python tools/github_stats.py --since-tag v2.2.0 --milestone=v3.0 --project 'matplotlib/matplotlib' --links > doc/users/github_stats.rst
 
 Review and commit changes.  Some issue/PR titles may not be valid rst (the most common issue is
 ``*`` which is interpreted as unclosed markup).
diff --git a/tools/github_stats.py b/tools/github_stats.py
index 6e3525787252..56debbc34e8e 100755
--- a/tools/github_stats.py
+++ b/tools/github_stats.py
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ def issues2dict(issues):
         idict[i['number']] = i
     return idict
 
-def split_pulls(all_issues, project="ipython/ipython"):
+def split_pulls(all_issues, project="matplotlib/matplotlib"):
     """split a list of closed issues into non-PR Issues and Pull Requests"""
     pulls = []
     issues = []
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ def split_pulls(all_issues, project="ipython/ipython"):
     return issues, pulls
 
 
-def issues_closed_since(period=timedelta(days=365), project="ipython/ipython", pulls=False):
+def issues_closed_since(period=timedelta(days=365), project="matplotlib/matplotlib", pulls=False):
     """Get all issues closed since a particular point in time. period
     can either be a datetime object, or a timedelta object. In the
     latter case, it is used as a time before the present.
@@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ def report(issues, show_urls=False):
     parser.add_argument('--days', type=int,
         help="The number of days of data to summarize (use this or --since-tag)."
     )
-    parser.add_argument('--project', type=str, default="ipython/ipython",
+    parser.add_argument('--project', type=str, default="matplotlib/matplotlib",
         help="The project to summarize."
     )
     parser.add_argument('--links', action='store_true', default=False,
@@ -161,7 +161,7 @@ def report(issues, show_urls=False):
                 state='closed',
                 auth=True,
         )
-        issues, pulls = split_pulls(issues_and_pulls)
+        issues, pulls = split_pulls(issues_and_pulls, project=project)
     else:
         issues = issues_closed_since(since, project=project, pulls=False)
         pulls = issues_closed_since(since, project=project, pulls=True)