Wikipedian_of_the_Year

Wikimedian of the Year
Wikimedian of the Year
	2023 recipient Taufik Rosman
Awarded for	Major achievements within the Wikimedia movement
Location	Traditionally presented at Wikimania
Presented by	Jimmy Wales
Formerly called	Wikipedian of the Year
First awarded	August 2011; 12 years ago

Wikimedian of the Year

Annual award established by Jimmy Wales

The Wikimedian of the Year is an annual award that honors Wikipedia editors and other contributors to Wikimedia projects to highlight major achievements within the Wikimedia movement, established in August 2011 by Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales. Wales selects the recipients and honors them at Wikimania, an annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation—except in 2020, 2021, and 2022 when the recipients were announced at online meetings as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.^[1] From 2011 to 2016, the award was named Wikipedian of the Year.^[2]

Quick Facts Awarded for, Location ...

In 2011, the first title was given to Rauan Kenzhekhanuly for his work on the Kazakh Wikipedia. The following year, it was awarded to an editor identified as "Demmy" for creating a bot to translate 15,000 short English articles into Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria. In 2013, Rémi Mathis of Wikimédia France and the French Wikipedia was named for his role in an article controversy. In 2014, the award was given posthumously to Ukrainian journalist Ihor Kostenko, who actively promoted the Ukrainian Wikipedia on social networking sites and was killed during a protest. Wales named an undisclosed recipient in 2015, and hopes someday to tell their story. In 2016, the first joint award was presented to Emily Temple-Wood and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight for their efforts to combat harassment on Wikipedia and increase its coverage of women. Other recipients include Felix Nartey in 2017, Farhad Fatkullin in 2018, and Emna Mizouni in 2019.

In addition to the main award, Susanna Mkrtchyan and Satdeep Gill were the first to receive honorable mentions in 2015. Since then, other honorable mentions have been conferred. The award was expanded in 2021 with additional categories including Media Contributor of the Year, Newcomer of the Year, Tech Contributor of the Year, and Wikimedia Laureate.

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Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref.
2011		Rauan Kenzhekhanuly	Kazakh Wikipedia	Kenzhekhanuly recruited a stable community to improve the Kazakh Wikipedia, which in a year increased from 4 to over 200 active editors, and 7,000 to 130,000 articles. Wales was criticized by fellow Wikipedians because of Kenzhekhanuly's ties to the government of Kazakhstan. Wales stated on Reddit in 2015 that he'd been unaware of Kenzhekhanuly's prior positions in the Kazakh government and said that if he had known Kenzhekhanuly was going to go on to become deputy governor of a Kazakh region, he would have "refused to give that award".^[3]	^[2] ^[4]
2012	—	"Demmy"	Yoruba Wikipedia	"Demmy" created a bot to translate 15,000 short English articles into Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria.	^[2]
2013		Rémi Mathis	French Wikipedia	Mathis, a chairman of Wikimédia France and a French Wikipedia administrator, who received the honor for his role in the controversy surrounding the French article "Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station".	^[5] ^[6]
2014		Ihor Kostenko	Ukrainian Wikipedia	Kostenko, a Euromaidan activist, was an editor on the Ukrainian Wikipedia and actively promoted it on social networking sites. He was killed during a protest on February 20, 2014, and received the award posthumously.	^[7] ^[8]
2015	—	undisclosed	Wikimedia Commons	Wales named an anonymous Venezuelan editor in pectore, and hopes someday to tell the reasons why without endangering the recipient.	^[9]
2016		Emily Temple-Wood	English Wikipedia	The first joint recipients for their efforts to combat harassment on Wikipedia and increase its coverage of women. Temple-Wood had created nearly 400 articles and improved hundreds more, many of which are about women scientists and women's health. Stephenson-Goodknight had improved more than 3,000 articles, co-created a space to welcome new contributors to the site, and co-founded women's outreach projects, including the "WikiWomen's User Group", "WikiProject Women", and the "Women in Red" campaign.	^[10] ^[11] ^[12] ^[13]
2016		Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight	English Wikipedia		^[10] ^[11] ^[12] ^[13]
2017		Felix Nartey	English Wikipedia	Nartey received the award for his addition of content about his home country, Ghana, and leading several initiatives to promote the importance of editing Wikipedia. In his dedication, Wales mentioned that Nartey played a leading role in the organization of the 2nd Wiki Indaba conference 2017 in Accra, and has been critical in building up the local communities in Africa.	^[14]
2018		Farhad Fatkullin	Tatar Wikipedia	Fatkullin joined the Wikimedia movement in 2009. He describes himself as being "in love with Tatar Wikipedia". From 2015, Fatkullin has been contributing to Wikipedia on languages of Russia, including Tatar.	^[15]
2019		Emna Mizouni	Arabic Wikipedia	In 2013, Mizouni with other people founded Carthagina. She began contributing to Wikimedia projects in 2013 with that year's Wiki Loves Monuments. She has helped to organize several major Wikimedia conferences, including the inaugural WikiArabia conference, and co-chaired Wikimania 2018's program committee. In 2016, she joined the Affiliations Committee and in 2018, she became vice-chairperson of it.	^[16]
2020		Sandister Tei	English Wikipedia	Tei contributed actively to Wikipedia articles about the COVID-19 pandemic's impact in Ghana.	^[1]
2021		Alaa Najjar	Arabic Wikipedia	Najjar was honored at the Wikimania 2021 conference, which was held virtually, for his work on Arabic Wikipedia and on medical projects, especially the COVID-19 project.	^[17]
2022		Olga Paredes	Spanish Wikipedia	Paredes was honored at the virtual Wikimania 2022 conference for her leadership in communities including Wikimujeres and Wikimedistas de Bolivia, and for encouraging others, especially women, to grow the Wikimedia movement.	^[18]
2023		Taufik Rosman	Wikidata, Malay Wiktionary	Taufik was honored at the 2023 Wikimania conference in Singapore for his massive contributions to the Malay Wiktionary and for the help given in fostering a positive community of Malaysian Wikimedia editors.	^[19]

Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref.
2015		Susanna Mkrtchyan	Armenian Wikipedia	Mkrtchyan is a member of the board of directors from Wikimedia Armenia. She was awarded for her off-wiki activities including "One Armenian – One Article", an editing campaign and youth camp project to aid new editors of Armenia.	^[20]
2015		Satdeep Gill	Punjabi Wikipedia (Eastern)	Gill is an Indian contributor on the Punjabi Wikipedia. He was awarded for encouraging people at his university to edit the Punjabi Wikipedia, making it the fastest-growing Indic-language Wikipedia that year.	^[9]
2016		Mardetanha	Persian Wikipedia	Mardetanha created the Persian-language version of the "Wikipedia Library", which helps editors to find sources for articles. Three publishers have donated the research access to their works to editors.	^[21]
2016		Vassia Atanassova	Bulgarian Wikipedia	Atanassova established the "#100wikidays" contest, which challenges editors to create one Wikipedia article per day for one hundred days. Over 120 contributors joined the contest and third of the editors have completed it.	^[21]
2017	—	Diego Gómez	—	Colombian student who was prosecuted for copyright violation after having shared an academic paper online. He was later acquitted.	^[22] ^[23]
2018		Nahid Sultan	Bangla Wikipedia	Sultan is an active member of Wikimedia Bangladesh.	^[24] ^[25]
2018		Jess Wade	English Wikipedia	Wade is a physicist who began a year-long effort to create Wikipedia articles about scientists and engineers which "better represent women and people of colour". As of February 2020, she had written over 900 new articles.	^[26] ^[27] ^[28]
2021		Netha Hussain	English Wikipedia and Malayalam Wikipedia	Hussain is a medical practitioner originally from India. She has provided invaluable contributions to medical content on Wikimedia projects, focusing much of her effort during 2020–21 on the coverage of COVID-19. She also started the Vaccine Safety Project to address misinformation surrounding COVID-19 vaccines.	^[29]
2021		Carmen Alcázar	Spanish Wikipedia	Alcázar was recognized for her work to reduce the gender gap on Spanish Wikipedia.	^[30]^[31]
2022		Anna Torres	Spanish Wikipedia	Torres is the Executive Director of Wikimedia Argentina, but her recognition in the Honorable Mentions category is for her efforts to create an international support network to grow and build capacity for communities across Latin America, as well as her contributions to movement processes, such as the 2030 Wikimedia Movement Strategy.	^[18]
2023		Anton Protsiuk	Ukrainian Wikipedia	Protsiuk is the Programmes Coordinator at Wikimedia Ukraine.	^[19]

Year	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref.
2021	Carma Citrawati	WikiPustaka	First starting to edit the Balinese version of Wikipedia in 2019, Citrawati was instrumental in the development of a Balinese version of WikiSource called WikiPustaka through her valiant efforts to lead a team responsible for digitizing and translating ancient Balinese writings which were originally written on palm leaves.	^[32]
2022	Nkem Osuigwe		With an account that started in 2019, Dr. Nkem Osuigwe helped to start a partnership with the African Library and Information Associations & Institutions in 2020, working with an existing professional network to generate over 27,000 edits and counting.	^[18]
2023	Eugene Ormandy	Japanese Wikipedia	Ormandy created two Wikimedia user groups: Student Wikipedian Community in Waseda University Tokyo and the Toumon Wikipedian Club Japan. He is the first award recipient from Japan.	^[19]

Year	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref.
2021	Lodewijk Gelauff	Wiki Loves Monuments	Gelauff is a prolific contributor, a mentor to many Wikimedians, and a volunteer for many community groups and efforts. He is one of the initiators of Wiki Loves Monuments, the annual Wikipedia photo contest around cultural heritage, and has led this project for a decade.^[34]	^[35]
2022	Andrew Lih		Lih is an internationally-renowned Wikipedia expert, author, professor, GLAMs activist, and long-time Wikimedia contributor. His work has inspired individuals and groups in the Wikimedia movement, especially in North America and the ESEAP region.	^[18]
2022	Deror Lin	Hebrew Wikipedia, Wikimania	Lin was a prolific contributor going back to the founding of Wikipedia. He wrote over 2 percent of the entire Hebrew Wikipedia. He participated in many 100wikidays challenges, particularly for Hebrew Wikipedia, and contributed thousands of images. He was also a key organizer of multiple Wikimanias.	^[18]
2023	Siobhan Leachman	WikiProject New Zealand		^[19]

Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref.
2021		Jay Prakash	IT and software development and support		^[36]
2022	—	Taavi Väänänen		Väänänen has been a critical volunteer contributor to Wikimedia Cloud Services, including Toolforge and Cloud VPS, key pieces of infrastructure that let community members host their Wikimedia-related bots, tools, and other software projects. He also helps maintain the CentralAuth MediaWiki extension, which allows users to use a single user account on all public Wikimedia sites.	^[18]
2023	—	Zabe		Zabe is recognized for "helping with deployments, bug fixes, and incidents in general, and, in particular, ... for maintaining Checkuser and CentralAuth codes, for supporting the comment database refactor migration revision, and for the technical work behind creating new wikis".	^[19]

Wikipedian_of_the_Year

Wikimedian of the Year

List of recipients

Honorable mentions

Newcomer of the Year

Wikimedia Laureate (formerly 20th Year Honouree)

Tech Contributor of the Year (formerly Tech Innovator)

Media Contributor of the Year (formerly Rich Media)

Wikimedia Affiliate Spotlight

See also

References

External links

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Year	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref.
2021	Ananya Mondal	Wikimedia Commons		^[36]^[37]
2022	Annie Rauwerda	Depths of Wikipedia	Rauwerda uses creative means on social media to spread the word about Wikimedia projects and communities that power them. She started the Depths of Wikipedia account that has now more than 1.5 million followers across Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.	^[18]
2023	Pax Ahimsa Gethen		Gethen uploads photographs to Wikimedia Commons, focused on LGBT culture, and is an active participant at English Wikipedia's WikiProject LGBT studies.^[38]	^[19]