Wikimedian Of The Year

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

Wales selects the recipients and honors them at Wikimania, an annual conference of the Wiki Foundation—except in 2020, 2021, and 2022 when the recipients were announced at online meetings as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2011 to 2016, the award was named Wikin of the Year.

In 2011, the first title was given to Rauan Kenzhekhanuly for his work on the Kazakh Wiki English. 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 Wiki Laureate.

List of recipients

List of Wikimedian of the Year winners
Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale
2011		Rauan Kenzhekhanuly	Kazakh Wiki	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".
2012	—	"Demmy"	Yoruba Wiki	"Demmy" created a bot to translate 15,000 short English articles into Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria.
2013		Rémi Mathis	French Wiki	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".
2014		Ihor Kostenko	Ukrainian Wiki	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.
2015	—	undisclosed	Wiki Commons	Wales named an anonymous Venezuelan editor in pectore, and hopes someday to tell the reasons why without endangering the recipient.
2016		Emily Temple-Wood	English Wiki	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.
2016		Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight	English Wiki
2017		Felix Nartey	English Wiki	Nartey received the award for his addition of content about his home country, Ghana, and leading several initiatives to promote the importance of editing Wiki English. 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.
2018		Farhad Fatkullin	Tatar Wiki	Fatkullin joined the Wiki movement in 2009. He describes himself as being "in love with Tatar Wiki Wikimedian Of The Year". From 2015, Fatkullin has been contributing to Wikipedia on languages of Russia, including Tatar.
2019		Emna Mizouni	Arabic Wiki	In 2013, Mizouni with other people founded Carthagina. She began contributing to Wiki projects in 2013 with that year's Wiki Loves Monuments. She has helped to organize several major Wiki 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.
2020		Sandister Tei	English Wiki	Tei contributed actively to Wikipedia articles about the COVID-19 pandemic's impact in Ghana.
2021		Alaa Najjar	Arabic Wiki	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.
2022		Olga Paredes	Spanish Wiki	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 Wiki movement.
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 Wiki editors.

Honorable mentions

List of Wikimedian of the Year honorable mentions
Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale
2015		Susanna Mkrtchyan	Armenian Wiki	Mkrtchyan is a member of the board of directors from Wiki 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.
2015		Satdeep Gill	Punjabi Wikipedia (Eastern)	Gill is an Indian contributor on the Punjabi Wiki English. He was awarded for encouraging people at his university to edit the Punjabi Wikipedia, making it the fastest-growing Indic-language Wikipedia that year.
2016		Mardetanha	Persian Wiki	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.
2016		Vassia Atanassova	Bulgarian Wiki	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.
2017	—	Diego Gómez	—	Colombian student who was prosecuted for copyright violation after having shared an academic paper online. He was later acquitted.
2018		Nahid Sultan	Bangla Wiki	Sultan is an active member of Wiki Bangladesh.
2018		Jess Wade	English Wiki	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.
2021		Netha Hussain	English Wikipedia and Malayalam Wiki	Hussain is a medical practitioner originally from India. She has provided invaluable contributions to medical content on Wiki 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.
2021		Carmen Alcázar	Spanish Wiki	Alcázar was recognized for her work to reduce the gender gap on Spanish Wiki English.
2022		Anna Torres	Spanish Wiki	Torres is the Executive Director of Wiki 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 Wiki Movement Strategy.
2023		Anton Protsiuk	Ukrainian Wiki	Protsiuk is the Programmes Coordinator at Wiki Ukraine.

Newcomer of the Year

The Newcomer of the Year award was first presented in 2021.

List of Newcomer of the Year award recipients
Year	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale
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.
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.
2023	Eugene Ormandy	Japanese Wiki	Ormandy created two Wiki user groups: Student Wikipedian Community in Waseda University Tokyo and the Toumon Wikipedian Club Japan. He is the first award recipient from Japan.

Wiki Laureate (formerly 20th Year Honouree)

The 20th Year Honouree award was first presented in 2021. In 2022, the award was renamed Wiki Laureate.

List of award recipients
Year	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale
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.
2022	Andrew Lih		Lih is an internationally-renowned Wikipedia expert, author, professor, GLAMs activist, and long-time Wiki contributor. His work has inspired individuals and groups in the Wiki movement, especially in North America and the ESEAP region.
2022	Deror Lin	Hebrew Wiki, Wikimania	Lin was a prolific contributor going back to the founding of Wiki English. He wrote over 2 percent of the entire Hebrew Wiki English. He participated in many 100wikidays challenges, particularly for Hebrew Wikipedia, and contributed thousands of images. He was also a key organizer of multiple Wikimanias.
2023	Siobhan Leachman	WikiProject New Zealand

Tech Contributor of the Year (formerly Tech Innovator)

The Tech Innovator award was first presented in 2021. The honor was renamed Tech Contributor of the Year in 2022.

List of Tech Innovator award recipients
Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale
2021		Jay Prakash	IT and software development and support
2022	—	Taavi Väänänen		Väänänen has been a critical volunteer contributor to Wiki 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 Wiki sites.
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".

Media Contributor of the Year (formerly Rich Media)

The Rich Media award was first presented in 2021. The honor was renamed Media Contributor of the Year in 2022.

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

Wiki Affiliate Spotlight

The Wiki Affiliate Spotlight was first presented in 2022. Art+Feminism and Wiki UK were recognized by the Wiki Affiliation Committee (AffCom) in the Partnerships and Governance categories, respectively.

References

External links

Media related to Wikimedian of the Year at Wiki Commons

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