Wikimedian of the Year

The Wikimedian of the Year is an annual award that honors Wikipedia editors to highlight major achievements within the Wikimedia movement.[1] The award was established in August 2011 by Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales,[1] who selects the recipients and honors them at Wikimania, an annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation.[1] From 2011 to 2017 the award was named Wikipedian of the Year.[1] The award includes prize money, which as of 2020 is $5,000.[1]

Wikimedian of the Year
The 2019 recipient: Emna Mizouni
Awarded for	Major achievements within the Wikimedia movement
Location	Traditionally presented at Wikimania
Presented by	Jimmy Wales
Formerly called	Wikipedian of the Year
Reward(s)	10
First awarded	August 2011 (2011-08)

In 2011, the first Wikimedian of the Year title was given to Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, a Kazakh entrepreneur, for "his work building a robust Kazakh language Wikipedia".[1] The next year, it was awarded to a Wikipedia editor identified as "Demmy" for creating a bot to translate 15,000 short English articles into Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria.[1] In 2013 Rémi Mathis of Wikimédia France and French Wikipedia was named for his role in an article controversy, and 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.[2][3]

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.[4][5] Other recipients include Felix Nartey, Farhad Fatkullin, and Emna Mizouni.

In addition to the main award, Susanna Mkrtchyan and Satdeep Gill were the first to receive honorable mentions in 2015.[6][7] Since 2015, seven honorable mentions have been conferred.

List of recipients

List of Wikimedian of the Year winners

Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref(s)
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.	[1] [8]
2012	—	"Demmy"	Yoruba Wikipedia	Demmy created a bot to translate 15,000 short English articles into Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria.	[1]
2013		Rémi Mathis	French Wikipedia	Mathis, a chairman of Wikimédia France and the French Wikipedia administrator, who received the honor for his role in the controversy surrounding the French article "Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station".	[9] [10]
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.	[2] [11]
2015	—	undisclosed		Wales named an anonymous editor in pectore, and hopes someday to tell the reasons why without endangering the recipient.	[7]
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 LGBT 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.	[4] [12] [13] [5]
		Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight	English Wikipedia
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, Ghana, and has been critical in building up the local communities in Africa.	[14]
2018		Farhad Fatkullin	Tatar Wikipedia	In 2009, Fatkullin joined the Wikimedia movement. He describes himself as being "in love with Tatar Wikipedia". From 2015, Fatkullin has been contributing to Wikipedia on dialects of Russia, including the Tatar language.	[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]

Honorable mentions

List of Wikimedian of the Year honorable mentions

Year	Image	Recipient	Principal project	Rationale	Ref(s)
2015		Susanna Mkrtchyan	Armenian Wikipedia	Mkrtchyan, 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.	[6]
		Satdeep Gill	Punjabi Wikipedia	Gill, 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.	[7]
2016		Mardetanha	Persian Wikipedia	Mardetanha created the Persian-language of the "Wikipedia Library", which helps editors to find sources for articles. Three publishers have donated the research access to their works to editors.	[17]
		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.
2017	—	Diego Gómez	—	Colombian student who was prosecuted for copyright violation after having shared an academic paper online. He was later acquitted.	[18] [19]
2018		Nahid Sultan	Bangla Wikipedia	Sultan is an administrator in Wikimedia Bangladesh.	[20] [21]
		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 titles.	[22] [23] [24]

See also

• List of volunteer awards

References

1. Morris, Kevin (April 26, 2013). "Winners of Wikipedia's biggest award still haven't received prize money". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved June 24, 2016.
2. "Ukraine Today: Ihor Kostenko given posthumous annual award (VIDEO)". Kyiv Post. September 14, 2014. Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved June 24, 2016.
3. Stulen, Catherine (February 21, 2014). "Если что-то случится, скажи, что я ее люблю". ВЕСТИ (in Russian). Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
4. "Emily Temple-Wood macht Wikipedia weiblicher". Geo (in German). Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
5. Zahneis, Megan (July 19, 2018). "Some Colleges Cautiously Embrace Wikipedia". Chronicle. Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
6. "Վիքիպեդիայի հիմնադրի անակնկալը Սուսաննա Մկրտչյանին". MediaMax (in Armenian). July 29, 2015. Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
7. Sutherland, Joe (July 31, 2015). "2015 Wikipedians of the Year unveiled in Mexico". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on June 23, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2016.
8. Orlowski, Andrew (December 22, 2014). "What's Jimmy Wales going to do with $500k from the UAE?". The Register. Archived from the original on June 3, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2016.
9. "Rémi Mathis". École nationale des chartes (in French). December 19, 2016. Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 29, 2020.
10. Geuss, Megan (April 6, 2013). "Wikipedia editor allegedly forced by French intelligence to delete "classified" entry". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on April 8, 2013. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
11. Savchuk, Iryna (August 15, 2014). "Ukrainian from the Heavenly Hundred becomes Wikipedian of the Year". Kyiv Post. Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Retrieved May 20, 2017.
12. Gordon, Maggie (November 9, 2017). "Wikipedia editing marathons add women's voices to online resource". Houston Chronicle. Archived from the original on August 16, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
13. D’Alterio, Emily (March 12, 2019). "Women in culture and tech: Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, academic, Wikipedian and champion of 'impractical' girls". Europeana Pro. Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
14. Ofori-Boateng, Pamela (August 29, 2017). "Felix Nartey named Wikimedian of the Year 2017!". Classic Ghana. Archived from the original on December 20, 2017. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
15. "Татарстанец Фархад Фаткуллин стал". Tatar-inform (in Russian). Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
16. Nadiya, Jennene (October 17, 2019). "Emna Mizouni, première femme arabe à obtenir le prix "Wikimédienne de l'année"". Tunisie Haut Debit (in French). Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
17. Erhart, Ed (June 24, 2016). "Jimmy Wales names Emily Temple-Wood and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight as Wikipedians of the Year". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on July 3, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2016.
18. Harmon, Elliot (December 21, 2017). "Diego Gómez Is Safe, but Threats to Curiosity Still Abound". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
19. Wikimania 2017 Closing Ceremony. Wikimedia Foundation. Event occurs at 17:30. Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 7, 2020 – via YouTube.
20. Koebler, Jason (April 27, 2016). "Wikipedia's Piracy Police Are Ruining the Developing World's Internet Experience". Vice. Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
21. Elsharbaty, Samir (July 26, 2018). "Farhad Fatkullin named Wikimedian of the Year for 2018". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
22. "Una scienziata al giorno". PressReader. August 12, 2018. Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 29, 2020.
23. Evans, Jocelyn (February 11, 2020). "Physicist writes 900 Wikipedia entries to boost diversity in science". ITV News. Archived from the original on May 27, 2020. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
24. Devlin, Hannah (July 24, 2018). "Academic writes 270 Wikipedia pages in a year to get female scientists noticed". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 7, 2020.