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. The award was established in August 2011 by Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales, who selects the recipients and honors them at Wikimania, an annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation. From 2011 to 2017 the award was named Wikipedian of the Year. The award includes prize money, which as of 2020 is $5,000.
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". 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. 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.
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, 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. Since 2015, seven honorable mentions have been conferred.

List of recipients

YearImageRecipientPrincipal projectRationale
2011Rauan KenzhekhanulyKazakh WikipediaKenzhekhanuly 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.
2012
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"Demmy"Yoruba WikipediaDemmy created a bot to translate 15,000 short English articles into Yoruba, a language spoken in Nigeria.
2013Rémi MathisFrench WikipediaMathis, 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".
2014Ihor KostenkoUkrainian WikipediaKostenko, 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
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undisclosedWales named an anonymous editor in pectore, and hopes someday to tell the reasons why without endangering the recipient.
2016Emily Temple-WoodEnglish WikipediaThe 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.
2016Rosie Stephenson-GoodknightEnglish WikipediaThe 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.
2017Felix NarteyEnglish WikipediaNartey 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.
2018Farhad FatkullinTatar WikipediaIn 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.
2019Emna MizouniArabic WikipediaIn 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.

Honorable mentions

YearImageRecipientPrincipal projectRationale
2015Susanna MkrtchyanArmenian WikipediaMkrtchyan, 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.
2015Satdeep GillPunjabi WikipediaGill, 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.
2016MardetanhaPersian WikipediaMardetanha 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.
2016Vassia AtanassovaBulgarian WikipediaAtanassova 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
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Diego Gómez
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Colombian student who was prosecuted for copyright violation after having shared an academic paper online. He was later acquitted.
2018Nahid SultanBangla WikipediaSultan is an administrator in Wikimedia Bangladesh.
2018Jess WadeEnglish WikipediaWade 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.