Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/WikiCelebrate/Celebrating
Meet all the Celebrated Wikimedians
editRead about our amazing celebrated Wikimedians and get inspired by their work. And if you want, you can check their individual pages and congratulate them and share some wikilove!
Finding joy in what she contributes to Wikimedia and how she accomplishes that is fundamental for Penny Richards (userpage). Penny loves that she can make connections with folks around the world and join efforts with a large global project like Wikipedia all the while from home and in her pajamas.
It’s a chance to use my research and writing skills every day. I don’t have an academic job and I don’t have space in my life for a big independent research project right now, but a daily biography is manageable and satisfying. [...] My usual project on Wikipedia is WikiProject Women in Red; that’s where I put most of my energy and find most of my community.
March 2023
Meenakshi first noticed Malayalam Wikipedia when she and her daughter were browsing the internet to learn about medicinal plants. Malayalam is spoken by 34 million people in India and millions more in diaspora. Meenakshi found that Malayalam Wikipedia had a wealth of information as well as knowledge gaps. This prompted her to start editing.
Her first edit was on 4th November 2017 and she eventually became a dedicated admin and contributor. Meenakshi is proud to have written 8,796 articles in Malayalam and 25 in English, and has some edits on Wikisource and Wikidata. The first article she worked on, Paramaribo (in original Malayalam), became featured on Malayalam Wikipedia. She read more, edited more, and participated in different contests, like the Wikipedia Asian Month and took on multiple 100 wikidays challenges. Feeling lonely at home, Meenakshi would sometimes be on Wikipedia from morning to evening, at one point writing 25 articles in a day. Two other of her most favourite featured articles on Malayalam Wikipedia are the oscar fish (original Malayalam) and the Arunachalesvara Temple (original Malyalam).
April 2023
Sara Horvat might be a newcomer, but this student is already proving the importance of education work in Wikimedia. She is a Wikimedian from the CEE Community, editing Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, with the main focus on education projects. This month we celebrate her work and her dedication to education projects in our movement.
The idea of knowledge equity is important to Sara: Wikimedia projects unite people and can erase all class divisions between them. Once only the aristocracy could get high-quality education. Now, it is more and more available to everybody. I want to help make authentic knowledge as accessible as possible to every single person. This important mission keeps her motivated and present. Asked about the advice she would give to every Wikipedian, she says: Be persistent and patient. Remind yourself why you started in the first place. Remember that it’s about something way bigger than yourself alone.
June 2023
Wikipedia is truly inseparable from Johnny Au’s life. This English Wikipedia editor has been editing each day since November 11, 2007, which makes him the Wikimedian with the longest editing streak. This month we celebrate his amazing work and his longtime and continuous dedication to free knowledge.
Johnny Au started contributing to Wikipedia in 2006, and at some point editing became a part of his everyday life. I have a habit of editing every day. I edit when I wake up and I edit before heading to bed to ensure that I maintain my editing streak, he says.
Each day Johnny checks his extensive watchlist, which includes articles related to his beloved hometown Toronto. From local sports teams and art galleries, to Toronto transit system - Johnny is passionate about all things Toronto-related, and carefully watches over Wikipedia articles about it. Including his favorite one: the article about Toronto subway public art (because he really enjoys looking at the subway system’s artworks).
July 2023
This is probably a situation familiar to many of us: while reading Wikipedia, we stumble upon an unexpected red link, indicating that there is an article missing. The majority of us just keep reading on, but some just can’t resist filling that knowledge gap. This is how the Wikipedia adventure started for Vera, also known as Pinky sl, a Slovenian Wikipedia editor, tech contributor, administrator and our Celebrated Wikimedian for September. She was reading Slovenian Wikipedia and noticed a red link, where a link for an article about a Hygrometer. So she decided to write that missing Wikipedia entry. And that decision made her a Wikimedian. 17 years later she is a dedicated contributor with more than 100 000 edits, a template and module creator, and an active community member for the Central and Eastern European region.
September 2023
Together with the organizers of the Wiki Women Camp 2023 we Wiki Celebrate a multi talented editor from the Bengali Wikipedia. Dolon Prova has been contributing to Wikimedia projects since 2016 and throughout that time, she has engaged in many on- and offwiki activities. She is a versatile Wikipedia contributor, passionate organizer and engaged community builder.
October 2023
Alice, a librarian in Goethe-Zentrum Kampala, began her Wikimedia journey in 2017. She claims to still be learning something new everyday and she knows for certain that she would not get tired of it. Contributing to Wikimedia has changed how she sees the world and exchanges with others. Alice shared that "This may sound selfish, but I initially got on this platform to contribute to topics that were undocumented but of interest to me – this has not changed".
November 2023
Readers around the world are familiar with the mainspace side of Wikimedia projects: the verified article pages, the proofread books, the treasure trove of open source media, and countless dictionary definitions, to name a few. There is also a lot happening in the background. Without the work of people resolving conflicts in talk pages, creating bots and giving creative solutions to conflicts the work around content would be much more difficult. Today we are celebrating usuário:Albertoleoncio, a Wikimedian who likes to work on the backstage of the Portuguese Wikimedia projects: watching and performing oversight content, working as an interface administrator and being a volunteer for VRT.
December 2023
Donatien is an experienced Wikipedia trainer, and a member of Wikifranca micro grant committee. He supported Wikimania through his activity in the scholarship committee, worked in the capacity building group for Movement Strategy and collaborated with communities from Senegal, Togo, Chad and Guinea. Most of his engagement is connected to the Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire, which he co-founded and which he now leads.
For Donatien the value of editing lies in learning through sharing. “Each act of sharing knowledge in Wikipedia is about checking sources, discovering new facts. Even if I already know a lot about the topic, I discover new facts in sources. It is like swimming in information. Sharing knowledge is not a passive process, it is a constant discovery. Through contributing I have learned a lot about my country, Africa and the world. Editing allows you to grow through giving”, says Donatien.
February 2024
Salicyna knows the struggle of lacking access to knowledge all too well. Growing up in rural Poland, she was a passionate reader with no access to well-stocked libraries and cultural institutions. This was still in the pre-Internet times, and her family, struggling financially, couldn't provide the resources she yearned for. "I remember this unsatisfied hunger for knowledge as stronger and more severe than the physical hunger," she reflects. “Sadly”, she says “millions still face this very knowledge hunger today, restricted by geographical location, poverty, disabilities, or illness”. Salicyna sees Wikimedia projects, with their free access to knowledge and culture, as a powerful tool to help alleviate this yearning, at least partially.
February 2024
In 2016, Brahim Faraji‘s search for a way to make a positive impact led him to the Wikimedia Movement. Browsing the internet, Wikipedia caught his eye. He soon realized it was more than just an encyclopedia: “I looked to know more about Wikipedia, how it works and its background, then I found the Wikimedia movement with its values which motivated me to work harder and with passion”, he says.
His entry point was Wiki Loves Monuments, a global photo competition that encourages participants to capture images of cultural heritage sites around the world. The idea of preserving history through images resonated deeply with Brahim. In 2016, he uploaded photos to the contest for the first time, with four making it to Morocco’s Wiki Loves Monuments top ten! Since then, he has become a dedicated Wikimedia photographer, contributing pictures on diverse topics: from TBOURIDA Festival (henna on a Moroccan wedding), to rebab instrument, from dramatic stormy sky to Morocco’s cultural heritage sites. His work has been part of popular Wikimedia photo campaigns like Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Folklore and especially Wiki Loves Monuments, where Brahim impressively achieved finalist status for four years in a row.
April 2024
B20180 is most active on Thai Wikipedia. This project, started in 2003 with an article containing just one word ("ดาราศาสตร์" - astronomy), has grown to 164,621 articles, and 53,995,663 monthly pageviews. Since he joined, almost 15 years ago, B20180 contributed to the growth of this project, by adding 2,905 articles. He writes about many different topics. You can stumble upon his articles, when trying to learn more about Swedish cuisine, shopping, a fighting video game from 1998, female Estonian chess player, tourism in Uruguay or the situation of women in Ukraine. B20180’s contributions bring together both sides of a neverending dispute between cat people and dog people - he did write both about kittens and dogs.
But for B20180 the Wikiworld doesn’t limit to Wikipedia:
"While Wikipedia is the most recognized, Wikimedia hosts various unique projects. As the sole administrator for all Thai siblings projects for over a decade, I wish more people appreciated the diversity and richness of these initiatives".
Among his many edits in siblings projects you can find B20180 adding Japanese and Ukrainian words to Thai Wiktionary, editing templates and pages in Thai Wikisource, adding quotes from sportspeople to Thai Wikiquote and working on Thai Wikibooks. He is also a contributor to Wikimedia Commons, adding photos about sport, monuments of the world, and community events. And if that wasn’t already impressive, there is also a large number of edits in Wikidata!
May 2024
Like many now-contributors, Ellie discovered the Wikimedia movement through participating in an outreach activity. It was 2019 and Ellie took part in an Art and Feminism workshop held in the Centro Cultural de España en El Salvador. This event, dedicated to enriching Spanish Language Wikipedia content related to notable women from El Salvador, taught Ellie how to make first steps in the Wikimedia world, create her own user page, look for sources, discuss with other editors, and (most importantly) add content to Wikipedia. For her, a professional journalist and communicator, this newly discovered wikiworld, focused on sharing information and storytelling, was fascinating from the very first moment.
July 2024
Mārtiņš Bruņenieks (user:Papuass) made his first contribution in 2005, just two years after his home project, Latvian Wikipedia was created. It was a simple maintenance edit - adding a missing closing tag in an image gallery. But the satisfaction of successfully fixing something in an online encyclopedia sparked his desire to edit more. A couple of months later, his first articles were created, primarily focused on student organizations and a popular sport in Latvia—ice hockey. Over the years, the number and thematic scope of his articles grew: he is now the author of more than 3,000 articles in Latvian Wikipedia across various topics. Readers can learn from him about a Croatian folk dance, a lake in Azerbaijani, a British throne succession, or Latvian female BMX racer, and many, many other topics.
From a single contribution made nearly 20 years ago to becoming one of the most respected Wikimedians in the CEE region, Mārtiņš has taken on many roles: administrator, article author, regional connector, campaign organizer, and translator. During this CEE Meeting, the regional community honored his contributions to the Wikimedia Movement through WikiCelebrate.
October 2024
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Next celebrated Wikimedian | This place waits for another Wikimedian of exceptional contribution! | 
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