Wikimedian of the Year is an annual award established in 2011 by Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales,[1] traditionally presented at Wikimania to highlight major achievements within the Wikimedia movement. Before 2017 the award was named Wikipedian of the Year.
Kenzhekhanuly was honored for recruiting 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.[2][1] Wales was criticized by fellow Wikipedians because of Kenzhekhanuly's ties to the government of Kazakhstan.[1][3]
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 20 February 2014 and received the award posthumously.[4][5][6][7]
The first joint recipients for their efforts to combat harassment on Wikipedia and increase its coverage of notable 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]
Nartey adds content about his home country, Ghana, and leads several initiatives to promote the importance of editing Wikipedia.[9][10] In his dedication, Wales mentioned that Nartey played a leading role in the organisation of the 2nd Wiki Indaba conference 2017 in Accra, Ghana and has been critical in building up the local communities in Africa.[11]
Farkhad is energetically community-organizing among Russia's minority languages communities, going far and wide beyond his native Tatar. He is also fluent in English, a fact that has established a bridge between those communities and the wider movement after years of isolation. He is community-minded, helpful, friendly, and dedicated to both Wikipedia's mission and to diversity.[12][13]
Nahid is the driving power behind success of Wikimedia Bangladesh, a highly successful chapter that thrives under difficult circumstances like legislation that makes it almost impossible to get funding, he also serves the global community as a steward and OTRS member. He also successfully co-managed several social media account for the Wikimedia movement (e.g. FB Wikimedia Commons). Nahid lives out Wikimedia Ideals - working to help his local community grow through open sharing of knowledge and helping people around the globe connect and learn from each other.[12]