This year’s closing ceremony of Wikimania, an annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation, revealed a Wikipedian of 2014. Established in 2011, this prize has already been awarded four times to Kazakh, Yoruba and French Wikipedia contributors. This year’s prize was awarded to a Ukrainian, Ihor Kostenko. Kostenko was one of the protesters killed during EuroMaidan Revolution in February.
Kostenko
was a geography student and EuroMaidan activist who was ranked among the Heavenly Hundred, a group of 105 protesters killed by snipers fired from the side of government forces. During his two-and-half-years of writing for Ukrainian Wikipedia, the 22-year-old journalist wrote some 280 and
edited more than 1,600 articles. Under the nickname Ig2000, he was a regular
contributor on a wide range of topics (sports,
geography, economics, and the history of the Ukrainian military).
Apart from writing the articles, Kostenko popularized Ukrainian Wikipedia in social networks, trying to get more
people involved in contributing to the biggest encyclopedia so far.
Wikipedia
co-founder Jimmy Wales is the one deciding who gets the award.
“There is no special criteria for the winners.
Certainly, Wikipedian of the Year is always the one who made a significant
contribution to the Wikipedia development. But this contribution is not quantitative,
it isn’t a number of written or edited articles that counts. Most importantly
the personal story of a wikipedian must impress Jimmy Wales,” says Serhiy Petrov, press secretary of the Wikimedia Ukraine.
In his closing speech
at the conference Wales commented on this year’s choice of a prominent
wikipedian.
“It was a really touching story for me, of a young person so active
and vibrant in our community, who like many people in many parts of the world
was going out into the street to fight for a better world and lost his life so
tragically,” said Wales.
Coincidentally, 2014
is a big year for Ukrainian Wikipedia as it celebrates its 10th
birthday. First article in Ukrainian language at the web resource appeared on
Jan. 30 in 2004. Unfortunately, all the celebrations were put off until July
due to the situation in the country. Nevertheless, the anniversary didn’t come
unnoticed as Wikipedia co-founder Wales wore “10 years of Ukrainian Wikipedia” t-shirt during the closing ceremony of Wikimania 2014.
As of early August, Ukrainian Wikipedia had 519,407 articles, the number which
puts it on the 16th position among 286 language sections.
Kyiv Post staff writer Iryna Savchuk can be reached at [email protected]
