UK Wikimedian of the Year 2016/Nomination
To submit a nomination, please specify who you're nominating along with a brief description on why you think they should win the award. Please no comparisons ("Bill is so much nicer than Mary" would be better phrased "Bill is very nice"). The deadline for nominations is Friday 1 July.
Nominations
UK Wikimedian of the Year
Sara Thomas
Sara Thomas Lirazelf was Wikimedian in Residence at Museums Galleries Scotland from February 2015 to June 2016. During that time Sara has worked with museums, galleries and heritage organisations across Scotland helping to train volunteers how to edit Wikipedia. She has also become a vocal advocate for open knowledge within the museum sector in Scotland. The work she has done since becoming a WiR has had a lasting impact on the heritage sector in Scotland and the sheer number of people she has reached in her time in post should be recognised. Macfack (talk) 23:58, 1 July 2016 (BST)
Charles Matthews
Charles started the Cambridge Wikipedia Meetup in 2008 and has hosted every single one of them since then. Cambridge Wikimedia Meetup has met every quarter for eight years without fail and is now the longest-lasting quarterly Wikimedia meetup in the world. I think Charles deserves a prize for this achievement. Deryck Chan (talk) 12:27, 14 June 2016 (BST)
Martin Poulter
Martin organised the Wikipedia Science Conference in 2015 in as a volunteer for WMUK in conjunction with the Wellcome Trust. I was an attendee at this conference and it amazes me this was done on no budget from WMUK; it was very well done. More information about his contributions are available here. Mvolz (talk) 21:25, 27 June 2016 (BST)
- +1 EdSaperia (talk) 13:03, 28 June 2016 (BST)
- +1 John Cummings (talk) 18:22, 28 June 2016 (BST)
Dr. Blofeld
User:Dr. Blofeld founded the 'Awaken the Dragon' campaign to improve articles relating to Wales. He ran a nation wide contest in April 2016 which resulted in the creation or improvement of over 1000 articles in English and Welsh. He formed a partnership with the 'Women in Red' project and the National Library of Wales, who hosted a physical editathon as part of his campaign. To date the campaign has led to 150 core articles improvements/creations, 61 Good Articles and 4 Featured Articles/lists. Jason.nlw (talk) 10:33, 29 June 2016 (BST)
Jane Doe
Because she's great! ~~~~
Partnership of the Year
The Open Educational Resources conference, University of Edinburgh
I'd like this award to go to the OER16 organisers Melissa Highton and Lorna Campbell for giving Wikimedians their own stream and high visibility within this prestigious international conference. In a conference which already had sessions and presentations related to Wikimedia projects, four Wikimedians In Residence (myself included) ran sessions at the conference, some with financial support from the conference to help them attend. See Open Educational Resources conference#2016 for details of the sessions. The topics discussed at the OER conference reflect the interests and direction of the Open Education movement in the UK and beyond, so the prominence given to Wikimedia projects and to Wikimedians In Residence reflects another step into the mainstream for our movement. It was a proactive choice by the organisers to support Wikimedians, and it has created additional interest in Wikimedia activity, including requests from the University of Oxford and University of the West of England for follow-up events, so for me this is the partnership success of the past year. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:20, 27 June 2016 (BST)
- +1 The strong presence of Wikimedia at OER16 was through the continuing support of the conference co-chairs and I believe a concurrent growing interest in the work of Wikimedia in OER circles. The sessions delivered all excited interest and, importantly, have continued to have had an impact in the weeks and months which have followed e.g. Martin's Wikisource demonstration at the conference has led to a Wikisource showcase event in August. Stinglehammer (talk) 12:41, 29 June 2016 (BST)
Honourable Mention
For me, the unsung hero in the UK Wikimedian community of the past year is Nav. A Wikidata volunteer, Nav has been sharing his expertise by email as well as by person in events including the Wikipedia Science Conference. He has helped John Cummings (WIR at UNESCO) with the bulk import of data from UNESCO and helped Ewan McAndrew (WIR at the University of Edinburgh) to get custom queries from the Wikidata Query Service. Both of these efforts have helped my own work with the University of Oxford. Nav's a teacher by background and it comes naturally to him to help people—geeks or newcomers—to learn the exciting new things Wikimedia is doing. MartinPoulter (talk) 18:55, 28 June 2016 (BST)
- +1 from me, most of things I have done this year would not have been possible without Nav, also he runs the best Wikipedia and Wikidata visualisation website Histropedia John Cummings (talk) 19:14, 28 June 2016 (BST)
- +1 Nav has been enthusiastic and incredibly supportive of my work to add National Library of Wales Data sets to Wikidata. Also, Histropedia, in my view, is totally awesome, and i cant wait to see it developed further. Jason.nlw (talk) 10:22, 29 June 2016 (BST)
- +1 Nav has consistently made himself available to helping me and a whole host of others. He has always been enthusiastic, creative & good-humoured in his dealings but, much more importantly and as Martin has already mentioned, he understands how to distill sometimes complex concepts and explain them in a simple, accessible way without dumbing things down but rather amplifies instead what is exciting & interesting about them. Histropedia is a great example of his way of working and it naturally garnered a lot of plaudits at Edinburgh University and Wikimania this year.Stinglehammer (talk) 12:41, 29 June 2016 (BST)