{"id":892,"date":"2014-08-15T02:51:30","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T09:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/?p=892"},"modified":"2014-08-19T01:14:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T08:14:39","slug":"wikipedian2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2014\/08\/wikipedian2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian named Wikipedian of the Year 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

The late Ukrainian journalist Ihor Kostenko, who was killed earlier this year in a Euromaidan<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>protest, has been named Wikipedian of the Year for 2014<\/strong> by Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wikipedians<\/em> are the people that contribute information to\u00a0<\/span>Wikipedia<\/a>, and the vast majority, like\u00a0<\/span>Ihor Kostenko<\/a>, are volunteers – they are not paid by anyone for the time they donate to Wikipedia to write articles, edit information and discuss the quality of articles with other Wikipedians. In The <\/a><\/strong><\/em>Last<\/a><\/strong> Virtual Volunteering Guidebook<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, myself and Susan Ellis say that Wikipedia is the largest example\u00a0of virtual volunteering<\/strong>. When anyone from any country asks me what organization involves the most online volunteers in their country, I say with confidence, “Your country’s version of Wikipedia.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ihor Kostenko<\/a> was a Ukrainian journalist and Euromaidan<\/a>\u00a0activist. In\u00a0two and a half years, he wrote more than\u00a0280 articles and made more than\u00a01,600 edits on\u00a0<\/span>Ukrainian Wikipedia<\/a>, contributing\u00a0under the user name\u00a0Ig2000<\/a>.\u00a0He also<\/span>\u00a0created maintained the popular Ukrainian Wikipedians Facebook page. He created the idea of a Wiki Flashmob in Ukraine, a group volunteer event that invited Ukrainians to participate in a day of article-writing on Wikipedia; the event was undertaken on on April 27, 2014 after his death and was dedicated to his memory. He was shot and killed on February 20, 2014\u00a0during a Euromaidan<\/a> protest in Kyiv.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m not sure why there is such scant information on the Wikipedia main site about the Wikipedian of the Year award<\/a>; I’m not sure when or where it was given. This page provides some information about the 2014 award<\/a>, but I can’t find an official Wikipedia press release about it anywhere – nor any press coverage of the announcement anywhere, other than the aforementioned link.<\/p>\n

Update August 19: The Kiev Post has posted an article about this that provides more information<\/a>. Apparently, the announcement was made at this year\u2019s closing ceremony of Wikimania<\/a>, an annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation. But there’s nothing at all on the Wikimania web site about Ihor Kostenko<\/a>, and I can find no official announcement from Wikipedia about this. Frustrating!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The late Ukrainian journalist Ihor Kostenko, who was killed earlier this year in a Euromaidan\u00a0protest, has been named Wikipedian of the Year for 2014 by Wikipedia. Wikipedians are the people that contribute information to\u00a0Wikipedia, and the vast majority, like\u00a0Ihor Kostenko, are volunteers – they are not paid by anyone for the time they donate to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[850,832,834,667,831,570,849,649],"class_list":["post-892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-jimmy-wales","tag-kiev","tag-kyiv","tag-online-volunteers","tag-ukraine","tag-virtual-volunteering","tag-wikimedia-foundation","tag-wikipedia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-eo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}