Wikimedian of the year: Indian techie among 7 awarded for making 'significant contributions'

New Delhi: A Bengaluru-based software engineer is among the seven winners who have been awarded for their "significant contributions" to Wikimedia projects, the software platform that powers Wikipedia, an official readout said on Thursday.

The annual 'Wikimedian of the Year' awards was presented by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, it said.

Wikimania 2024, the 19th edition of the flagship annual conference that celebrates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and the volunteers (Wikimedians) who make them possible, is taking place this week in Katowice, Poland from August 7-10.

As part of the event, the Wikipedia founder presented the annual 'Wikimedian of the Year' awards to exceptional individuals and communities who have made significant contributions to Wikimedia projects, helping to make reliable knowledge available to people around the world, it said.

"Among the seven winners of this honour this year, Siddharth V P, a software engineer based in Bengaluru, has been awarded the title of 'Technical Contributor of the Year', for his contributions to MediaWiki, the software platform that powers Wikipedia and many other Wikimedia projects. This is the second time the winner of this award has been from India," the readout said.

In 2021, Jay Prakash won the inaugural edition of the award for his technical support to Indic communities, including fixing bugs, building new tools, and spearheading technical outreach, it said.

Siddharth, has been a technical volunteer on Wikimedia projects for more than a decade and is deeply valued by his peers for his work on scripts, bots, and gadgets that help contribute to the smooth running of the projects, according to the readout.

For example, Siddharth created the "Articles for Creation" submission interface, which has come to be the primary way for new Wikipedia users to submit new articles for inclusion on the site. More than 6,000 new article drafts are submitted every month, the readout said.