Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2023
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Colin Hall (Spinningspark)
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Colin Hall, a retired engineer and project manager from England, was an administrator who wrote many articles on technical subjects, especially the history of technology. He also helped out at forums for newcomers, particularly the science reference desk and the help desk. He began editing in 2007, and in 2009 he celebrated the completion of his first featured article, a biography of the American telephone engineer Otto Julius Zobel. Spinningspark brought seven additional topics to featured status, and shepherded sixty-four more through the good article process. He made his last edit on 16 February 2023, the day before his sudden and unexpected passing.
Jo Pugh (Mr impossible)
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Jo Pugh was a British Wikimedian for nigh on two decades. As an employee of the United Kingdom's National Archives, he led or spoke at several Wikipedia:GLAM-wiki events, as well as being a contributor to Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, both professionally and on his own time. He died on 22 February 2023, several years after first being diagnosed with cancer.
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David Goodman, a science librarian who began editing Wikipedia in 2006, was known for being helpful and willing to deal with a variety of complex problems, including conflict of interest and promotional editing. He was on Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee from 2015 to 2018 and then in 2020. He was also involved in Wikimedia New York City. He died aged 79 on 6 April 2023.
Thomas Hibbs was an enthusiastic Wikimedian since 2006. His love of knowledge was so great he returned to school for a library sciences degree. He had particular interest in preserving information on Vermont (his long time home), Hungary (where his family hailed from), vinyl records, books, and retro video games. Thibbs was an experienced and regular contributor who devoted his time to English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. He created 118 articles on many topics including a detail history of Hungarian animation, and a now lengthy article on the subject of nonviolent video games. He died on 14 April 2023, several years after being diagnosed with brain cancer, at the age of 41.
Deror Lin, a lawyer and Israeli Wikimedian since 2004, was one of the most prominent members of the Israeli community and the Hebrew Wikipedia. He wrote over 8,750 Wikipedia articles in Hebrew and over 70 in English, and uploaded thousands of images to Wikimedia Commons. He served as a board member of Israel's local Wikimedia chapter, which he helped found in the late 2000s. Deror was part of the core team that organized Wikimania 2011, as well as the global Wiki Loves Monuments competition in 2014. He is among the most prolific 100 WikiDays competitors, having completed the challenge at least 14 times. He is also a Wikimedia Laureate. Deror passed away on May 6, 2023.
Inoslav Bešker was a Croatian journalist and academic who worked as a correspondent in Rome for various media outlets. He earned a PhD in Comparative Slavic studies at the University of Milan, and had taught at the University of Split, University of Naples "L'Orientale", Sapienza University of Rome, as well as the universities of Bologna, the Zagreb and Dubrovnik. He left 2,194 edits on Wikimedia projects. Bešker passed away on June 29, 2023.
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John Clark, an English actor, director, and producer, edited Wikipedia from 2006 to 2022, making the last of his 3,224 edits at the age of 90. He died on July 6, 2023, at 91.
Donald Peter Cram was an American Wikipedian who created over 13,500 main-space articles, and many more pages in total. Many of these focused on U.S. National Historic Register entries and U.S. National Historic Landmarks. He also worked on articles about NRHP-affiliated artists, architects, builders, and engineers. He participated in several WikiProjects over the years, was active at AfD, and created many excellent list articles. During his lifetime he worked as a cabbie in New York City, where he also worked as a budget analyst. He held faculty positions at MIT, Cal State Fullerton in California and at the State University of New York at Oswego. Later, after moving to Montrose, Colorado, he was employed in airport operations. He died on July 9, 2023 in Montrose of natural causes. His obituaries include: Montrose Press and Syracuse Post Standard.
Ingo Koll was a German who spent many years as a pastor and lecturer in Kenya and Tanzania. He was a longstanding and very active editor, bureaucrat and administrator on the Swahili Wikipedia. He was an early member of the Wikimedia Tanzania community, and created extensive editing education and training programs in Kiswahili. He had over 1,800 edits to English and German Wikipedias, as well as many edits to Wikidata and Commons, but the project he considered "home" was the Swahili Wikipedia, where he had over 52,000 edits. He passed away on July 10, 2023.
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Dr. Peter McCawley, an economist from the Australian National University, spent a little over ten years on Wikipedia contributing in his area of expertise: the economy and politics of Indonesia. Outside of Wikipedia, his career history included being the executive director of Asian Development Bank, dean of the Asian Development Bank Institute, and the deputy director general of AusAID; his work was indeed cited on Wikipedia itself. He died on July 18. His obituary can be found here.
Eagleash, from South Croydon, London, began editing Wikipedia on 15 October 2012 and amassed nearly 109,000 edits on many subjects including his beloved Crystal Palace F.C. and Formula One. He often helped out new users at the help desk and in articles for creation. He edited every day for over eight years from 9 April 2015 until his last edit on 29 May 2023, achieving the fourth-longest such editing streak in all namespaces along with the same ranking (among non-bot editors) in the article namespace list. He died on 8 June 2023, aged 70, after a heart attack.
Theodor Otto Diener was a Swiss pathologist who was the first to recognize and name viroids, the smallest known infectious agent. He was awarded the National Medal of Science by the President of the United States in 1987; among many other honors. Diener died at his home in Beltsville, Maryland, on 28 March 2023, at the age of 102. At the age of 96, he made 16 mainspace edits, mostly to improving viroid, and corrections to his own biography article, with oversight by an experienced editor, User:Graham Beards. He also made 78 mainspace edits using an earlier account, User:Dienerto. The Washington Post obituary (Archive) has more information.
Richard Haslam (Nosebagbear)
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Richard Haslam was a British Wikimedian and administrator. He registered in 2012, and after a few years of dormancy, began editing in 2018. Acquiring adminship the next year, he began using the tools extensively, helping out where he could in areas that ranged from Articles for Creation to sockpuppet investigations. In recent years, his focus shifted to working behind the scenes to collaborate with the Wikimedia Foundation and other volunteers across the movement on governance initiatives, including the Universal Code of Conduct and Movement Charter. Through this work he always remained grounded as a proud member of the online communities, especially English Wikipedia; bringing a persistent but pragmatic accountability to the broader Wikimedia landscape, that will make his loss all the more felt. At the time of his passing, he was serving as an elected community member on the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, helping to create new structures and policy to help lead Wikimedia into the next decade.
Wolf Dieter Haupt was born on 11 April 1943 in Innsbruck, Austria. He studied telecommunications engineering at TU Wien, then began working as a programmer for many years in assembly language. Programming remained a constant preoccupation throughout his life, and in his many jobs in Austria, Switzerland and Germany he supported and encouraged young programmers. From 1980 he lived in Stuttgart and from 2010 in Bad Friedrichshall, Germany, where he built a Tiny House in a large garden, almost entirely by himself.
Dieter was interested in everything and was always curious about new things: people, languages, foreign countries, literature, nature, science and art. In Vienna, he took part in the events staged by the Viennese Actionism movement. He loved cycling and nature.
On Wikimedia Commons he was committed to the creation, maintenance and further improvement of templates, especially in the field of heraldry or the widely used One-letter templates, like Template:C or Template:F. So everytime we are using {{C|category name}} or {{F|file name}} he still lives on. Always friendly, level-headed, and deeply knowledgeable, he was unfailingly helpful.
Dieter died on 20 September 2023 from a very rapidly progressing cancer.
Please feel free to sign the list of condolences.
Dr. Steven B. Harris was born in Springville, Utah, USA, in 1957.
He obtained an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Brigham Young University, and a medical degree from the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. Dr. Harris did a fellowship in gerontology and geriatric medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine, and was a biogerontology Research Fellow at UCLA until 1993. Board-certified in internal medicine, he practiced and taught geriatric medicine at the University of Utah Medical School. He made more than 38,000 contributions to Wikipedia, with a particular interest in the history of the American Old West.
He was cryonically preserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in November 2023.
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Mary Hamlen was from Boston, Massachusetts. She worked to address gender equality on Wikimedia Projects. In addition to adding content since 2018 to Wikipedia (6,000 edits) and Wikidata (4,000 edits), Hamlen mentored new editors. She led regular in-person editing sessions with the WikiProject Women in Religion. She contributed to the book Women Advancing Knowledge Equity: The Parliament of the World’s Religions, third in a series called "Women in Religion". In that book, she wrote the biographies of Yvonne V. Delk and Isabel Apawo Phiri. Hamlen was a certified mediator, and worked as program staff with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. She held a Masters of Advanced Studies in Ecumenical Studies from the University of Geneva, and a Master of Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion.
Tribute published at the Carleton College website, Polly's alma mater.
Mikhail Lewis, known by the Wikipedia username Hyacinth, began editing in 2003 and became an administrator in 2004. He amassed nearly 177,000 edits on the site, many of which related to music, and created the List of music students by teacher system. Of particular note, he was often the first to both create and maintain articles on music theory topics; his efforts included a variety of templates and diagrams to illustrate these complex topics. Hyacinth passed away on December 9, 2023 at the age of 42 due to epilepsy.