Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2015

2015

Rest in peace, deceased Wikipedians. We promise we will never forget your contributions.

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Frederik H. Kreuger (Primasz)

Frederik H. Kreuger was an editor of the Dutch and English Wikipedia (from 2007) and of Commons. He wrote a biography of the master forger Han van Meegeren.

Matthias Wegel (Kronf)

Kronf was an editor of the German Wiktionary and Wikipedia and also of Commons and the English Wikipedia. He mainly worked as an administrator and bot programmer in the German Wiktionary but was involved in global activities too. The smart and friendly student of computer linguistics passed away naturally at the age of 21. A book of condolences can be found at the German Wiktionary: Benutzer:Kronf/Kondolenzbuch.

Milton Beychok (Mbeychok)

Milton Beychok, a retired chemical engineer, edited the English Wikipedia from 2008, creating over forty articles on scientific subjects and improving many more. He was also an editor of Citizendium (his user page there).

John Webber (Viva-Verdi)

John Webber edited Wikipedia from 2005 until shortly before his death in March 2015. During that time he contributed over 27,000 edits and created scores of articles on opera-related subjects. In the real world he was a passionate supporter of the Santa Fe Opera in Santa Fe, New Mexico, serving for nine years as both a docent and as a member of the Santa Fe Opera Guild of which he was a past President (his obituary in The Santa Fe New Mexican).

Ray Girvan (Raygirvan, Gordonofcartoon)

The name of Ray Girvan's second account is reference to a distant family connection, Gordon of Khartoum. Although fundamentally a generalist who worked on hundreds of articles, his favorite subjects included the local history of Britain, artists, and medicine. In the real world, he wrote a book on Maxwell Gray, A Wren-like Note, and shortly before his death, he released his book under a free license, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. His personal blog focused on books.

Blake A. Williams (Eirra, Evanidusvir, Theloniuscrow)

Blake A. Williams, aka Emily Misciagna, a transgender activist, was interested in controversial articles and articles dealing with LGBT and Queer subjects (their obituary in The Gazette).

Khalid Mahmood (Khalid Mahmood)

Khalid Mahmood (User:Khalid Mahmood), a Western Punjabi Wikipedia administrator, died in October 2015 after a long illness. Khalid was an educator from Pakistan, and was passionate about Wikipedia and free knowledge movement. He made more than 67,000 global edits. On Western Punjabi Wikipedia he had more than 40000 edits and on English Wikipedia he had more than 2800 edits. He received a Wikimania Scholarship in 2012, 2014 and 2015 and attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico. He was interviewed for a Wikimedia blogpost on Punjabi Wikipedians.

Peter K. Domaradzki (Belissarius)

Peter K. Domaradzki (User:Belissarius) was a co-founder of the Polish Wikipedia and was described as "a pillar" of that project. He actively edited the English Wikipedia and contributed to Commons with a global edit count of over 110,000. He graduated from the University of Gdańsk with a degree in history. Domaradzki was active in the Solidarity movement, responsible for the movement's newspaper and press releases. He emigrated from Poland in 1984, moving to the United States in 1985. He remained an activist in the community, promoting Polish American culture and activities. From 2009 to 2013, he was editor-in-chief of Dziennik Związkowy (Polish Daily News) and a journalist, secretary and editor for the paper from 1985. Domaradzki was active in WikiProject Poland and WikiProject Military history and attended Chicago meet-ups and edit-a-thons.

Tom Mayer (Tjmayerinsf)

Tom Mayer mostly edited film articles, making close to 60,000 edits over a period of almost 10 years. Mayer died of a heart attack in July 2015, and his obituary from a local movie theatre may be seen here.

Telsa Christina Gwynne (Telsa)

Telsa Gwynne participated in and supported the free software movement and was a member of the GNOME community. She edited Wikipedia from 2005 until 2009 and was an active participant in WikiProject Wales. She is survived by her spouse, Alan Cox.

Branislav Jovanović, (BraneJ)

Branislav Jovanović, known as Brane, was a board member of Wikimedia Serbia and its vice-president for 2 years. He died on 11 December 2015. He had been fighting bone cancer. A memorial page has been opened, at meta:User talk:BraneJ.

Paul Barlow (Paul Barlow)

Paul Barlow was a great contributor to English Wikipedia, specialising in history, and died suddenly in mid-2015. Obituary from Visual Culture in Britain.

Tom Loback (Tttom, TTThom)

Tom Loback was an artist, known for his illustrations of characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's 1977 book The Silmarillion, his miniature figurines, and his public artworks in New York. He contributed also as a Tolkien scholar interested in Tolkien's constructed languages.

At Wikimedia Commons, he published many of his artworks under a free license and so contributed to illustrating Wikipedia articles about Tolkien's world. Apart from that, Tttom was also an active editor of Tolkien-themed articles and military history topics at the English Wikipedia.