 I started my journey in Wikipedia in 2019 and I joined in Balinese Wikipedia. The first workshop that I joined is Wikilati. Wikilati is one of the workshops for newcomers like me. But in the first time I joined Wikilati. It's really interesting to know and learn more about Wikipedia. I'm interested in South Korea. So I made an article about the culture of South Korea and about the movie in Korea. In 2020 I started to concentrate on Wikisores in Balinese Wikisores. I'm really excited when I try to share my knowledge with others and make communication and intense communication with my members in Balinese community. And speaking of friends, I think there's somebody new on the call. Hello. Hi, it's me, Jimmy Wales. So I popped on the call for a couple of reasons. First of all, as you may know, I'm a huge advocate of the smaller language versions of Wikipedia all around the world. And so it's been very interested in your work in Balinese Wikipedia, but also the community nature of the work. Actually, when I just came on, you sound like me talking about getting people involved in the excitement of sharing knowledge. And as you know, every year we have a set of awards. And this year we're introducing a new award called Newcomer of the Year as a part of the Wikimedia of the Year Awards. And I'm awarding you Newcomer of the Year for your work in Balinese Wikipedia. Oh, congratulations. Thank you for a surprise. I'm really surprised. I think in the beginning, in the Zoom, there is a surprise text. Is it a surprise? Really, I'm surprised about this. Thank you so much. Congratulations. So I'm going to hop off the call. I have no words to say. The verbal edge is so wonderful to me. So first I started editing on Bengali Wikipedia, which is my home Wikipedia. And then I started little, little edits based on topic nutrition, then women in athletes, like that. I love butterfly from the very beginning, but that time I just love to watch them. I don't know their name and identification and all this. Afterward, I grew some interest. I read some book about butterflies. Speaking of butterflies, we have a new person who's joined the call. Hello. Hi. I've got a butterfly texture for my background, you see. Yeah. And I've just joined the call to let you know that this year, we have a new category for Wikimedia of the year. Rich media category. And I am awarding you the winner in this category. Really? Yes, because of the amazing wiki love butterflies project, which is fantastic and your inspiration to so many people in the community. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's, it's means a lot. Yeah. It's a, this actually this goes to the whole team who are helping me in online offline. I'm just amazed. Like, I didn't know anyone who discouraged me on technical committee. No one, everyone encouraged me a lot. I have contributed to media wiki media wiki extension. Like, for one years, I do just media wiki. Nothing else. I think it is a nature of this work. Because if you upload the past, so there is no way to reverse it. The only way is to make the improve that page. If you upload a patch, okay, on our wiki media, so there is a no way to reverse it. The only way is to make the improvement on a patch and at last merge it into the repository. There is a like much demand of media wiki because people are now understanding the what, what is the power of media? Hi, Jimmy, we just lost Jay to electricity, but he's rejoining. So this is actually an even better surprise because when he rejoins, he'll see you. Okay, great. So I'll come. Do you see how cleverly I changed my name to wiki media to not give away the surprise early. I think it might help. Hello, Jimmy. Yes, hello, how are you? I am fine. This is a bit of a surprise. I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, I just, well, I just popped up to the call for a couple reasons. I am a big fan of all the work that you've done in the Indic communities. And so, as you know, we, I give an award every year, but this year we're expanding the awards to identify more people. And for the wiki meeting of the year awards this year, I am naming you the tech innovator. So you have won the tech innovator award of the wiki meeting of the year. Thank you very much. That is like, for me, a very proud moment this time. You deserve it. You deserve it. Thank you very much for this moment. Like, I never forget this moment in my life. That's very kind of you. That's very kind. Well, for me, this is, for me, this is one of the most exciting things that I get to do. It's such an honor for me to be asked, you know, in my position, just like it's a privilege to be able to say thank you to some of the top best people, not just in the community, but in the whole world. You might get some attention from the press, which could be nice. And, you know, certainly throughout the tech world and things like that, I think calling attention to your work is going to be fantastic. I can't explain my happiness in front of you, but yeah, I am very happy. In terms of human rights, in terms of access to health, education, justice, right? So he told me that we could, with the knowledge that I had working in communities, we could do something with Wikipedia in indigenous languages. At the end of the day, we did work a little bit with the NAWATS, but we wanted to work more, just that at that time it wasn't a priority for the foundation, the issue of indigenous languages. And, well, there it was, but I realized then that I could participate in Wikipedia that I didn't need a very big or technical knowledge, right? I liked it, the truth is that that's how it was. I didn't start editing about women, not like Mexican things, like food, cities, music, and that's it. Then I saw everything in general. Hello. Hello. Excuse me. How are you? How are you Carmen? Hello, Carmen. I'm surprised. So I've joined the call to congratulate you and to announce to you that you are the winner of the Honorable Mention in the WikiMeeting of the Year. Very excited to meet you and to award you this. And the thing that really caught my eye and that I think is incredibly important is your work on the gender gap. I think it's the most important work in the movement right now. And you're amazing. Muchas gracias, estoy muy emocionada, muy sorprendida, me hubiera maquillado. Estoy muy, muy contenta, muy contenta porque sí es mucho trabajo, pero creo que lo hacemos juntas la fundación, los ofiliados y las participantes del movimiento. So we had all the policies, all the resources in place already. And COVID just showed that we are a robust community with really good policies. So to begin with, when COVID-19 happened, people from all over the world started writing articles about it. Although we kind of quite worked harmonically, we did not have any central place to come to and talk about COVID-19 in a special, specifically about COVID-19. We did have projects like WikiProject Medicine and COVID was largely a medical problem at that time. It had not progressed into a social and a political problem. So at that time it was largely under WikiProject Medicine that we coordinated and wrote about how the disease is progressing. But then many communities realized that we really need to talk in depth about it because this has developed into a much larger problem. First, it's our people and second, it's our policies. The way we work harmoniously together, we have a good mix of experts. And when they all come together, it makes our articles robust. It's also very robust collaboration. But I'm really happy with the people and the policies that we have. And when it comes to people, I think that we need more experts join Wikipedia because knowledge is changing. And when our movement started, we did not have this kind of rapid turnover of new facts. And now we have on top of that, we have problems with fake news. We have people like, it's very difficult for an average person to go to a website and see if it is fake news or real news, or if that news is being given there in order to manipulate them in some way. So to help people to distinguish real news, good information from misinformation, I think that we need involvement from many people, especially people from academia, to make our movement more robust. Well, Dr. Hussein, we have a guest on this call. Yeah, I can see that, but it says Wikipedia. Hey Jimmy! How are you? Good, good. I was just enjoying listening to you. I mean, the things that brought a smile to my face, it's funny that you were saying about the policies, things like assume good faith and, you know, the policies are quite old and have hardly changed. Yes. And that's good. And then the software is quite old and has hardly changed and that's bad. So the reason I've popped on the call is the, well, two main reasons. One, I mean, I'm such a huge fan. I've been hearing about all of your work around two things, gender gap, which as you know is a topic that's very near and dear to my heart, something that I think we really need to change. And actually, I think it takes a couple of things. It takes actual movement and action on the site where we're inviting people. And so it also takes role models. I've always loved this expression. You can't be what you can't see. And I think you are that as a medical doctor, as an active Wikipedia, and people can see you and say, oh, I could become like her. And that would be amazing. And then also obviously in this time of COVID and coronavirus, I've been very proud of Wikipedia. I mean, there's been so much. But like the fact that we are a place people can turn to, and they're not getting crazy ideas. They're getting good, solid research, even in fact, when there are some open questions, like we were honest about the open questions, but we're thoughtful and reasonable. Anyway, fantastic. And as a result of all this, I'm giving you the award of honorable mention for Wikimedian of the year. Wow. So. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I couldn't believe this. Yeah. Well, you should believe it because you're amazing. Yeah. You're very welcome. You're very welcome. But for me, it's, it's, it's like just a great honor to be allowed to be the person to present the award and to tell you, of course, in any other year, we would do it in person, in Wikimania. This year would do it on Zoom, but still it's very meaningful. And I'm sure I'll see you at a next to Wikimania when the world goes back to normal. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. That's great. I can't process all this. I'm really, I would say I'm really lucky. Yes. And then it also goes back to the legacy of, you know, all these Wikimedians who have won these awards from you. And they have been really great. And they have been my role models as well. Thank you. Yeah. You're very welcome. Thank you. Thank you more than me. I'm just a guy who sort of goes out of words and says, you know, you know, you were trying to basically get as many pictures of those as possible. So we encourage people to instead of going into a museum to go out on the streets and take photos of these national monuments, these buildings, which are about 60,000 of them across the country. We had, we put the list on Wikipedia and we encourage people like take a photo of them. And the best photo will win some kind of prize. What you really see is the fact that it's easier to participate. And it makes it easier for people to participate. I also see that we have a guest on the call. Hey, Jimmy. Hey, how are you? Good. How are you? Good. Um, how is life? Uh, it's busy, but good busy. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like a normal in normal circumstances. I see you least once a year. Yeah. So this year we're expanding the Wikimedia of the year. Um, and, you know, usually it's been someone who's sort of new and done something interesting and amazing. Uh, but this year I really wanted to kind of expand it and say, you know, actually there are people who've been around for a long time who probably should have wanted a long time ago, but, you know, things go this and that. And so congratulations. Um, I'm very honored. Thank you so much. Yeah. They, uh, they, they wrote me sort of a list of things that you've done, but I knew it all. And, uh, obviously, uh, it's kind of amazing to think about, uh, you know, like Wiki loves monuments being the largest photo competition in the world. Like that's, that's to me, I, every time I think about that, I'm like, wow, that's like in and of itself. An amazing thing. Right. But of course it's just part of our whole movement. Exactly. Um, so, so I wanted to make that happen as well. And Wiki loves monuments because there are some, there's always new challenges coming up. Yeah. And new people need to take up those challenges and, uh, Yeah. To the next level. Yeah. Well, anyway, you're amazing. You've been around forever. Uh, richly deserve. The thing that excited me the most, but also surprised me a little bit when we started to see that there are so many new people, uh, that are coming from the heritage community that are coming from, uh, just people who are, who are looking around their houses to like, oh, wow, this building, I never knew it was there. Um, and, and they wanted to take it, to take a picture and share it with the world. I'm looking at your background there. Wiki loves gas stations. It looks amazing. I can't quite see it, but it looks like very cool. Like a teapot. And it's so brilliant. It's a big honor. I hope it doesn't mean that it has to be the end of my life. That was a big risk of, uh, Now you retire. Uh, no, I have to retire. Can I do anything anymore? To be the change, it changed a lot of my personal, you know, you will, we deal with a lot of people. You will see a lot of things. It's about the language, about the diversity, about the knowledge free, about the comments, about the license. It's about the data. It's not only information and how to edit and write on Wikipedia. But I'm trying on my time in the hospital, my free time, on my wrist, time to open it, on my phone, on my laptop. Um, uh, it's kind of, uh, it's kind of education to Wikipedia, you know, it's not... Addiction, yeah. Addiction to Wikipedia, it's not only about edit and to share information. Sometimes I can let this live in the hospital without checking what happened on Wikipedia or Wikipedia or meta or English Wikipedia before I sleep. Um, Wikipedia is a life, you know. It's a world and it's not only, as I said, it's not only information and editing, you know. People in Wikipedia being my best friends, my best friends. Now my best friends in real life, really, they are Wikipedia. They are... I know them from Wikipedia. I talk with them every day. Even we didn't see each other on the ground. But they being the best friends to me, you know. So... This is Wikipedia. We have a guest on the call, Maria. Who's that? Hello. It's Jimmy Williams here. Hello, James. Do you know this? Very good. Yes, wonderful. Well, so, the reason I joined the call is I knew that there would be a call with you. And I'm really... I'm excited about you. I'm excited about all the work you've been doing. I mean, you're everywhere. You're all over Wikipedia. I've looked into it. And I'm particularly this year very, very keen and very excited about our medical information, particularly around COVID-19. You know, I founded Wikipedia with the idea of quality information. And at the time, it seemed like as we know, with social media and so forth, the disinformation and the fake information that circulates rampantly hasn't really impacted Wikipedia, though, but that's not by magic. It's because of people like you who, you know, are there doing the great work, fighting the good fight every day. And then, obviously, Arabic Wikipedia is incredibly important and your role there has been instrumental. I understand you've made 150,000 edits, so that's a lot of typing. And so I just popped on the call to let you know that I'm naming you Wikimedian of the year this year because I think you're fantastic. I'm so surprised. I don't know what to say. First of all, I'm happy to see you, Jim. You know, I hear a lot about you and, you know, I read a lot about you, so I'm happy to talk to you. Yes, that's good. And I'm really surprised about what happened there, as I didn't expect it. So I don't know what to say. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I think I was just listening in on the call and, you know, for me, one of the real things that's very important in our community is leadership, people that people can look to and say, oh, yeah, this is what it means to be a Wikimedian. So, you know, working thoughtfully with community, you know, neutrality, quality information, all of that stuff. I mean, people see people like you and say, that's a model Wikimedian. I want to be like that person. And so it's a really exciting and, yeah, in any normal year, I would be meeting you at Wikimedia somewhere. Obviously not this year, but I'm sure in some future year we'll have some sort of, I think we should have a Wikimedian of the year dinner or something for the collected up winners from the years that we had. Thanks a lot. Real, you know, speechless about what happened, you know, I think the Wikimedia account is another account related to you that you are open from it maybe to record this and I'm very surprised about what happened now, you know.