Hi Anirudh,

>For instance, even though Karthik Nadar has 11 edits, he has brought in valuable references for
the article, and in contrast, Hisham's contribution with 51 edits has
been minor gnoming and copy-editing of the page.

Yes I manually went through the contribs of all the editors and checked out the diff between every edit made on the page during the entire month.
 
Yes, Karthik's contributions were significant as it helped in removing the refimprove tag. And that's the reason why I chose to give him the "Citation Barnstar", different from the "Teamwork Barnstar" which we give out regularly. 
 
Hisham came up with minor edits but those were important as well and that's the way he has been working on past COTM's.
 
I see your point and next time, I'll be awarding the barnstars only on the basis of the contributions. Wikiloves will go for the minor edits.
 
Thanks,
Pratik Lahoti
User:BPositive