Greetings,

I am happy to announce the Featured Wikimedian of the Month for June 2018, User:Nizil Shah from Gujarat.

Nizil started editing in 2008, his first article on English Wikipedia was deleted. In 2012 when he could not find an article on a topic related to the history of Gujarat, he decided to write about it himself. Being an avid reader, he observed that Indian topics are lacking in coverage on English Wikipedia. So he kept writing about topics related to Gujarat such as history, language, literature, culture, people, politics, geography, archaeology and many more. With more than 34000 edits and 400+ articles, he is now among the top 2500 English Wikipedians. He also contributes to Gujarati Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikisource, English Wiktionary, Hindi Wikipedia and English Wikivoyage. He has uploaded and curated more than 500 images on Commons. He considers mentoring of a few Wikimedians is his best contribution to the Wikimedia movement.

He sees lots of potential in the Wikidata and has been its contributor since its inception. He briefly served as an administrator there and has now 39000+ edits. He believes that it will be the central data repository of the internet with its effects going very far. He wants to revive Gujarati Wiktionary through upcoming Lexicographic Data on Wikidata.

Though by profession he is a dentist, he rarely contributes to the health-related subjects. He now wants to expand his contributions to dental and other health topics on English and Gujarati Wikipedias. He considers the lack of good resources in Indian languages and on Indian topics is a challenge and he is working to improve the situation with help of fellow Gujarati editors. He says; One edit is too many and thousand is never enough.

Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya Velaga
Wikimedia India