Dear all,
It is with great sadness that I must share the news of the passing of User:Coyau, a pillar of the francophone Wikimedia community. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Coyau https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Coyau
He joined our community over a decade ago, and had become an active editor on several French-language wikis (Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary), as well as a prolific contributor to Commons and Wikidata. He had made over 1.5 million edits across Wikimedia projects. We learned of his death on Tuesday; he was 38.
He was deeply committed, delightfully absurd, and absolutely genial. You may have met him if you've ever had drinks with Wikimedians in Paris. He also had a blog in French where he wrote about Wikimedia projects and shared tutorials about topics like photo processing for other Wikimedians to learn: http://coyau.blogspot.com/
He was a genuine and soulful human being, whose sudden death has left many of his wiki friends and colleagues heartbroken. His loss is felt profoundly among the communities, where people have been expressing their grief and condolences on his talk page: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_utilisateur:Coyau#Bip_bip_bip...
He had uploaded thousands of files on Commons, among which a photo of a deflated yellow balloon in a tree (which has become emblematic of him), and a stitched 360° panorama assembled from 219 photos of a seemingly random Parisian street: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quai_de_la_Seine_(Paris),_baudruche.... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris,_Rue_Watt.jpg
As an homage, you are invited to browse his photos on Wikimedia Commons and add them to articles and pages in need of relevant pictures: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Files_by_User:Coyau