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
--
Guillaume Paumier