Hi all,
In the Dutch Wikipedia we started in 2015 with awarding the best contributors of that year with an award to celebrate the best among the many welcome contributions. We (Taketa & Romaine) got inspired by the German initiative https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiEule on the German Wikipedia that started a year earlier to do the same and was a big success
The WikiOwls, WikiUilen in Dutch, are symbol for wisdom and free knowledge of Wikipedia.
The Dutch Wikipedia is known for its hard criticism and we hope that these awards, to celebrate the valuable contributions, help to balance out the criticism, as well as that they give inspiration for future contributions.
The process of the WikiUilen on the Dutch Wikipedia is twofold: first any active contributor on the Dutch Wikipedia can nominate in six categories other users that they think are the most valuable contributors for the past year. The six categories are best newcomer, best writer, best illustrator, best editor, best collaborator and best project. We then make a list of the nominees and publish it (without indicated who nominated) on Wikipedia. Second any active contributor on the Dutch Wikipedia can vote secretly. Traditionally the most valued contributors of the past year are awarded with a small statue at the new year's event of the local chapter.
The new year's event is an interested event for many editors to come to as result of a mix of things together. It is hosted at an institution (often an museum, usually one we worked together with in the past year) where there is an overview of what happened in the past year and what will happen in the coming year, an award ceremony for the WikiOwls, a free visit and guided tour through the institution, and concluded with a drink. This formula of a combined activity works very well and is for many years a great success.
Yesterday the new year's event took place in the Netherlands in Burgers' Zoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Burgers%27_Zoo in Arnhem where the participants had half a day to freely walk through the zoo (and take photos to enrich Wikipedia of course). With the award ceremony I first gave an introduction, followed by experienced editors we asked to hand out the awards.
Today the results of the fully community driven voting (and preceeding nomination) for the WikiOwls also has been published on the Dutch Wikipedia (in Dutch) at: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiUilen/2018
The next edition of the WikiUilen will be organised again starting in November 2019.
Greetings (also from my colleague Taketa),
Romaine