Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-05-31/Obituaries

Obituaries

Dmitrismirnov, Kattenkruid, Muidlatif, Ronhjones, Tsirel

By Staff

Dmitrismirnov may have been the first Wikipedian struck down by COVID-19. The deaths of several other well-known Wikipedians were reported this month. These obituaries are taken from Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2020 written by multiple editors and edited by Signpost staff. For the next few months The Signpost may continue to report the passing of any Wikipedian where the details have been published.

Dmitri Smirnov (Dmitrismirnov)

A Soviet and British composer and an administrator of the Russian and English Wikisource projects, Dmitri passed away on April 9 from complications caused by COVID-19.

He was born in 1948 in

Philip Gershkovich

.

In 1989, his operas were staged on subjects from William Blake: Tiriel in Freiburg, Germany and Tel in London. That same year, his First Seasons Symphony was performed at the Tanglewood Festival in the US. In 1991, Smirnov emigrated to the UK where he taught at several well-known universities.

Smirnov made significant contributions to Russian and English Wikisource projects, Wikimedia Commons, Russian and English Wikipedias, and Wikidata.

He is survived by his wife, composer Elena Firsova, and by two children Philip Firsov and Alissa Firsova.-RW,-S

Kris de Vries (Kattenkruid)

The Dutch community sadly informed English Wikipedia of the passing of one of their admins: Kattenkruid. Kattenkruid ("catnip") was active on Wikipedia since 2004 and wrote articles on the topics of politics, animals and Poland. He was active in other language editions and on Wikidata as well, mainly with manual edits. He became an administrator on the Dutch Wikipedia in 2009 and was active until his passing on March 19, 2020.

Muid Latif (Muidlatif)

On April 11, 2020, Muid Latif, a former project lead of Creative Commons in Malaysia who had been promoting the free-culture movement and open collaboration, passed away as announced by his brother at Latif's official Facebook page.

Ron H. Jones (Ronhjones)

Ron Jones, a retired

non-free images. He had been a contributor for over 11 years, making over 400,000 edits. He was a prolific editor, as well as an administrator on Wikimedia Commons since 2013 where he made over 100,000 edits.^[1] Furthermore, he was part of the Wikimedia OTRS Team. He was a member of the Inland Waterways Association, whose London branch published an obituary of him in their January–July 2019 newsletter. He published scientific papers as Ronald H. Jones. Details of some of them may be found on Scholia

.

Boris Tsirelson (Tsirel)

On January 21, 2020, Boris Semyonovich Tsirelson, a mathematician and professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University, Israel, as well as a Wikipedian, passed away due to being voluntarily euthanized following a terminal battle with cancer. (Mourning page at Tel Aviv University, 25 January 2020) (Talkpage declaration of his voluntary assisted death) He was 69. During his lifetime, he made notable contributions to probability theory and functional analysis, such as Tsirelson's bound and Tsirelson space. On Wikipedia, he made 8,857 edits, including the creation of pages such as Conditioning (probability) and Standard probability space, among others. His legacy will not be forgotten.

References

^ Edit counts for Ronhjones retrieved from his global account information

In this issue

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Thank you for starting this section! I knew about Kattenkruid and Ronhjones, but not about the others. Too many great losses in a brief period ... thank you all for your contributions to Wikipedia! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:52, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It makes my heart heavy when a Wikipedian passes, even though I've never met them in person. I have worked with Ron on Commons, and he will surely be missed. They were all such amazing people. We were lucky to have them, even if it was for such a brief period of time in the grand scheme of things. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 01:02, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate (liking feels wrong given the contents) this little corner of the signpost. I hope it stays. --Dutchy45 (talk) 11:35, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is a saddening section of the signpost, but sort of required. People can avoid reading if they dont want to read it. Even though we interacted only three-four times, I always saw Ron's work on enwiki, and on commons. In my real life, I have seen a lot of deaths, and saw a few people dying in front of my eyes. But I still dont understand why I am so much saddened, and shaken up by hearing about Ron's death. Like I said here, I am still trying to avoid venues wherever there are signatures. —usernamekiran (talk) 14:12, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- Thanks for the kind words and the encouragement to continue this column. We used material from Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2020 and that makes it a lot easier for The Signpost. Thanks to all those who contribute there. That said, my personal opinion is that obituaries are by far the toughest thing to write in any form of journalism, especially one with our limited resources (e.g. $0.00 annual budget) and the specifics of Wikipedia (e.g. anonymous editors). In the general case obits are hard to write because almost all the readers read the details in a very specific context as family members, friends, colleagues, etc. They may be in a state of shock, there likely won't be any tolerance for anything that comes close to criticism or even the slightest perceived mistake. They have personal details that we couldn't possibly have. They may compare "their" obit with others on the same page, e.g. why is this one shorter than that one, or why did you mention that guy's college but not this other guy's. I don't mean to criticize relatives or friends, but they are going through a tough time and can be very demanding. One very bad reaction to this by some journalists is to write very flowery pieces that nobody can complain about - even if they aren't true! That doesn't help anybody. On top of that the writer only gets one chance to get it right.
- That said - Is anybody looking for a very tough job that pays exactly $0? If so send me an email. I suppose there is at lest one form of compensation. Some of the best journalists in some of the best newspapers in the world, e.g. the New York Times, specialize in obits and are recognized by their colleagues for doing it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:56, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Smallbones: If you need more help getting obits done, I wrote Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-01-27/Obituary. I just need a ping or two onwiki with the names to get started. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:39, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - I actually think reprinting the Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians obits is a good practice. In academic communities, obits are usually written by students or colleagues of the deceased who know both the person and their contribution to human knowledge, and often at the request of the journal's editor. My understanding is that the Deceased Wikipedians entries are written by Wikipedians in a similar position: those who were WikiFriends with the deceased as well as knowing their contributions to the encyclopedia. I think this comes close to the standard practice in collegial communities. — Wug·a·po·des 21:35, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. — T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Deepest condolences to all of them.--
here 04:44, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply
]

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