Honour long time contributors or champions

A friend who is a long time contributor (48000+ obs) and really a champion of the goal of identifying and mapping the world’s species is about to succumb to disease.
Given their generous efforts I wonder if there is a formal way to acknowledge their contributions??

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This tribute is the one I remember. I miss his kind engagement in conversations which turned difficult, where people were talking past each other.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/in-memoriam-ian-toal-mamestraconfigurata/34998

And this gracious thread is from him
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/recognition-of-young-inatters/31178

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There has been a variety of discussions about approaches to deceased contributors on the forum. An official staff response to a related idea is here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/deceased-observers-and-a-deceased-symbol-on-their-icon/642/69

I think the best avenue for personal tributes could be a forum post (if the user was very active on the forum) like the one Diana linked above or a journal post on iNat that other users can comment on to share their memories/gratitude.

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The official staff response that @cthawley referred to says,

Which leaves us with the suggested Forum or journal post.

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If you decide to write a forum post honouring that user, please consider adding the ‘in-memoriam’ tag to it:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/tag/in-memoriam

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Has the user in question expressed any desires about how they be remembered on iNat?

I think in some cases a family member of a deceased user has logged in to their account and added a note in the profile, but this of course requires that they make their wishes clear before their death and ensure that someone is able to access their passwords.

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