Who is the most famous Wikipedia editor?
Steven Pruitt (born 1984) is an American Wikipedia editor with the highest number of edits made on the English Wikipedia: over four million. He has also created more than 34,000 Wikipedia articles. Pruitt was named as one of the 25 most important influencers on the Internet by Time Magazine in 2017.
How many people edit Wikipedia?
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia famously allows anyone to edit its content. More than 34 million people have registered a username, but only a little more than 100,000 regularly contribute to the site. Pruitt is one of just seven who have reached more than a million edits, and he’s the only editor over the 2 million mark.
Who is Wikipedia’s most active contributor of all time?
Since joining Wikipedia a decade ago, 32-year-old Justin Anthony Knapp (username “koavf”) has established himself as the the site’s most active contributor of all time. He has made an astonishing 1,485,342 edits (an average of 385 per day), ranging in topic from Taylor Swift to the history of blacksmithing.
How many Wikipedia editors are female?
The authors found that women accounted for only 9 percent of all Wikipedia edits and represent an even smaller share of high-frequency editors — 6 percent of Wikipedians who have edited 500 articles or more are women. The study also found that men are more likely than women to edit articles about geography, science or history.
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Who controls Wikipedia editing?
All Wikipedia pages and articles are edited collaboratively by a community of volunteer contributors. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. No one, no matter what, has the right to act as though they are the owner of a particular article (or any part of it).
What Wikipedia page has the most edits?
1–1000No.UserEdit count1Ser Amantio di Nicolao5,231,7672BrownHairedGirl2,891,1993Koavf2,108,6324BD24122,000,72561 more rows
What kind of person edits Wikipedia?
28% of editors are aged 40+. 59% of the editors are aged 17 to 40. The English Wikipedia currently has 44,206,065 users who have registered a username. Only a minority of users contribute regularly (120,587 have edited in the last 30 days), and only a minority of those contributors participate in community discussions.
Is Wikipedia edited by anyone?
Wikipedia is a wiki, meaning anyone can edit nearly any page and improve articles immediately. You do not need to register to do this, and anyone who has edited is known as a Wikipedian or editor.
Do Wikipedia editors get paid?
For the Wikipedia and Wikimedia policy on paid editing, see WMF:Terms of Use. Paid editing is editing Wikipedia in return for payment. Although there may be some forms of compensation which are generally acceptable, such as the Wikipedia reward board, there are other forms which are considered unacceptable.
Who writes most of Wikipedia?
Steven Pruitt has made nearly 3 million edits on Wikipedia and written 35,000 original articles.
Is it illegal to edit Wikipedia?
Anyone can - it's open to all and can be modified and edited by anyone. However, Wikipedia's administrators protect some pages from direct editing if they believe they are regularly subjected to "vandalism" - the addition of abusive language or falsehoods.
What happens if you troll Wikipedia?
Like a vandal, a troll is an editor who intentionally makes nonconstructive edits to Wikipedia; however, a narrower set of motivations are behind trolling than are behind general vandalism. Specifically, a troll makes nonconstructive edits to Wikipedia with the intent of provoking an angry reaction in other users.
Can I write a Wikipedia article about myself?
Anyone can create a Wikipedia user account and write an article, on any topic whatsoever. Wikipedia, however, would prefer that topic not be “Myself.” It's right there, clearly stated in their terms of service. Wikipedia entries are like wedding showers.
How does Wikipedia get updated so fast?
This kind of information rich updates are created by real users. There are a lot of dedicated users on Wikipedia and most of these users constantly follow certain articles and constantly update the content. Commonly these dedicated users are experts, enthusiasts or professionals on the articles they edit.
How long does it take for Wikipedia to approve an edit?
3-6 monthsIt needs to be able to approve a large percentage of Wikipedia within 3-6 months. Mark versions of each article appropriately depending on the outcome of any approval process for that version. This gives a guide to quality of particular versions in the history.
Can we trust Wikipedia?
We do not expect you to trust us Also, since Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time, articles may be prone to errors, including vandalism, so Wikipedia is not a reliable source. So, please do not use Wikipedia to make critical decisions.
What is the most visited Wikipedia page?
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (September 25 to October 1, 2022)RankArticleViews1Jeffrey Dahmer17,531,8162Christopher Scarver3,878,5923Coolio2,321,4164Marilyn Monroe2,053,64821 more rows
Does Steven Pruitt get paid?
However, in the evening, after completing his duties, he spends more than three hours a day researching, editing and writing for the online portal. He doesn't receive any compensation for his work, but he has remained true to his interests. "The idea of making it all free fascinates me.
How many Wikipedia mods are there?
There are currently 44,243,388 Wikipedia accounts, of which 121,140 have made at least one edit during the last month....Demographics.Age groupWMF (%)22–2926 percent30–3919 percent40+28 percent2 more rows
How many Wikipedia editors are there?
With 321 different language versions, more than 32 million active editors, and an average of 600 new articles a day on English Wikipedia alone, Wikipedia is massively popular.
How many people edit Wikipedia?
Samantha Lien works at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that houses Wikipedia. She said there are about 250,000 people who edit Wikipedia on a daily basis. Lien added that the Wikimedia Foundation does not set any editorial policy for Wikipedia. “It’s open for everyone to edit, and people edit in a variety ...
What percentage of Wikipedia editors are women?
The gender issue of Wikipedia content is further reflected in the demographics of its content creators—Stephenson-Goodknight said only 9 percent of the editors on English Wikipedia are women. She said this steep gender disparity impacts the policies that are crafted and how they are implemented.
How many articles has Stephenson Goodknight written?
Stephenson-Goodknight said she has created close to 5,000 articles for the site so far. She also said that continuing to follow 2001-era rules in 2019 impacts the kinds of articles the site publishes in the first place.
What is WikiTribune?
Furthermore, in an effort to fight the tide of fake news, Wales introduced WikiTribune, a new media organization that would act as a hybrid, combining the open Wikipedia community with traditional news media.
When was Wikipedia created?
Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia has steadily grown to house more than 40 million articles across 301 languages, and is the fifth most visited website in the world.
Is Wikipedia an encyclopedia?
At face value, the website Wikipedia advertises itself as the online, de facto encyclopedia. But comedian Stephen Colbert had a different definition for the site on a 2007 episode of “The Colbert Report,” calling it, “The encyclopedia where you can be an authority even if you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”.
Is Wikipedia a verifiable source?
She said one hard and fast rule on the site is that original research is not accepted as a verifiable source.
How many edits did Pruitt make to Wikipedia?
As of February 2019, Pruitt made over three million edits to Wikipedia, more than any other editor on the English Wikipedia, and made over four million edits by February 2021. He surpassed editor Justin Knapp for most edits in 2015, the same year he was made an Administrator. Pruitt believes he made his first edit to Wikipedia in June 2004.
When did Pruitt edit Wikipedia?
Pruitt believes he made his first edit to Wikipedia in June 2004. As a contributing member of the Women in Red WikiProject, his Wikipedia edits have included creating articles on more than 600 women, in order to counter the site's gender gap.
What percentage of Wikipedia articles are about women?
January 26, 2019. Archived from the original on February 1, 2019. Retrieved April 10, 2019. The last statistic I saw was that 17.6 percent of the biographical articles on Wikipedia are about women, on the English Wikipedia I should say," Pruitt said.
Who is Steven Pruitt?
Steven Pruitt (born 1984) is an American Wikipedia editor with the highest number of edits made on the English Wikipedia: over four million. He has also created more than 34,000 Wikipedia articles. Pruitt was named as one of the 25 most important influencers on the Internet by Time Magazine in 2017. Pruitt edits under the pseudonym Ser Amantio di ...
Who is Pruitt on CBS?
Pruitt was featured on CBS This Morning in January 2019. In the interview, Pruitt described the first article he worked on about a distant ancestor ( Peter Francisco ). He described his commitment to help boost Wikipedia's coverage of notable women, one area in which Wikipedia critics have noted the site falls short.
Did Pruitt get a job during the recession?
Being unemployed during the recession, Pruitt took to spending hours editing, which had the unexpected effect of not getting job interviews, since potential interviewers often confused it with Julian Assange's WikiLeaks.
What is Wikipedia used for?
Wikipedia is a free Encyclopedia made by people for people, used for research, study or casual learning on almost every subject on Earth
How many editors are there on Wikipedia?
In total, there have been hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia writers/editors over its 13 year history. There is no central editorial board, but even so,
How many Wikipedias are there?
There are a few hundred different Wikipedias, each in a different language. Each one is written and edited by volunteers. These volunteers have created policies and guidelines, that are pretty extensive and outline the project's goals; when disagreements arise, the most important thing is to make reference to those policies and guidelines.
Can anyone edit Wikipedia?
Anyone, Wikipedians or anonymous users, can edit Wikipedia articles. All edits history are saved and anyone can undo inaccurate/malicious edits to the last reliable version of the article.
Where is the talk tab on Wikipedia?
Click on the tab called "Talk" at the upper left corner of the page , and see if anybody has left comments about the article.
Is Wikipeida free for volunteers?
Volunteer editors who either use their IP or an account, contributes to Wikipedia and other sister projects. And it is for free. No paid editing is allowed on Wikipeida.
Who edits Wikipedia?
Basically everybody edits Wikipedia articles, you can do it, I have edited some in the past
How many people edit Wikipedia?
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia famously allows anyone to edit its content. More than 34 million people have registered a username, but only a little more than 100,000 regularly contribute to the site. Pruitt is one of just seven who have reached more than a million edits, and he’s the only editor over the 2 million mark.
How many edits does Steven Pruitt have?
0. Steven Pruitt has more than 2.5 million edits to Wikipedia articles to his credit. Yes, 2.5 million. That’s a lot of editing to a lot of articles, so you’d understand if he couldn’t come up with the one that he most enjoyed working on.
How many edits does Pruitt do per day?
Pruitt has his finger in so many pies that if you do the math, you realize he has averaged more than 540 edits per day. You score an edit whenever you save your changes, so one edit could be anything from fixing a typo to overhauling an article. Pruitt considers himself a WikiGnome (according to Wikipedia, “a wiki user who makes useful incremental edits without clamouring for attention”), and he works the gamut, though much of his recent focus is on “authority control” — linking entries to worldwide library catalogues — and especially on categorizing articles. “It keeps me out of trouble more than anything,” he says of his time-consuming hobby. “It allows me to scratch the scholarly itch.”
How many articles has Pruitt written?
Moreover, in the past 13 years, he has generated more than 31,000 original articles, conducting his research via books, newspapers, online sources and occasional field excursions. Want to know about the United States Lighthouse Society, the biblical figure of Omar, the composer Margaret Bonds, the Nsukka group of Nigerian artists, the communes of French Martinique? Pruitt — or Ser Amantio di Nicolao, the Wikipedia handle he took from a minor character in the Puccini opera “Gianni Schicchi” (naturally, he’s an opera lover) — has an entry for each.
How many pages does Pruitt have?
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, Pruitt is the most prolific contributor to the English version of the digital encyclopedia. Of its nearly 5.7 million pages, he has edited a staggering one-third.
How many notes are in the Pohick Church article?
Thanks to Pruitt, the Pohick Church article now includes 122 notes and references to external sources, including records of the Fairfax Genealogical Society and a digitized version of the Truro Parish Colonial vestry minutes. “My interests are maybe not the most ordinary,” concedes the 34-year-old, “but I have them, and I follow them.”
Who is the editor of Democracy Dies in Darkness?
Democracy Dies in Darkness. Magazine. The Wikipedia contributor behind 2.5 million edits. Steven Pruitt, 34, of Virginia is the top editor of the English-language Wikipedia, with more than 2.5 million edits to his credit. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) By Stephen Harrison. October 2, 2018.
How many edits has Steven Pruitt made?
Steven Pruitt has made nearly 3 million edits on Wikipedia and written 35,000 original articles. It's earned him not only accolades but almost legendary status on the internet.
Why is Pruitt considered one of the most influential people on the internet?
Pruitt was named one of the most influential people on the internet by Time magazine in part because one-third of all English language articles on Wikipedia have been edited by Steven. An incredible feat, ignited by a fascination with his own history.
How many articles does Pruitt have?
It's earned him not only accolades but almost legendary status on the internet. The online encyclopedia now boasts more than 5.7 million articles in English and millions more translated into other languages – all written by online volunteers. Pruitt was named one of the most influential people on the internet by Time magazine in part ...
How many people use Wikipedia?
And yet it not only exists, it almost is the Web: Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website in the world, with 22.5 million contributors and 736 million edits in English alone. It’s as if the entire population of Australia (23.6 million) each contributed 30 times. Last year Wikimedia sites overall (which includes the likes of Wikiquote and Wiktionary, as well as Wikipedia itself) averaged 20 billion pageviews per month.
How many languages are there in the stewards?
Among the 36 current stewards, only one is monolingual (Bsadowski1, who only lists English in his profile); as a group they average 3.6 languages per person. The group includes native speakers of Azerbaijani, Indonesian, Tamil, Swedish, and Sicilian — among the 33 unique languages the stewards can claim competence in.
What is a steward?
One steward is an expert on American roads and highways; another on Jupiter and its moons; one on Ancient Greek; another on theoretical physics. To each their own constellation of Wikimedia pages and resources (of course, quite a few are interested in computers). They come to the project through different paths, too.
Why is Yup a successful project?
Yup, the largest and most successful collaborative project in history, the modern center of human knowledge — a radically participatory model for this technologic age — is possible because people find it inherently satisfying to participate.
Why do libertarians and anarchists say it all works?
Libertarians and anarchists say it all works because the project lacks a central authority ; capitalists boast about the laissez-faire dynamic and tendency toward equilibrium; socialists suggest that Wikimedia is an egalitarian model unaffected by capitalist incentives.
Why does participation and administration work?
Participation and administration works not because anyone is paid or recognized, but apparently because people are authentically interested in the project. In fact, many stewards have expressed adamant opposition to payment. Among the stewards I talked with, satisfaction depended only on the intrinsic nature of the project itself: instant gratification from immediate publishing, the ability to spread knowledge, and learn — and yes, because it is fun.
What is the weirdest, wildest, most successful participatory project in history?
What the weirdest, wildest, most successful participatory project in history tells us about working together. Wikimedia, the “movement” that includes Wikipedia and all the other Wiki-things, shouldn’t really exist. Its basic operating procedure defies our strongest convictions about incentives, work, and community: It is made with no form ...
How many edits does Knapp have?
Today, Knapp has nearly 1.5 million Wikipedia edits to his name. Considering an average of one minute per edit, he’s spent a total of 1,041 days (2.8 years) editing — though his pace has admittedly slowed a bit from his glory days.
How many edits did Justin Knapp make?
In April of 2012, after 7 years of tireless dedication to his craft, Knapp became the first Wikipedia Editor to surpass 1,000,000 edits, a feat so Herculean that Jimmy Wales, the site’s founder, proclaimed April 20th “Justin Knapp Day”:
What university did Knapp go to?
At the time, Knapp was three years into a college degree at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and had an insatiable appetite for new knowledge. To the young intellectual, Wikipedia was a treasure trove of accessible information.
How many articles are there in Wikipedia?
As of this morning, the English-language Wikipedia contains 4,985,975 articles. If these were printed and bound into books — each 25cm tall by 5cm thick, like Britannica — there would be 2,207 volumes, each containing 1,600,000 words.
What was Koavf's first contribution to Wikipedia?
The following winter, Knapp realized that if he started making edits, he could “play a substantial part in creating and maintaining the site’s content.” From an anonymous IP address, he made his first contribution: an addition to the “Political Status of Taiwan” wiki. Shortly thereafter, he created a username, “koavf”, and devoted himself to a life of Wikipedia martyrdom.
What was Kurt Vonnegut's main interest?
He began with a few of his interests: international relations and conflicts (specifically relating to Western Sahara), Chinese history, country flags, and music. Most of his early edits were simply grammatical corrections, or small additions, but eventually he graduated to creating entire “portals” ( Western Sahara) and drastically re-writing major pages (George Orwell, Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, Kurt Vonnegut).
When did Knapp start using Wikipedia?
Though he’d used Wikipedia once before for a high school project on India, Knapp first became a regular reader of the site in 2003, two years after Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched it. Back then, there were only around 100,000 articles, but the content was growing at a rate of 200 new pages per day, largely thanks to a growing team of community contributors.
Overview
Steven Pruitt (born April 17, 1984) is an American Wikipedia editor with the highest number of edits made on the English Wikipedia, at over 5 million, having made at least one edit to one-third of all English Wikipedia articles. He has also created more than 33,000 Wikipedia articles. Pruitt was named as one of the 25 most important influencers on the Internet by Time magazine in 2017.
Early life and education
Pruitt was born on April 17, 1984, in San Antonio, Texas, the only child of Alla Pruitt, a Russian Jewish immigrant, and Donald Pruitt of Richmond, Virginia. His mother emigrated from the Soviet Union under the loosening of the policy of Jewish migration under Leonid Brezhnev, while his father worked as a college professor in Virginia. They met when they were both teachers in the Defense Language Institute's Russian Department at Lackland Air Force Base, close to San Antonio.
Career
In 2017, Pruitt was a contractor for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where he worked with records and information and preferred to work on paper. In 2020, he became a records manager at the Defense Health Agency. As of 2021, he works for Chenega IT Enterprise Services, a contractor for the Defense Health Agency.
Wikipedia editing
Pruitt began editing Wikipedia in June 2004. His first Wikipedia article was about Peter Francisco, a Portuguese-born American Revolutionary War hero known as the "Virginia Hercules". His favorite article to work on is the Virginia Pohick Church. He created his current account in January 2006 while a senior at the College of William & Mary. Prior to creating his current account, he had edited under several accounts for which he kept forgetting the password. Being unemployed during the
Personal life
Pruitt's non-Wikipedia-related interests include the Capitol Hill Chorale, in which he sings. He is an avid fan of opera, which started from his parents' inculcation at an early age, and this passion provided inspiration for his Wikipedia username "Ser Amantio di Nicolao" – after a minor character in the 1918 Puccini opera Gianni Schicchi. Pruitt is also a fan of classical music. As of 2018, he is single and living with his parents as their caregiver due to the high costs of housing in the Washi…
Distinctions
• Time's "The 25 Most Influential People on the Internet" (2017)
External links
• Meet the man behind a third of what's on Wikipedia – CBS This Morning's piece on Pruitt