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Meet the Man Behind a Third of What's On Wikipedia (cbsnews.com)
Thelasko shares a report from CBS News: 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. 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 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 much money does he make from his work? None. "The idea of making it all free fascinates me. My mother grew up in the Soviet Union ... So I'm very conscious of what, what it can mean to make knowledge free, to make information free," he said. Pulling from books, academic journals and other sources, he spends more than three hours a day researching, editing and writing. Even his day job is research, working in records and information at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He joked that his colleagues probably think he's nuts. To put in to perspective what it took for Pruitt to become the top editor, he's been dedicating his free time to the site for 13 years. The second-place editor is roughly 900,000 edits behind him, so his first place status seems safe, for now.
How much money does he make from his work? None. "The idea of making it all free fascinates me. My mother grew up in the Soviet Union ... So I'm very conscious of what, what it can mean to make knowledge free, to make information free," he said. Pulling from books, academic journals and other sources, he spends more than three hours a day researching, editing and writing. Even his day job is research, working in records and information at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He joked that his colleagues probably think he's nuts. To put in to perspective what it took for Pruitt to become the top editor, he's been dedicating his free time to the site for 13 years. The second-place editor is roughly 900,000 edits behind him, so his first place status seems safe, for now.
I used to be in the top 300 editors before I was hounded out by deletion fascists. They would all use their delete voting sockpuppets on AFD and it didn’t matter how many sources you provided if ‘they’ didn’t like it would go. Wikipedia uses its Google ranking to influence the web and if it wants you to be an unperson it will. I hope this guy gets a job at Britannica or World Book since he is wasting his talent at Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has been around for 18 years. 18 years / 3 million edits = 3 min 9 sec between edits. If you figure he has an 40 hour/week job (since Wikipedia doesn't pay him) and sleeps / showers / eats 8 hours a day, that works out to 83 seconds between edits if he did nothing but edit Wikipedia during his free time for 18 years.
It's possible, but on the other hand someone who is prepared to search out hard references is pretty valuable. There are plenty of subject experts who will type out the information they know, or amend an incorrect point, but can't really be bothered to go and find a proper reference for their edits. Having someone who will go through and do that helps make the system more robust.
I am very wary of what you are saying though. I contribute on stack exchange on engineering questions relevant to my expertise, and I've found it is really common for the SE god contributors to turn up at an extremely specialist question, bash out an waffly answer with errors, get up voted by their buddies, and before you know it the answer is accepted. Meanwhile I might write out a detailed answer and it gets buried in the system as the question is to obscure to get much further attention. It has made me very suspicous of many of the answers on that site. I think that either way it is healthly to approach these sources as starting points, and not become too dogmatic about something based on a crowd sourced article.
I think this is time for someone to post a link to the article about how the most popular contributors to sites like Wikipedia are insane people. It's based on an analysis of the amount of work and time available, where they average one edit every few minutes, 24 hours a day, for years at a time.
Damn lamers should not be involved. I read a lot of his contributions and they are easy to identify. Also he always sources them correctly. I have also seen where others have tried to modify his updates without understanding them and it has made an awful mess. Incredibly laughable stuff people try to co opt from him. I cannot imagine anyone would be fooled by some of these fake Wikipedia updates. I have emailed him directly when I had a question and he replied right away and told me what was accurate and what was inaccurate
Wikipedia's a joke, but they must be desperate for publicity. Donations are falling because their admin corps are a bunch of narcissistic psychos
Wikipedia is flush with cash, don't be fooled. Their donation drives may make it sound like they're a modern day PBS always struggling to stay alive; the truth is, they've got the funds to last them for decades already. Their goal with the donation drives though is to reach a high enough money flow that they can survive on interest on their current wealth and weather any financial down-turns etc. Essentially they want to become financially independent and be able to last forever as a free standing institution, eventually never having to ask for money again.
That's the goal at least. They're not going to collapse any time soon.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch