Steven Pruitt

Submission 44,005

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About

Steven Pruitt is an American Wikipedian. He is known as the most prolific English-language editor on Wikipedia,, having made a third of the site's edits.

History

According to Pruitt, he began editing Wikipedia in 2004 with his first entry on Peter Fransisco, a Portuguese-born American who fought in the Revolution War.^[1] Two years later, on January 4th, 2006, Pruitt launched his user name Ser Amantio di Nicolao with an entry on Michael Pacher.^[2]

As of 2019, he has made more than 3 million edits to Wikipedia and has penned more than 35,000 entries.^[3]

Reputation

In 2017, Time magazine^[4] named Pruitt one of the "25 Most Influential People on the Internet." In their description, the wrote:

"In an era defined by fake news, the 33-year-old Virginian (real name: Steven Pruitt) has emerged as one of the internet’s most prolific guardians of fact. By day, he’s a contractor for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But by night -- or more realistically, whenever he has free time -- Pruitt voluntarily works as an editor for Wikipedia, the increasingly popular online encyclopedia. Since 2006, he has made roughly 2 million Wikipedia edits, more than any other English-language editor.

Additionally, Pruitt is known for fighting "systematic bias" on the platform, working to write more entries about women of note. Started in 2015 by Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, the Women In Red project aims to close the gender gap between male and female biographies on the site. Stephenson-Goodknight called Pruitt a "superhero" for his help with the project. Ozy writes,^[3] "Two years and tens of thousands of articles later, it’s made a small dent, as the proportion of female subjects rose from 15 percent to 17.4 percent. Pruitt has written many of them."

On January 26th, 2019, CBS interviewed Pruitt about his work for Wikipedia (shown below). The video received more than 600,000 views on YouTube. When uploaded to the /r/videos^[5] subreddit several days later, the post received more than 1,200 points (89% upvoted) and 250 comments.

On January 28th, Redditor^[6] GrandmasterBow posted a Carefully, He's a Hero meme featuring Pruitt on the /r/dankmemes subreddit. The post received more than 94,000 points (93% upvoted) and 1,200 comments within two days (shown below).

The following day, Redditor wacrover posted an article from The Washington Post^[7] about Pruitt in the /r/TodayILearned. The post^[8] received more than 800 points (93% upvote) and 55 comments.

Steven Pruitt has made nearly 3 million edits on Wikipedia and written 35,000 original articles- all for free. CBSNEWS.COM Meet the man behind a third of what's on Wikipedia carefully, he's a hero

Criticism

About What Was Expected Tweet

On January 28th, 2019, following the interview with CBS, Twitter ^[9] user @jenniferjmedina tweeted a screenshot of the video with the caption, "Yup, looks about what was expected." The post received more than 2,600 retweets and 17,000 likes in two days (shown below, left).

Many took offense to the tweet, stating that the tweet was meanspirited. That day, Redditor^[10] Lelaru posted the tweet in the /r/iamatotalpieceofshit subreddit with the title "POS makes fun of a hero's appearance." The post received more than 76,000 points (84% upvoted) and 2,400 comments.

Author and advice columnist Beth McColl responded to the tweet^[11] with "this is so needlessly unkind." The post received more than350 retweets and 21,000 likes in 24 hours (shown below, center). Throughout the coming days, others questioned why the author wrote the tweet (example below, right).