Show and tell and tell and tell

Here’s a guy who has ~~a lot of time on his hands~~ a thirst for knowledge.

Meet the man behind a third of what’s on Wikipedia
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. […]

“I think for a long time there was an attitude of, ‘That’s nice, dear. The boy’s crazy. I don’t know why he wastes his time, the boy’s crazy,'” Pruitt said of what his parents think of his volunteer gig. That may have changed when Time magazine named him one of the top 25 most influential people on the internet, alongside President Trump, J.K. Rowling and Kim Kardashian West.

I took a leaf out of Steven’s book and tried research a little wider to look for some more articles about him. Here’s one from the alumni magazine of the William & Mary University in Virginia.

Steven Pruitt ’06: Wikipedia’s most prolific editor
He began dabbling in Wikipedia when he discovered the online encyclopedia while he was attending William & Mary as an art history major. The first article he wrote was about Peter Francisco, a Portuguese-born Revolutionary War hero known as the “Virginia Giant” who was also Pruitt’s great-great-great-great- great-great grandfather on his father’s side of the family. Since that first contribution, he’s written more than 31,000 other articles — some, he acknowledges, with the aid of a template.

“He cares so intensely about the spread of knowledge,” says Bethany Brookshire ’04, a friend from college who lives in the Washington area. “The instant he learns something, he has to tell you.”

I wonder if he’s been tempted to edit his own entry on Wikipedia. The page has certainly been quite busy this month, with this fresh set of articles about him doing the rounds.