This Prolific Nerd Is Shaping the Future of Wikipedia

[Sanguine]

The act was a touch sophomoric in retrospect, but in Steven Pruitt’s defense, he was, in fact, a college sophomore when he sat down at his computer to compose his first article for a 3-year-old website called Wikipedia. Peter Francisco was a noteworthy subject — a brutally effective Revolutionary War soldier known as the “Virginia Hercules” — but he was also Pruitt’s ancestor. Steven probably wouldn’t do it again, though he considers such nepotism OK so long as it meets the standards for objectivity that have helped build Wikipedia into a credible global collaboration, a triumph of open source information that serves as a microcosm for the potential and pitfalls of the internet itself.

It may have been a youthful transgression, but the Francisco article launched Pruitt on a journey to become by far the most prolific English language Wikipedian — as the site’s editors are known — with more than 2.2 million edits pixeled into history (the next closest has completed a mere 1.8 million edits). What’s more, Pruitt has turned his unpaid hobby — he works as a federal contractor in information management for Customs and Border Protection by day — into a crusade to improve Wikipedia’s functionality and chip away at its gender imbalance....

http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/this-prolific-nerd-is-shaping-the-future-of-wikipedia/79469?utm_source=dd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=02132018&variable=7d67ea2b311a5f5441b5cd0e7edca8ef

Somewhat informative.