Meet the man behind a third of what's on Wikipedia

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-man-behind-a-third-of-whats-on-wikipedia/

by hellofunk • 7 years ago

34 13 7 years ago

cbsnews.com

SHAKEDECADE• 7 years ago

‘History is written by the vict..err..a huge history buff’

ptest12• 7 years ago

I don’t get it- the title is totally incorrect. He hasn’t written a third of what’s on Wikipedia.

yesenadam• 7 years ago

Well, to be fair, the title doesn't say he wrote it. Just that he's behind it. Which to me doesn't have any clear or even vague meaning. If someone asked, I couldn't tell them. But it is vaguely arguably true, I think. I've seen much worse.

lkbm2• 7 years ago

I assume they're dividing his "almost 3 million edits" by the "more than 5.7 million articles" on en.wp.

It's obviously extremely wrong, but their incentives aren't for being sticklers on accuracy. It's on being sensational.

ptest12• 7 years ago

Yeah, that makes sense. But it’s still wrong!

StevePerkins• 7 years ago

CBS News. I don't even really notice sensationalized or misleading headlines so much these days, until they're pointed out to me.

Perhaps this guy's contribution count represents one-third of a top-contributors list, and the author conflated that with "all of Wikipedia" out of laziness? Curious that "Steven Pruitt" (or any usernames that look like they might be owned by him) doesn't even show up on any of Wikipedia's own lists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_...

ahuibers• 7 years ago

He is on those top-contributors lists. His username is "Ser Amantio di Nicolao" per article.

basscomm• 7 years ago

His username, Ser Amantio Di Nicolao, shows up on both of those lists.

wheelerwj• 7 years ago

yeah you're right, its not even a little bit accurate.

dooglius• 7 years ago

Latest contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contribut...

Not all edits are of equal weight; most of it looks like non-content-based edits, like adding/reorganizing categories. Not to say these contributions aren't valuable--this sort of thing is certainly important--but the article quite overstates his impact.

aboutruby2• 7 years ago

Categories are part of the content (at the bottom of each page) and actually require a lot of Wikipedia-specific knowledge.

aboutruby2• 7 years ago

Pretty annoying how such an interesting person gets so badly interviewed and kind of mocked by the show.

Here is a much better article about him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/meet-the-m...

Still that's the only video of him I could find, pretty interesting.

Meet the man behind a third of what's on Wikipedia

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