The Secret King of Wikipedia

 

The guy you're looking at is the world's biggest Wikipedia editor. He is the guy who is in his room editing Wikipedia more than three million times. Who is he? Why is he doing this? And how much knowledge does he have? For the first time ever, I want to introduce you to Steven.

"Hi, I'm Steven and I have made the largest number of edits to Wikipedia in the world!"

This guy is single-handedly responsible for millions of Wikipedia edits and he lives here in a small town in Virginia, USA and he has a normal job and a normal life. You see, 16 years ago when Steven was still in university, he came across a small unknown encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to. So, he had the idea to write about his great great grandfather, Peter Francisco, who fought in the American revolutionary war. 

"I thought it'd be fun to write about Peter because I knew about him and the family knew about him but he wasn't in any mainstream encyclopedias."

So, Steven wrote about his ancestor, published it and then from that one article, he got excited because now he could educate the world from his basement.

"What I love about Wikipedia is it allows you to cover topics not usually found in the mainstream western media. It allows anybody in the world to have their voice."

So, he wrote another article and another and another and before he knew it, he's written thousands.

"It started and it was sort of like, oh, well that's cute and then when I started getting a lot of edits for it. There comes a point when it goes from that, you tell people and they're like, "You have how many (edits)? Wow!" 

So far, he has edited over 3 million and written more than 35, 000 articles and the best part he's been doing this for 16 years, three hours a day and he wasn't even paid a single dollar to do it!

"Why are you doing this for free?"

"Why am I doing it for free? Um, to be perfectly honest, I've never been very good at making money. My mother grew up in the Soviet Union and from the stories that she's told me, I understand what it's like to live in a place where access to information is so heavily guarded. If you make this information free then the more people that have access to it can do more with it and it makes for a free or better and ultimately stronger society."

But the question on everyone's mind is, "How accurate is Wikipedia and how can a guy like this help edit three million articles?" Well, turns out Wikipedia is more accurate than you think. For every article, every paragraph, even every sentence, someone like Steven has to fact-check that it's true like, super fact-check!

"The potential is practically limitless for how you can redefine who is worthy of being included in the canon of knowledge. You can create an entire ecosystem in that language online and it's user generated. The potential for where we are now is huge! The potential for where we can be in 100 years is massive! In 500 years and even a thousand years out of this, It's huge if you want to take the long view which I kind of like to do."

That's why Steven, yes, this guy in the basement was chosen as one of the most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine and I'm pretty sure you never knew that before.

Steven doesn't write based on feelings or hunches or guesses. He only writes based on facts with multiple sources and lots of evidence.

"I never depend on just one source. I'll look through books, encyclopedias, websites, anything I can get my hands on."

The world needs to thank people like Steven who give up their free time and their family time just to share information to the world, so a kid in a village 5,000 miles away can open up their phone, load up Wikipedia and learn something new entirely for free. People like Steven are the reason humanity is beautiful.