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AMA: Steven Pruitt, a Wikipedian with 3M edits

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Re: AMA: Steven Pruitt, a Wikipedian with 3M edits

#2

Post by skilled »

Apparently, higher-up, editors get tools that let them make modifications to multiple threads simultaneously. [1]

And, Wikipedia happens to count those edits separately even if the editor applies the fix to multiple articles at once as a single action. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pr...

Re: AMA: Steven Pruitt, a Wikipedian with 3M edits

#3

Post by aboutruby »

skilled wrote: post #2

Apparently, higher-up, editors get tools that let them make modifications to multiple threads simultaneously. [1] And , Wikipedia happens to count those edits separately even if the editor applies the fix to multiple articles at once as a single action. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pr...

I didn't find whether this counts as a single action but I found the website hosting most of the tools: https://tools.wmflabs.org (I was looking for this site for a while and couldn't find it)

Re: AMA: Steven Pruitt, a Wikipedian with 3M edits

#5

Post by mormegil »

skilled wrote: post #2

Apparently, higher-up, editors get tools that let them make modifications to multiple threads simultaneously. [1] And , Wikipedia happens to count those edits separately even if the editor applies the fix to multiple articles at once as a single action. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pr...

Wikipedia (or, rather, MediaWiki, the wiki engine powering it) has a comprehensive API (see e. g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox), allowing all kinds of automated tasks. You do not need any special permission to use it, however, you are rate-limited, unless you get an exemption. And, there are many ready-made tools utilizing the API for common tasks. Either local tools like Pywikibot or hosted online like many tools on tools.wmflabs.org

Re: AMA: Steven Pruitt, a Wikipedian with 3M edits

#9

Post by aboutruby »

curiousgal wrote: post #4

It's a bit sad that this guy mainly came into the spotlight because of some Twitter user making fun of his appearance and not because of his work.

That's not true, that's just some internet drama, the CBS interview was the starting point [1], which is actually not great compared to the Washington Post article [3].

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-man-behind-a-third-of-...

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/meet-the-m...

Re: AMA: Steven Pruitt, a Wikipedian with 3M edits

#10

Post by cooper12 »

skilled wrote: post #2

Apparently, higher-up, editors get tools that let them make modifications to multiple threads simultaneously. [1] And , Wikipedia happens to count those edits separately even if the editor applies the fix to multiple articles at once as a single action. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pr...

The tool is called AWB, [0] and a better way to explain it would be that it lets you work on lists of articles, applying the same change to each, but each edit still has to be approved one-by-one. It's only bots that are normally allowed to just fire away edits and those have to be granted permission beforehand. [1] Pruitt does not have any special bot exemption, [2] and those running bots are usually expected to create a separate account for them. Indeed, looking at his contributions, [3] they have the tag "AWB". The requirements are also not that high, needing only "250 non-automated mainspace edits or 500 total mainspace edits" to be eligible.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_policy

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ser_Aman...

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