Interview with Steven Pruitt

In 2017, TIME Magazine featured William and Mary alumnus and Wikipedia editor Steven Pruitt ’06 on the list of the Top 25 Most Influential People on the internet. Others on the list included pop culture personality Chrissy Teigen, former President of the United States Donald Trump, and media personality Kim Kardashian. The magazine recognized Pruitt as one of the internet's most "prolific guardians of fact." With over five million Wikipedia edits to his name — more than any other English language editor — Pruitt strives to uplift stories nearly lost in history and maintain the integrity of one of the world's most notable encyclopedias. 

COURTESY IMAGE // STEVEN PRUITT

Flat Hat Magazine had the privilege of chatting with Pruitt about his rise in the Wikipedia ranks, his editing process, music, art, his time as a student at the College, and the power of taking the unexpected in stride. 

As our conversation began, so did Pruitt's editing for the evening. 

"I use a semi-automated tool — it's sort of background editing," Pruitt said. "I can actually pay attention to our conversation once I've got it teed up. I've got a list of just over 3,000 edits to make."

Pruitt explained that part of his high edit count is due to the many background tasks he takes on. These tasks include categorization work and his most recent project, short descriptions. “Short descriptions” are a feature of Wikipedia mobile that offers a brief description of the subject matter featured on the page. To demonstrate this process, Pruitt began working on the list of Canadian number-one albums of 1990.

"Short descriptions are important if you use mobile Wikipedia, which a lot of the world does," Pruitt said. "I'm working with a tool that's called AutoWikiBrowser to add short descriptions to list articles. It's just really more back-end stuff, but it's stuff that needs to be done. And really, that's a lot of what I do, which is a lot less glamorous than I think people realize, but as I say, it needs to be done.” 

Pruitt officially began his journey as a Wikipedia contributor in the summer of 2004 between his sophomore and junior years of college. During this time, Pruitt published his first Wikipedia article about his distant relative, Peter  Francisco.  Francisco — also referred to as the "Giant of the Revolution" and "Virginia Hercules" — was a Revolutionary War hero.

"Peter was a test case for me," Pruitt said. "You're talking about Wikipedia being something that can connect languages and cultures. I've known about Peter for years, so I said almost as a challenge, 'Oh, yeah? Let's see if you keep this article up.' And I really didn't think it was going to stay. But it didn't go anywhere."

 Francisco’s permanent residence on the site revealed to Pruitt the vast potential of Wikipedia. 

"We're not limited by field," Pruitt said. "We can really create a broad general interest encyclopedia, and we could then take that model into other languages as well."

In addition to English, Peter Francisco’s page has been translated into Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Indonesian, Portuguese, and Russian. 

For Pruitt, another draw to the site was its accessibility. Even with the involvement of "computer geeks" in the project, Pruitt appreciates Wikipedia's steadfast commitment to maintaining an understandable editing format. 

"That's what I liked about it," Pruitt said. "It isn't just a free website that anyone can edit. It's a free website that is designed to make it easy for anybody to edit it."

The accessibility of Wikipedia allows Pruitt to indulge his scholarly pursuits without having to be in an academic setting. 

“This allows me to write what I want at a length that I want without having to justify it for anything other than really my own pleasure,” Pruitt said.

In addition to his notable status as a prolific editor, Pruitt has recently become a vocal advocate for fighting the gender bias among articles on the site — according to Pruitt, under 15% of biographical articles in English were about women in 2014.

COURTESY IMAGE // STEVEN PRUITT

Pruitt became involved with the Women in Red Project, founded by Roger Bamkin and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight in 2014. The project aims to create more articles related to women's issues, written and artistic works by women, and biographies of women notable in their field. The "red" in the project's title refers to a hyperlink placed on a name or event featured in an article that does not have an article of its own. Often, editors will place a red hyperlink to indicate that an article should be created for the topic.

Pruitt noted the project's impact in closing the gender gap over only a few years. 

"We're changing the conversation," Pruitt said. "A lot of the talk about Women in Red focuses on how big the gender gap is. And that's true. But how much bigger was it five years ago? On Wikipedia, we've moved the needle [by] about 5% in four or five years. We're at 19.16% now for all biographical articles in English.”

At one point in the project, Pruitt found himself writing at least an article a day, ending up with more than 600 articles over the course of a year.

Pruitt’s interest in female artists and composers spurred his commitment to providing a platform for women on the site. 

“Women artists and composers have often been more marginalized, less spoken of, less discussed,” Pruitt said. “And so it has always been something that gelled with me,”. 

COURTESY IMAGE // STEVEN PRUITT

Recently, Pruitt wrote two articles about a 19th-century French opera singer with two wildly successful singing careers under two different names: Juliette Borghèse and Ufrese Borghèse. Pruitt was initially fascinated by Juliette Borghèse and her role in the notable Donizetti opera, “The Daughter of the Regiment.” It baffled Pruitt how little information there was on her life, so he leaped down the historical rabbit hole. He discovered that Juliette Borghèse had changed her name to Ufrese early in her career, ultimately splitting her narrative into two different biographies. As a result, Pruitt created two Wikipedia pages for the two Borghèses.

"If anybody comes to me and says, 'Why did you write something like this?' I can say, ‘Because this was a woman who was evidently important in her field in her day,’" Pruitt said. "And Women in Red is particularly good at that. Much of the question over the years has been framed as, 'Who gets a seat at the table?' We are broadening and deepening consensus just through these conversations, through these articles that we're writing. And that's a huge deal to me."

Pruitt has some standards a potential article subject must meet. Typically, he avoids writing about living people, instead preferring to write about notable figures from history whose stories he feels haven't been told in their entirety. 

"Notable does not mean complete," Pruitt said. “Just because a person is notable doesn't mean the article is going to be complete. So there's always going to be the possibility of something new to be added, something new to be said. The whole beauty of Wikipedia is that it's changeable, it's mutable."

In terms of the longevity of Pruitt's Wikipedia career, he has no plans of stopping any time soon and continues to uphold his policy of at least one edit a day.

"There may come a point when I feel like I've at least done every sort of mass edit that I think needs to be done," Pruitt said. "But for now, I envision it to be long-term."

His passion for uplifting stories nearly lost to time and his dedication to maintaining the integrity of Wikipedia justifies TIME Magazine's "guardian of truth" moniker. In a world rampant with misinformation, Pruitt's pursuit and publication of knowledge should leave those reading this article refreshed and optimistic. 

For Pruitt, the news that TIME had recognized him as one of the most influential figures on the internet was simply another day at the office — literally. 

"I was in the middle of a meeting at work when I got the email," Pruitt said. "I think my initial reaction was, 'Excuse me, what?’ That was very interesting. Especially because all around me, what I was hearing was, 'Oh, my God, you're on the list with Kim Kardashian.'”

For Pruitt, the bigger honor was being placed alongside jailed-Russian opposition leader Alexei Anatolievich Navalny.

"To be spoken of in the same breath as him — that, I will admit, I'm proud of," Pruitt said. "He's the kind of person who actually does things that matter and uses the internet to do things that matter. And I have great respect for anybody who has the courage that he has."

While Pruitt has made a name for himself in his post-grad life, the College — an institution Pruitt still maintains a fond place in his heart for — chartered his journey. 

One of the most impactful aspects of his undergraduate career was choir. There, Pruitt established lasting friendships and honed his craft as a tenor under the expert instruction of former choir director Dr. James Armstrong. 

"For a music program that doesn't have a lot of music majors in it and is not geared towards a broader music degree, it's a very substantial [with] a good choir, good orchestra, excellent chamber groups, ethnic groups, ethnic ensembles. . . " Pruitt said. "It's the kind of offerings you expect to see at a school with double the music programs. So many of the students were doing it for passion. It is remarkable, and I cannot stress that enough because I think it's very easy not to recognize what you've got when you've got something like that."

Pruitt is the textbook definition of a “Typical William and Mary Person” in all the best ways. He exemplifies someone who follows their passions with enthusiasm, earnestness, and curiosity. When writing articles, Pruitt’s pursuit of truth and uplifting marginalized voices and their stories inspire those around him to follow suit. 

Pruitt's advice for students striving to make their mark on the world is enduring: Rome wasn't built in a day.

"People make all the jokes about how W&M students are driven, focused, want to succeed, and want to achieve. . . that we're type-A," Pruitt said. 

But that drive comes with a downside — sometimes students at the College, especially as young graduates, can push themselves too hard, expecting world-changing success too soon.

“If you're not where you want to be by the time you're 30, don't beat yourself up over it,” Pruitt said. “I'm not saying rest on your laurels or be lazy, but be easy on yourself. That is what I wish somebody had told me upon getting ready to graduate — that whatever there is will come, but it will come in time in its own time. You don't have to worry if it doesn't happen when you expect it to happen."

Pruitt recalled how his father would talk about opening doors; however, it was up to him to decide which ones he chose to walk through. 

"The thing is, the door that I ultimately walked through that got me all the attention is a door that I would never have believed would have opened for me, even. Much less that I would have gone as far with it that I have," Pruitt said. "Be open to new ideas, new choices, and new experiences. You might be surprised when one of them will take you to something that today you think is just a whim, and tomorrow might be the cornerstone of your career.”

COURTESY IMAGE // STEVEN PRUITT