User:HillTippett/sandbox

Pruitt began editing Wikipedia in June 2004. His first Wikipedia article was about his great great grandfather, Peter Francisco, a Portuguese-born American Revolutionary War hero known as the "Virginia Hercules." His favorite article to work on is the Virginia Pohick Church. He created his current account in January 2006 while a senior at the College of William & Mary. Prior to creating his current account, he had edited under several accounts for which he kept forgetting the password. Being unemployed during the 2008 financial crisis, Pruitt spent hours editing, which sometimes prevented him from getting job interviews when potential interviewers confused the site with Julian Assange's WikiLeaks. In 2015, he surpassed editor Justin Knapp for the most edits. By February 2019, Pruitt had made over three million edits to Wikipedia, more than any other editor on the English Wikipedia, and he made over four million edits by February 2021. The same year, he became an Administrator. Pruitt has also created more than 33,000 Wikipedia articles, the seventh-highest tally out of any Wikipedia editor. According to Northern Virginia Magazine, "Pruitt has not literally pressed the 'edit' button 4.4 million times. One method he has used to achieve his astonishing numbers is a software tool that allows a user to make numerous identical edits simultaneously. For example, he could italicize every mention of Northern Virginia magazine across Wikipedia where it currently appears in standard font. Yet it is claimed he has not 'cheated' his way to the top spot, since that software is also available to others."

As a contributing member of the Women in Red WikiProject, his Wikipedia edits have included creating articles on more than 600 women, in order to counter the site's gender gap. Even though the majority of his work is done alone, he is also a member of the WikiProject Virginia. Pruitt, who identifies as an inclusionist and a WikiGnome, spends between three and four hours daily editing, with more on the weekends. The longest Pruitt has gone without editing Wikipedia is two or three weeks. He made the one billionth edit on Wikipedia on January 13, 2021, to the page Death Breathing. Concurrently several hundred thousand early Wikipedia edits were lost during a software upgrade.

Pruitt has credited his love of knowledge to his mother's stories of growing up in the Soviet Union.