User:Teratix/Common misconceptions about Wikipedia

Various misconceptions about Wikipedia exist in the general public and the press.

Steven Pruitt
Steven Pruitt, who goes by on Wikipedia, has done extraordinary work for the project, making more than 3 million edits and writing more than 30,000 articles as of 2019. There's no need to exaggerate such incredible accomplishments, which is why it's even more of a shame when CBS News misrepresents Pruitt as "behind a third of what's on Wikipedia". The article supports this claim by explaining "one-third of all English language articles on Wikipedia have been edited by Steven" – a severe misunderstanding of the editing process. A substantial portion of Pruitt's edits employ the semi-automated program AutoWikiBrowser, which allows users to make rapid changes to many pages. These edits may be as simple as fixing a typo or changing a category – it's inaccurate to claim Pruitt would now be responsible for the entire article's content.

Finances
The Wikimedia Foundation is in sound financial condition and in no imminent danger of running out of money to fund Wikipedia's servers, despite the alarming tone of its fundraising advertisements. Several outlets have highlighted this discrepancy.

Notability
Notability has a special meaning on Wikipedia and is not synonymous with significance, importance, popularity or fame. Topics one might regard as trivial such as toilet paper orientation, exploding whales or a comprehensive list of Pokémon still meet the general notability guideline, as enough independent, reliable sources have written about them in sufficient depth. Conversely, articles one might regard as important will still be deleted if not enough sources can be found – a recent controversial instance was the deletion of an article on Clarice Phelps, a nuclear chemist. This fallacy cropped up frequently in coverage of the Strickland incident, with many outlets claiming a draft on the 2018 Nobel Prize winner was not published because she was not "important" or "famous" enough.

WikiLeaks
The website WikiLeaks, notorious for publishing leaks and classified media, is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation, despite the similar name. Jimmy Wales explained to The Independent in 2010 that "the most important message ... is that we have absolutely nothing to do with WikiLeaks". He also highlighted that WikiLeaks is not actually a wiki – users cannot collaboratively edit content. Alas, "wiki" is not a copyrighted term, so there's no way to stop WikiLeaks from keeping its confusing name in future.