Steven Pruitt (born April 17, 1984) is an American Wikipedia editor with the highest number of edits made to the English Wikipedia, at over 5 million, having made at least one edit to one-third of all English Wikipedia articles. Pruitt first began editing Wikipedia in 2004.[2][3][4] He has also created more than 33,000 Wikipedia articles.[3] Pruitt was named as one of the 25 most important influencers on the Internet by Time magazine in 2017.[1]
Pruitt edits under the pseudonym Ser Amantio di Nicolao, which is a reference to a minor character in Giacomo Puccini's 1917 opera Gianni Schicchi.[5] He has stated that he aims to fight gender bias on Wikipedia, promoting the inclusion of women via the Women in Red project.[6]
Pruitt was born on April 17, 1984, in San Antonio, Texas, the only child of Alla Pruitt, a Russian Jewish immigrant, and Donald Pruitt of Richmond, Virginia.[3][7] His mother emigrated from the Soviet Union under the loosening of the policy of Jewish migration under Leonid Brezhnev, while his father worked as a college professor in Virginia.[6] They met when they were both teachers in the Defense Language Institute's Russian Department at Lackland Air Force Base, close to San Antonio.[7]
While growing up, Pruitt was an avid reader of classical literature and mystery stories by Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh.[7] Pruitt has credited his love of knowledge to his mother's stories of growing up in the Soviet Union.[3]
Pruitt graduated from St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2002.[8] He attended the College of William & Mary, where he sang as part of a choir,[6] and he graduated in 2006 with a degree in art history.[7]
In 2017, Pruitt was a contractor for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where he worked with records and information.[1][5] In 2020, he became a records manager at the Defense Health Agency.[9] As of 2021, he works for Chenega IT Enterprise Services, a contractor for the Defense Health Agency.[3]