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20th Apr 2012

Justin Knapp: One man, one million Wikipedia edits

An American man by the name of Justin Knapp has made his 1,000,000th edit to the online encyclopaedia that is Wikipedia. That's 10,000 more than his closest rival.

Oisin Collins

An American man by the name of Justin Knapp has made his 1,000,000th edit to the online encyclopaedia that is Wikipedia. That’s about 10,000 more than his closest rival.

Justin Knapp uses his spare time to update, upload and edit content on Wikipedia. He has been doing this for the past seven years and recently he hit a major milestone: 1,000,000 edits.

The 30-year-old from Indianapolis, USA, has been tweaking away at the online database for the past seven years, which works out to be 385 edits per day. Or one every four minutes if you really want to get down to it.

Aside from editing Wikipedia, Knapp has degrees in philosophy and political science from Indiana University. He mostly makes edits about politics, philosophy, religion and popular culture.

Speaking about hitting the milestone Knapp said, “Being suddenly and involuntarily unemployed will do that to you.” Nice.

He can now sit back and take a break – although we suspect he won’t – because his closest editing rival Rich Farmbrough is a good 10,000 edits behind him.

Now that’s what we call dedication, or a waste of time. Can’t decide.

Edit: An earlier version of this article said Knapp’s closest rival sat 400,000 edits behind him. However, Mr. Knapp has personally told us that this is incorrect. If only this was Wikipedia, he’d have another edit on his hands.

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