For 7 years, Wikipedian has fixed the same error 47,000 times
Do you think, know what obsession and perfectionism are? This is probably not the case. Meet the Wikipedia editor under the nickname Giraffedata , his real name is Bryan Henderson. From 2007 to the present, he has made more than 47,000 edits on Wikipedia .
Henderson is something of a cult character in the Wikipedian community. When they talked about him at a community conference, the audience applauded the hero .
The 51-year-old programmer from the USA is among the 1000 most prolific editors . But, unlike the others, he did not use bots: all edits were done exclusively by hand.
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Even more surprisingly, Brian Henderson focused his attention on the same grammatical error, which he corrected article by article, week after week, for more than 7 years. His attention was attracted by the phrase-parasite “composed of” , which he deleted again and again.
Henderson says he took up the editing every Sunday before bed. For an hour of work he managed to correct 70-80 errors.
It should be noted that the work of the programmer was not entirely manual labor. First, he searched for incorrect phrases through Google, and then used an HTML parser, written on his own, to look for matches in articles. The program generated a list of articles to change on the Henderson site, so it was relatively easy to follow links and correct texts.
It must be admitted that not all professionals praised Henderson's work. For example, in 2009, someone complained about him to Jimmy Wales, the founder and leader of Wikipedia, about the abnormal activity of the editor. One way or another, but Henderson continues his work to improve the world.
Henderson is something of a cult character in the Wikipedian community. When they talked about him at a community conference, the audience applauded the hero .
The 51-year-old programmer from the USA is among the 1000 most prolific editors . But, unlike the others, he did not use bots: all edits were done exclusively by hand.
')
Even more surprisingly, Brian Henderson focused his attention on the same grammatical error, which he corrected article by article, week after week, for more than 7 years. His attention was attracted by the phrase-parasite “composed of” , which he deleted again and again.
Henderson says he took up the editing every Sunday before bed. For an hour of work he managed to correct 70-80 errors.
It should be noted that the work of the programmer was not entirely manual labor. First, he searched for incorrect phrases through Google, and then used an HTML parser, written on his own, to look for matches in articles. The program generated a list of articles to change on the Henderson site, so it was relatively easy to follow links and correct texts.
It must be admitted that not all professionals praised Henderson's work. For example, in 2009, someone complained about him to Jimmy Wales, the founder and leader of Wikipedia, about the abnormal activity of the editor. One way or another, but Henderson continues his work to improve the world.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/376169/
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