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Fairmount man is one of Wikipedia’s top 200 after nearly 130,000 edits

Thomsen, 74, is a retired computer programmer from Fairmount who spends about ten hours each weekday editing Wikipedia entries.

David Thomsen has made more than 120,000 edits to Wikipedia articles. Photo by Ed Hille for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It started with one edit to Wikipedia‘s page for the expression “Holy cow,” and five years and nearly 130,000 edits later, David Thomsen, or dthomsen8, is now one of Wikipedia’s top editors.

Thomsen, 74, is a retired computer programmer from Fairmount who spends about ten hours each weekday editing Wikipedia entries, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. He’s a Wikipedia “gnome,” as they’re called, who organizes “Winics,” or picnics for Philadelphia Wikipedians and gets “Wikipedia Editor” caps made in South Philadelphia to give away to others who share his passion.

After a health scare, Thomsen said he hopes to make the shift to writing entries, instead of just editing them.

Read the whole Inquirer story here.

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