http://philwelch.net

Accomplishments:

• Rewrote much of Objectivist philosophy
• Began Wikipedia:Merge lists to categories, a proposed project to merge otherwise redundant information.
  • As a test case, merged list from article Gay icon into the Gay Icons category--a project that required over 500 edits. Reactions to the test case will hopefully determine if the project moves forward, and if so, what we will do the same and what we will do differently. If you have an opinion, please post it at
• Wrote much of Firearm
• Created Ice Bowl
• 1,242 edits at last count, 700 not counting the "Gay Icon Project", which consisted primarily of easily repeated mass edits, like a "human script".

NOTE: If you are concerned with my categorization of 238 individuals and groups as "gay icons", keep in mind the following:

• I simply merged from the now-deleted list in the article Gay icon to the category. I didn't do much (well, any) fact-checking. I simply acted as a "human script".
• Please read the article Gay icon to understand what a gay icon is. A gay icon is often heterosexual, but is culturally significant to the gay community/has a large gay fanbase/etc. Judy Garland is perhaps the prototypical example.
• By categorizing some 200 articles, the job of fact-checking has been widely distributed. The Gay icon article looked poorly-maintained--if anyone was watching it, it was just one or two people. However, if the average Wikipedia article has 3 people watching over it, and 200 articles were categorized, we have spread out the fact-checking task from maybe three people to 600, most of whom are the self-appointed experts on the individuals they're monitoring articles about.

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