> What was the point of spending years as a productive administrator, making tens of thousands of edits and logging thousands of actions, to implode the whole thing over a pointless argument on an RfA talk page?
Maybe they just honestly enjoyed the work, then they didn't feel like it anymore, and banned themselves.
It let them have the last laugh - they just kept doing what they wanted even after being banned, then ended it on their own terms when they felt like it.
It's not like they lost anything, except the opportunity to perform unpaid work and get more articles written about them from people who cannot fathom someone would voluntarily relinquish some meaningless position.
it means they lost the power to use Wikipedia to promote another scam. The original account was no troll doing it for the lulz, they were after money and possibly actually a group of people. So either this revelation is now fake for whatever reason, or there is more going on. In either case, all of the activity of said admin (Lourdes) should probably be looked at with concern. Possible other scams to be found.
It seems like you are reading into it too much, the account only ever shilled for one company, not that it makes it okay, but that makes it more likely a personal affiliation rather than an admin for hire.
It seems you missunderstood me, I did not say they were for hire. But they were after money. And they got money by convincing students they can get internationaly accepted and sought for MBAs, while they were worthless in reality. And wikipedia was promoting that fraudulent school for 4 years, repeatedly deleting sources exposing the scam.
That was organized. And maybe they found new projects to work on after the old got exposed too much, or indeed freelance, sell out their wiki skills to other malicious actors. At the moment it is all not really clear to me.
This person made thousands of other legitimate changes, it seems a stretch to say someone would do all that just as a marketing tactic, that is a whole lot of effort for questionable results. I mean, how many people go to Wikipedia for college recommendations? How many people are going to attend a school they otherwise wouldn’t because they looked it up on Wikipedia? I’m sure it’s not zero, but we can’t be talking about many.
The article I linked claimed, that indeed quite a few persons in rural india believed wikipedia. Also labour in india is cheap, I doubt he did it himself, but payed someone to do it.
In general, many people do trust wikipedia. And PR companies get payed much more, to get some information inside.
Looks like parent reads "for hire" in the more specific "mercenary" meaning, and not in the very generic "old enough to be employed" sense you seem to use.
>>> making tens of thousands of edits and logging thousands of actions, to implode the whole thing over a pointless argument
Sounds to me like deep cover. Perhaps this wasn't one person. Perhaps this was a project run by a team over many years. All those tiny edits? The ability to spin up so many accounts without being detected? Getting privileges to those new accounts? These are the techniques of professionals. Perhaps this was a state actor. Perhaps an advertising agency. Any number of organizations might want to have a high-level wikipedia editor account as a tool for something. The fact that the persona was never clearly weaponized doesn't mean it wasn't there.
There was like 3-4 accounts that we know of. There is absolutely nothing here that that requires more than one person with a few hours of time on their hand each day.
Also their behavior doesn't mesh with being a state actor or organization - why would they throw away their admin account to get a last laugh in an internet argument? Why would their cover be an admin account of bad enough temperament and decision-making that it draws attention to itself and risks getting banned?
Maybe they just honestly enjoyed the work, then they didn't feel like it anymore, and banned themselves.
It let them have the last laugh - they just kept doing what they wanted even after being banned, then ended it on their own terms when they felt like it.
It's not like they lost anything, except the opportunity to perform unpaid work and get more articles written about them from people who cannot fathom someone would voluntarily relinquish some meaningless position.