Comment by indigo945
5 hours ago
On the contrary, it's precisely by "risking" the scheme that the self-promotion became effective.
It's quite unlikely for anybody to stumble upon any given English-language Wikipedia article by chance, given that there's literally billions of them now - therefore, the promotional value of having a Wikipedia article on something even in a popular language is negligible. However, by spamming all the Wikipedias, and having this "scheme" discovered, Woodard created a situation where he is widely reported on as the artist that spammed Wikipedia, and has therefore received the five minutes of fame that he so desperately wanted.
If he had stuck to spamming the English Wikipedia, would he have ended up on the frontpage of HN?
This was clearly the endgame all along.
Quietly having all these articles might be personally satisfying in some way, but his obvious appetite for fame or notoriety points toward him wanting the scheme to be exposed. In fact I would not be entirely surprised if he somehow instigated the discovery of his activities.