Wikipedia's GSS is a paid editor called Pawan Kumar

Many professional Wikipedia editors suspect that GSS, Mer-C and Pradixicae have skin in the game. How else could they justify their long hours spent editing Wikipedia?

I gathered evidence about GSS's Upwork editing operation over the course of two years. I contacted the subjects of Wikipedia articles which GSS targeted and asked them which Wikipedians they had been in contact with prior.

Not surprisingly, most subjects did not want to talk to me. However, one subject agreed. The Anglo-Russian actor, Andrew Byron.

Byron told me he spoke to four Wikipedia editors on the freelancing site Upwork. He struck a deal with one and worked with them to draft content for a Wikipedia entry about himself.

At 16:48 GMT on the 9th of March, Byron's chosen Wikipedia editor uploaded a page titled Andrew Byron. At 16:49 just one minute late GSS reverted the page to draft and left this edit summary.

"GSS moved page Andrew Byron to Draft:Andrew Byron without leaving a redirect: Violation of WP:TOU; vet through AfC."

Moving an article from mainspace to draft space is a tactic used by Wikipedia sleuths when they don't have the administerial right to delete a page. Draftification is, in essence, a form of soft-deletion.

At 16:50 GSS tagged the Andrew Byron draft as an undisclosed paid edit.

At 16:51 GSS moved the page for the British quango Tech Nation page to draft with the edit summary "GSS moved page Talk:Tech Nation (organisation) to Draft talk:Tech Nation (organisation) without leaving a redirect: Violation of WP:TOU per off-wiki evidence; vet through AfC"

 Then, at 16:52 GSS added the undisclosed paid editing tag to the Tech Nation (organisation) draft. Now it's the off-wiki evidence part of this that I am interested in. How does one obtain off-wiki evidence? Does GSS have a crystal ball? Or better yet, an active Upwork profile?

Bear with me here, this next part isn't a digression I assure you.

So on GSS' user page, they state that they are from India and have committed their real-life identity using the SH512 function. Bear that in mind I'll come back to that in a minute but first I want you to take a look at this screenshot.

As a courtesy to our visually impaired readers, I will describe the screenshot. The screenshot shows that Andrew Byron only spoke to four editors on Upwork.

For those that don't use the platform these days, Upwork only allows recruiters to send out three invites. Andrew invited an American Editor, a Pakistani editor and an editor who for now shall remain nameless and stateless. However, a fourth editor contacted our dear Andrew. This fourth editor just so happens to also be from India and he has also verified his real-life identity and geographical location. This Upworker also started editing Wikipedia in the same year as GSS: 2014. We can see that from this screenshot of his Upwork profile.

Coincidence? Methinks not.

The interesting thing though about this particular editor from India is his profile isn't publicly searchable, one can't simply reach out to him. No, he approaches you. He approached Andrew and extracted as much information as he could out of him, which wasn't actually all that much as Andrew had already made his hiring decision.

So what do we know so far? We know that Andrew Byron placed a "Wikipedia editor wanted" advert on Upwork. This is corroborated by GSS in his contributions from that day. "Violation of WP:TOU per off-wiki evidence; vet through AfC". We also know that acting on this intelligence, within one minute of the page going live GSS reverted it to draft and tagged it as a paid edit.

Now although we can't be sure, it's starting to look like GSS gained this intelligence by posing as a paid Wikipedia editor on Upwork, which arouses my suspicions. How does he gain the trust of his clients? Surely no one would talk to him or divulge any sensitive information about their project? Unless the prospective paid editor has some credentials or better still, feedback.

So let's take a closer look at our entrepreneurial Indian friend's Upwork feedback, shall we?

Wow, that's some impressive feedback. This guy is a real pro and the feedback is recent too. He's a prolific paid Wikipedia editor. He even saved a page from deletion. I wonder how he did that? Saving pages from deletion requires a serious sock-puppet army.

He's shared some examples in his portfolio.

Here's another clip from his portfolio.

What a shame he keeps his profile hidden from the masses, I wonder why that could be? I think it's because he doesn't want any of his Wiki buddies to know that he is in fact a paid editor and using his position as, how he puts it "a senior Wikipedia editor". This is after all someone who has disclosed their real-life identity to Wikipedia.

However, I suspect duplicity. What better way to get ahead of the competition in the increasingly saturated paid editing marketplace than to be both practitioner and police.

I believe GSS is the editor behind this Upwork profile. I think he is taking orders and doing the work using a variety of sock-puppets, and if he doesn't get a job he uses his main account to shut down the project as soon as it goes live as he did with Andrew Byron.

Two weeks after GSS moved Andrew Byron's page to draft, Pawan Kumar got back in touch with Byron. Pawan claimed he could get the page reinstated.

This seems to be GSS'/Kumar's modus operandi. Find out which jobs are out for tender on Upwork, make a note of it and watch the new page feed. Once the page pops up, he soft-deletes it by moving it to draft space. Finally, after a couple of weeks, he contact's the article's subject and offers to reinstate their page for a nominal fee.

What other evidence exists

I needed more evidence to support my claims. So, I put "Pawan Kumar" + "GSS" into Google. It turns out GSS is a school in India and Pawan Kumar attended it.

You do the math.