If 4 spokes broke before the repair, either the person was in an accident, or was riding on the bike with a wobbly wheel causing additional stress until the spokes broke.

Repairing and re-truing may be enough, although perhaps other spokes were damaged in the process.

For me, it is easier to just replace broken spokes as needed rather than rebuild a whole wheel.

I've broken and replaced 3 outbound spokes on my front wheel in the last year or so. Popped the spoke heads off at the J. I figure that leaves me about 15 outbound spokes left to go

I'm now at about 6 months and a couple thousand miles on the wheel without broken spokes, including a ride that took me over 150 miles from home (I packed some spares with me for that trip).

Anyway, we'll see how well the popcorn theory holds.