Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide

If you have a close association with the subject of a Wikipedia article, and you wish to edit the article, you are bound by some restrictions. The short version:

Disclosure

For paid editors

The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use state:

Paid contributions without disclosure

These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. You must make that disclosure in at least one of the following ways:

  • a statement on your user page, either custom-written or using {{paid}},
  • a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or
  • a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.

Applicable law, or community and Foundation policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure.

Also see FAQ on disclosure of paid contributions.

For volunteer editors

Ethically, you need to disclose your conflict of interest. You have one if you are editing about yourself, or anyone you know personally. You can do so on your user page, or on the talk page of the article you have a conflict of interest with.

Advice

  1. Register with an independent username. Your username should represent you as an individual, not your company or organization as a whole. It may be your real name, or it may be a name you invent to represent yourself, but it should not be your company's or client's official name or the names of its products or services, or be designed to promote them. Also, multiple people may not ever use the same account. Any of these are grounds for a block of the account until the username is changed. Some editors will use a name like John at Montane Corp to make clear that they're from an organization but editing as an individual.
  2. Declare your conflict of interest. Being transparent about who you are and who you're working for is the easiest way to gain the community's trust, get help, avoid embarrassing revelations of misconduct, and possibly obey the law. Clearly state your background and goals on your userpage as explained here and at the talk pages of articles related to your COI. Here are positive examples of editor disclosures: 1, 2, 3, 4. It's also appropriate to add the connected contributor template to the article's talk page. The COI template may also be used on the article, if there are neutrality concerns being discussed.
  3. Do not make direct edits to live articles where you have a COI. Wikipedia's guidelines strongly discourage COI editing. Editing articles that have nothing to do with your COI is allowed, but the safest way to avoid problems is simply to never make direct edits to live articles. That doesn't mean your contributions are unwelcome. Instead of direct editing, propose changes, get editors to review them, discuss any issues, and let others make the changes. See this simplified guide to making edit requests. Do not use large language models (AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, etc.) to write your suggestions.
  4. Create a draft or request an article. If you would like to request the creation of a new article where you might have a COI, create a draft or request an article. If you create a draft, do it forwards by finding reliable sources first and then summarizing them (rather than writing the draft first and then sourcing it). Once the draft is finished, you can then ask someone to review it by typing {{subst:submit}}. If you request an article, be sure to add sources.

What to do when something goes wrong

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Refraining from Certain Activities", Wikimedia Foundation terms of use.