Wikipedia Conflict of Interest Policy: What WP:COI Requires

What is Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy?

It is a guideline, WP:COI, that tells editors with a close relationship to a topic how to behave. A conflict of interest exists when your outside role or relationship could make you put the subject's interests ahead of Wikipedia's aim of a neutral encyclopedia. The guideline discourages direct editing of affected articles, encourages disclosure, and points connected editors to the talk page and to Articles for Creation (AfC), the review queue for new drafts.

COI is not itself proof of bad editing. It is a risk flag, and the response it asks for is transparency.

What do WP:COI and WP:PAID actually require?

WP:COI asks you to disclose and to avoid direct editing; paid disclosure is a hard requirement under the Terms of Use.

• WP:COI (guideline). Disclose the relationship. Avoid editing the article directly; propose changes on the talk page with an edit request and let an independent editor decide. Step back from disputes and deletion discussions about the subject.
• WP:PAID and the Terms of Use (requirement). The Wikimedia Terms of Use require anyone paid to contribute to disclose each employer, client and affiliation. The English-Wikipedia policy WP:PAID applies this on-wiki.

A simple way to hold both: COI is about how you edit, paid disclosure is about what you declare. A paid editor who discloses and uses talk-page requests is within policy. A paid editor who edits silently breaks the Terms of Use even if every edit was accurate.

Who does the conflict of interest policy apply to?

It applies to any editor, not only agencies. Three layers of connection are recognised:

• Financial. You are employed by, paid by, or hold an interest in the subject. This includes contractors, consultants and anyone compensated indirectly.
• Personal. A family member, partner or close friend is involved. Editing an article on your sister's company is a conflict even without money.
• Close relationship. A long-term collaborator, a member of an organisation you are heavily involved in, or anyone whose professional standing is tied to the subject.

The test is whether an outside reader would reasonably expect your editing to be influenced. The duty is the same in every layer: disclose, and route changes through independent editors. Founders and employees editing their own company's page fall squarely here; see why you should not edit your own page.

What does disclosure look like in practice?

Under the Terms of Use, a paid contributor may disclose through a statement on their user page, on the talk page of each affected article, or in the edit summary. These are three ways to meet the same duty, and good practice uses more than one.

• User page. A permanent public declaration naming the employer, the client and any other beneficiary.
• Talk page. A notice on the article, usually with the {{connected contributor (paid)}} template, so the disclosure stays attached to the page's history.
• Edit summary. A note on edits that marks them as paid, visible in the version history.

Anyone investigating the article, from a reviewer to a journalist, should be able to find the disclosure within a minute.

Which COI mistakes get pages deleted?

Four patterns recur, and all of them are concealment:

• Undisclosed accounts. A new account created to write a client's article without declaring payment. Administrators with checkuser tools investigate linked accounts, and one identified account usually exposes others. Results are posted in public sockpuppet investigations.
• Employees editing their employer's page without declaring the connection. These single-topic accounts are easy to spot.
• Silent "consultant" editing. Confidentiality is not an accepted reason to skip disclosure under the Terms of Use.
• Mixing volunteer and paid work on one account without updating the declaration, so earlier edits get re-examined too.

Consequences range from a COI tag on the article to deletion and account blocks. They attach to the editor and to the page, and sometimes to the company named in the case file.

Is paid editing allowed if you disclose it?

Yes. Neither the guideline nor the Terms of Use forbids paid editing; they forbid hiding it. A disclosed page is editorially constrained, with no promotional language, no unsourced claims and no content built mainly from the company's own material, but it is durable because there is nothing to discover. For the full picture, including the roles of disclosure and legality, read our guides on paid editing and disclosure and whether paying for a page is legal.

How do we comply with WP:COI on every project?

Paid editing on every WikiBusines project is disclosed on Wikipedia in WikiBusines' name, with no exceptions for clients who would prefer otherwise.

• Each editor keeps a public user-page declaration naming WikiBusines as employer and the client.
• Each affected article carries a talk-page paid-contributor notice.
• Edits carry a paid-status note in the summary.
• Agency, client and end beneficiary are all named, including when there is a chain of intermediaries.
• We decline projects that depend on hiding the relationship.

The commitments are also written on our guarantees page. We never guarantee that an article will be published.

What should you check before hiring a Wikipedia editor?

Ask for evidence, not reassurance. Our guide to hiring a Wikipedia agency has the full list. The core five:

1. The user-page URL of the editor who will work on your article.
2. The talk-page template they use.
3. Their edit-summary convention.
4. Confirmation that agency, client and beneficiary are all named.
5. Their policy on requests to skip disclosure.

Vague references to "established accounts" they cannot link, or flexibility about disclosure for the right client, are warning signs; see red flags in service contracts.

How WikiBusines helps

We work inside the policy, never around it, and promise no outcome:

• Notability audit, from €490, credited toward the page if ordered within one month: whether your independent sources would support an article.
• Page creation, from €2,400 for English, 4 to 5 weeks, with 90 days of monitoring and guarantee after publication. Edits to existing pages run €700 to €1,900.
• Annual support, from €720 per year, with a 12-month guarantee.

Start with the free 10-minute assessment: contact us. If the case is unclear, we offer the paid notability audit from €490, credited toward the page if you order it within one month.