Can I edit my own Wikipedia page?

Can you edit a Wikipedia page about yourself?

You are able to, but Wikipedia's rules strongly discourage it. Nothing in the software stops the subject of an article from editing it, and the biographies of living persons policy accepts that very obvious errors can be fixed quickly, including by the subject. Beyond that narrow allowance, the conflict of interest guideline expects connected people to propose changes on the article's talk page and leave the decision to someone independent.

The reason is stated in the guideline itself. Editors with a conflict of interest who add material on their own tend to break Wikipedia's content rules: the material is often poorly sourced, promotional, or silent about negative information, and they may edit war to keep it. A conflict of interest, the guideline adds, describes a situation and is not a judgement about anyone's honesty or good faith.

It also helps to know what an article is not. Wikipedia's page on ownership of content says that a subject, whether a person or an organisation, does not own its article or have any right to dictate what it says. That holds however accurate the subject's own knowledge is.

Who counts as having a conflict of interest on Wikipedia?

Anyone whose outside relationships could reasonably be said to pull against Wikipedia's interest in a neutral article. The guideline defines conflict of interest editing as contributing to articles about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships, and says any external relationship, personal, religious, political, academic, legal or financial, can create one.

In practice the following are all treated as connected to an article's subject:

• the person the article is about, and their spouse, relatives and friends;
• owners, employees, contractors and investors of a company, which the guideline groups together as a financial conflict of interest;
• agencies, consultants and anyone else paid to edit on the subject's behalf;
• rivals and opponents, since the guideline notes there can be a conflict when writing for a competitor just as when writing for the subject.

Paid editing is singled out. Under the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, a person paid for their contributions has to disclose each employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation, and English Wikipedia applies the same rule. Subject-matter experts are a separate case: the guideline welcomes them in their own field, provided their professional relationships do not shape how they write about themselves or their work.

What does the conflict of interest guideline ask connected people to do?

It asks them to be open about the connection, to stay out of the article itself, and to propose changes for others to review. The guideline sets this out as a short list. Editors with a conflict of interest:

• should disclose the conflict whenever they are involved with the affected article;
• are strongly discouraged from editing the article directly;
• may propose changes on the talk page, using the edit request template made for this purpose;
• should put any new article through Articles for Creation instead of creating it directly;
• should not act as a reviewer of the affected article anywhere on Wikipedia;
• should keep discussions concise, out of respect for the volunteers reading them.

Proposed changes are held to the same standards as any other edit, and the guideline says plainly that editors may decline them. A request that is sourced and neutral is usually accepted. One that reads like a press release is not. Our guide to Wikipedia edit requests explains how the queue works and what makes a request succeed.

Which small fixes can you make to your own page?

A short, defined list of edits that nobody could reasonably dispute. The conflict of interest guideline allows connected editors to make these directly:

Even the last item on the left comes with a caveat: the guideline says it is better to supply the source on the talk page for others to add. And the whole list rests on one condition. If another editor objects to a change for any reason, the guideline says, it is not an uncontroversial edit.

Wikipedia's FAQ for article subjects gives similar examples in plainer words: a wrong date can be corrected with a reliable source, a dead link fixed, and private information such as a home address removed. For defamation or a serious error that needs correcting quickly, the guideline allows the subject to act and then asks them to follow up with an email to the Volunteer Response Team, a post on the biographies noticeboard, or a note on the article's talk page.

What should a connected editor never change directly?

Anything contentious, promotional or about criticism. Wikipedia's FAQ for article subjects addresses this in its advice to people working in public relations, and the list applies equally to subjects and staff. It says never to:

• use Wikipedia to promote or advertise a client;
• remove negative material, other than material that breaks the biographies of living persons policy;
• copy and paste content from another site, including one you manage;
• add information that cannot be independently verified or is not significant for an encyclopedia;
• add, delete or change text that is particularly controversial or where the facts are disputed.

Citing your own published work is a related trap. The guideline allows it within reason, if the work is relevant and the citation is not excessive, but notes that you will be permanently identified in the page history as the person who added it. Adding many references to your own work and none to anyone else's is treated as spam.

If the problem is negative material you believe is wrong or disproportionate, our guide to removing negative information from Wikipedia covers what can be challenged and how.

What happens when people edit their own Wikipedia page?

Usually the edit is noticed, reverted and recorded, and the account starts to attract scrutiny. Wikipedia's FAQ for article subjects warns that each article's history is public and reflects exactly what was changed. Editors who watch a page see every edit to it, and an account that edits only one subject is easy to recognise.

What follows depends on how far the editing goes. The common steps, roughly in order:

1. A revert. Promotional additions and removals of sourced material are undone, usually with an edit summary saying why.
2. A message on the account's talk page. Standard templates ask whether the editor has a connection to the subject and point to the guideline.
3. Notices on the article. The article can be tagged as possibly written with a conflict of interest, and its talk page given a notice listing the connected accounts. Our guide to the conflict of interest tag explains what those mean and how they are resolved.
4. A noticeboard report. If problems continue, any editor can open a discussion at the conflict of interest noticeboard, whose archives stay public.
5. A block. The blocking policy allows accounts that appear, from their edit history, to exist mainly to promote a person, company, product or organisation to be blocked without warning, usually indefinitely.

Outside Wikipedia, the guideline notes that the media has several times drawn attention to companies that edit their own articles, which has embarrassed the organisations concerned. In 2007 a tool called WikiScanner matched anonymous edits to the organisations whose networks they came from, and the edits it surfaced from companies, government bodies and political parties were reported worldwide.

Is editing your company's Wikipedia page treated differently?

The same guideline applies, with two extra rules that catch companies out. The first concerns accounts. Wikipedia's username policy says an account must represent one person, so a username that is the company's name, or that implies several people share it, is not allowed. Sharing a password with colleagues is not permitted either. An account that combines a promotional username with promotional editing is usually blocked sooner than one that does only one of the two.

The second concerns what can be removed quickly. The biographies of living persons policy, which lets anyone remove unsourced contentious claims about a person at once, does not normally apply to companies. A company that wants a claim about itself changed generally has to make the case on the talk page under the ordinary rules on sources and neutrality.

Otherwise the position matches that of an individual subject. Employees, executives and the agencies they hire are all connected. Wikipedia's essay for staff asked by their employer to edit the company article advises them, in its first heading, to tell their boss it can't be done, and explains instead how to request edits.

How should you ask for a change to your own page instead?

Through an edit request on the article's talk page, which an uninvolved volunteer then reviews. Wikipedia's page on editing an article about yourself describes the steps:

1. Open the article's talk page and start a new section at the bottom.
2. Add the conflict of interest edit request template at the top of the section.
3. Say exactly what text should be added, removed or changed, and where.
4. Give the reliable sources that support the change.
5. Sign the post.

Wikipedia's Edit Request Wizard walks through the same steps. Specific requests are handled faster than vague ones, and the same page warns that a request may be picked up within hours or wait for weeks, depending on how busy the article is. Repeating the request or pressing reviewers does not speed it up.

Two more points matter now. Wikipedia's plain and simple conflict of interest guide asks connected editors not to use large language models to write their suggestions, and English Wikipedia has banned using them to generate or rewrite article content since a March 2026 decision. A request that reads as machine-written is likely to be dismissed.

What does experience change when you are connected to the page?

For a single factual error with a good source behind it, very little. Post the request yourself, explain your connection, and wait for a volunteer. That is exactly the situation the process was built for.

The gap opens when the change is anything more than a fact. A connected request starts at a disadvantage, because reviewers read it with the guideline's warning about promotional, one-sided editing in mind. Whether it is accepted then turns on choices that have to be right the first time: which changes to ask for and which to drop, which source carries weight for each claim, and how to word a proposal so it reads as encyclopedic rather than corporate. Each request, reply and decline stays on the talk page, and the editor who reviews the next request reads them.

Our article update work covers the research, sourcing and drafting of requests, and the follow-up on the talk page, so that each change is proposed in a form reviewers can accept. If you are not sure what your article needs, start with a free page health check.