In brief
- An edit request goes in a new section on the article's talk page, with a template that lists it in a queue for volunteer reviewers.
- Connected editors use the Edit COI template. Protected pages have their own templates, matched to the protection level.
- Reviewers want the exact text to change, the exact replacement and a source, in a "change X to Y" form.
- Requests are commonly declined for being unclear, unsourced, promotional or in need of prior consensus.
- Wikipedia says a request can take anywhere from a day to several months, and the conflict of interest queue is the longest.
- An unanswered conflict of interest request should be treated as declined after six months. Reminders are discouraged.
What is a Wikipedia edit request?
An edit request is a formal proposal to change an article, made on its talk page for another editor to review and carry out. Wikipedia's page on edit requests describes it as the way to propose changes to a page when you cannot or should not make them yourself.
There are two situations. Either the page is protected and your account does not have the rights to edit it, or you have a conflict of interest. The second is the one that concerns most subjects. Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline strongly discourages connected people from editing affected articles directly and asks them to propose changes on the talk page instead, so that they can be reviewed by someone independent.
The request itself is ordinary talk page text with a template at the top. The template does two jobs: it flags the section to readers, and it places the page in a tracking category that volunteers work through. When a reviewer responds, they mark the template as answered and it drops out of the queue.
Which edit request template should you use?
Use {{Edit COI}} if you are connected to the subject, and a protection template if your only problem is that you cannot edit the page. The edit requests page lists these:
| Template | When to use it |
|---|---|
| {{Edit COI}} | You have a conflict of interest, including being paid, being employed by the subject or being the subject. It has to be added by hand. |
| {{Edit semi-protected}} | The page is semi-protected and your account is too new to edit it. |
| {{Edit extended-protected}} | The page is under extended confirmed protection. |
| {{Edit fully-protected}} | The page is fully protected, so only administrators can edit it. |
| {{Edit template-protected}} | The page is a template under template protection. |
| {{Edit partially-blocked}} | Your account is blocked from that particular page or namespace. |
The Wikipedia:Edit Request Wizard asks whether you are paid, connected or blocked by protection, and leads you to the right form. For a subject without an article yet, it points to drafting instead, because edit requests are only for existing pages.
How do you write an edit request that gets accepted?
State the exact change, give a source for it, and say why in a sentence. Wikipedia's guidance asks for requests in a "change X to Y" form, and the documentation for the Edit COI template warns that volunteers are less likely to respond to requests that are unclear or open-ended.
In practice a strong request has these parts, in this order:
- A plain section heading that names the change, such as "Update to current chief executive".
- The template, on its own line at the top of the section and not indented.
- A disclosure of your connection, in a sentence. Paid editors must say who is paying them and on whose behalf they edit.
- The current text, quoted exactly, with the section it sits in.
- The proposed text, also quoted exactly, written in the same neutral register as the article.
- The source, with enough detail for a reviewer to find it: publication, title, date and a link.
- A one-line reason, then your signature.
"I work for the company and am paid in that role. In the Leadership section, please change 'The founder is the company's chief executive' to 'The founder was chief executive until March 2026, when she became executive chair.' Source: the company's announcement of 4 March 2026, and the trade press report of 11 March 2026, linked below. The current sentence is out of date."
Separate unrelated changes into separate requests, as the edit requests page advises. A reviewer can accept three clean requests in the time it takes to unpick one long one, and a single weak item will not sink the others.
For changes that go beyond a fact, such as rewriting a section, the guidance is to discuss first and post the request only once there is agreement. Typos, grammar and reference formatting do not need that step.
Before you edit anything yourself: every change, deletion discussion and declined draft stays in the page's public record, and reviewers read it. A free page health check tells you what that record already shows.
Request a page health checkWhy are edit requests declined?
Most declines come down to a request that is unclear, unsourced, promotional or premature. Reviewers answer with standard responses, and the wording tells you what to fix:
| The response you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| It is not clear what changes you want made | The request did not give exact "change X to Y" wording. |
| Please provide reliable sources that support the change | No source, or a source the reviewer does not consider reliable for that claim. |
| Please establish a consensus before posting an edit request | The change is contested or substantial, and needs a talk page discussion first. |
| Declined as advertising, non-verifiable or non-specific | The reason codes on the Edit COI template: the text reads as promotion, cannot be checked, or does not say precisely what to change. |
| Appears to have been generated by a large language model | Reviewers now have a standard response for machine-written requests, which are not allowed. |
| Partly done | Some of the request was accepted. The reply normally says which part and why. |
A reviewer can also reply with a question, or tell a connected editor to go ahead and make a minor change themselves. A decline is not a judgement on the subject. It is a judgement on that request, and the record of it stays on the talk page for the next reviewer to read.
How long does a Wikipedia edit request take?
Wikipedia's own answer is anywhere from a day to several months. There is no deadline and no paid staff. Requests are answered by volunteers who choose which ones to pick up.
The queues are tracked publicly. A bot maintains tables of open requests by type, and the figures show how uneven they are: the conflict of interest queue has recently held more than a thousand open requests, while each queue for protected pages held a small fraction of that. A request that needs a reviewer to read several sources, or to weigh a contested point, asks more of a volunteer than a one-line fix, and that affects which requests get picked up.
The edit requests page asks people not to post reminders, which it describes as unnecessary. Editing the request to add a missing source is fine. Adding "any update?" lines is not, and reviewers notice.
How does the conflict of interest queue differ?
It is longer, slower and read more sceptically. Requests made with {{Edit COI}} go into the category of conflict of interest edit requests, and reviewers know every one comes from someone with an interest in the outcome. The template's own decline codes include advertising and non-verifiable content, which shows what reviewers are looking for.
The Edit COI documentation describes the backlog as very high and asks requesters to be extremely patient. It also records outcomes: accepted requests, partly implemented requests and declined requests are each sorted into their own categories, which means a pattern of declines on one article is easy to see.
The queue also has its own end point. The edit requests page says that if nobody responds to a conflict of interest request even after six months, it should be treated the same as a declined request. That rule exists so that silence is never read as permission to edit the article directly.
What should you do if nobody answers your edit request?
Wait, then widen the audience on Wikipedia itself. The edit requests page suggests giving at least two weeks before reapplying or seeking help, and then notifying editors who have already worked on the page, or a related WikiProject, about your post. The conflict of interest guideline adds the conflict of interest noticeboard as a place to ask when an article has few uninvolved editors.
A few housekeeping situations have their own fixes:
- The talk page was archived before anyone answered. Move the request back if it is still relevant.
- A reviewer asked for more information and marked the request answered. Supply it and set the answered parameter back to "no" so it returns to the queue.
- Six months have passed on a conflict of interest request. Treat it as declined, look at why it may have been passed over, and post a clearer request.
What not to do is edit the article because the queue is slow. That is the step that turns a patient request into a conflict of interest problem, and the history will show that a request was pending when the edit was made.
What should you do after a request is declined?
Read the reason and respond to it, not to the reviewer. The edit requests page advises analysing why a request was declined. If the reviewer asked for consensus, open a new discussion thread on the talk page rather than another request. If the problem was sourcing, find a stronger source. If the wording was promotional, rewrite it in the article's register.
Reposting the same request in different words is rarely useful. Neither is asking a second reviewer to overrule the first. Where a real disagreement about content remains after discussion, Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes are the next step, and our guide to repeated and disputed edits sets out how they work.
Can you write edit requests yourself?
Yes, and for a single factual update with a clear source you should consider it. The process is designed for people outside Wikipedia's editing community, and a short, exact request from a subject is welcome.
The difficulty is in everything around that case. The talk page keeps every request and every decline, and the next reviewer reads them before reading yours. A first request that asks for a paragraph of achievements, or that argues with a decline, teaches reviewers to approach the account with caution. With queues measured in months, each weak request also costs a long wait before the strong one is even read.
We write requests in the form reviewers expect and accept that volunteers decide. A page health check will tell you which changes to your article are realistic to request and in what order. Our article updating service handles the requests from there.