Wikipedia notability, and the route that applies to you

Why the article cannot be bought

The premise of most services in this category is that the article is the product. It is not. The article is a byproduct of a record that already exists somewhere else.

Wikipedia is a tertiary source. It summarizes what independent, reliable publications have already published about a subject. If those publications have not written about you in any depth, there is nothing for an article to summarize, and no amount of skilled drafting changes that. This is why articles about genuinely accomplished people are deleted every week: the person is excellent at their work, and their public record consists of their own website, their company's announcements, a handful of interviews and some bylined columns. None of that counts.

So the honest sequence runs backwards from how it is usually sold. Coverage first. Article second, if the coverage earns it. Everything on this site about distribution exists because of that ordering — the chain that actually leads here starts about two years earlier than most people expect.

The rule in plain English

The general notability guideline says a subject is presumed to merit an article when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

Read that as three tests applied to every source you want to rely on. Does it cover the person directly and in detail? Does it come from a publication with genuine editorial standards? Was it produced by someone with no connection to the person? A source must pass all three. Most sources professionals are proud of pass one or two.

The word presumed matters too. Meeting the bar makes an article defensible, not automatic. Reviewers still weigh whether there is enough substance to write something encyclopedic rather than promotional.

What counts as a source

This is the whole game, so it is worth being concrete.

A useful test before you spend anything: open a document, paste in the links you would put forward, and delete every one that fails any of the three tests. What is left is your actual case. Most people are surprised by how short that document is, and finding that out costs nothing.

The route that applies to you

The general standard is the default. Several professions have a second door, and which one you are being judged against changes the assessment completely. This section replaces the five separate profession pages this site used to run, because the honest version of each was a section rather than an article.

Founders and executives

No specialist route exists, so the general bar applies without shortcuts: several substantial pieces, in publications with real editorial standards, written by people unconnected to you. The specific trap is that a founder's record is usually made of things the company generated — funding announcements, product launches, the newsroom, entered awards, podcast appearances. All of it traces back to you, so none of it counts. Coverage of your company is also not coverage of you: a profile of the business that quotes you makes the business potentially notable, not you.

Academics and researchers

The academic criteria are unusual in two ways. They do not ask for press: a scholar with no media profile can qualify on citation record, election to a highly selective scholarly society, a named or distinguished chair, or a major academic award. And verification can rest on primary sources, so a university's own announcement of a chair is acceptable evidence of the chair. That is a genuine departure from how the rest of Wikipedia's sourcing works. What has not changed is the height of the bar: the standard is explicitly that you are substantially more accomplished than the average professor in your field, with citation practice judged against discipline norms rather than a universal number.

Authors and writers

The criteria for creative professionals run alongside the general standard rather than replacing it. The most useful for a working writer: a person may qualify by having created a significant body of work that has been the subject of multiple independent reviews or critical attention. The coverage does not have to be about you. Reviews of your books, in publications with genuine editorial standards, can carry it even if no journalist has ever profiled you. Other routes include originating a significant concept and holding work in permanent collections. Self-published output with no independent critical reception does not qualify, and reader reviews on retail sites are not editorially reviewed sources.

Doctors and surgeons

Clinicians usually arrive through one of two doors. Research-led clinicians are assessed under the academic criteria, where citation impact, fellowships, chairs or major awards can carry it without press. Practice-led clinicians face the general standard in full. Clinical reputation, patient outcomes, procedure volume and peer regard are not criteria, however substantial they are — peer regard is not a source. Medicine also attracts closer sourcing scrutiny than most subjects, so claims about treatments and outcomes are held to a higher evidentiary standard and promotional framing is removed quickly.

Lawyers

No dedicated guideline, so the general standard applies. In practice the coverage tends to arise from three places: involvement in cases that themselves attracted substantial independent reporting, where journalists wrote about your role rather than listing you as counsel; legal scholarship with genuine academic impact, in which case the academic criteria may apply instead; or judicial and senior public appointments, which carry their own weight. Firm rankings, directory listings, awards the firm submitted for and practice-area profiles do not establish notability, however familiar they are inside the profession.

Why good professionals get declined

Across the assessments we run, the reasons cluster tightly, and almost none of them are about writing.

• The record is self-generated. Impressive in volume, and every item traces back to the subject or their organization.
• Company coverage is mistaken for personal coverage. The most common single error, and the hardest to hear.
• Volume is mistaken for depth. Dozens of mentions, no piece that treats the person as its subject.
• Output is mistaken for impact. Particularly among academics: a long publication list is not a citation record.
• Tone. A defensible case written promotionally gets rewritten or removed. This one is fixable; the others are not fixable by drafting.

Formatting and structure account for a minority of failures. The single largest cause is that the sources do not establish notability, and that question can be answered before a word is drafted — which is why we answer it first, and for free.

The rules when someone is paid

You are allowed to write about yourself, and the community strongly discourages it: the autobiography guidance is blunt that writing about yourself is difficult to do neutrally, and conflict of interest applies to you as much as to a paid editor. The recommended route for anyone connected to the subject is the same either way — submit through Articles for Creation rather than publishing directly, and declare the connection.

If money changes hands, the Wikimedia Terms of Use require the contributor to disclose employer, client and affiliation. That is not a courtesy; undisclosed paid editing is the fastest route to a blocked account and a deleted article.

If you are clearly notable, comfortable reading guidelines carefully and willing to accept an outcome you cannot control, doing it yourself is a legitimate option that costs nothing but time. What a provider is actually selling is the assessment, the source research, and having been through review before. What that costs, and what the prices in this market mean.

Questions people actually ask

Sources

• Wikipedia. General notability guideline (WP:GNG).
• Wikipedia. Notability guideline for people (WP:BIO), including the creative-professionals criteria.
• Wikipedia. Notability guideline for academics (WP:NACADEMIC).
• Wikipedia. Identifying reliable sources (WP:RS).
• Wikipedia. Conflict of interest guideline (WP:COI), including autobiography and fraudulent guarantees.
• Wikipedia. Paid-contribution disclosure policy (WP:PAID).
• Wikipedia. Articles for creation.
• Wikimedia Foundation. Terms of Use, section 4, paid contributions disclosure.

Related reading

• How this actually ends up at Wikipedia — the chain that starts two years earlier.
• Wikidata — a far lower bar, and reachable for most professionals.
• Google knowledge panels — a different system that gets treated as the same prize.
• What a Wikipedia page actually costs