Sarah Keeling, a Director within our Client Services team, takes a few minutes to answer the top five questions she is often asked about Wikipedia.

She helps clarify some of Wikipedia’s complex rules and explains key aspects to bear in mind when putting forward drafts or edits for consideration. She also discusses how the website may change in future with the advent of AI.

1. Why is Wikipedia so important to an online profile?

Wikipedia is amongst the most highly ranked, visible, and reputable websites, and has long held an enviable position at the top of search engine results pages. A high domain authority and strong return on relevant keywords, combined with the structure of the site boasting millions of interlinked articles, all contribute to its status as a Search Engine Optimisation powerhouse.

As well as being highly visible online and hosting articles on almost any subject you can imagine, Wikipedia’s general reputation for reliability has improved over the years, and also appears in Google and Bing’s Knowledge Panels. In our recent research, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity all drew upon Wikipedia for queries relating to high profile individuals, businesses and families.

In short, the content on Wikipedia is well-placed to affect almost any reputation.

 2. Should I create a Wikipedia page if there isn’t one already?

There are a few factors to bear in mind when thinking about putting forward a draft for consideration on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is not a controlled profile. Unless an article has official protections applied, anyone is free and encouraged to amend its content. If you are not comfortable with anyone in the world having the ability to write your narrative, a controlled profile such as an official website or professional social media platform is a better option.

There are strict criteria for notability on Wikipedia. Influential individuals or companies which are not regularly in the public eye often find that they do not meet these criteria as reliable media often only publishes passing mentions rather than in-depth coverage. In these cases, it is unlikely that drafts would be approved; we would advise delaying any proposed articles until the media landscape features more in-depth, independent, reliable coverage.

If you are comfortable with opening your profile to the world and have a solid body of references to draw from, we wholeheartedly recommend submitting a draft article. Drafts are reviewed by experienced community members, who will ensure that any proposed article meets all guidelines before going live, even if it has been submitted by someone connected to an article subject.

3. Who are Wikipedia editors and are they paid?

As both the “free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit” and a determined proponent of neutrality, the content of Wikipedia is moderated by regular people from anywhere in the world where access to the site is legal. These individuals operate on their own terms, and are not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit which hosts the site and provides its technical infrastructure. No matter how active an account is (and some accounts have made hundreds of thousands of edits in their time on Wikipedia) there is no monetary compensation for carrying out work on the site’s many millions of articles, though reliable editors with a proven record of activity can accrue more permissions and even hold positions of authority when deciding content or behavioural disputes.

Active editors on the English Wikipedia are more likely to be male, middle-class, tech-savvy and from either North America or Europe. It can be hard to collect totally accurate data as certain data points are user-generated or rely on IP location, which can be manipulated.

A small number of editors on the site are paid, but not by Wikipedia. Some will hide this status to make edits, violating Wikipedia’s rule and guidelines, but others declare their employer so they can enter into conversation with the volunteer community to influence change on the site. The community can be hostile in both cases, as they see Wikipedia editing as something that should remain free of outside influence.

4. Why do we always advise to declare a conflict of interest and not to edit directly?

Editing without declaring a conflict of interest is against Wikipedia’s guidelines and is considered a highly disruptive and malicious activity by the site’s volunteer editors, even though many who engage in the behaviour have little idea that it is even discouraged.

Wikipedia has multiple task forces dedicated to identifying editors trying to disguise themselves as neutral parties. These groups will block offending accounts and sometimes remove their work, even if the content itself met all Wikipedia guidelines.

Declaring that you have a connection is important, but we still advise communicating changes through the community’s discussion spaces in most cases. Even if you are familiar with Wikipedia’s many official policies and unofficial social expectations, it is possible to introduce mistakes or unconscious biases. Uncontroversial edits such as fixing typos and reverting vandalism are technically allowed, but even these can be misconstrued if there is context that volunteers lack, and we would suggest seeking advice before proceeding.

Both editing directly and hiding your intentions pose reputational risk when the behaviour is caught. This can take several forms, such as media coverage framing the article subject as engaging in white-washing behaviour, or even punitive editing from volunteers. This could result in vastly reduced articles, deletion nominations, and addition of hostile content if supporting sourcing can be found.

Engaging with the community to review your suggestions helps to build trust with volunteers, and also allows for better authority and longevity when the eventual version is added to the article, helping to safeguard narratives in the long-term.

5. How will Wikipedia change in the future?

With the recent increase in prominence of generative AI, there have been many debates about how to implement this technology into Wikipedia and indeed whether this will threaten the site.

Wikipedia has been working with artificial intelligence for years, but it is unlikely to open its figurative arms to generative language models, and for now is more focused on identifying and protecting the site against AI additions.

One of Wikipedia’s core policies is No Original Research, as such it has little use for generative AI’s capacity to generate new material unless it has been through a transparent fact-checking process. The site’s insistence on reliable citations is also at odds with many current engines’ lack of attribution for the content they return. As these engines improve, we might see increased adoption of AI tools which add new text to articles, but this shift will only come once it is possible to operate sufficient safety nets to avoid mistakes being introduced and proliferated across the encyclopaedia. Current efforts such as Stanford’s STORM, focus heavily on checks and supervision and operate away from the Wikipedia site.

Wikipedia has, for years already, allowed the sanctioned use of bots to make edits to the site, with stipulations such as that bots must be approved and emphasise clearly that they are bots. That said, many of these bots focus on small, technical changes, and even these often leave messages on the pages they amend encouraging users to check their work. Generative language models, whether they are built to flag AI, detect subpar human editing or even to make direct changes, will likely be held to the same standards.

As to whether Wikipedia is under threat from AI, the site will physically persist as long as the passion of its volunteers and the support of its donors continues, but we might start to see a shift in how people visit the site. If AI models were hypothetically to supplant Wikipedia’s dominance as a reference site, the reduced traffic to Wikipedia itself would not necessarily mean that we are not consuming its version of events. We know that current generative language models draw from Wikipedia, and as such, the project will likely continue to maintain its influence over how we gather information and judge reputations.