Why do undisclosed Wikipedia edits backfire?

Undisclosed Wikipedia editing on behalf of a company or person backfires in several compounding ways. Detection is consistent: experienced editors recognize the patterns (single-purpose accounts editing one company’s article, promotional language, syndicated press citations, suspiciously coordinated edits) and routinely identify them within days. Once detected, the edits get reverted in full, often with a public Talk-page notice naming the suspected undisclosed editor and explaining why their work was removed. The article gets tagged with maintenance notices visible to every subsequent reader. The Talk page becomes a record of the detection that future editors and journalists can find. The editor’s account may be sanctioned. And the article often ends up materially worse than it would have been through proper channels, because the community now has reason to scrutinize every claim. The cost-benefit math is unambiguous: the disclosed COI route, even though slower, is the only approach that has a positive expected value.