The five attributes of a reliable source

Independent

The author and publisher have no affiliation with the subject being covered.

Secondary

It analyzes or describes the subject rather than restating primary information.

Published

It has gone through an editorial or publication process.

Professionally edited

It carries the editorial standards of an established outlet.

Reputation for fact-checking

The outlet is known to verify claims before publishing them.

What qualifies vs. what does not

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Two practical points. First, syndication does not multiply sources: a single wire story reprinted across many newspapers still counts as one source, not several. Second, companies are judged against a stricter bar (WP:NCORP) that puts more weight on the quality and independence of the sourcing and discounts routine business announcements. The same standards govern both whether a subject is notable enough for an article and whether a specific claim inside an article can stand.

The post What are Wikipedia’s reliable source standards? appeared first on Five Blocks.

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The six steps to publication

1. Sourcing analysis. We audit the subject’s existing coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources and judge whether the notability bar can be met as the record stands. Wikipedia’s general notability standard expects significant coverage in multiple reliable, independent sources, so if that coverage does not yet exist the recommendation may be to defer the article until it does.
2. Drafting. The article is built in a user sandbox or through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process, structured to Wikipedia’s encyclopedic conventions, sourced inline, and written in a neutral point of view.
3. Submission with disclosed COI. The draft is submitted with the paid or affiliated relationship disclosed, naming the employer, the client, and any affiliation, in compliance with the Wikimedia Foundation’s terms of use. COI editors are strongly discouraged from publishing about the subject directly, which is why the draft goes through review rather than straight to the article.
4. Community review. An uninvolved Articles for Creation reviewer evaluates the draft against notability and Wikipedia’s content policies before it can move to mainspace.
5. Response to feedback. Any concerns the reviewer raises are addressed substantively, with revisions and additional sourcing as needed, and the draft is resubmitted.
6. Publication to mainspace. The article moves to mainspace once an uninvolved reviewer accepts it.

Each step has its own quality bar, and trying to compress the sequence tends to produce articles that get challenged or deleted shortly after they appear.

The post What’s involved in getting a Wikipedia article published? appeared first on Five Blocks.

Three challenge pathways

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How the challenge is made

All three pathways run the same way: through a Talk-page edit request that cites the specific policy and proposes the compliant alternative – the exact wording that should replace the disputed text, with the reliable secondary sources that support it. Uninvolved community editors then evaluate the request on its merits. Done well, the addition is either removed or restated in a form that survives both editorial and reputational scrutiny.

The post Our Wikipedia article was just edited to include the lawsuit. Can that be reversed? appeared first on Five Blocks.

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How the fix gets made

You do not edit the lead directly. The remedy runs through the article’s Talk page as an edit request that uninvolved community editors evaluate on its merits:

1. Identify the loaded language. Point to the specific word or phrase in the lead that characterizes rather than describes the subject.
2. Cite NPOV. Name the policy the wording violates, so the request rests on Wikipedia’s own standard rather than on preference.
3. Propose a neutral alternative. Offer specific replacement wording for the sentence, supported by reliable sources.
4. Let the community evaluate. Uninvolved editors review the request and implement it if it holds up.

What makes a proposed wording succeed

The replacement sentence should meet three criteria:

• Specific, it says exactly what the sentence should read instead.
• Demonstrably accurate, reliable sources support it.
• Properly neutral, it describes the subject rather than characterizing it.

Done well, this kind of request usually gets implemented, because the community broadly supports NPOV. It does not require an argument with anyone. It requires wording the policy plainly favors.

The post Our Wikipedia article describes us as ‘controversial’ in the opening line. Who can fix that? appeared first on Five Blocks.

Who does the editing

The most active contributors are a mix of subject-matter experts, retired professionals, hobbyists with deep topic knowledge, and administrators who hold elevated permissions. They work independently of one another, so no one editor or group controls a given article.

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How edits are reviewed

Review happens continuously through several overlapping channels rather than a single approval step:

• Watchlists, editors monitor changes to specific articles they care about.
• Recent-changes patrol, volunteers scan the live feed of edits across the encyclopedia for inappropriate changes.
• Topical attention, editors with subject expertise watch the articles in their area.

When an edit fails policy, it gets reverted, typically within minutes on high-traffic articles and within days on lower-traffic ones, and the reverting editor often cites the relevant policy in the edit summary. Where there is genuine disagreement, the discussion moves to the article’s Talk page, where editors work toward consensus.

What this means for conflict-of-interest work

For anyone with a conflict of interest, this structure sets the rules of engagement. Direct edits by interested parties are routinely reverted. A well-formulated Talk-page edit request, backed by reliable sources, is a different matter: uninvolved editors judge it on its merits and decide whether to implement it. Working with the process gets results; trying to route around it does not.

The post Who edits Wikipedia and how are edits reviewed? appeared first on Five Blocks.

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Why the safeguards run higher for companies

The reason is straightforward: corporate articles attract the most conflict-of-interest (COI) editing and the most attempts at promotional framing, so the safeguards run higher to compensate. Reputation work that respects those safeguards has a path; work that tries to bypass them does not.

The post How does Wikipedia handle corporate pages differently from personal pages? appeared first on Five Blocks.

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The three steps of disclosed COI editing

1. Disclose on the user page. The editor creates a Wikipedia account and posts a disclosure on their user page naming the employer, the client, and any affiliation, in compliance with the Wikimedia Foundation’s terms of use.
2. Post a Talk-page edit request. Rather than editing the article directly, the editor proposes the change on the article’s Talk page, clearly identifying the proposed wording, the existing wording it would replace, and the reliable secondary sources that support the change.
3. Independent editors review and decide. Uninvolved community editors evaluate the proposal on its merits, sourcing, neutrality, and weight, and then implement it, modify it, or decline it. The editor with the conflict of interest does not implement the change.

Handled this way, the process is transparent and the article changes are made by uninvolved editors with no stake in the outcome, so the result withstands later review. Direct edits, undisclosed accounts, or an argumentative tone produce fragile work that often backfires on the client.

The post How does disclosed COI editing work on Wikipedia? appeared first on Five Blocks.

What BLP requires

• High-quality sourcing. Any material about a living person that is challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation to a reliable, published source.
• Immediate removal of unsupported claims. Contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether negative, positive, or merely questionable – can and should be removed immediately, even without waiting for consensus.
• Neutral framing. Coverage must avoid loaded language and undue weight, and must reflect the balance of what reliable sources say rather than disparaging or sympathizing with the subject.
• Enforcement. Editors who persistently or egregiously add policy-violating material may be sanctioned or blocked from editing.

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For executives and high-profile individuals dealing with thin or inaccurate negative claims on their articles, BLP is the policy to invoke. In our experience, a Talk-page request that cites BLP and points to the specific sourcing weakness lands better than a general request to soften the content, because it names a concrete policy violation rather than asking editors to take the subject’s side.

The post What is Wikipedia’s biography of living persons policy? appeared first on Five Blocks.

The layers, fastest to slowest

• Seconds – anti-vandalism bots. Bots such as ClueBot NG detect obvious vandalism patterns and revert them automatically, usually in under a second.
• Minutes – recent-changes patrollers. Volunteer editors scan the live feed of recent changes for inappropriate edits and revert them. On watched pages, most vandal edits have historically been reverted within about five minutes.
• Minutes – monitoring and alerts (WikiAlerts). For client articles, Five Blocks’ WikiAlerts tracks edits, vandalism, and traffic on watched pages and alerts the team in real time when a page changes, so a corporate communications team can respond rather than wait to notice a problem on its own.

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The result is that obvious vandalism on a watched corporate or executive page rarely survives long. The bot layer catches the blatant cases almost immediately, the patroller layer handles what the bots miss, and the monitoring layer keeps the people who care about the page informed. Less obvious vandalism, or vandalism to a little-viewed article, can persist longer, which is why active monitoring matters for pages that are not already heavily watched.

The post What happens when someone vandalizes your Wikipedia page? appeared first on Five Blocks.

That principle has two practical consequences:

• No advocacy. An article cannot argue for or against its subject. The editorial voice has to stay neutral, presenting positions as positions rather than as facts.
• Proportional weight. The space given to each viewpoint has to mirror the weight that viewpoint carries in reliable sources. Majority positions get majority treatment, minority positions get proportional treatment, and fringe positions get brief treatment or none at all.

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Why NPOV matters for reputation work

For reputation work, NPOV is both a constraint and a tool.

• As a constraint, it limits what we can propose. We cannot suggest language that omits a documented controversy or that frames the subject more favorably than reliable sources do.
• As a tool, it is the policy for fixing imbalance. When an article gives undue weight to a single critical source, NPOV is the basis for getting that imbalance addressed. The standard requires proportionality, not the removal of well-sourced material.

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