Who edits Wikipedia and how are edits reviewed?

Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors worldwide, and the community structure matters because it is the source of the platform’s legitimacy and the constraint on every kind of work done on the platform. The most active editors include subject-matter experts, retired professionals, hobbyists with deep topic knowledge, and administrators with elevated permissions. Editors review each other’s work continuously through watchlists, recent-changes patrols, and topical attention. Non-compliant edits get reverted within minutes on high-traffic articles and within days on lower-traffic ones, with the reverting editor often citing policy in the edit summary. Disagreements move to Talk pages for discussion. For COI work, this structure is both the obstacle and the path: direct edits by interested parties get reverted, but well-formulated Talk-page requests with reliable sources are evaluated on their merits by uninvolved editors. The system works when it is engaged on its own terms.