How do Wikipedia’s conflict of interest policies affect what we can actually edit ourselves?

Wikipedia’s COI policies do not prohibit interested-party work on articles – they prescribe how to do it. WP:COI defines conflict of interest broadly to include subjects, their employees, their PR firms, and anyone with a material relationship to the topic. WP:PAID requires disclosure for any compensated editing. Together they shape a clear workflow: disclose the relationship publicly through the editor’s user account, work through Talk-page edit requests rather than direct edits, source each proposed change to reliable independent secondary outlets, and let community editors evaluate and implement. The compliant version of this work is durable and respected. The non-compliant version – undisclosed sockpuppet accounts, direct edits, promotional sourcing – is the version that produces sanctions, lasting article instability, and material damage to the client. Five Blocks operates exclusively in the compliant lane.