What is Wikipedia’s paid editing disclosure policy?

Wikipedia’s paid-editing policy (WP:PAID) is one of the most consequential rules for any reputation firm working on Wikipedia, and it is short enough to read in five minutes. Its core requirement is disclosure: any editor who is paid, or even compensated indirectly, to edit on behalf of a subject must publicly disclose that relationship, and the disclosure must name the employer, the client, and any relevant affiliation.

The three required disclosure locations

The policy requires the paid relationship to be disclosed in all three of the following places:

User page

A standing disclosure on the editor’s own Wikipedia user page, naming the employer, client, and affiliation.

Talk-page contributions

The same disclosure on the Talk page of any article the editor works on.

Edit summaries

A disclosure in the edit summary of any edit the editor makes.

What happens without disclosure

Non-disclosure is treated as a serious policy violation rather than a technicality. The consequences include:

• Account blocks on the editing account.
• IP-range bans reaching beyond a single account.
• Damage to the underlying article, which can be tagged, reverted, or left less stable than before.

Five Blocks operates exclusively under disclosed COI editing; it is the only model that produces durable results and the only one consistent with Wikipedia’s expectations.