To make a Wikipedia page, create an account and gain experience first by editing other articles. Then make sure your topic is notable and find independent, reliable sources that have provided significant coverage of the topic.
This is a difficult process for new editors, in my experience, because there are a lot of rules to follow. Some of those rules are formalized in Wikipedia’s policies, but some are unwritten and you need experience to learn them. This article will share my 11 years of experience to help you be one of the few who knows how to get a Wikipedia page.
A Wikipedia page (Wikipedia article) is a collaboratively edited encyclopedia entry hosted on the MediaWiki platform and written in Wikitext. A Wikipedia article presents neutral, verifiable information with citations to reliable sources (WP: RS), which is to say it isn’t a blog post, resume, or airing of grievances. Unlike a corporate website or Reddit rant, every claim needs backup from a reliable source. In my opinion, the platform’s obsession with verifiability borders on pathological, but that’s what makes it trustworthy. Let’s go over how to make a Wikipedia page now.
Step 1: Create Your Wikipedia Account
To create a Wikipedia page, first open a Wikipedia account using the process below:
- Navigate to Wikipedia.org
- Click “Create account” in the upper right
- Choose a username that won’t haunt you—avoid “CEOofAwesomeCorp” or “MarketingNinja1990”
- Provide an email you actually check (you’ll need it when someone inevitably challenges your edits)
- Complete the CAPTCHA)
- Verify through the email link
Fresh accounts can’t create articles immediately—Wikipedia came to that consensus after years of spam. You need autoconfirmed status, which you get after waiting four days and doing ten edits. Get started by fixing typos in existing articles and other new editor “suggested edits” you can find on your user homepage.
Step 2: Research and Gather Reliable Sources
Wikipedia requires reliable, independent sources to verify every claim in your article. If that glowing Forbes piece about your startup is from a “contributor” (Forbes’ pay-to-play program), it’s not reliable as far as Wikipedia is concerned. I’ve also learned that coverage in CoinDesk or Bitcoin Magazine (or any crypto source) often gets rejected per one of Wikipedia’s many unwritten rules. Another unwritten rule: editors particularly despise .ai and .io domains and delete them as sources.
Acceptable sources for Wikipedia articles include the following:
- Newspapers with actual newsrooms and staff mastheads like The New York Times and local newspapers
- Books from publishers who employ fact-checkers (Random House: yes; CreateSpace: no)
- Peer-reviewed academic journals like The Lancet
- Established magazines that predate the internet, e.g., TIME, National Geographic, The Atlantic
- Government reports and census data
- Major news sites with editorial standards like Reuters, AP, and the BBC
The reject pile of deprecated sources on Wikipedia grows daily and includes:
- Most blogs
- Social media and all user-generated content (UGC) because it has no editorial fact checking
- Press releases, even if you published it on a legitimate news site like the Globe & Mail
- Anything you published yourself
- Corporate websites because they’re primary sources
- Medium, Substack, and every other platform where anyone can publish anything
Primary sources (WP:PRIMARY) like patents, court documents, or SEC filings are useful for specific facts but don’t establish notability (WP:N). You need secondary sources—other people talking about you, not you talking about yourself. Independent sources are those that you’re not affiliated with and didn’t pay to talk about you.
How many sources does a page need? Most successful articles I’ve seen have 7-10 solid sources from at least 5 different websites. That said, Wikipedia’s policy is that “there is no fixed number of sources required.”
Step 3: Draft Your Article in the Sandbox
The Wikipedia sandbox is a practice area where users can draft articles before publication. To access the Wikipedia sandbox, click the person icon at the top-right corner when logged into your Wikipedia account. According to Wikipedia’s user interface documentation, registered users receive WikiSandbox access immediately upon account creation.
Wikipedia provides two editing interfaces: VisualEditor (VE) and Source Editor, which uses wiki markup. Visual Editor functions as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface requiring zero Wikitext knowledge. Source Editor requires Wikitext markup understanding for article formatting.
To switch between editors, click the pencil icon displaying “Edit” in your sandbox. The editing interface selector appears as a dropdown menu. Visual Editor processes formatting through buttons and menus. Source Editor displays raw Wikitext markup with [[double brackets]] for WikiLinks and <ref> tags for citations.
The draft namespace exists at Draft:YourArticleTitle. Articles in draft namespace undergo Articles for Creation (AfC) review before they’re published to the mainspace as an article. Any time an editor edits a draft, they should leave an edit summary field documenting changes they made.
Here’s how to use the sandbox:
- Access it by clicking on the person icon in the top-right corner of Wikipedia when you’re logged in
- Click the pencil icon to switch to Visual Editor so you don’t have to use Wiki markup
- Check Preview—what looks good in code might not on screen
How Are Wikipedia Articles Structured?
A well-structured Wikipedia article follows the standard format in the table below:
| Section | What to Include |
| Lead | 1-4 paragraphs defining the topic, giving a brief overview of the page, and explaining of why the topic is notable |
| Short Description | Editors use the {{Short description}} template to clarify the page title in 40 characters or less. |
| Infobox | While not required, an infobox helps readers scan key information by presenting it briefly in a table. Wikipedia uses TemplateData to define infobox parameters. |
| Body Sections | Can include history, early life, controversies, reception, career, and many others depending on the topic. Body sections should follow a hierarchical heading structure. |
| See Also | Hyperlinks (wikilinks) to related Wikipedia articles |
| External Links | External links should go in this section, not in the body of an article. You may put a link to a person or company’s website here if it’s not already in the infobox. Ecommerce pages and other promotional content are not allowed. |
| References | Auto-generated from <ref>…</ref> with {{Reflist}}, though you must add the References heading (== References ==) yourself. You add references using the {{Cite journal}}, {{Cite book}}, {{Cite web}}, or {{Cite news}} templates. |
| Categories | [[Category:CategoryName]] declarations establishing topical context. These navigational links help readers browse related topics within a structured hierarchy of information. |
How to Write a Wikipedia Page?
Pick a clearly notable topic with multiple independent, reliable sources, draft in your own words with a neutral point of view (NPOV), add inline citations as you go, then publish from Draftspace using the Article Wizard or by moving a complete draft to mainspace.
Here is the practical flow for writing a Wikipedia page:
- Start by checking for conflict of interest (WP:COI). If you are connected to the subject, step back or disclose and request that another editor review your draft after you’ve written it.
- Search Wikipedia for an existing article or draft, including alternate spellings or names. If one exists, update it instead of creating a new page.
- Gather secondary, independent coverage and assess whether they’re reliable sources or not. Books from reputable presses, newspapers, magazines, and peer-reviewed journals are your backbone. Primary sources can confirm simple facts but they do not establish notability.
- Open a working area in your Sandbox or in Draftspace. The Article Wizard will set this up and guide you.
- Write by summarizing what your sources say, not by copying or close paraphrasing. Keep a professional tone; this is an encyclopedia, not a blog. Represent significant viewpoints with due weight, and avoid giving undue weight to fringe views or fringe theories unless you are clearly describing them as such and balancing with the mainstream coverage. Follow Wikipedia’s policy on no original research (WP:NOR). If a claim is not in your sources, leave it out.
- Cite while you write. Add references immediately after the sentences they support. Use inline attribution for opinions or contested interpretations, for example, “According to The New York Times …”. Mark gaps with “Citation needed” only when you cannot source a minor claim right away. Avoid citation overkill on routine facts, but do not skimp on contentious material. For example, you don’t need to provide multiple sources to substantiate a person’s birthplace unless this fact is contested.
- Apply Wikipedia’s policy on Biographies of Living Persons (BLP) if your topic is a person who is alive. Anything that could harm someone’s reputation, or even praise that might be undue, needs high-quality sourcing and precise wording. When in doubt, omit it or start a discussion about it on the article’s Talk page.
- Shape the article so it looks and reads like an encyclopedia entry. Write a clear lead section that defines the topic in plain English. Choose an accurate Page Name (title) that readers would type. Organize sections in a standard order and follow the Manual of Style (MOS). Add an infobox where appropriate, and consider a Navigation box (navbox) for related topics. Link to related pages and add categories so the article is not an orphan. You may want to add a hatnote at the top to direct people to another page they may be looking for instead of yours (disambiguate to clarify). Some of this will require formatting with Wikitext, which is a lightweight markup language for rendering content correctly.
- Embed media into the article with freely licensed image files or video files from Wikimedia Commons. If there’s an image you want to use that’s not on Wikimedia Commons, you can upload it to https://commons.wikimedia.org/ as long as it’s not copyrighted, has the appropriate license for sharing, and you add correct attribution.
- Proofread your draft top to bottom before publishing and check three things. First, notability must be clear from multiple independent secondary sources. Second, tone and balance must meet NPOV and due weight. Third, every fact or claim must have verification with inline citations.
Step 4: Publish Your Draft or Submit It for Articles for Creation (Afc) Review
If you don’t want another editor to review your draft, you can simply publish it by moving the draft to mainspace. Otherwise, you can use AfC, which is Wikipedia’s review process for new submissions from non-autoconfirmed editors. Picture a DMV staffed entirely by volunteers who either genuinely care about encyclopedia quality or are simply on a power trip. Some days, your reviewer is a saint with endless patience. Other days, you get someone who rejects drafts for cosmic reasons only they understand.
Submit your draft as follows:
- Click “Submit for review” on your draft or add this to the top of your draft in the source editor: {{subst:submit}}.
- Wait while your draft enters a queue deeper than a Dostoyevsky novel.
- Respond to reviewer comments quickly
- Make requested changes—don’t argue or get into an edit war, just fix.
Articles for Creation puts your work through the wringer. Volunteer reviewers check everything: notability (do you matter?), sourcing (says who?), tone (are you selling something?), formatting (did you follow the rules?), and copyright (did you steal this?).
Your Wikipedia draft will be accepted, declined (which means you can edit it and try again), or rejected (no option to edit and try again). Many articles need 2-3 rounds of edits, which commonly adds about 2–6 weeks to the overall timeline depending on reviewer response times.
How Long Does It Take Wikipedia Draft Pages to Be Reviewed?
It takes 1–4+ months for a draft article to be reviewed, roughly ~30–120+ days (~4–17 weeks). This table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:AfC_information) shows the levels of backlog according to Wikipedia:
| LEVEL | Description | Number of Articles at AfC |
| 1 | High backlog (4+ months) | 4+ month backlog |
| 2 | 3-month backlog | 3+ month backlog |
| 3 | 2-month backlog | 2+ month backlog |
| 4 | “Healthy” backlog | 1+ month backlog |
| 5 | Virtually no backlog | <1 month backlog |
Step 5: Monitor Your Page
After the page goes live, edit with care and watchlist it so you can track changes in real time, scan Recent changes, and patrol for mistakes or vandalism. Use Page history to compare versions, open a Diff to highlight what changed, and restore or undo problem edits quickly; if needed, revert and then discuss on the Talk page with sources to correct the record and de-escalate. Follow Bold–Revert–Discuss (WP:BRD): make a bold fix, accept a good-faith revert, then discuss to reach consensus rather than cycling reverts. Respect the Three-revert rule (WP:3RR) to deter edit wars; repeated breaches can draw admins to sanction accounts or restrict pages.
When repeated disruption occurs, ask for protection at the noticeboard so admins can lock the page temporarily, restrict editing to autoconfirmed users, or apply semi- or full protection to safeguard the content. If drive-by vandalism continues, request Rollback rights or ask a patroller to rollback clusters of bad edits in one click. Use clear edit summaries to explain why you revert, compare, or restore, and invite others to discuss rather than fight over versions. Keep an eye on high-risk sections, inspect citations, and patrol for unsourced or contentious claims about living people. This steady cycle—edit, review, discuss, and, when needed, restrict—will mitigate disputes and keep the article stable and reliable over time.
What Are Wikipedia’s Notability Requirements?
Wikipedia notability requirements (WP:N and WP:GNG) state that subjects must have received significant coverage in reliable, independent sources to qualify for an article. I’ve outlined Wikipedia’s core notability requirements in the table below:
| Requirement | What It Means | Example |
| Significant Coverage | More than a name-drop; actual analysis or substantial discussion | A 2,000-word profile dissecting a startup’s business model beats 50 mentions in startup roundups |
| Reliable Sources (WP:RS) | Editorial oversight, fact-checking, reputation for accuracy | The Wall Street Journal works; a Substack doesn’t (sorry) |
| Independent Sources | No financial ties, no subject control over content | TechCrunch covering your competitor’s funding—yes. Your own press release—absolutely not |
| Multiple Sources | Sustained attention from different outlets | A one-month PR burst doesn’t work, and neither does two articles |
| Secondary Sources | Sources talking about the subject, not the subject talking about itself | A journalist’s investigation into trial outcomes, not the court transcript itself |
But meeting every requirement guarantees nothing. Wikipedia’s subject-specific notability guidelines layer additional hoops; academics (WP:PROF) need different proof than actors (WP:ENT), and companies face different standards than charities (WP:ORG). WP:BIO wants significant coverage or major contributions to a field. WP:ORG demands coverage beyond “Company X raised funding” announcements that TechCrunch churns out daily. And verifiability (WP:V) underpins everything: if a reliable source didn’t write about it, did it really happen?
How Do You Get a Wikipedia Page Approved?
Wikipedia page approval requires meeting editorial standards and responding to reviewer feedback. If you’re writing an article about a company (WP:CORP) or living person (WP:BLP), it will face more scrutiny.
Why Did My Wikipedia Page Draft Get Rejected?
Wikipedia provides 38 subcategories for rejected article drafts, listed below:
- Advertisement (promotional content or {{Peacock}} language)
- All plot (the page merely summarizes the plot of a book, movie, or other piece of content)
- Already existing
- Blank
- BLP violation (Biographies of living persons [BLPs] must be written with regard for accuracy and the person’s privacy
- Non-notable book
- Category (the user proposed a new category, not a new page)
- Copyright violation
- Custom reason
- Dictionary definition (Wikipedia is not a dictionary)
- Duplicate
- Essay (Wikipedia is not an opinion page)
- Joke
- Lacking context
- Lacking reliable sources
- Large language model (LLM) output (users must verify all LLM-generated text before using it in an article because it could contain hallucinations, copyright violations, or libel)
- Needing footnotes
- Needs merge into another article
- Neologism (a neologism is a word or expression you made up)
- Single-event news (Wikipedia is not a news site)
- Non-notable
- Non-notable academic topic
- Non-notable athletic topic
- Non-notable biography
- Non-notable event
- Non-notable film
- Non-notable musical topic
- Non-notable organization
- Non-notable web content
- Not in English
- Not suitable for Wikipedia
- Not neutral
- Redirect
- Resume-like (BLPs are not resumes; they should not merely list a person’s education and jobs)
- Test
- Userspace draft
- Vandalism or attack page
- Inactive draft
What Are Wikipedia’s Notability Requirements for Different Topics?
Wikipedia has different guidelines depending on the subject type. I’ve summarized some of Wikipedia’s subject-specific notability guidelines below:
| Subject Type | Specific Requirements | Recommended Sources |
| People/Biographies (WP:BIO) | Has made a widely recognized impact | Major profiles, unauthorized biographies, academic citations of their work |
| Companies/Organizations (WP:ORG) | Influence beyond just “it exists and makes money” | Industry analysis, business journalism that goes beyond earnings reports |
| Events (WP:EVENT) | Requires lasting impact—not just this week’s news | Historical analysis, documentaries, scholarly examination years later |
| Academics (WP:PROF) | Significant research impact, prestigious award, head editor of a major journal | Books, reliable news articles, and peer-reviewed journals |
| Books (WP:BK) | Non-trivial coverage in independent works, won a major award | Books, reliable articles, scholarship |
Biographical subjects can’t just be successful—they need independent documentation of that success. Corporate subjects face the highest bar because Wikipedia isn’t a business directory; simply raising or making money doesn’t make a company notable.
Should You Create Your Own Wikipedia Page?
Creating a Wikipedia page about yourself is discouraged due to conflict of interest policies, though not explicitly prohibited. Translation: you can try, but you’ll probably regret it. Wikipedia’s conflict of interest guidelines exist because nobody can write neutrally about themselves. Even Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder, didn’t write his own article, which should tell you something.
If you try and fail because your page gets deleted, it only makes it harder to get a Wikipedia page in the future.
What Wikipedia Page Alternatives Are There?
If you don’t meet Wikipedia’s notability requirements, several alternative platforms provide similar benefits.
Alternative encyclopedia and knowledge platforms include:
- Everipedia: A general interest wiki
- WikiFamousPeople: Biographical wiki for people notable in niches Wikipedia ignores
- Fandom: Hosts wikis on almost any topic you can think of
- Quora: a Q&A site
- IMDb: a database for anyone in the film industry
- Crunchbase: for startups that haven’t earned Wikipedia coverage yet
- Academia.edu: for professors and academics
- WikiAlpha and other Wikipedia copycats: these sites mirror Wikipedia
What Are Professional Wikipedia Page Creation Services?
Professional Wikipedia page creation services help clients navigate Wikipedia’s complex requirements while ensuring compliance with all guidelines. Let’s address the elephant in the room: yes, people pay for Wikipedia articles (WP:PAID). No, it’s not illegal.
Professional Wikipedia writers understand which sources count, how to write in Wikipedia’s house style, and when to push back against unreasonable feedback from other editors. They know that Wikipedia consultancy means managing expectations because sometimes people and companies think they’re more notable than they are.
Benefits of professional Wikipedia services include:
- Getting your page published instead of rejected or sitting in review for months
- Saving months of learning Wikipedia’s labyrinthine rules and culture
- Ongoing protection against vandalism and hostile editing
- Managing conflicts of interest transparently and appropriately
- Writing that sounds encyclopedic, not like marketing copy
- Knowing what’s worked for similar subjects
Wikipedia page creation service providers range from solo operators to agencies. The good ones follow Wikipedia policies and set realistic expectations.
How Much Does It Cost to Create a Wikipedia Page?
Wikipedia page creation costs range from $0 for self-creation to $3,000-$15,000 for professional services, depending on complexity and sourcing requirements. Free means spending 40-80 hours (about 5–10 full workdays at 8 hours/day) learning Wikipedia’s culture, finding sources, drafting, and revising. Professional service pricing starts around $3,000 for straightforward biographies with obvious notability. Complex corporate pages requiring extensive research, multiple language versions, or controversial subjects hit $15,000.
Variables affecting Wikipedia page creation cost include source availability, subject complexity (quantum physicists need different writers than restaurateurs), controversy level (negative coverage requires careful handling), and ongoing maintenance needs. Wikipedia is free; what you’re paying for is expertise so your page gets past all the hurdles and gatekeepers. Anyone claiming to be “from” Wikipedia or to be a “Wikipedia moderator” is lying and trying to scam you.
How Do You Maintain a Wikipedia Page After You Make It?
Wikipedia pages require ongoing monitoring and maintenance after initial approval. Your article isn’t a monument—it’s a living document in an ecosystem where anyone with internet access can edit. Page monitoring through your watchlist sends alerts when someone decides your carefully crafted prose needs “improvement.”
Wikipedia maintenance never ends. New sources emerge requiring updates. Vandals replace your CEO’s photo with a potato. Competitors add “criticism” sections sourced to their own blogs. Well-meaning editors “improve” your technical descriptions into nonsense. Talk page discussions debate whether your company really deserves that awards section. Professional maintenance services handle this daily grind—they know when to fight edits and when strategic retreat preserves the article’s core content. Watchlist management becomes a part-time job for any subject with even moderate controversy or competition.
Are There Other Types of Wikipedia Pages?
When you think of a Wikipedia page, the first thing that jumps to mind is probably its mainspace articles (the actual encyclopedia entries), but there are other types of pages, too. A disambiguation page lists pages with similar titles. According to Slate, for example, the longest disambiguation page on Wikipedia lists 584 churches called “St. Mary’s Church.” A redirect page forwards you to the page you were probably looking for, e.g., if you type “UK” in the Wikipedia search bar, it will forward you to the United Kingdom page.
Sources:
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Notability” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Conflict of interest” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- MediaWiki. “Help:Getting Started” MediaWiki.org Documentation.
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Articles for Creation” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Neutral point of view” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Verifiability” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Reliable sources” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- Cohen, Noam. “Wikipedia vs. the Small Screen” The New York Times, February 2014.
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia:Your first article” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
- Harrison, Stephen. “The Internet’s Favorite Reference Site Is Having a Hard Time” Slate, June 2023.
- Wikimedia Foundation Statistics. “Wikipedia Statistics – Tables – Active Wikipedians” stats.wikimedia.org.