Almost everyone who wants a knowledge panel also wants a Wikipedia article, and for understandable reasons. A Wikipedia article is often where the panel's description comes from, it ranks well for your name, and the AI assistants have read Wikipedia more thoroughly than almost anything else. It is also the part of this course where good intentions do the most damage. An article written by the wrong person, from the wrong sources, gets deleted, and the deletion discussion stays public long after the article is gone.
This module explains the rules English Wikipedia actually applies to articles about people, in plain terms. It was checked against Wikipedia's current guideline pages in October 2026. Wikipedia's rules are set by its volunteer community and do change, so read the current versions of the pages named here before acting on anything.
Who decides
Nobody owns Wikipedia's articles, including the people they are about. Articles are written and maintained by volunteer editors, and whether an article should exist is decided by those editors applying community guidelines, sometimes in a public discussion. There is no application form, no fee and no appeal to a company. That is exactly why the rules matter so much: they are the only lever there is.
The test for people
Wikipedia calls its test notability. It is not a judgment about whether you are important, talented or successful. It is a judgment about whether enough independent, reliable material has been published about you to write a neutral article from it.
The basic criterion for people, in Wikipedia's guideline on the notability of people, is that a person is presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject. Each part of that sentence does work, so it is worth taking apart.
| Part of the test | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Significant coverage | The source is substantially about you, not a passing mention, a quote or a name in a list |
| Multiple | More than one. There is no fixed number; quality and depth matter more than count |
| Published | Available to the public through a reputable publisher, online or in print, in any language |
| Secondary | Someone writing about you, analyzing or reporting, rather than you or your organization speaking |
| Reliable | A source with editorial oversight and a reputation for fact checking, such as a newspaper, a trade journal or a book from an established publisher |
| Independent of each other | Not the same story syndicated to five sites, and not several pieces by the same author or outlet |
| Independent of the subject | Not written, paid for, commissioned or controlled by you, your employer or your publicist |
Wikipedia also says that primary sources can support facts in an article but do not count toward proving notability. That covers most of what people usually have the most of: their own site, their company's site, their profiles, press releases, and interviews where they are speaking about themselves.
There are additional criteria for particular fields, such as academics, authors, athletes and politicians, and meeting one of those can establish notability in a different way, for example through a major award or widely cited academic work. If you work in one of those fields, read that section of the guideline. For most business founders, consultants, coaches and creators, the basic criterion is the one that applies.
Common reasons articles about people fail
The sources are about the company, not the person. Wikipedia's guidelines say notability is not inherited. A well covered company does not make its founder notable, and a famous client does not make their adviser notable. The coverage needs to be about you.
The sources are interviews and appearances. A long run of podcast episodes and Q&A features is good evidence for Google and the AI assistants, as module 3 explained. For Wikipedia, interviews are largely the subject talking about themselves, so they rarely establish notability on their own.
The sources are promotional. Press releases, sponsored articles, paid "featured in" placements, award listings from organizations that charge entry fees, and contributor posts on sites that publish almost anything are treated skeptically or discounted entirely.
The coverage is about one event. If you were covered because of a single news story, the guidelines generally favor covering the event rather than writing a biography.
The article reads like a profile. Even with good sources, an article written in the tone of a LinkedIn summary, with achievements and testimonials, gets flagged as promotional and heavily trimmed or deleted.
Why you should not write your own article
Wikipedia's guideline on conflict of interest strongly discourages people from editing articles about themselves, their employer or their clients, and its page on autobiography strongly discourages writing an article about yourself at all. The reasons are practical as much as ethical. It is very hard to write neutrally about yourself, editors are experienced at recognizing autobiography, and an article created by its own subject draws scrutiny that a borderline article written by an independent editor might not.
If anyone is paid to edit on your behalf, the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use require them to disclose who is paying them, and the conflict of interest guideline very strongly discourages paid editors from editing affected articles directly. Undisclosed paid editing is a breach of the Terms of Use. Wikipedia has a long and public history of uncovering paid editing networks, and articles created through them are routinely deleted.
That is the background to the warning in module 0. Services that promise you a Wikipedia article for a fee are either using undisclosed paid editing, which breaks the rules, or taking your money for a draft that independent editors may well reject. Either way, the outcome is not theirs to promise.
The proper routes
None of that means you have to sit still. There are legitimate routes for someone with a conflict of interest, and Wikipedia's own guidelines describe them.
- Check the evidence first. Use the table above and the scorecard in module 9. List every source that is significant, reliable, secondary and independent. If you cannot list at least a few, stop here; no route below will work yet, and module 3 is where your time should go.
- If an article exists, propose changes on its talk page. Every article has a talk page for discussion. Disclose your connection, then propose a specific change with a reliable source, using the edit request template for conflict of interest editors. An uninvolved editor reviews it and either makes the change or explains why not.
- If no article exists, consider Articles for Creation. This is Wikipedia's review process for new articles. You, or someone working with you, can submit a draft for review by experienced editors, with your conflict of interest disclosed on your user page and on the draft. Reviewers decline drafts that do not show notability, and often explain why, which is useful in itself.
- Or wait for someone independent. Wikipedia's own advice to people who want an article about themselves is that if you are notable, someone else will notice and write it. Strong independent coverage makes that more likely over time, and it is the only route that involves no conflict of interest at all.
- Fix clear errors properly. If an article about you contains something plainly false or defamatory, the guidelines allow the subject to raise it, and articles about living people have their own strict policy on sourcing. Use the talk page or the help routes for article subjects rather than editing the claim out yourself, unless it is an obvious case such as vandalism.
A disclosure is straightforward: a sentence on your user page saying who you are and that you are the subject of, or connected to, the article, and a note in any edit request. Disclosure is not an admission of wrongdoing. It is what lets other editors trust you.
What a draft should look like
If you or an independent editor do work on a draft, the standard is the one every Wikipedia biography is held to.
Neutral tone. Facts, not praise. "She founded the company in 2015" rather than "she visionarily founded". No adjectives that a critic would not also use.
Every claim sourced. Each sentence that states a fact cites a reliable source. Material about living people that is challenged and unsourced is removed quickly, under the policy on biographies of living persons.
The sources do the talking. The article says what reliable independent sources say about you, in proportion to how much they say it. If the sources mostly discuss your company's growth, so does the article. Your own view of what matters most does not decide the emphasis.
Short is fine. A short, well sourced article is far more likely to survive than a long one padded with primary sources.
Where this leaves most people
Honestly, most people who take this course are not ready for Wikipedia yet, and many never need to be. That is not a failure. A Wikipedia article is one of several sources Google and the AI assistants use, and it is not required for a knowledge panel. Plenty of people have panels with no Wikipedia article at all, built from a clean site, consistent profiles, independent coverage and a Wikidata item.
The work that makes a Wikipedia article possible later is the same work that improves everything else now: earning significant, independent coverage in reliable publications, as described in module 3. If you do that steadily, the question of Wikipedia tends to answer itself, sometimes by an independent editor deciding to write about you.
Do this now
- Read Wikipedia's current pages on notability of people, conflict of interest and autobiography before doing anything on Wikipedia.
- List your sources and mark each one: significant, reliable, secondary, independent of you, independent of the others. Count only the ones that pass all five.
- If an article about you exists, read its talk page and history, and propose any corrections there with a disclosure and a source.
- If no article exists and you have several sources that pass all five tests, decide between Articles for Creation with disclosure and waiting for an independent editor.
- If you have fewer, put this module aside and go back to module 3. Note the date to revisit in six months.
Questions
Can MeMyself write my Wikipedia article?
No. We do not write or edit Wikipedia articles for clients, because doing it properly would mean a disclosed paid edit that Wikipedia strongly discourages, and doing it any other way would break the rules. What we do is tell you honestly where you stand against the criteria and help you build the independent coverage that makes an article possible.
A friend offered to write it for me. Is that allowed?
A close friend has a conflict of interest too, under Wikipedia's guideline. They would need to disclose it, and the same notability test applies. A friend writing it does not change whether the sources are there.
My article was deleted. Can I recreate it?
Not without significantly better sources than it had when it was deleted. Recreating a deleted article without addressing the reason for deletion is usually deleted again quickly, and repeated attempts can lead editors to block recreation. Build the coverage first, then use Articles for Creation with disclosure.
Does a Wikipedia article guarantee a knowledge panel?
No, but it helps a great deal, because Google draws on Wikipedia heavily for descriptions and facts. People with an article almost always have a strong entity. People without one can still have a panel; it simply depends more on Wikidata, their own site and other independent sources.