How to write a Wikipedia draft that survives review
Assume you have already passed the notability test, because without that nothing here helps. What is left is a craft problem: writing about yourself in a voice that sounds like it was written by someone who does not care about you.
How do you write a Wikipedia article?
Create a draft through Articles for Creation, write in neutral encyclopaedic tone with every claim supported by an inline citation to a reliable independent source, declare any paid or personal connection on your user page and the draft’s talk page, then submit for review. Volunteer reviewers assess notability, neutrality and sourcing, and the queue commonly takes weeks to months.
Before you write a word
- Confirmed notability — multiple significant, independent, reliable sources
- A Wikipedia account, with any paid or personal connection declared on your user page
- Your sources organised, with the specific fact each one supports
- Two or three existing articles on similar subjects, open as models
- 1
Declare the conflict of interest first
Before writing anything. Put it on your user page and on the draft’s talk page. Paid editors must disclose under Wikipedia’s terms of use, and undisclosed paid editing is the most common reason a bought article is deleted and the account blocked.
- 2
Start from the sources, not from the story
List the facts your sources actually support, then write only those. The usual failure is writing the story you want and then hunting for citations, which produces an article full of claims nothing supports.
- 3
Write the lead as a definition
The first sentence states what the subject is, in the plainest possible terms. No adjectives, no achievements, no mission.
- Good: "Acme Corp is a British software company founded in 2015."
- Bad: "Acme Corp is an innovative, award-winning leader in enterprise software solutions."
- 4
Strip every promotional word
Leading, innovative, award-winning, renowned, visionary, cutting-edge, passionate, world-class. Reviewers scan for these, and a draft containing them is declined for tone before anyone assesses the sourcing.
- 5
Cite inline, after every claim
Not a list of references at the bottom. Each statement needs a citation immediately after it, so a reviewer can verify any sentence without hunting.
- 6
Include what you would rather leave out
Significant, well-sourced controversy belongs in the article. Its absence is itself a signal to a reviewer that the draft was written by someone connected to the subject — and omitting it invites another editor to add it later, less kindly.
- 7
Submit and wait properly
Submit through Articles for Creation. The queue is volunteer-staffed and unpredictable. When a reviewer leaves comments, address them on the merits and resubmit; arguing never works and is remembered.
Why drafts get declined
- Promotional tone. This is the most common reason by a wide margin, ahead of notability.
- Claims with no citation, or citations to the subject’s own website.
- Undisclosed conflict of interest, which is detected and is treated seriously.
- Treating a press release as a source.
- An article with no criticism when the public record plainly contains some.
- Resubmitting unchanged after a decline.
When this stops being a DIY job
Honestly: the writing is learnable and you can do it. What is hard to do for yourself is the neutrality, because you cannot hear your own promotional tone — everyone thinks their draft is neutral. That blind spot is most of what a paid editor is actually for.
Wikipedia page creationQuestions
Last reviewed . Platform processes change; we re-check every guide quarterly.