Wikipedia editing rules: What you need to know to contribute without getting blocked

When you edit Wikipedia editing rules, the set of community-backed guidelines that determine what changes are allowed on Wikipedia. Also known as Wikipedia policies, these rules aren’t written by lawyers or CEOs—they’re shaped by thousands of volunteers who argue, vote, and update them daily to keep the site reliable. If you’ve ever been blocked for adding a citation that wasn’t from a reliable source, or had your edit reverted because it sounded like an ad, you’ve run into these rules in action.

These rules aren’t optional. They’re the reason Wikipedia stays usable when millions edit it every day. For example, neutral point of view, the policy requiring articles to present facts without favoring any side stops editors from turning a page about climate change into a debate forum. Then there’s verifiability, the rule that every claim must link to a published source—this is what keeps AI-generated nonsense out. And no original research, the ban on adding new theories or unpublished findings ensures Wikipedia doesn’t become a blog. These aren’t just suggestions. They’re enforced by bots that revert spam in seconds and human editors who patrol talk pages for bias or hidden agendas.

Wikipedia’s editing rules also protect its editors. If you’re writing about your own company, the conflict of interest policy, the guideline that requires transparency when personal ties affect edits tells you to disclose it—or risk being banned. If you’re fixing a typo on your phone, the mobile editing tools, simplified interfaces designed to help casual contributors make safe, small changes are built to guide you away from breaking rules. Even the bots that clean up vandalism follow rules coded by volunteers who spent months debating what counts as spam versus a genuine edit.

These rules evolve. When AI started generating fake citations, Wikipedia doubled down on sourcing standards. When edit wars over geopolitics spiked, the community strengthened its dispute resolution tools. And when new editors kept getting scared off by complex jargon, they created tools like TemplateWizard to make formatting less intimidating. The rules aren’t static—they’re a living response to what breaks the site.

What you’ll find below isn’t a list of dry policies. It’s real stories: how librarians use these rules to teach research, how bots catch 90% of spam before humans see it, how a single edit on a controversial topic can trigger a month-long debate. Whether you’re fixing a typo on your commute or trying to get your article promoted to featured status, these posts show you how the rules actually work—on the ground, in real time, with real people.