What Getting Featured on Wikipedia Actually Means

Short answer: You cannot buy a Featured Article designation on Wikipedia. It is granted only after volunteers review an article in public and agree it meets a high standard, so anyone selling "featured on Wikipedia" placement is describing something that doesn't exist or proposing a policy violation.

Three different things people mean by "featured"

Most of the confusion starts with the word itself. "Featured on Wikipedia" can mean three different things, and only one of them has a formal meaning.

• Having a Wikipedia article. An article exists about a person, company or organization. This depends on notability, which means the subject has received significant coverage in independent, reliable sources. Creating one is a sourcing question, not a payment.
• Being mentioned in one. Your name, company or work is cited in an article about something else, usually because an independent source reported on you. You cannot request this. It happens when editors decide a source is relevant.
• Featured Article status. This is a formal designation Wikipedia gives to a small fraction of its articles, after a public community review. It is the only one of the three that carries the "featured" label, and a subject or company cannot apply for it.

Mixing these up is how many misleading offers get written. A vendor who says they can "get you featured" may mean any of the three, and the price usually attaches to whichever sounds most impressive.

What the Featured Article process involves

Featured Article candidate nominations are reviewed in the open, on Wikipedia itself. Any registered editor can comment, and reviewers check the article against the Featured Article criteria. Those cover things like being well written, comprehensive, accurately sourced, neutrally written, stable rather than being edited back and forth, and illustrated where suitable images exist. Reviewers question prose, sourcing and balance, and a nomination can close without promotion if concerns are not resolved.

That is a high bar on purpose. The designation is meant to signal that an article is among the best on the encyclopedia, and volunteers judge it with no obligation to a nominator's business goals. Nominations often attract detailed objections about a single sentence or citation, and the author is expected to answer each one with evidence and revisions. An article that cannot survive that scrutiny is not promoted, however much work went into it.

There is also a lower-tier Good Article review, which is a more accessible step, but it still turns on the community's judgment of quality. Both reviews reward the same underlying habits: neutral wording, sources that say what the article claims, and an article that has stopped changing dramatically from week to week.

For a company or person, the practical implication is that a Featured Article is the product of years of sustained, independent coverage and careful editing, not a campaign. If the article about you is not yet well sourced, the Featured process is far off. The work that actually helps is the unglamorous part: finding and citing independent, significant coverage. For background on what counts, see our notability guidelines explainer.

Why "featured placement" offers break the rules

An offer to place you in a featured article, or to secure featured status for a fee, runs into several problems at once. Wikipedia's Terms of Use require that paid contributions be disclosed, and the community's conflict-of-interest guidelines restrict what subjects and their representatives may do with articles about themselves. Editing or nominating in ways designed to promote a subject while hiding the financial relationship is exactly the behavior that gets accounts blocked and articles tagged or deleted.

The offer itself is a warning sign. Common versions include:

• A package price for "featured" status on a set timeline.
• Claims of "contacts" who will approve or nominate the article.
• Sourcing built from sponsored articles, press releases or the subject's own website, which the community does not treat as independent.
• Requests to keep the arrangement quiet.

If a vendor cannot explain plainly how their work is disclosed on-wiki, assume the service is either not what it claims or one that could get your article removed. Our paid-editing disclosure guide covers what the disclosure requirement actually asks for.

What you can legitimately do

If you already have a Wikipedia article, the honest path is to check it for accuracy, sourcing and neutrality, and to propose changes on its talk page, disclosing any conflict of interest. If you don't have one, the first question is whether independent coverage exists at all. Collect significant articles from reliable outlets that were not paid for, and ask whether they cover you in depth rather than in passing.

What you should not do is write a featured-quality article about yourself, nominate it yourself, or ask others to nominate it for you. Those actions are read as promotion. A neutral, well-sourced article that matches what independent sources say is the only kind with a realistic chance of surviving review, and no payment changes that.

What to take from this

Treat "featured on Wikipedia" as the description of a community outcome, not a product. Know which of the three meanings a vendor is using, and be wary of anyone who sells the outcome. Money spent on careful sourcing and an honest review of your article is the defensible use here. If you want an honest read on whether your coverage is strong enough to support an article at all, our Wikipedia page creation service is a reasonable place to start that conversation.

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