How to Create a Wikipedia Page for Politicians

Want to create a Wikipedia page for a politician?

Whether the page is for yourself, someone in your professional or personal circle, or simply someone you follow, I’ve gathered all the essential information you need to know here.

At Wikiconsult, we regularly support public officials, parliamentary assistants, and communications teams from consulting firms with Wikipedia training or by taking on the creation and maintenance of their pages ourselves on the platform.

Which Politicians Are Eligible for a Wikipedia Page?

Simply being elected isn’t enough to qualify for a Wikipedia page.

Politicians must meet either general or specific notability criteria, which may vary depending on the language version of Wikipedia.

For example, here are the 3 specific criteria that apply to politicians on French Wikipedia. You must meet at least one to be eligible for a dedicated page:

• Be or have been a member of a national government, a federal entity, or another executive body of similar importance and notability.
• Be or have been a member of a transnational, national, or similar legislative body, such as a Canadian province, a Belgian federated entity, a UK nation, Catalonia, or any significant deliberative assembly.
• Be or have been the mayor of one of a country’s 20 most populous cities, provided the city has at least 100,000 inhabitants.

If you don’t meet any of these specific criteria, you may still qualify under general criteria if you have been:

• Featured in at least 2 media publications,
• Published at least 2 years apart,
• In well-known, national, general-interest media outlets such as Le Monde, L’Obs, L’Actualité, Le Temps, The Herald Tribune, Der Spiegel, Times, France 2, France Inter, etc.
• With articles focused exclusively on you—your career, mandates, or public engagements,
• Not limited to reports on candidacies or election results.

Source : Wikipedia – Notability of Political Figures

💡 If you’d prefer to delegate this work, I can also conduct a notoriety audit for you. This will help you determine if you are eligible for a Wikipedia page and provide an assessment of the quality of your press relations and online reputation. Contact me.

Can You Create Your Own Wikipedia Page if You’re Involved in Politics?

While it’s not forbidden to create your own Wikipedia page (though it’s not recommended), transparency is key. You must clearly state your direct connection to the page’s subject: is it about you, a family member, or an employee?

To comply with Wikipedia’s guidelines, disclose this connection on the discussion page, in your profile, and in the edit summary of the new page.

What are the risks of not doing so? Your page could be removed, or it may get flagged with unattractive warning banners that are difficult to remove (french example):

It’s quite easy nowadays on Wikipedia to spot pages created by accounts with little experience, often set up just to add one or a few Wikipedia pages. Both bots and volunteers, especially members of the Anti-Promotion project, work to detect these kinds of practices.

What Should the Page Look Like?

If you’re not familiar with creating Wikipedia pages, I recommend taking inspiration from a “Featured Article” on Wikipedia. You can find the full list of these articles here.

If you’re building the page for a government official, you could, for example, take inspiration from the Wikipedia page of Liz Truss, a British politician whose article has been quality-rated since 2023:

You must, of course, follow all basic rules regarding content and formatting, including:

• Supporting each piece of information with a reliable source;
• Using a neutral tone, without superlatives;
• Adding internal links to other Wikipedia pages;
• Adding external links only in appropriate sections (infobox, notes and references, external links);
• Including categories and portals;
• Structuring the article with sections and subsections;
• Using only copyright-free images, uploaded via Wikimedia Commons;
• Avoiding abbreviations;
• Avoiding lists, structuring in paragraphs.

How to Publish the Page

Have you reviewed and finalized your page? It’s currently available on Wikipedia as a draft, visible only to those with a direct link.

To make it accessible on Wikipedia’s public space and indexed by search engines like Google, you’ll need to publish it by:

• Submitting your draft for review by a volunteer on Wikipedia—this process can take several weeks or months, and you may need to revise the page based on feedback;
• Publishing directly. However, there’s a high risk that your page may be removed if it doesn’t fully meet Wikipedia’s content and formatting standards.

💡 If you’d prefer to delegate the creation of your page, I offer this as a service, following a notability audit.

How to Respond if Your Page is Edited or Deleted

Once a Wikipedia page is published, it’s subject to review by both automated bots and volunteer editors who check for relevance. This is especially true in the political sector, where some Wikipedia editors closely monitor newly created pages.

It’s very common for your page to be edited or even deleted within hours of going live.

If your page is deleted, I recommend reading this article: How to recover a deleted Wikipedia page? (coming soon)

If your page is edited, and you believe the changes are irrelevant:

🚨 Keep in mind that just because you created the page or it’s about you, doesn’t give you superior editorial control on Wikipedia. Horizontal collaboration is a core principle—no one has greater decision-making power; even administrators have only additional technical tools, not extra editorial authority.

How to Become Eligible on Wikipedia

Have you realized that the politician you want to create a page for doesn’t yet meet the eligibility criteria? To actively accelerate eligibility, press relations are often essential.

For more information, see this article: Best Press Strategy to Get a Wikipedia Page (coming soon)

I hope you found this article helpful! If you have questions, please reach out.

Happy editing 🙂!