# Is it ethical for a student to edit the Wikipedia page of his advisor? Tags: ethics, conflict-of-interest, wikipedia - Score: 24 - Views: 3841 - Answers: 5 - Answered: yes - Asked by: Franck Dernoncourt (35119 rep) - Asked: 2014-12-19 - Edited: 2014-12-21 - Site: academia ## Question I have seen quite a few students editing the Wikipedia page of their advisors. I wonder what the view of the academic community are on this. There might be some conflict of interest since promoting one's advisor can be seen as indirectly promoting oneself, but at the same time it can be argued that a student (especially graduate student) may have a decent amount of knowledge about his advisor. ## Answers ### Answer by Compass (score: 32) It is not ethical, and is, per Wikipedia guidelines, a conflict of interest. If you have a personal connection to a topic or person, you are advised to refrain from editing those articles directly, from adding related advertising links, links to personal websites and similar, and to provide full disclosure of the connection if you comment about the article on talk pages or in other discussions. There is an exception. For example, let's say Dr. Potato is lis