From time to time, notable people come to edit Wikipedia, most often to edit articles related to themselves. As newbies, they invariably are unfamiliar with our policies and guidelines, our sourcing standards, and make many mistakes. Of course, this is our chance to put them in their place, right?

Conflict of interest, notability and neutrality may all be genuine issues that very much need addressing, but please, let's be sensitive about how we go about it, and not abuse the relative advantage we have over notable people when they come here to edit. We should always be kind to newcomers, and be especially sensitive to the position of people whose lives are affected by our coverage of them.

Good things to do

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Please don't torture the celebrity.

These are a few things you should consider doing, to make the process as easy and agreeable as possible:

You might also consider dropping them a link to the Notable person survival kit on their talk page, which outlines some of these basic points.

Wikipedia is a great leveler. Notable people are people, and usually interesting and talented people at that. The Wikipedia experience will be much more interesting and pleasant for them and for us if we approach them in a spirit of camaraderie and help them find their feet here, rather than throwing the book at them.

And that way, when they speak about Wikipedia, they will have something nice to say about us.

See also

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