CEO.wiki:Editorial policy

This page sets out how CEO.wiki chooses subjects, gathers sources, writes and checks articles, uses automated tools, and corrects mistakes. It is the policy the site is actually run by, and it is kept up to date when the process changes.

Choosing subjects

An article is written only when the subject is already documented in independent sources. In practice that means one or more of:

the person leads, or has led, a company listed on a stock exchange or a company of comparable size;
the person or company has an entry in an established encyclopedia or national biography, in any language;
the person or company has been covered in depth by established news organisations.

Subjects are selected by the editorial team from public lists, such as company filings and encyclopedia records of chief executives. We do not accept requests, payment or any other consideration for creating an article, and we do not offer "profile", "listing" or "featured" services of any kind. Anyone offering to place an article on CEO.wiki for a fee is not acting for us; please report it through the contact page.

Sources

Every statement of fact should be traceable to a published source. In order of preference we use:

regulatory filings and official records (annual reports, proxy statements, stock exchange announcements, court records);
established news organisations and business publications;
books and academic work;
other reference works, including Wikipedia.

Company press releases and the subject's own statements are used only for uncontroversial facts such as dates of appointment, and are attributed as such ("the company said"). They are never used as the basis for praise. See reliable sources and verifiability.

Where an article adapts text from Wikipedia, that text is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence and the Wikipedia article is credited.

Writing

Articles follow the Manual of Style and the neutral point of view policy:

Plain, factual language. Words such as "visionary", "legendary" or "world-class" are not used in CEO.wiki's own voice.
Achievements and criticism are both reported where reliable sources report them. Controversies, legal proceedings, failed ventures and departures are part of the record.
Opinions are attributed to the people who hold them.
Nothing is included that the sources do not support. If the sources are thin, the article is short.

Use of automated tools

CEO.wiki is produced by a small team with the help of software, and we say so openly.

Research. Scripts collect source material about a subject from public records, news sources and reference works into a research file.
Identity checks. Before anything is written, scripts check that the source material is about the right person (people with the same name are a common source of error) and that it describes a business career. Subjects that fail are dropped.
Drafting. A first draft is written by an AI language model that is instructed to use only facts present in the research file, and to stop and report rather than fill gaps.
Checks before publication. Drafts are checked automatically for length against the sources available, balance between the person and their company, and style rules.

Automated tools make mistakes. That is why every article shows its sources, why the corrections process exists, and why articles that do not yet cite sources are kept out of search engine indexes until they do.

Independence and conflicts of interest

No subject, employer, public relations firm or reputation management firm can pay for, commission, review or approve an article.
CEO.wiki carries no advertising and no sponsored content.
People with a connection to a subject (employees, advisers, agencies, family) must not edit that subject's article. They are welcome to report factual errors through the corrections page, with a source.
Requests to remove accurate, properly sourced material because it is unflattering are declined.

Corrections

Errors are corrected as soon as they are confirmed, and the change is recorded in the article's history. See corrections for how to report one. Legal requests are handled under the takedown request policy.