Wikipedia coverage of Donald Trump has been a subject of controversy, largely on the English-language version, since 2015 after he launched his 2016 United States presidential campaign.
Both of these actions have resulted in increased media attention and subsequently some protection against editing by inexperienced and malicious editors to prevent further vandalism to the article.
[2] After Trump announced his 2016 United States presidential campaign in June 2015, his article began receiving an increase in edits.
[5] The next month, The Washington Post reported that Trump's page was edited more times in an election cycle than other Republican nominees since 2004.
Simultaneously, the page had a total of 156 million views, the most for a biography since Wikipedia began tracking viewership data in December 2007.
[2] During the 2016 United States presidential election, features of Trump's article were frequently debated.
Although the domain rarely redirected to figures for political purposes, Connelly felt that the "definition of a loser" was "a man who attacks Muslims" and "pushes fear and doubt".
[12] In one such instance, an editor replaced the contents of the page with "Lets [sic] be fair, nobody cares about him.
[26][28] In August 2023, editors engaged in a contentious debate on whether or not an article for Trump's mug shot should exist.
The article's proponents argued that the mug shot was a historical photograph, which some opponents questioned.
[30] In May 2024, after Trump was found guilty of 34 felony charges in New York, editors held a discussion on whether the words "convicted felon" should be included in his article's first sentence.
In spite of this, a user changed the seating capacity in the infobox of Williams Arena's page from 8,000 people to 20,000.
[40] In June 2017, a Wikimedia Commons user claimed that the White House's official portrait of Trump for his first presidency was not the work of the United States government, but rather a photographer known as Doug Coulter, and thus did not qualify for public domain status.