@inproceedings{li-etal-2026-etcon,
title = "{E}t{C}on: Edit then Consolidate for Reliable Knowledge Editing",
author = "Li, Ruilin and
Wang, Yibin and
Zhu, Wenhong and
Zhang, JingHao and
Li, Chenglin and
Li, Chenliang and
Yan, Junchi and
Wang, Jiaqi",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.489/",
pages = "10235--10256",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Knowledge Editing (KE) aims to update specific facts in large language models (LLMs) without full retraining. Prior efforts sought to tune the knowledge layers of LLMs, achieving near-perfect performance in teacher-forced evaluations. However, under realistic autoregressive generation evaluation, their effectiveness remains limited by two core challenges: (1) even when methods successfully inject new knowledge, pre-trained capabilities can degrade, and (2) more critically, the injected parametric knowledge is not reliably expressed at inference time. To this end, we formalize knowledge editing as a two-stage problem and propose EtCon, an edit-then-consolidate paradigm that couples targeted edits with post-edit consolidation. Within EtCon, the edit stage applies Targeted Proximal Supervised Fine-Tuning (TPSFT) to update parametric knowledge with minimal disruption to pre-trained capabilities. The consolidation stage applies Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to align the model{'}s autoregressive generation with the edited parametric knowledge. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our instantiation (TPSFT + GRPO) improves editing reliability and real-world generalization while preserving pre-trained capabilities, and that EtCon consistently improves existing editing methods when instantiated with them."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="li-etal-2026-etcon">
<titleInfo>
<title>EtCon: Edit then Consolidate for Reliable Knowledge Editing</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ruilin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yibin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Wenhong</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">JingHao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Chenglin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Chenliang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Junchi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Yan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiaqi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-10</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hung-Yi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lee</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sunipa</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dev</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jessy</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Desmond</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Elliott</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Budapest, Hungary</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-462-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Knowledge Editing (KE) aims to update specific facts in large language models (LLMs) without full retraining. Prior efforts sought to tune the knowledge layers of LLMs, achieving near-perfect performance in teacher-forced evaluations. However, under realistic autoregressive generation evaluation, their effectiveness remains limited by two core challenges: (1) even when methods successfully inject new knowledge, pre-trained capabilities can degrade, and (2) more critically, the injected parametric knowledge is not reliably expressed at inference time. To this end, we formalize knowledge editing as a two-stage problem and propose EtCon, an edit-then-consolidate paradigm that couples targeted edits with post-edit consolidation. Within EtCon, the edit stage applies Targeted Proximal Supervised Fine-Tuning (TPSFT) to update parametric knowledge with minimal disruption to pre-trained capabilities. The consolidation stage applies Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to align the model’s autoregressive generation with the edited parametric knowledge. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our instantiation (TPSFT + GRPO) improves editing reliability and real-world generalization while preserving pre-trained capabilities, and that EtCon consistently improves existing editing methods when instantiated with them.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">li-etal-2026-etcon</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.489/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>10235</start>
<end>10256</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T EtCon: Edit then Consolidate for Reliable Knowledge Editing
%A Li, Ruilin
%A Wang, Yibin
%A Zhu, Wenhong
%A Zhang, JingHao
%A Li, Chenglin
%A Li, Chenliang
%A Yan, Junchi
%A Wang, Jiaqi
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F li-etal-2026-etcon
%X Knowledge Editing (KE) aims to update specific facts in large language models (LLMs) without full retraining. Prior efforts sought to tune the knowledge layers of LLMs, achieving near-perfect performance in teacher-forced evaluations. However, under realistic autoregressive generation evaluation, their effectiveness remains limited by two core challenges: (1) even when methods successfully inject new knowledge, pre-trained capabilities can degrade, and (2) more critically, the injected parametric knowledge is not reliably expressed at inference time. To this end, we formalize knowledge editing as a two-stage problem and propose EtCon, an edit-then-consolidate paradigm that couples targeted edits with post-edit consolidation. Within EtCon, the edit stage applies Targeted Proximal Supervised Fine-Tuning (TPSFT) to update parametric knowledge with minimal disruption to pre-trained capabilities. The consolidation stage applies Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to align the model’s autoregressive generation with the edited parametric knowledge. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our instantiation (TPSFT + GRPO) improves editing reliability and real-world generalization while preserving pre-trained capabilities, and that EtCon consistently improves existing editing methods when instantiated with them.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.489/
%P 10235-10256
Markdown (Informal)
[EtCon: Edit then Consolidate for Reliable Knowledge Editing](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.489/) (Li et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Ruilin Li, Yibin Wang, Wenhong Zhu, JingHao Zhang, Chenglin Li, Chenliang Li, Junchi Yan, and Jiaqi Wang. 2026. EtCon: Edit then Consolidate for Reliable Knowledge Editing. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, pages 10235–10256, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.