Editing Wikidata

Editing pages on Wikidata is something that anybody can do. It helps not just our project, but anybody who uses this data for other purposes too! You can read more about contributing to Wikidata here.

• Add Wikidata pages for items that don't yet have them.
• Improve the labels and descriptions on the Wikidata pages.
• Translate the labels and descriptions to more languages.
• Add social media accounts under the "Identifiers" section. If a brand or organization has a Facebook or Twitter account, name-suggestion-index can fetch its logo automatically.

👉   The browsable index at https://nsi.guide can show you where the Wikidata information is missing or incomplete.

 

Adding properties to Wikidata

Social media accounts may be used to automatically fetch logos, which are used by the iD Editor.

Social media links are often displayed on the official web site of a brand, making them easy to find. When adding an entry for a social media account, it might be worth checking if that account has a "verified badge" which indicates a verified social media account, and if it does, this can be added via the "add qualifier" option, using "has quality" along with either "verified account" or "verified badge".

 

Adding references to Wikidata

Wikidata pages without a matching Wikipedia article should have some additional references by independent sources. For our purposes, the easiest one to add is usually something in form of "this shop brand had N shops on some specific date".

If adding a general reference, you can use "described at URL" (P973) as a top-level claim. The ideal would be links to articles in major newspapers that are primarily about the brand in question. Press releases and articles guest-written by the CEO are not as good.

 

Creating Wikidata pages

For minor brands there may be no Wikipedia article and it may be impossible to create one. In such cases one may still go to Wikidata and select "Create a new item" in menu. For such entries it is mandatory to add external identifiers and references in order to comply with Wikidata's notability policies (see section above with animation showing how it can be done).