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. You can edit anonymously, but it is recommended to make an account.

How you can help:

• 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 account, the Name Suggestion Index can fetch its logo automatically.

Tip

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

Editing existing Wikidata pages (items)

Adding properties

If a Wikidata item doesn't have sufficient information, it can be at risk for deletion. Some useful properties that you can easily add to Wikidata include:

• P31: "instance of" - For example: "organization", "retail chain", "business"
• P856: "official website" - URL to the organization's main web page
• P12454: "location information URL" - URL to the organization's locations page. This could be a store location list on a brand's official website, of service locations on an operator's official website, etc.
• Social media accounts, such as Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, etc. - Name Suggestion Index uses the Facebook username property to fetch the logos that are displayed on presets in the Rapid and iD editors.
  • P2002: "X (Twitter) username" - don't include @ symbol
  • P2013: "Facebook username" - everything that follows URL part 'https://www.facebook.com/'

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

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 reference would be links to articles by major news outlets (newspapers, credible national or local news television networks or stations, credible news websites, etc.) 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 the side 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).

Undeletion of Wikidata pages

Occasionally Wikidata pages may be deleted for various reasons. You can request them to be undeleted. Do not create new Wikidata pages to replace deleted pages; these will be deleted on sight.

Some possible reasons for deletion include:

• Lack of detail. Apologise and be respectful when requesting undeletion, and add more details and reliable references to the Wikidata page once it has been restored.
• Unclear notability:
  • If you know the number of POIs, say it. It's hard to argue that a chain with a bunch of physical locations isn't worth having data on.
  • "structural need". This one is harder to argue; their definition of "structural need" is just for Wikimedia Foundation projects (e.g., the various language Wikipedias). NSI isn't one. But we are open data and share goals. NSI has a complete need for this entry to be restored, as without a Wikidata page a brand/flag/operator/transit network can't be fully integrated into NSI.
• Age, this entry was probably brand new by you. It can't reasonably have had multiple editors yet. As with "lack of detail", kindly request for the page to be undeleted and add enough details and reliable references to the Wikidata page once it has been restored to prove that the item is notable enough for Wikidata.