The value of Wikidata for your business
The value of Wikidata for your business
Wikidata is a database that can be edited jointly by the public. Wikidata supports the more than 280 language versions of Wikipedia as a common source of structured data. This data can be used in all the articles of the free encyclopedia and is also free to re-use by other interested parties. With Wikidata it is easy to connect vocabulary and also captures the concept in different languages.
A database - free to use
Maintained in one place, ready for use anywhere! For example, the year of the founding of a company or the number of editors in all language versions of Wikipedia can be used when it is stored in Wikidata. All the data in the database has a CC0 license, which means that the material can be used free of charge and without limitations.
Wikidata has been designed to support both the community that creates Wikipedia and the use by third parties who want to use a large amount of curated data. For example, amounts of data from the companies can be included and linked with data from other organisations. When the information is sourced also clearly indicates which organization contributed information, ensuring quality.
Wikidata then makes it easy to include aggregated research data on the various Wikipedia versions. Wikidata effectively reduces the maintenance burden when all data is maintained in one place. Practical lists and timelines can be created automatically, instead of having to manually update. Being able to rely on data collected by a much larger community raises the quality and saves a lot of work for volunteers who contribute to Wikipedias in small languages.
It's never been easier to spread your knowledge to the world!
Development and opportunity to support
The initial development of Wikidata was led by Wikimedia Deutschland, the German local association of the Wikimedia movement. Funding was provided by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence [AI]², Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Google Inc. Wikidata was then passed to the Wikimedia Foundation for further development and maintenance. Wikimedia is here to help your organisation if you are thinking of how you can use Wikidata.
What you can bring to Wikidata
- Share a data about the company and possibly its products (if they meet the relevant criteria). This includes both data as well as media. This gives you greater visibility and outreach to a large audience.
- Disclose information within your general field of activity. By contributing you are involved in developing common resource that you and others can enjoy and be better at working in your field. The database is always available and has a format that can be easily reused. You do not have to think about maintenance.
- This is a concrete and effective way to contribute to society and demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR). Tell us about all the information and development you contributed to. Be transparent.
What you can use to Wikidata for
- Include your data on Wikidata in a project or product. It's free and easy to do with the well-documented API.
- Visualize a business by making the company and its products better described in the database that supports one of the world's most well-known websites, Wikipedia. Add for example current figures so that no old information is visible.
- Update your own databases with improved meta data from Wikidata.
- Download names of concepts by QLabel, see bit.ly/QLabel and create multilingual documents, such as menus (see for example bit.ly/tastydata).
- Visualize your data in new ways, for example Histropedia (as example bit.ly/jobsproducts) or Reasonator (as example bit.ly/royalarmoury). Thanks to the open API it can also be custom developed, and there Wikimedia is happy to cooperate with you.