Wikidata

Wikidata is the least known and most useful thing in this course. It is a free, open database of facts, run by the same foundation as Wikipedia and edited by volunteers, and Google, the AI assistants and Wikipedia itself all read it. A well referenced item about you is one of the clearest signals you can give Google that you are a distinct, real person with checkable facts. A badly made one gets deleted, sometimes within days, and makes the next attempt harder. This module is about making the first kind.

What Wikidata is

Wikipedia is articles, written in prose, one language at a time. Wikidata is facts, written as statements, shared across every language. Each thing in Wikidata is an item with an ID that starts with Q, such as Q42. Each item has a label (the name), a short description, other names it goes by, and a list of statements. A statement is a property and a value: occupation, podcast producer; employer, a named company; educated at, a named university. Each statement can carry references that say where the fact comes from.

That structure is exactly what Google's Knowledge Graph is made of, which is why Google pays attention to it. Wikidata is the largest open source of this kind of data, and much of the old Freebase database that seeded the Knowledge Graph was moved into it. An item about you, with statements that match your site and references to sources Google already trusts, gives Google a second, independent place where your facts are stated in the form it uses internally.

The bar

Wikidata does not accept an item about anyone who asks. Its notability policy lets an item exist if it does one of three things: it links to a page on a Wikimedia project such as Wikipedia, it is needed to make statements on other items, or it describes a clearly identifiable entity that "can be described using serious and publicly available references".

For most people taking this course, the third route is the relevant one, and the phrase that matters is "serious and publicly available references". Your own site is publicly available, but on its own it is not what Wikidata's editors mean by serious. Profiles you wrote, press releases and podcast appearances are thin. What reliably meets the bar is at least one independent, named source about you: a profile in a recognized publication, a staff page at a university or established employer, a book from a known publisher, an award from a recognized body.

The policy is under periodic discussion and may change, so read the current notability page on Wikidata before you file. The practical guide that has held up well: if you have one solid independent source, file a minimal item. If you have none, wait, and spend the time on module 3. Items created for people with no independent sources are among the most commonly deleted, and once an item has been deleted, editors look harder at the next one.

Before you start

Check whether you already exist. Search Wikidata for your name. You may already have an item, created by a bot from a library catalog, an academic database, a film database or a sports record. If you do, edit that item rather than creating a new one. Two items for the same person is a mess someone has to merge.

Create an account. You can edit Wikidata without an account, but your IP address is then shown publicly and edits look less trustworthy. Use a plain account name, ideally one that does not look like a brand.

Be open about your interest. You are allowed to add facts about yourself on Wikidata, but you should not hide that it is you. Say so on your user page. If anyone is paying you or being paid to edit on your behalf, the Wikimedia Terms of Use require that to be disclosed, and that includes MeMyself: when we file an item for a client, we disclose it.

Gather your references first. List the facts you want to state and the source for each. If a fact has no source, leave it out. Wikidata is not the place for anything that only you can vouch for.

Build a minimal item

Start small. A short item with a reference on every statement survives. A long item full of unreferenced claims attracts attention for the wrong reasons.

Leave out your date of birth unless it is already published in a reliable source and you are comfortable with it being in an open database forever. Wikidata applies extra care to living people, and so should you. The same goes for anything private: family members, a home address, health. An item about you is public and permanent.

If you founded a company that has its own item, add "founded by" (P112) on the company's item, pointing at yours. If you are its chief executive, the company item can carry "chief executive officer" (P169). If you wrote a book with its own item, the book's "author" (P50) should point at you. These links between items are what make your record hard for Google to misplace.

References that hold

Every statement needs a reference, and the way you add it matters, because the interface makes one particular mistake very easy.

For a source with a title and a named publication, you can also add "stated in" (P248) or "title" (P1476) to the reference. It is optional, and it helps an editor judge the source quickly.

Point each reference at the most independent source you have for that fact. For your employer, a team page on the company's site is better than your LinkedIn. For your education, a university page or a published profile is better than your own site. Your own site is acceptable for basic facts where nothing else states them, and the reference should point at your home page, where the facts are stated plainly, not at a media kit or a blog post.

Connect it to your site

Once the item exists, tell Google the two are the same person.

Add the Wikidata address, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q..., to the sameAs list in your site's hidden layer. Add your Q number as an identifier on your Person entry as well. MeMyself clients: tell us the Q number and we add both. On the Wikidata side, the official website statement already points back at your site. That pair of links, each pointing at the other, is one of the strongest connections you can make between your own record and an independent database Google trusts.

After you file

Watch the item for the first few weeks. An editor may tidy your description, merge your item with an existing one, or ask for better references. Take suggestions at face value; they are usually right about how Wikidata works.

If someone nominates the item for deletion, you can respond on the deletion request page. Do it once, calmly, by listing your independent sources. Do not argue that you are important, and do not ask friends to join in. If the item is deleted anyway, accept it, build more independent coverage, and come back in six months or a year. Recreating a deleted item without new sources is the quickest way to make editors suspicious of you.

Keep the item current. When you change roles, add the new employer with a start date and give the old one an end date, rather than replacing it. Wikidata is a record over time, not a snapshot. MeMyself clients on Evolve and Authority have this kept in agreement with their site.

Questions