Help:Contributing/entities

This page explains the data model and how to create and edit items and properties. Start at the Help:Contributing hub if you are new here.

The data model in five minutes

Wikibase is the software behind Wikidata. Two entity types exist on this instance:

Entity	ID	URL form	Example
Item	Q1, Q2, …	/wiki/Item:Q1	a book, a person, a place
Property	P1, P2, …	/wiki/Property:P1	"instance of", "date"

Each entity has:

• Terms: a multilingual label (unique per language per type), a description, and optional aliases.
• Statements: a property → value pair, optionally with qualifiers (details) and references (provenance), and a rank (preferred, normal, deprecated).

Order of work: define properties first (the schema), then create items (the data).

Before you create anything

1. Search first — use the search box or Special:Search; do not create a duplicate item or property.
2. Reuse existing properties — browse Special:ListProperties (sidebar → Semantic tools → Browse properties) before proposing a new one. A property is expensive: its datatype is permanent.
3. Labels are unique per language — an item cannot have two labels in the same language. Use the description to disambiguate.

Creating a property

1. Go to Special:NewProperty (also in the sidebar → Semantic tools → Create new property).
2. Fill in at least a label (for example instance of) and a description (for example that class of which this subject is a particular example and member). Add aliases (for example is-a, isa).
3. Choose the datatype — the most important decision, and it cannot be changed after creation:

Datatype	Use for	Example value
Item	link to another entity	Q5 (a person)
Property	link to another property	P1
String	free text	"ISBN-13"
External identifier	identifier in another system	Q1234 → https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1234
URL	web address	https://example.org
Monolingual text	text with a language tag	"hello"@en
Quantity	numbers with units	3 (unit Q11573, kg)
Time	dates	2026-08-15T00:00:00Z
Globe coordinate	latitude and longitude	48.85N 2.35E
Commons media	a file name	File:Foo.jpg

The dropdown in Special:NewProperty shows the full set of datatypes available here.

For External identifier, also set the formatter URL (formatter-url field), for example https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/$1 — it makes values dereferenceable URIs in RDF.

Save: the property gets its permanent ID (P1, P2, …). Other editors can now use it in statements.

Creating an item

1. Go to Special:NewItem (also in the sidebar → Semantic tools → Create new item).
2. Fill in a label (English at minimum — en; other languages welcome), a description, and optional aliases.
3. Save: the item gets its permanent ID (Q1, Q2, …).
4. Add statements (next section). An item with no statements is just a stub.

A classic page is created for you. Saving a new item at Special:NewItem also creates a wiki page in the main namespace titled with the item's label — an item labelled Ada Lovelace gets the page Ada Lovelace — and links the item to that page (the Sitelink tab then shows blue). If a page with that name already exists, the item is linked to the existing page instead of overwriting it; use the Sitelink tab if you need to correct a wrong link. A label containing characters MediaWiki forbids in page titles (# < > [ ] { } |) is normalised for the page title only (those characters become dashes); the item's label is stored unchanged.

Adding and editing statements

On an item page (Special:EntityPage/Q1):

1. Click + add statement (or + add value for more values of one property).
2. Property: start typing P1 or its label — autocomplete.
3. Value: depends on the datatype (item → start typing another entity's label).
4. Qualifiers (optional): refine the statement, for example the date property (P8) on population → 2.1 million.
5. References (recommended for facts — this is the provenance layer): Add reference, for example the source URL property (P7) for a web source, source (P28) for a book or article, or date (P8) if the fact itself has a date. Every fact should say where it comes from.
6. Rank: mark conflicting or outdated values as deprecated, the best value as preferred.

Editing tips:

• Statement values are editable by clicking them; remove a statement with the ✕ control.
• Terms (label, description, aliases) are edited directly in the entity header — click the pencil icon and choose the language tab.
• Undo or roll back via the page history tab — every change is a wiki revision.

Deleting and merging

Merge two duplicate items: use merge on the item page (right: item-merge, granted to registered users).

Delete an entity page: Special:DeletePage (Item:Q12) — admins only. Deleting a property is rare and breaks the statements that use it — prefer deprecating it instead.

Updating basic information with a form

Items created through the guided flows (persons, sources, collectives, software, fictional characters) can be edited in place with the same form that created them:

• On the item page (/wiki/Item:Q1), the Update basic information button under the title opens the matching page — Special:UpdatePerson, Special:UpdateSource, Special:UpdateCollective, Special:UpdateSoftware or Special:UpdateFictionalCharacter (the page is chosen from the item's class).
• The form shows the same fields as the creation flow, prefilled from the item's current statements. Change what needs changing and submit.
• What updates: the item's English label and description, and the statements for the fields the form shows (authors, publisher, journal, dates, places, facts, …). Everything else — sitelinks, references on other statements, uploaded portraits/logos you did not replace — is left untouched.
• Renames: if the new label differs, the classic page (e.g. Person:Old Name) is renamed to match, with a redirect left behind.
• When a form field is filled automatically from fetched source data (for example a license from an image's metadata, or a publisher from a book record), the wiki shows a confirmation line — "{field} fetched from source: {value}, we think this corresponds to {label} (Q#)." — with Yes, that's right or No, let me correct. Say No to clear the field and pick another item yourself.

Raw statement editing (add/remove values, qualifiers, references, ranks) is still done on the item page as described in Adding and editing statements.

See also

• Help:Contributing — the hub
• Help:Contributing/access — who can do what
• Help:Contributing/query — querying with SPARQL
• Help:Contributing/house-rules — house rules for this instance
• Help:Contributing/import — importing from external authorities
• Help:Contributing/api — API and bulk editing