Key:brand:wikidata

brand:wikidata

Description

The ID of the Wikidata item about the feature's brand.

Group: annotations

Website

www.wikidata.org

URL pattern

https://www.wikidata.org/entity/$1

Used on these elements

Requires

brand=*

Useful combination

brand:website=*
brand:wikipedia=*

How to tag

Add a brand:wikidata=* tag. Its value should be a Wikidata item identifier, including the "Q" prefix.

The Wikidata item should have a claim of being an instance of (P31) a business (Q4830453) or brand (Q431289), either directly or indirectly. For example, an amenity=fast_food POI could be tagged with a Wikidata item that claims to be an instance of a fast food restaurant chain (Q18509232). If a preschool belongs to a chain of preschools, the corresponding Wikidata item should claim to be an instance of a retail chain (Q507619) with the qualifier "of (P642) preschool (Q1076052)".

Some individual chain store locations are notable enough in their own right to have their own Wikipedia articles and thus their own Wikidata items. The Wikidata QID representing the chain store location itself goes in wikidata=*.

brand:wikidata=* should be accompanied by the corresponding human-readable brand=* tag. While this is redundant purely from the data, it is useful to data consumers that don't wish to look up additional data in Wikidata's database, and mappers to have a good idea of what the Wikidata-code stands for.

Example

This is an example of a KFC franchise inside an airport:

amenity=fast_food

name=KFC

brand=KFC

brand:wikidata=Q524757 (the corresponding entry on Wikidata)

brand:wikipedia=KFC

operator=ACME Airport Concessions

Rationale

Using brand:wikidata=Q524757 from the example above, a renderer can reliably mark KFC locations with the KFC logo without incorrectly branding other uses of "KFC" that have nothing to do with fried chicken from Kentucky. Likewise, a renderer that displays brand names can reliably localize the label into Chinese as "肯德基" (pronounced "Kentucky").

Finding a Wikidata item

Search Wikidata for brand items:

Or look up the brand's article on Wikipedia and click "Wikidata item" under the "Tools" section of the sidebar.

Creating a Wikidata item

Sometimes you may need to create a Wikidata item to represent the chain whose store location you're mapping. Go to d:Special:NewItem to create the item.

Basic requirements

The most basic requirements for a Wikidata retail chain item are a label in at least one language and an instance of (P31) statement. Set the instance of statement to the most appropriate value for the kind of chain you are mapping. This query returns the appropriate value for each of the most common kinds of retail chains. Below are some more:

OSM tag	Instance of
`amenity=bicycle_rental`	bicycle-sharing system (Q1358919)
`amenity=bureau_de_change`	bureau de change (Q2002539)
`amenity=car_rental`	car rental (Q291240)
`amenity=post_box`	postal service (Q1529128)
`amenity=vending_machine`	food manufacturer (Q1252971) (for a beverage or snack brand)
Any retail chain not included in the query above	retail chain (Q507619) (with qualifier of (P642))
Any other company	business (Q4830453)
Any other organization	organization (Q43229)
Any other brand	brand (Q431289)

Establishing notability

Wikidata items are subject to the Wikidata notability policy, which is stricter than OpenStreetMap's inclusion standards but not as strict as Wikipedia's. For example, a chain store location can be mapped in OSM as long as it exists on the ground, even if it has only a few locations, but such chains are unlikely to be considered notable for Wikidata. Like OpenStreetMap, Wikidata sees its share of SEO edits, and administrators there delete any item that looks like spam or self-promotion.

Even if the chain has many locations, you should take one or more of these steps to ensure that the Wikidata item looks notable enough so it doesn't get deleted as spam:

The easiest way is to link an existing item to it. For example, KFC is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, so KFC (Q524757) has a parent organization (P749) statement set to Yum! Brands (Q668737), which in turn has a subsidiary (P355) statement set to KFC (Q524757). Another useful property is different from (P1889), which you can use reciprocally to distinguish the company from another company with a similar name.
Find a third-party published source mentioning the chain. Any news article will do, but steer clear of press releases, social media, and self-published personal websites. Add a citation to one of the item's statements, such as the instance of (P31) statement. Set the citation's reference URL (P854) property to the URL of the source.
Some jurisdictions assign a unique ID to the business, which is represented as an external identifier on Wikidata. For example, a EU VAT number (P3608) statement helps establish notability.
Take a photograph of a store location or find an appropriately licensed photograph, such as from Mapillary or KartaView, and upload it to Wikimedia Commons. Add an image (P18) or image of interior (P5775) statement to the item. On the image description page, in the "Structured data" tab, set "Items portrayed in this file" to the Wikidata item you've created. If Commons now has multiple images of this store chain, create a category for it on Wikimedia Commons and create a link to it under the "Multilingual sites" section of the Wikidata item.

If the chain is too obscure to meet any of these requirements, use brand=* instead of brand:wikidata=*.

Making the item more useful

Beyond the bare minimum, a good Wikidata retail chain item should also have some additional statements that describe the chain in more detail, for example:

country (P17)
founded by (P112)
headquarters location (P159)
image (P18)
image of interior (P5775)
inception (P571)
industry (P452)
location of formation (P740)
logo image (P154)
official name (P1448) (akin to official_name=* for the brand)
official website (P856)
short name (P1813) (akin to short_name=* for the brand)
typically sells (P7163)

You can add statements for each of the social network accounts the brand owns, for example:

See Foot Solutions (Q69982369) for an example of stating how many locations a chain had at a given time.

See a full listing of company properties at Wikidata.

Uploading images

The image (P18) and logo image (P154) properties only accept file names of images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, a repository of freely-licensed media. First, search Commons for the chain's logo and store images. If nothing turns up, use the upload wizard to upload any images that meet the Commons copyright policy (public domain or free licenses such as Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike).

Mapillary or KartaView may have images you can upload under CC BY-SA. You can use Commons:Template:Mapillary to more easily associate the image with Mapillary.

A retail chain typically displays its logo on its official website. Many retail chain logos are simple enough that they are ineligible for copyright protection (even if eligible for trademark protection) in the United States and the chain's country of origin. This is generally the case with logos that only contain a small amount of text, lines, and solid shapes, though different thresholds of originality apply in every country. If the logo is simple enough, choose "This file is not my own work", then "Another reason not mentioned above", then enter {{PD-textlogo}} and {{Trademarked}} when uploading the image.

For logos, SVG images are preferred because they look good even when scaled down, such as in iD's preset search results. If the logo is in another format, such as PNG or JPEG, add {{Convert to SVG|logo}} to the image description page after uploading to request assistance in converting it to SVG.

Next steps

If the chain has enough locations to be notable according to Wikidata, it is probably notable enough to be added to the Name Suggestion Index as well.

If it is notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia, you can use the Wikidata item's statements as a starting point for a Wikidata article, which you can then link to the Wikidata item (under the "Wikipedia" section towards the bottom).

Software support

Name Suggestion Index uses brand:wikidata=* to obtain a URL to the brand's official logo. For example, Debenhams (Q1181484) has a Facebook ID (P2013) property, so the URL is to the profile picture on the brand's official Facebook page. If a Wikidata item doesn't have a Facebook page listed, the index falls back to the Twitter profile picture via Twitter username (P2002), then to a freely licensed logo on Wikimedia Commons via logo image (P154). Editors use Name Suggestion Index to ensure consistent tagging of chain store locations.

External links

Detailed guide to editing Wikidata chain store items from the Name Suggestion Index project
Contributing to Wikidata