Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Wikidata

This page is a short guide to editing Wikidata in relation to video games. To edit the Wikidata item for an article, navigate to that article, and look at the left hand sidebar. Under Tools should be a link for "Wikidata item". Click it to navigate to Wikidata and begin editing! For new articles, there may not be a Wikidata item yet, or the English page may not be linked to the Wikidata item. You should search on Wikidata to confirm that the item doesn't exist. If it does exist, edit the Wikidata item to add the interwiki link, and if it does not, click the "create a new item" link in the sidebar.

Many of our templates may also provide a link to Wikidata in the form of text such as "Edit on Wikidata" or the pen symbol:

Before beginning: Now that you're looking at Wikidata, are you surprised to see that nothing is there? If this is a brand new or empty wikidata item, please start by adding a new statement. For the property name, type instance Of. It should offer this as the first choice. For the value, use video game (Q7889) for video games, human (Q5) for a person, etc.

Important notice about Wikidata content
Wikidata is not English Wikipedia. As such, English Wikipedia policies do not apply to Wikidata. It has its own sets of policies and rules. The data stored in it is available to every wiki in the Wikimedia family directly, and even services external to the Wikimedia family. While many of our templates have specific rules for what should be included in each field, Wikidata does not obey those rules. Other projects may be using the data that English Wikipedia would leave out. Please do not remove valid information from Wikidata because we would omit it on English Wikipedia.

If you are seeing data that you believe should not be presented on English Wikipedia, use a local value instead. For example, if the engine for a video game has no article on enwiki, but Wikidata has a value populated, use  to suppress the display. Or if you believe the data is shown in error and should have been automatically hidden, use the talk page for the template to bring up the issue.

Infobox
Template:Infobox video game uses several properties to store data. Please see the template's documentation page for an exact list. For example, P136 (game mode) is populated with the values "single player" or "multiplayer", while P136 (genre) would contain genres such as first-person shooter. P400 (platform) is populated with the platforms that the system is on. The instructions below for adding review scores are the same as editing for the infobox, just use the corresponding property instead of the "review score" property noted below.

If you need to add a person to Wikidata in order to populate a field like writer, programmer, director, etc, please follow the instructions below for adding an author in support of a reference. The concept is the same. Try to be complete and add details such as what their profession is, where they are employed, etc, if it can be sourced. Adding a person to Wikidata does not require they have an article here on English Wikipedia, they will be listed in the infobox with a link to their Wikidata entry, rather than as a red link.

Preventing Wikidata values
As noted above, Wikidata may contain data that should not be displayed on English Wikipedia. In order to stop an Infobox field from showing data from Wikidata, specify it in the template with a blank value. For example, if you do not want a engine value from Wikidata to show, specify. No value is necessary. If the field exists on English Wikipedia, even if blank, it will prevent Wikidata from showing.

To prevent any data being pulled from Wikidata, specify every field in the Infobox.

Reviews
Template:Video game reviews, Template:Video game series reviews and Template:Video game review score are Wikidata-capable templates that pull their score information from Wikidata. This allows the score to be entered once, on Wikidata, and then reused on multiple articles or across different wiki projects. For example, if the Metacritic score for a game is set in Wikidata, both the game's article and the series for the game's article will use the same data. Changing the score will affect both pages, keeping them in sync.

At this time, Template:Video game reviews only supports Metacritic, OpenCritic and GameRankings. Template:Video game series reviews supports Metacritic, GameRankings, OpenCritic and Famitsu.

Adding a score to Wikidata
Once you are at the Wikidata page for your article, search the page for "review score", property P444. You can also append "#P444" to the URL and hit enter to jump to the property, if present.
 * If you do not find it, you will be adding the first score for this item. At the end of Wikidata's list of statements, there is an "Add" button. When you press it, a new statement form will appear, and you will be asked to enter a property name. Type "Review Score" and choose it.
 * If you found existing scores, determine if the score you want to add is already present. For example if you want to add the Metacritic score for Xbox One, ensure that none of the existing scores have the "score by" set to Metacritic and "platform" set to "Xbox One". If you do not, press the Add button at the bottom of the Review Score section.

Now we're ready to enter data:
 * 1) In the first field for Review Score, type the score in the typical format. For example, Metacritic scores should be listed as xx/100, while GameRankings should be listed as xx%.
 * 2) Press "Add Qualifier", and type "Score by" as the property name. Enter "Metacritic" or "GameRankings" in the value field. Note that Wikidata will provide an autocompletion for you., make sure you pick the correct entry!
 * 3) If this review is for a specific platform, press "Add Qualifier" again. This time use the type "Platform", and enter the platform. Again, note that Wikidata has multiple items with the same name. For example, if the platform is PlayStation, make sure you chose the item for the console, not for the console series.

You've entered in all the necessary data for the review score. Now we need to add the reference.
 * 1) Press "Add reference"
 * 2) Type "Reference URL" as the property name, and put the URL to the review as the value. This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 3) Press "Add" to insert another row. This will need to be done each time you need a new row below.
 * 4) Type "title" as the property name, and put the article title in as the value. Wikidata will prompt you for the language, chose EN for English. This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 5) Type "published in" as the property name, and put the work in as the value, such as Metacritic or GameRankings. This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 6) Optionally, type in "publisher" as the property name and add the publisher, such as CBS Interactive. Note that in many cases publisher is omitted from citation. Opinions vary on its use. This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 7) Type "retrieved" as the property name, and enter the date that you checked this reference. This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 8) If you have an archive, type in "archive url" and enter the archive URL.  This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 9) If you have an archive, type in "archive date" and enter the date that the archive was taken. This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 10) Archive url and archive date must be supplied together. If one is omitted, the archive will not be generated in the citations.

At any point, you can press the Save button to save your changes. Press "Edit" next to the specific review score to make changes or continue adding other additions such as author, mentioned below.

For reviews that have a publication date and author
Currently the templates only support aggregators, but support for individual reviews is planned. If you are adding a review such as IGN, there are additional reference fields.


 * 1) Type in "publication date" and enter the date that the review was published on. This is equivalent to   in Template:Cite web.
 * 2) Type in "author", and enter the name of the author. This is equivalent to ,   and   in Template:Cite web. You only need to pick the author from Wikidata's selections, the template code will handle populating the names into the citation correctly. If the author appears in Wikidata's suggestions, much like with platforms, check to ensure it refers to the right person. For example, Jim Sterling's entry should be the one that mentions him being a gaming commentator, or a video game journalist, etc. If you cannot find the author, then you may need to add a new entry. The description may not be filled in, so make sure to check the properties on the items which don't have descriptions.

Adding a new Wikidata item for an author
So you can't find your author? Or you found someone, but it doesn't look right. You'll need to add it.


 * 1) On the left sidebar for Wikidata, click "Create a new item". Before doing this, you should either save your progress on your review score, or open this link to another tab.
 * 2) Enter the name of the author as the label, in firstname lastname format, i.e. Jim Sterling.
 * 3) For a description, attempt to be generic but accurate. If this author only edits in video gaming, a description like "video game journalist" should work. If they are with a more general publication, simply "journalist" would be more appropriate.
 * 4) Press the Create button. You will be redirected to your new item, but we're not done yet.
 * 5) Press the "Add" button to make a new statement. Type in "instance of" as the property name, and enter "human" as the value.
 * 6) Press "Add" again. Type in "given name" as the property name, and enter their first name.
 * 7) Press "Add" again. :) Type in "family name" as the property name and enter their last name.
 * 8) Much like the author and platform above, be careful with both these fields and ensure you pick the right entry. For example, the last name "Stapleton" has many entries in Wikidata, such as a disambiguation page, a city, a village, etc. Look for the entry that mentions being a surname, etc.
 * 9) Optionally, you may add other statements, such as employer, sex or gender, etc.
 * 10) Save your changes and return to the review score you were working on. You can now enter the author.