Wiki data: What's it all about?

Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that serves as a central repository of structured data for various types of information. It is maintained collaboratively by volunteers and is part of the Wikimedia Foundation, the same organization behind Wikipedia. One of the key components of Wikidata is the Wikidata Page, which is also referred to as a "Wikidata item."

A Wikidata Page represents a specific concept, entity, or subject in the real world, such as a person, place, book, movie, event, or any other identifiable topic. Each Wikidata Page is assigned a unique identifier, called a "QID," which is a numeric value prefixed with the letter "Q." For example, the QID for "Albert Einstein" is Q937, and for "Earth" is Q2.

The information in a Wikidata Page is structured and organized as a collection of statements.

Each statement consists of three parts:
Subject: The QID of the item to which the statement pertains.
Predicate: The type of data being asserted about the subject, often representing a property or attribute. For example, "date of birth,"
Object: The value or data associated with the predicate. This could be a specific date, a location, a string of text, a quantity, or even another Wikidata item (QID).

The collaborative nature of Wikidata allows contributors from around the world to add, edit, and curate data on Wikidata Pages, making it a valuable resource for various applications, including research, data analysis, and knowledge integration across multiple languages and projects. Wikidata also supports multilingual labels and descriptions, allowing users to access information in their preferred languages. Additionally, the data from Wikidata is used to enhance other Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and more.