Contributing to Freebase

Freebase is all about user contributions, whether it's adding information to topics, creating new topics, building bases, participating in discussions, flagging and voting on topics, or digging into the creation of new types and data models. Whatever your interest, there's a way you can contribute to Freebase. Here are some suggestions and guidelines to get you started.

How Can I Contribute Information?

• Edit or add topic information. Topics in Freebase contain fields that provide specific information about that topic. For example, if you're looking at a topic about one of your favorite bands, you'll see a collection of fields like Place Musical Career Began, Albums, and Genre. If you're a registered user you can click the edit button next to any of these fields to add or edit information.

• Add topics. Maybe you're looking at a list of Punk Rock bands from Los Angles, and you notice that your favorite band is missing. On Freebase you can simply add them, even if it's your own band! There's no "notability" requirement for a band or a person before they can be added to Freebase, as long as the information you add is factual and accurate. To add a topic, just click Add More at the top of the list. All the information fields will automatically be added to the topic, and, in some cases, they'll be filled in with information. For example, if you add an LA punk band, the Place Musical Career Began and Musical Genre fields will automatically be filled in with Los Angeles and Punk Rock. After you've added your bands, you can view their topics and enter more information.

• Make bases. A base is a collection of topics around a specific subject, like Bands from LA, with those topics organized into different lists, like LA Punk Rock Bands and LA Glam Metal Bands. When you create a base you can even get into designing the information fields, or schema, that describe your topics.

• Contribute large datasets. If you're the sort of person who has collected a lot of information about something, like the names and positions of all the New York Yankees players since 1929, or the model names and years of all the cars produced by General Motors, you can contribute this information to Freebase as well. If you have a lot of information to add, or you need help figuring out how it works into the structure of Freebase, you can contact our Data Modeling Team for assistance.

What Kind of Information Should I Contribute?

If you want to start creating topics and bases, or contributing large datasets, the most important thing to remember about information in Freebase is that it should be factual, of interest to a wide audience, and freely available for anyone to use. Some examples include:

• Information about people, like names, birth dates, and occupations
• Information about books, films, albums or video games, like titles, release dates, and characters
• Information about organizations, including businesses, non-profits, or political groups, like where they're located, who their chief officers are, and who their founders are.

There are literally millions of topics in Freebase, so don't be shy about contributing whatever it is you're passionate about, as long as it can be represented in a structured way. As you do so, however, keep in mind that there are some things that don't belong in Freebase:

• Information or images that would violate someone's copyright. Our Licensing Policy and help topics on public domain, fair use, and various free licenses can help you decide if your images or information are appropriate for Freebase.
• Information that you know is inaccurate or false.
• Information that is strictly personal, like to-do lists or travel expenses.

Our help topic Is That Appropriate Content? provides additional guidelines on what is, and isn't, appropriate information for Freebase.

Flagging Content

Flagging content that is inappropriate, or should be merged or deleted, is another way to contribute to Freebase. You might be exploring Freebase, for example, and notice that there is a duplicate version of a topic, or you might find something that violates the community content guidelines. In those cases you can click the flag icon (on the far right of the topic name) and select delete, merge with another topic, or possible inappropriate content. In the first two cases the topic will go into a queue to be reviewed and voted on by members of the Freebase community (these flagged topics show up on user homepages in the Vote On Flagged Topics section). Topics that have been flagged as possible inappropriate content will be reviewed by Freebase staff and experts.

Getting in on the Discussion

You can start a discussion around any topic in Freebase by clicking Start the Discussion at the bottom of a topic, or join in on a discussion that's underway. Discussion subjects can range from the technical details of creating data models to personal reviews of the topic's subject matter.

No matter what's under discussion, please keep your comments respectful and thoughtful. You should refrain, for example, from:

• Attacks on other people. If you have an issue with something somebody said, keep the comments focused on the topic rather than on the person who made the post.
• Inflammatory comments intended to bait others. Heated exchanges are great; arguing for the sake of provoking others is not. Trolls won’t be tolerated by the community.
• Spam. A message filled with links and little commentary tends to smell like spam, which has a short shelf-life on Freebase.
• Search-engine bait. Gratuitous external links often look like attempts to manipulate search engines. Link carefully and make sure your legitimate intent is clear, and keep in mind that all outgoing links are tagged "nofollow" for search engines.

If you have feedback for the Freebase staff that you don’t want to share with the general public, consider sending a message via the Feedback form. Those messages go directly to staffers.