Gratisdata:Introduction

Gratisdata is a free, collaborative, multilingual, secondary database, collecting structured data to provide support for Gratispaideia, and to anyone in the world.

What does this mean?
Let's look at the opening statement in more detail:


 * Free. The data in Gratisdata is published under the [//creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0], allowing the reuse of the data in many different scenarios. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the data, even for commercial purposes, without asking for permission.
 * Collaborative. Data is entered and maintained by Gratisdata editors, who decide on the rules of content creation and management. Automated bots>Special:MyLanguage/Gratisdata:Bots|bots also enter data into Gratisdata.
 * Multilingual. Editing, consuming, browsing, and reusing the data is fully multilingual. Data entered in any language is immediately available in all other languages. Editing in any language is possible and encouraged.
 * A secondary database. Gratisdata records not just statements, but also their sources, and connections to other databases. This reflects the diversity of knowledge available and supports the notion of verifiability.
 * Collecting structured data. Imposing a high degree of structured organization allows for easy reuse of data by Gratispaideia and third parties, and enables computers to process and “understand” it.
 * Support for Miraheze wikis. Gratisdata assists Gratispaideia and Miraheze wikis with more easily maintainable information boxes and links to other projects connected to Gratisdata, thus reducing editing workload while improving quality. Updates in one language are made available to all other languages.
 * Anyone in the world. Anyone can use Gratisdata for any number of different ways by using its application programming interface.

How does Gratisdata work?
upright=2.0| This diagram of a Gratisdata item shows you the most important terms in Gratisdata. Gratisdata is a central storage repository that can be accessed by others, such as the wikis maintained by [//meta.miraheze.org/ Miraheze Limited]. Content loaded dynamically from Gratisdata does not need to be maintained in each individual wiki project. For example, statistics, dates, locations and other common data can be centralized in Gratisdata.

The Gratisdata repository
270px| Items and their data are interconnected. The Gratisdata repository consists mainly of items>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Items|items, each one having a labels>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Label|label, a descr>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Description|description and any number of aliases. Items are uniquely identified by a   followed by a number, such as .

statements>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Statements|Statements describe detailed characteristics of an Item and consist of a properties>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Properties|property and a values>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Statements#Values|value. Properties in Gratisdata have a  </> followed by a number, such as with <tvar|p></>.

For a person, you can add a property to specify where they were educated, by specifying a value for a school. For buildings, you can assign geographic coordinates properties by specifying longitude and latitude values. Properties can also link to external databases. A property that links an item to an external database, such as an authority control database used by libraries and archives, is called an identifier. Special sitelinks>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Sitelinks</>|Sitelinks connect an item to corresponding content on client wikis, such as Gratispaideia.

All this information can be displayed in any language, even if the data originated in a different language. When accessing these values, client wikis will show the most up-to-date data.

Working with Gratisdata
There are a number of ways to access Gratisdata using built-in tools, external tools, or programming interfaces.


 * Client wikis can access data for their pages using a mw-lua>mw:Extension:Wikibase Client/Lua</>|Lua Scribunto interface. You can retrieve all data independently using the api>Special:MyLanguage/Gratisdata:API</>|Gratisdata API.

Where to get started
Some links to get started:
 * Set your help>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Navigating Gratisdata/User Options</>|user options, especially the 'Babel' extension, to choose your language preferences
 * Help with missing labels and descriptions
 * Help with interwiki>Special:MyLanguage/Gratisdata:Interwiki conflicts</>|interwiki conflicts and constraint violations
 * random>Special:Random</>|Improve a random item
 * Help translating

How can I contribute?
Go ahead and help-ed>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Editing</>|start editing. Editing is the best way to learn about the structure and concepts of Gratisdata. If you would like to gain understanding of Gratisdata's concepts upfront, you may want to have a look at the help>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Contents</>|help pages. If you have questions, please feel free to drop them in the project chat or contacts>Gratisdata:Contact the development team</>|contact the development team.

There is more to come
Gratisdata is an ongoing project that is under active development. More glossary>Special:MyLanguage/Gratisdata:Glossary#Datatypes</>|data types as well as extensions will be available in the future.