Hi,
I've been quite interested in the idea of compiling a list of companies into Wikidata. I wanted to see how well this fits with Wikidata's goals. There are company databases like Hoovers/DNB, Mattermark, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, DataFox, etc. which are very popular, but not as open as Wikidata. These sites are hugely valuable to folks like investors, job candidates, sales organizations, etc. and I'd love to see an open collaborative approach.
My company could contribute engineering resources towards compiling this data in Wikidata. E.g. maybe building a tool which allows to pull and review facts from company websites, SEC filings, news articles referencing funding amounts or acquisitions, etc. into wikidata. This is something that we could do on our own behind closed doors, but it seems more interesting to do it in the open where others can receive value from it and contribute back such that the dataset grows and becomes more valuable.
Many of these companies may not be notable or interesting on their own. However, having an entire compiled dataset where you can lookup any company is extremely interesting. I'd love Wikidata to be the de facto go-to for this type of data instead of the more closed organizations mentioned above.
Is this the type of project that's interesting to Wikidata? If so, I'd be very interested in learning more about the types of ways that we can engage with Wikidata and helping to develop a framework for contributing.
Thanks,
Ben