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What is Wikidata?

Wikidata is a free, collaborative knowledge base maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. It contains structured data about millions of real-world entities—like people, places, events, and concepts—that can be read by both humans and machines.

Each entity has a unique identifier (called a QID, such as Q243 for the Eiffel Tower) and includes attributes like labels (titles), descriptions, links to Wikipedia, images, and—especially useful for mapping—latitude and longitude coordinates.

Wikidata is also open for anyone to contribute. Whether you’re fixing a typo, adding a new fact, or linking an image, your edits help enrich a global pool of free knowledge.

How Juncture Uses Wikidata

Juncture integrates seamlessly with Wikidata to automatically add rich, contextual information to your pages—just by referencing an entity’s QID.

When you include a Wikidata QID in your content, Juncture automatically retrieves key metadata, including:

Label – used as a heading or map caption
Description – shown in info popups
Image/thumbnail – used to visually enrich the popup
Geo-coordinates – used to place and center markers on maps

This metadata powers Entity Info Popups, which can appear inline with your text or when clicking a map marker. These popups give readers a quick, informative summary without needing to leave the page.

Why Use Wikidata with Maps?

Wikidata’s structured location data makes it perfect for Juncture’s map component. With just a QID, Juncture can:

Center the map on the right location
Drop a marker automatically
Show a popup with the entity’s name, image, description, and more
Display a caption pulled directly from the entity label—no need to enter one manually

For example:

`map location=Q243 marker`

This one line of Markdown creates an interactive map of the Eiffel Tower, complete with a marker and info popup—all powered by Wikidata.

Using Wikidata with the Image Component

In addition to supporting maps and entity popups, Juncture also allows you to use Wikidata QIDs directly with the image component by prefixing them with wd:.

When you use a QID in this way, Juncture automatically:

Queries Wikidata for the image associated with the entity
Retrieves the full-resolution image from Wikimedia Commons
Displays the image with all of Juncture’s viewer features: zooming, panning, cropping, and more
Loads metadata (title, description, rights info) to populate the viewer’s caption and sidebar

Example

`image src=wd:Q243`

This line will display the image of the Eiffel Tower (Q243) as defined in Wikidata, using the full image from Wikimedia Commons.

This makes it incredibly easy to include richly described, properly attributed images in your pages—just by referencing a QID.

This approach builds on Juncture’s goal of simplifying content creation while supporting open, linked data and responsible reuse of shared media.

See the use of Wikidata in action

An image
```
  `image src=wd:Q243`
```
image src=wd:Q243
A map
```
  `map location=Q243 marker`
```
map location=Q243 marker
An information popup
```
  Something about the [Eiffel Tower](Q243)...    
```
An entity information popup is created by using a Wikidata QID in a standard Markdown link

Something about the Eiffel Tower…

By linking to Wikidata, you not only simplify your content creation, you also help your readers explore trustworthy, reusable knowledge in a visually engaging way.