Editing & Contributing

ATDb is built by the community. You can improve the database by suggesting edits, submitting new entities, reporting issues, and flagging status changes. Contributing requires beta access.

Suggesting Edits

If you spot incorrect or outdated information on a company or person profile, you can suggest corrections.

How to Suggest an Edit

1. Navigate to the entity's profile page
2. Click the Suggest Edit button
3. The edit form opens pre-filled with the entity's current data
4. Modify the fields you want to change
5. Write an edit summary (150-500 characters) explaining what you changed and why
6. Review the diff preview showing old vs. new values
7. Click Submit

What Happens Next

Your edit enters the review queue. An admin will review your changes and either:

• Approve — your changes are applied to the entity immediately
• Reject — the entity stays unchanged; you'll receive a reason why

You'll get an email notification when your edit is reviewed (if you've enabled notifications in Settings).

One Edit at a Time

You can only have one pending edit per entity. If you've already submitted an edit for a company and it hasn't been reviewed yet, you'll see a "Pending Edit" indicator and won't be able to submit another until the first one is resolved.

What You Can Edit

Company fields: summary, overview, value proposition, website, founded year, stock symbol, parent company, headquarters, business model, target market, industry, employee count, funding total, market position, key features, competitive advantages, and more.

Person fields: summary, current title, current company, LinkedIn, Twitter, personal website, location, bio, known for, years in industry, expertise areas.

Protected Fields

Some high-impact fields require extra review even from experienced contributors. These include AdTech tier, market position, competitive advantages, operational status, and entity status. Edits to protected fields always go through admin review.

Submitting Entities

If you notice a company or person missing from ATDb, you can submit them.

Discovery Queue (Any User)

The simplest way to suggest a new entity:

1. Go to /submit
2. Enter the company or person name
3. Optionally add a website URL and brief description
4. Submit — your suggestion enters the discovery queue for admin review

Direct Entity Creation (Level 1+ Contributors)

Experienced contributors can create more detailed submissions:

1. Go to /submit
2. Fill in the full form: name, summary, website, category, and other details
3. Submit — the entity is created as a draft for admin review
4. Once published by an admin, it goes live on the site

Trust Levels

ATDb uses a trust system to manage contribution quality. As you make more approved edits, your trust level increases and you gain more capabilities.

How Levels Work

Leveling Up

Promotion happens automatically when you meet the thresholds:

• Level 0 → Level 1: Get 5 edits approved AND have an account at least 7 days old
• Level 1 → Level 2: Get 25 edits approved AND have an account at least 30 days old

You'll receive an email notification when your trust level changes (if enabled in Settings).

Your Contributor Profile

Every contributor has a public profile at /contributors/[username] showing:

• Your username and join date
• Total approved edits
• Number of entities you've improved
• Your recent contribution history

The Contributors page (/contributors) ranks all contributors by approved edits.

Guidelines

To keep ATDb accurate and useful, follow these guidelines when contributing.

Do

• Be accurate — only submit information you can verify. Cite sources when possible.
• Be neutral — write descriptions objectively, not promotional copy
• Be specific — "Series B funding of $50M led by Sequoia" is better than "received funding"
• Fix what you know — if you work in AdTech and notice an error, your expertise is valuable
• Write clear summaries — explain what you changed and why in your edit summary

Don't

• Don't promote — editing your own company's profile to add marketing language will be rejected
• Don't vandalize — deliberately incorrect information will result in banning
• Don't guess — if you're not sure about a fact, leave it for someone who is
• Don't spam — submitting many low-quality edits will hurt your approval rate

Conflict of Interest

If you work at or are affiliated with the company you're editing, you should:

1. Disclose your affiliation in the edit summary
2. Stick to factual corrections (wrong employee count, outdated website, etc.)
3. Avoid adding promotional language or subjective claims

Edits with undisclosed conflicts of interest are flagged automatically and may be rejected.

Reporting Issues

If you can't fix something yourself, you can report it:

1. Click the Report button on any entity profile
2. Describe the issue (up to 2,000 characters)
3. Submit — your report goes to the admin inbox

Use reports for: incorrect data you can't verify the correction for, duplicate entries, entities that don't belong in ATDb, or any other data quality concern.