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. Any signed-in member can report an issue or vote on accuracy; suggesting edits and creating entities require beta access (an invite code).

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If you spot incorrect or outdated information on a company or person profile, you can suggest corrections.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. Open the ... menu and choose Suggest an edit
3. The edit form opens pre-filled with the entity's current data
4. Modify the fields you want to change
5. Optionally add an edit summary explaining what you changed and why, and a Source URL that supports your change (both help reviewers approve faster)
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

Trusted Editors (Level 2 and up) skip the queue for edits to fields that aren't protected: those edits are applied automatically.

Some facts have been verified by an editor against sources. If your edit changes one of them, the form tells you which field and won't submit it; remove that field, or use Spotted an error? on the page to tell us what's wrong with it.

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, the form will tell you that you have a pending edit and won't let you 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, main competitors, the overview text, operational status, a company's parent company, a person's current company and title, and entity status (for events, also deal value and event type). 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 Beta Member)

The simplest way to suggest a new entity:

1. Go to /submit and pick the Company or Person tab
2. Enter the name
3. Optionally add a website URL, category, and brief description
4. Optionally include your email — if you do, you'll get a confirmation email and we'll only follow up if we have a question
5. Optionally add notes for the editors (these aren't published)
6. Submit — your suggestion enters the discovery queue for admin review

Other paths into the queue (no action on your part): ATDb also feeds the same discovery queue from automated sources — AI discovery agents that propose long-tail companies and people, and news-article extraction that surfaces mentioned people and M&A events as new news arrives via our RSS feeds. Admin review applies to all paths equally.

Direct Entity Creation (Level 2+ Trusted Editors)

Trusted Editors get a fuller form in place of the discovery form:

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

These are the current thresholds; admins can adjust them.

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
• Sections rated (accuracy votes)
• Your recent contribution history

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

Accuracy Voting

You can help improve ATDb without making edits by voting on whether entity profile sections look accurate. Look for the "Accurate?" label with three small icons on entity pages.

How to Vote

1. Find the Accurate? widget on an entity page (on a company, it sits in the At a glance panel and on the Competitors and People tabs)
2. Click one of three icons:
   • ▲ (Accurate) — "This section looks right"
   • ○ (Unsure) — "I'm not sure about this"
   • ▼ (Inaccurate) — "Something seems wrong here"
3. For Unsure or Inaccurate votes, an optional text input appears — use it to explain what seems off
4. Click the same icon again to remove your vote

What Happens

• Your vote is saved immediately
• Aggregate vote counts (e.g., "3 · 0 · 0") appear once a section has 3 or more total votes
• Admins review flagged sections and may update the content based on community signals
• Your total "Sections Rated" count appears on your contributor profile

When Content Gets Updated

When an admin fixes content based on community feedback, the section resets for fresh evaluation:

• An "Updated" badge appears where vote counts were, with a small info icon
• Click the ℹ icon to see what changed: how many previous votes were archived, what concerns were raised, and when the update happened
• If you previously flagged the section, you'll see a "Re-vote?" prompt inviting you to re-evaluate
• Once 3+ users have re-voted, the badge disappears and normal vote counts return

This cycle — flag, fix, re-evaluate — is how ATDb improves over time with your help.

Good to Know

• You can have one vote per section per entity — changing your mind just updates your vote
• Voting is separate from the trust level system — it doesn't affect your L0-L3 progression
• You can see your complete voting history in Settings → Voting Activity

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

Edit forms have a conflict-of-interest checkbox for this. Declaring one sends your edit to admin review rather than auto-approval. Edits with undisclosed conflicts of interest may be rejected.

Reporting Issues

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

1. Open the ... menu on any entity profile and choose Report
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.