How Perfumes Get Added to WhatScent: Inside a Community Kept Catalog

Most fragrance catalogs do not explain where their information comes from. You look up a perfume, you get a list of notes, and you are quietly expected to trust it. Nobody tells you whether a human ever smelled the thing, whether the pyramid was lifted from a press release, or when any of it was last checked.

We would rather show the process, because the process is the reason to trust the result. Everything in the WhatScent catalog was put there by someone who had the bottle in front of them, and the notes on every entry are voted on by people who have actually worn the fragrance. This is a walkthrough of exactly how a perfume travels from someone's shelf into a catalog entry that other people rely on.

Key Takeaways

• Entries come from owners. Anyone can propose a perfume, with a bottle photo and its sources attached.
• Primary sources only. Details have to trace back to the house itself, and every source is recorded against the proposal.
• Approval is fast. Hundreds of perfumes are proposed every day and most are reviewed within a few hours.
• Notes are voted on, not just entered. Every note carries a status that moves as people who wore it weigh in.
• Checking is earned. Moderation responsibilities come with a contributor level built from a real track record.
• Wrong data self-corrects. Reformulations and mistakes get caught because the voting never stops.

Table of Contents

1. Why the process matters more than the size
2. Step one: someone proposes the perfume
3. Why every proposal has to cite a primary source
4. Step two: the proposal gets reviewed
5. Step three: the community votes on the notes
6. Who does the checking
7. What happens when something is wrong
8. How to add a perfume yourself
9. Frequently Asked Questions
10. Conclusion

Why the process matters more than the size

A fragrance catalog is a claim about reality. It says: this perfume exists, these are its notes, this is roughly how it behaves. Every one of those claims came from somewhere, and the somewhere determines how much weight it deserves.

Most catalogs quietly draw on one of two things. A single editor writing entries, which is accurate in proportion to how many perfumes one person can realistically smell. Or information copied from other catalogs, which spreads mistakes faster than it spreads facts.

WhatScent runs on two sources instead, kept deliberately separate. What the house itself states, taken only from primary sources and recorded against every entry. And what the people who wear the fragrance actually perceive, gathered through voting that never stops. The rest of this piece is how both work.

Step one: someone proposes the perfume

It starts with a gap. Someone goes looking for a fragrance they own, and it is not there.

Rather than a dead end, that is an invitation. Any member can propose a new perfume, and the form asks for what an entry actually needs:

• The house and the exact product name, including the flanker or edition if there is one.
• The concentration. If the house genuinely never stated one, and plenty of independent houses do not, there is an explicit option to say so rather than guess.
• The notes and accords, arranged by pyramid position where that applies.
• A photo of the bottle. Not a stock image, the actual bottle. The image editor is built for this: an anchor point outline tool for precise cutouts, brush strokes for the fiddly parts, a magnifying loupe, deep zoom, and proper handling of transparency so the result sits cleanly on a catalog page.
• The sources behind it. Links and screenshots showing where each detail came from, attached to the proposal itself.

That last item is not a nice-to-have, and it deserves its own section.

Why every proposal has to cite a primary source

The rule is simple and it is the backbone of the whole thing: details have to come from a primary source, and the source travels with the proposal.

A primary source means the house itself. Its own product page, its own ingredient listing, its official communication about a launch, the text on the box in front of you. What it does not mean is a summary written by a third party, a note list copied off another site, or a number someone half remembers from a video.

Two reasons this matters more than it sounds.

Copied information inherits errors permanently. When one catalog copies a note list from another, a mistake made once gets repeated everywhere and starts to look like consensus because it appears in several places. Sourcing from the house directly breaks that chain. If four places disagree, the house's own listing settles it.

A recorded source can be re-checked. Every proposal keeps its sources attached, so an entry is never just an assertion. If someone later questions a concentration or a note, the trail is right there and the claim can be checked against where it came from rather than argued about. Fragrance data is full of confidently stated details that nobody can trace, and a tracked source is the cure for that.

The combination is what makes the process work. Primary sources establish what the house says is in the bottle. Community voting, covered further down, establishes what people actually smell in it. Those are two genuinely different questions, and a good entry answers both.

Step two: the proposal gets reviewed

Proposals do not go live automatically. They go into review, where another member checks the entry against the sources attached to it: that the house exists, that the name is exactly right, that the concentration matches what the house states, and that the photograph shows what it claims to show.

Hundreds of perfumes are proposed every day, and most are approved within a few hours. Some clear in minutes.

That throughput is the part that surprises people, and it comes down to arithmetic rather than heroics. The reviewing pool grows with the community, so the capacity to check scales alongside the volume being submitted. A process that depends on a small fixed team hits a ceiling and forms a queue. A process where reviewing capacity grows with contribution does not.

The practical effect: a release that reached buyers this week is generally findable this week. For designer launches that is convenient. For a small batch independent release, it is the difference between the perfume being documented at all and it existing only in a few people's private notes. Keeping a catalog current covers that lifecycle in more detail, and the niche database guide covers why the effect is strongest at the small end.

Step three: the community votes on the notes

An approved entry is not a finished entry. This is where a catalog either becomes data or stays a listing.

Every note and accord on a perfume carries one of three states:

Members who have worn the fragrance vote on each note, and they are not voting yes or no. They rate how strongly it comes through, on a scale that runs from barely noticeable, through mild and moderate, up to prominent and finally the dominant character of the composition. That nuance is the useful part. "Contains vanilla" and "is basically a vanilla" are wildly different pieces of information, and only one of them helps you decide.

Once enough people have voted, the status resolves. A note the community consistently perceives moves to verified. A note the community consistently cannot find gets hidden, no matter who originally entered it or what the marketing said.

This is why note lists on WhatScent tend to drift away from the official pyramid over time and towards what the fragrance actually does on skin. Anyone who has bought something described as a fresh citrus and found themselves wearing a woody amber for eight hours knows why that drift is worth having.

If the vocabulary is new, accords explained and the complete guide to fragrance notes cover what these terms mean and why the difference between a note and an accord matters here.

Who does the checking

Not everyone, and not nobody. Contribution builds a record, and that record builds a contributor level. Moderation responsibilities sit behind those levels, so the people reviewing proposals and handling disputes are people who have already demonstrated they contribute carefully.

It is a fairly ordinary idea, borrowed from how any healthy collaborative project works: trust is earned through a visible track record, and the responsibilities that come with it are proportional to that record. It means the checking is done by enthusiasts with skin in the game rather than by whoever is available, and it means a bad actor cannot simply arrive and start approving nonsense. The app for fragrance experts covers what that layer looks like once you are part of it.

Underneath the entries there is structural tidying too. Houses are connected into brand families and corporate groups, so you can see how names relate to one another. Notes are organised into groups and understand aliases, so the same raw material filed under a different name still surfaces when you search. Search itself handles punctuation, accents and typos, which sounds trivial until you are trying to type a French flanker name on a phone.

What happens when something is wrong

Two kinds of wrong, handled differently.

Wrong at entry. Someone mistypes a concentration, or attributes a perfume to the wrong house, or enters notes from a different flanker. Review catches most of this, and what slips through gets flagged and corrected by other members who notice.

Wrong over time. This is the harder and more common case. Perfumes get reformulated, sometimes substantially, while the name and the bottle stay identical. A catalog entry that was perfectly accurate at launch can quietly become a description of something you can no longer buy.

Continuous voting handles this without anyone needing to announce it. People who own the current formulation wear it and vote on what they smell. If the reformulated version has lost a note, votes stop supporting it and the status shifts. The entry follows the bottle rather than the press release, which is exactly what you want from a reference you are about to spend money based on.

How to add a perfume yourself

If you have found a gap, filling it takes a few minutes.

1. Search first, twice. Try the full name, then the house on its own, then a deliberately misspelled version. Search forgives typos and understands aliases, so if it is genuinely not there, three attempts will tell you.
2. Open the proposal form and enter the house, the exact product name, and the concentration. Use the explicit unknown option if the house never stated one.
3. Add the notes and accords you can see listed, arranged by pyramid position where the house provides one. Leave out anything you are guessing at. A shorter accurate list beats a longer speculative one, and the community voting will fill in what is missing.
4. Photograph the bottle and use the outline tool to cut it out cleanly. Take the extra minute here. A good cutout is the difference between an entry that looks like a catalog entry and one that looks like a photo of a shelf.
5. Attach your sources, and make them primary. A link to the house's own product page, its official ingredient listing, a photo of the box copy. Not another catalog, not a video, not memory. The source stays attached to the entry, so it can be re-checked later.
6. Submit, and check back later the same day. Most proposals are through within hours.
7. Then vote on its notes, and keep voting on other perfumes you own. This is the part people skip and it is where most of the value is created.

That last step deserves emphasis. Adding a perfume creates an entry. Voting on notes is what turns entries into a catalog worth trusting, and it takes seconds per fragrance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: Who adds perfumes to the WhatScent database?

A: The community. Any member can propose a perfume, attaching the details, a photo of the actual bottle and supporting evidence. Proposals are then reviewed by members whose contributor level reflects a track record of good contributions.

Q2: How long does it take for a new perfume to be approved?

A: Usually a few hours, and sometimes minutes. Hundreds of perfumes are proposed every day, and because the reviewing pool grows alongside the community, submissions do not sit in a long queue.

Q3: How do I know the notes on a perfume are accurate?

A: Every note and accord carries a status. Members who have worn the fragrance vote on how strongly they perceive it, from barely noticeable through to dominant. Notes reach verified status only with enough agreement, and notes the community cannot detect are hidden instead.

Q4: What stops someone entering false information?

A: Four things. Details have to come from a primary source and that source stays attached to the entry, proposals are reviewed against those sources before going live, moderation responsibilities are earned through contributor level rather than handed out, and ongoing note voting means a bad entry gets contradicted by everyone who actually wears the fragrance.

Q5: Where does the information in an entry come from?

A: Two places, kept separate on purpose. Factual details such as the house, name, concentration and stated notes come from primary sources: the house's own product pages, ingredient listings and official communication, all recorded against the proposal. What the fragrance actually smells like comes from members who have worn it and voted on each note.

Q6: Do I need to contribute to use the catalog?

A: No. The overwhelming majority of people only ever look things up, and everything is available without contributing. Adding and voting is there for the people who enjoy it, and it is how the catalog stays current for everyone else.

Conclusion

A catalog is worth exactly as much as its process. Ours is that owners add what they own, every factual detail traces back to a primary source that stays attached to the entry, reviewers with a track record check it against that source, and everyone who wears a fragrance gets a vote on what is really in it. Nothing about that is complicated, and all of it is visible, which is more than most reference sources will tell you about where their information came from.

Download WhatScent on iPhone or Android, look up the strangest bottle you own, and if it is missing, spend five minutes adding it properly.