Abstract-Wikipedia April 2026

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Newsletter #245: The Foundation’s search for the perfect language
by Denny Vrandečić 29 Apr '26

29 Apr '26

The on-wiki version of this edition of the newsletter can be found here: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2026-04-25 ---- The Foundation’s search for the perfect language An academic paper critically discussing the Abstract Wikipedia project by University of Melbourne senior lecturer Michael Falk <https://michaelfalk.io/> has been published in Springer Nature AI & Society <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-026-02899-w>: *Wikilambda the ultimate - The Wikimedia Foundation’s search for the perfect language*. The title of the paper riffs on a wonderful book <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%20Ricerca%20della%20Lingua%20Perfetta%20ne…> by Umberto Eco <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto%20Eco>, a book I recommend everyone to read when they are interested in the goal of Abstract Wikipedia, as the book describes the many brilliant minds that have aimed for similar goals, and their failures to achieve them. I thought I discussed the book in this newsletter before, but it seems I am mistaken; I will do so in the near future. Michael Falk discusses a number of interesting points about Abstract Wikipedia: - An overview of the architecture and ambition of the project - The 2023 evaluation of the project by the Google.org fellows <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20Wikipedia/Updates/2023-02-08> - A literary criticism of the code of the WikiLambda orchestrator I recommend reading the article if you are interested. Whereas I would disagree with some of the characterizations, I also find a lot to agree with. I want to avoid going through it point by point, but if there’s anything you find particularly interesting, please raise it and I’d be happy to discuss that point further. I do want to cite a few sentences from the conclusions: *The Abstract Wikipedia/Wikifunctions project has a profoundly moral aim: to give human beings control over information in the Age of GenAI. If the problem were simply to populate minority-language Wikipedias with articles, it would be simpler just to get a Large Language Model (LLM) to translate English Wikipedia into those languages. But Wikilambda presents a stark alternative to LLMs such as Gemini, Llama or ChatGPT. LLMs rely on vast concealed datasets. Wikifunctions draws its data openly from public Wikimedia databases. LLMs generate text using opaque algorithms that even their designers struggle to control. Wikilambda makes every part of every algorithm available to anyone. In short, Wikilambda is contestable. If you ask an LLM to generate an article on a topic, the only way to contest its algorithm is to click 👍 or 👎 (Crawford and Gillespie 2016). If you are unhappy with an article generated by Abstract Wikipedia, you will be able to: change the “abstract” content in Wikidata; change the algorithms that construct or render the article in Wikifunctions; or sever the connection between the article and Abstract Wikipedia, and edit the article the old-fashioned way in Wikipedia. The role of Wikilambda in all this is to make algorithms “defeasible” (Blanton et al. 2022). Every part of every algorithm is there, and can be contested on the platform itself, even if that contestation may be culturally and politically constrained (Tkacz 2015; Ford 2022). Wikilambda is an attempt to design what Alan Blackwell (2024) calls a “moral code”: it combines More Open Representation, Access to Learning, and Creating Opportunities for Digital Expression. If nothing else, Wikilambda is a thundering critique of corporate AI hype.* Falk, M. Wikilambda the ultimate: the Wikimedia foundation’s search for the perfect language. AI & Soc (2026). doi.org/10.1007/s00146-026-02899-w News in Types: ‘Tis the seasons This week we implemented the proposal <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Season> by Dv103 <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Dv103> to create a type for the four temperate seasons, Spring, Summer, Fall or Autumn, and Winter. The new type is now available: temperate season (Z33827) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33827> Thanks to Dv103 for the proposal, and the community for discussing and supporting it! We are looking forward to seeing the functions using the new type. We invite you all to create new and discuss the existing type proposals so we can keep on creating new types. Thanks to all the community members contributing to the discussion and writing proposals, making it possible to extend the Wikifunctions to new domains! Fresh Functions weekly: 61 new Functions This week we had 61 new functions. Here is an incomplete list of functions with implementations and passing tests to get a taste of what functions have been created. Thanks everybody for contributing! - monolingual text from lang and str in zh-hant/s (Z33391) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33391> - fallback languages codes with fallbacks (Z33399) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33399> - Unlabelled (Z33405) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33405> - best lexeme from list with label (Z33415) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33415> - subject is instance of, default (Z33420) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33420> - item is instance of something (Z33431) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33431> - verb to agent noun (Z33439) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33439> - Tagalog verb to agent noun (Z33440) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33440> - Filter but fallback if empty (Z33453) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33453> - Monolingual text as HTML with language span (Z33457) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33457> - State location using entity and class, en, 4 args (Z33459) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33459> - wrap text as HTML element (Z33470) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33470> - magnitude of complex128 (Z33499) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33499> - same complex128 within tolerance (Z33506) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33506> - remove tones from pinyin (Z33509) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33509> - reference note of pitch standard (Z33570) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33570> - qualifier value of item property claim (Z33573) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33573> - qualifier value of Wikidata statement (Z33579) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33579> - exponent minus log (Z33593) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33593> - argument of Complex number (Z33610) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33610> - is negative (float64) (Z33615) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33615> - cells for enwikt Japanese verb conj. table row (Z33644) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33644> - intersperse delimiter throughout list (Z33646) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33646> - float as plain decimal to decimal places (Z33672) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33672> - complex conjugate (complex128s) (Z33679) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33679> - frequency of MIDI note number (Z33682) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33682> - subject is instance of (html) (Z33687) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33687> - subsection title from Wikidata label (Z33690) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33690> - subsection title (H3) (Z33691) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33691> - single char pinyin with tone numbers to tone marks (Z33696) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33696> - multiply Complex numbers (float64) (Z33700) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33700> - divide Complex numbers (float64) (Z33708) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33708> - square magnitude of Complex number (float64) (Z33713) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33713> - pad end of list (Z33720) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33720> - enwikt Module:Hrkt-translit tr (Z33727) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33727> - Word order (SOV, SVO...) of WD language Item (Z33731) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33731> - Word order (SOV, SVO...) of Natural language (Z33738) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33738> - Basque article-less instantiating sentence (Z33753) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33753> - Unlabelled (Z33768) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33768> - word for predicate (Z33775) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33775> A complete list of all functions sorted by when they were created <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ListObjectsByType?type=Z8&orderb…> is available.

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Newsletter #244: Milestones, and some major issues hopefully resolved
by Denny Vrandečić 16 Apr '26

16 Apr '26

The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2026-04-16 ---- Milestones Wikifunctions crossed 4000 functions this weekend, with subtracting two complex numbers <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33366> being judged as the 4000th function. Also, Abstract Wikipedia crossed the first 1000 articles, with the article about the legendary Indian Brahmin Chanakya <https://abstract.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q9045>. Congratulations to the community! Some major issues hopefully resolved Just before sending out this newsletter, a deployment may have resolved some of the ongoing issues with the system. A combination of hard-to-debug issues while a few of our engineers are out lead to a real test for your patience. We are sorry for the inconvenience we caused, and thankful for your patience. There were issues involving the caches throughout the whole Wikifunctions infrastructure, which had an effect on the display of previews in Abstract Wikipedia, on embedded function calls across all enabled projects, and access to Wikidata data from functions. This should cover T420630 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T420630>, T422299 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T422299>, and T432211 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T432211>, and maybe others. Please let us know if you encounter further issues, or they don’t seem resolved. Thanks to the engineering team and SRE for their work resolving this! Recent Changes in the software This week, on Wikifunctions, the display of labels when function calls are collapsed has been adjusted to better handle long labels or narrow windows, with further improvements coming soon (T421959 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T421959>); on Abstract Wikipedia, links to abstract articles on special pages (such as Special:RecentChanges or Special:AllPages) now show a label alongside the QID (e.g., “universe (Q1)”) (T420254 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T420254>), and fragment fetches now hit servers more gently, giving them more time to respond before saying they timed out (T421581 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T421581>). News in Types: word order Based on a proposal <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Word_order> by YoshiRulz <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:YoshiRulz>, an enumeration type for word order has been implemented as word order (Z33568) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33568>. We invite you all to create new and discuss the existing type proposals <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals> so we can keep on creating new types. Recording of Volunteer’s Corner from 13 April 2026 <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/File:Abstract_Wikipedia_Volunteer_Corner…> This Monday’s volunteer’s corner (13 April 2026) is now available as a recording on Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abstract_Wikipedia_Volunteer_Corner…>. This time, we did not have the time to build a function together, but instead had a lot of questions and a number of discussions, particularly about Abstract Wikipedia. Presentation about Wikidata and Abstract Wikipedia in Stuttgart This Saturday, 18 April 2026, Wikimedia Deutschland’s Wikipedia 25 bus <https://www.wikimedia.de/presse/wikipedia-bus-kommt-nach-stuttgart-zum-25-g…> is coming to Stuttgart, Germany. The event at the Stuttgart library <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtbibliothek%20Stuttgart> includes booths and a program with presentations <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stuttgart/Der%20Wikipedia-Bus%20kom…>. Plenty of Wikipedia volunteers will be there during the day. One of the presentations will be around Wikidata and also Abstract Wikipedia. The event is from 11:00 to 17:00 local time. The event is in German, although speakers of other languages will be among the volunteers and at the booths. - Stuttgart city website about the event <https://www.stuttgart.de/veranstaltungskalender/veranstaltungen/25-jahre-wi…> Recording of Denny’s ISWC 2025 keynote available Late last year in Nara, Japan, at the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2025 <https://iswc2025.semanticweb.org/>, Denny gave the opening keynote, celebrating Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - 20 years of co-development, and the future <https://videolectures.net/videos/iswc2025_nara_vrandecic_wikipedia_future>. The talks start with the roots of the histories of both Wikipedia and the Semantic Web, before showing how they interacted with each other in the last two decades, leading to the development of Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia. The recording of the talk is now available on VideoLectures.net <https://videolectures.net/videos/iswc2025_nara_vrandecic_wikipedia_future>. NLG SIG meeting cancelled No program for the NLG SIG <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:NLG_SIG> (the natural language generation special interest group) meeting for next Tuesday has been proposed, and we therefore cancel the meeting. Fresh Functions weekly: 46 new Functions This week we had 46 new functions. Here is an incomplete list of functions with implementations and passing tests to get a taste of what functions have been created. Thanks everybody for contributing! - nasin nanpa pona of number (Z33151) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33151> - Japanese short description for album (Z33156) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33156> - Malay cardinal (prefix “se-”, place value ≥ tens) (Z33165) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33165> - Bangla label of Wikidata item (Z33172) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33172> - language of Monolingual text is exactly (Z33175) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33175> - simple present singular sentence, indef (Z33185) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33185> - add complex128s (Z33201) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33201> - same complex128 (Z33202) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33202> - real part (Z33214) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33214> - display complex128 (Z33219) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33219> - imaginary part (Z33221) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33221> - complex128 from real and imaginary parts (Z33227) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33227> - Bangla fragment sentence wrapper (string list) (Z33238) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33238> - Unlabelled (Z33245) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33245> - $/MMBtu to €/MWh (Z33251) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33251> - Superlative definition, in Czech (Z33260) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33260> - describing entity with adjective/class, Bangla (Z33267) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33267> - normalize city name (Z33281) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33281> - validate city name in English (Z33284) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33284> - create HTML span fragment (Z33289) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33289> - HTML li fragment from text (Z33292) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33292> - create HTML ul fragment (Z33295) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33295> - Malay short description for album (Z33299) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33299> - abstract wikilink string (Z33306) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33306> - create HTML td fragment (Z33315) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33315> - create HTML tr fragment (Z33319) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33319> - create HTML th fragment (Z33322) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33322> - create HTML caption fragment (Z33325) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33325> - create HTML table fragment (Z33328) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33328> - has initial phoneme triggering Eifel rule (lb) (Z33333) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33333> - Chinese String from language and str in zh-hant/s (Z33335) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33335> - begins with letters triggering Eifel rule (lb) (Z33340) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33340> - subtract complex128 (Z33366) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33366> - opposite of complex128 (Z33372) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33372> A complete list of all functions sorted by when they were created <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ListObjectsByType?type=Z8&orderb…> is available.

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Newsletter #243: Community proposals for capturing meaning
by Denny Vrandečić 10 Apr '26

10 Apr '26

The on-wiki version of this newsletter edition can be found here: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2026-04-10 ---- Community proposals for capturing meaning Following last week’s proposal <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2026-04-02> for a syntactic approach <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Syntactic_t…>, this week saw three more proposals in this direction: one for syntactic <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Syntactic_u…> and semantic units <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Semantic_un…>, meant to go in tandem, by Mahir <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Mahir256>, and one solely semantic <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Abstract_se…> by Dv103 <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Dv103>. We are hoping for lively discussions that will help us find the best way forward. I am happy to see that the proposals are picking up ideas from each other. Hiccups We are currently having a few hiccups on which we are working with a high priority, but we cannot promise a timeframe for resolving them: embedded function calls are having trouble (T422299 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T422299>), as well as the connection to the cache on Abstract Wikipedia, so the previews are often not showing immediately, if at all (T420630 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T420630>), and missing updates test result caches under rare circumstances (T422300 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T422300>). Recent Changes in the software This week, we fixed an issue where error messages were double-escaped and hard to read. They now render correctly, with angle brackets and quotes displayed as expected, making debugging easier (T421834 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T421834>). News in Types: Complex numbers We have introduced Complex numbers <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33198> based on a proposal <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/complex128> suggested by GZWDer <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:GZWDer>. The catalogue has a section with functions for complex numbers <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Catalogue/Number_operation…>. We invite you all to create new and discuss the existing type proposals <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals> so we can keep on creating new types. Wikifunctions presentation at WikiCon Australia on 11 April Toby Hudson <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:99of9> will be presenting *Wikifunctions in Practice: Reusable Logic for Wikimedia <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WikiCon%20Australia%202026/Submission…>* at WikiCon Australia <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WikiCon%20Australia%202026> this weekend, on 11 April 2026 at 12:00 local time at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National%20Film%20and%20Sound%20Archive> in Canberra. Here is the description of the talk: *Wikifunctions promises something simple but ambitious: write logic once, and make it reusable across Wikimedia projects and languages. Small, well-chosen functions can have outsized impact and eliminate some updating, copy-pasting, or even translation.**This talk focuses on goals and practical usage rather than internals or programming, but will allow plenty of time for questions from the audience to dig into the details. We'll see what Wikifunctions is and what it's for. We will test a range of existing functions on Wikifunctions directly. We will see how to embed the result of a function call in a regular Wiki page elsewhere on a sister project. Then we will look ahead to how Wikifunctions will play a key role in the future Abstract Wikipedia.* Thank you Toby for giving this presentation! And everyone have fun at WikiCon Australia! Volunteer’s Corner upcoming on 13 April 2026 The next Volunteers’ Corner will be next week Monday, 13 April 2026 at 17:30 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1776101400>. We plan to have the following agenda: there will be time to ask questions and discuss all matters arising. We will celebrate the launch of Abstract Wikipedia Beta. If we have time, we will either write a function together or work on an Abstract Wikipedia article together (volunteer-led). Everyone is welcome to join us on Google Meet <https://meet.google.com/xuy-njxh-rkw>. Fresh Functions weekly: 68 new Functions This week we had 68 new functions. Here is an incomplete list of functions with implementations and passing tests to get a taste of what functions have been created. Thanks everybody for contributing! - reference marker HTML from HTML (Z32891) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32891> - default Australian place population sentence (Z32897) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32897> - Chinese (Trad) article-ful instantiating fragment (Z32900) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32900> - superlative definition, in German (Z32906) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32906> - Creative work - entity, class, creator, Swedish (Z32910) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32910> - Australian population sentence (Z32919) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32919> - italicise (HTML) (Z32925) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32925> - grammatical features indicate zero article English (Z32929) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32929> - item indicates zero article, English (Z32935) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32935> - lowercase first letter (Z32953) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32953> - Article-less instantiating HTML fragment (Z32962) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32962> - Japanese article-ful instantiating sentence (Z32967) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32967> - Superlative definition, in Bangla (Z32973) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32973> - non-defining role sentence (Z32982) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32982> - Tagalog non-defining role sentence (Z32985) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32985> - Japanese verb describing noun sentence (Z32989) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32989> - Japanese collective role sentence (Z32994) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32994> - Date to monolingual string (Z32997) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32997> - value of best statement of Lexeme with predicate (Z32998) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32998> - item is a subclass of something (Z33006) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33006> - grammatical features indicate English zero article (Z33011) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33011> - State location using entity and class, zh-Hans (Z33028) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33028> - Traditional Han Chinese "是" sentence (Z33036) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33036> - Unlabelled (Z33038) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33038> - Unlabelled (Z33039) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33039> - convert monolingual txt into Wt langconv lang unit (Z33040) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33040> - X exists in N Ys, Spanish (Z33044) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33044> - English simple present singular sentence, indef (Z33059) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33059> - Japanese indef noun phrase (Z33063) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33063> - enwikt inflection table outer (Z33065) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33065> - best lexeme with category from Wikidata item (Z33071) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33071> - keep only lexemes in list in a lexical category (Z33073) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33073> - Japanese classify a class of nouns fragment (Z33083) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33083> - Unlabelled (Z33087) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33087> - Wikidata statement value is reference to item? (Z33103) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33103> - parts of lexeme (Z33123) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33123> - values (unqual.) from Wikidata lexeme statements (Z33125) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33125> - filter statements in Wikidata lexeme by prop (Z33128) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33128> - is proper noun lexeme? (Z33143) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33143> - is proper noun? (item reference) (Z33146) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33146> - is contiguous region transected by latitude line? (Z33150) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33150> A complete list of all functions sorted by when they were created <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ListObjectsByType?type=Z8&orderb…> is available.

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Newsletter #242: Request for Discussion: Towards a more modular NLG
by Denny Vrandečić 02 Apr '26

02 Apr '26

The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2026-04-02 ---- Request for Discussion: Towards a more modular NLG One drawback of the current approach towards NLG is that it is very tightly coupled between the conceptual "thing" you want to say and the choice of a single Function to serve that need. It could benefit from more modularity, to support some languages better and reduce the challenge of using them. Since the launch of Abstract Wikipedia, there have been so many discussions coming up that it is difficult to keep track of all and join them all, but one thing I noticed is how to create functions that allow to create grammatically correct sentences and at the same time allow for the kind of annotation and formatting we are used from Wikipedia articles, e.g. emphasis, links, etc. I made a proposal last year, which received a fair amount of criticism. In the light of the use cases and requirements we are noticing right now, I have improved and significantly simplified the proposal. But there doesn’t seem to be an answer yet: we want to present this as a contribution to the on-going discussion and to open it for finding answers together. The proposal is currently here: Syntactic tables <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposal/Syntactic_ta…> . Functions suggested by Abstract Wikipedia The Abstract Wikipedia community has created a page to collect suggestions <https://abstract.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia:Suggested_functions> from the Abstract Wikipedia community to the Wikifunctions community for what would particularly help them. We are hoping for a fruitful cooperation! Recent Changes in the software This week, we implemented a new caching system to address an ongoing issue where results differed between the two Wikimedia datacenters. This should mostly resolve the user-facing inconsistencies, though more work is needed to ensure the system scales. We deployed this early, on Monday morning, to test its impact in isolation (T419666 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T419666>). We also addressed a number of bugs: Wikifunctions special pages now correctly show a message when ZObject creation is not enabled, such as on Abstract Wikipedia (T421148 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T421148>). We fixed an issue so that clicking on Wikifunctions objects from Abstract Wikipedia now correctly opens them on Wikifunctions (T420670 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T420670>). A problem in the article creation workflow has also been addressed; attempting to create an abstract article for a Wikidata item that already has a page no longer overwrites existing content, now users see an appropriate message and are redirected to the existing article (T420725 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T420725>). In addition, previews now properly set content language and direction, improving alignment and readability, especially for RTL languages (T420687 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T420687>). Finally, we fixed a bug where we mis-set the page context, so publishing a new abstract article from some links would always fail (T420916 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T420916> ). News in Types: Grammatical voices Based on two proposals by Dv103 <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Dv103> for Grammatical voices <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice%20(grammar)>, a proposal for active / middle / passive <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Grammatical…>, and a proposal for active / mediopassive <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals/Grammatical…>, the respective two new lightweight enumerations have been created: Grammatical voice (active / mediopassive) (Z32792) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32792> and Grammatical voice (active / middle / passive) (Z32789) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32789>. They join the existing Grammatical voice active / passive <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28517> lightweight enumeration. Please join in reviewing, discussing, and creating type proposals <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Type_proposals>. Wikifunctions presentation at WikiCon Australia on 11 April 2026 Toby Hudson <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:99of9> will be presenting Wikifunctions in Practice: Reusable Logic for Wikimedia <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WikiCon%20Australia%202026/Submission…> at WikiCon Australia <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:WikiCon%20Australia%202026> on 11 April 2026 at 12:00 local time at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National%20Film%20and%20Sound%20Archive> in Canberra <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra>. Here is the description of the talk: *Wikifunctions promises something simple but ambitious: write logic once, and make it reusable across Wikimedia projects and languages. Small, well-chosen functions can have outsized impact and eliminate some updating, copy-pasting, or even translation.**This talk focuses on goals and practical usage rather than internals or programming, but will allow plenty of time for questions from the audience to dig into the details. We'll see what Wikifunctions is and what it's for. We will test a range of existing functions on Wikifunctions directly. We will see how to embed the result of a function call in a regular Wiki page elsewhere on a sister project. Then we will look ahead to how Wikifunctions will play a key role in the future Abstract Wikipedia.* Thank you Toby for giving this presentation! And everyone have fun at WikiCon Australia! Volunteer’s Corner upcoming on 13 April 2026 The next Volunteers’ Corner will be on Monday, 13 April 2026 at 17:30 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1776101400>. We plan to have the following agenda: there will be time to ask questions and discuss all matters arising. We will celebrate the launch of Abstract Wikipedia Beta. If we have time, we will either write a function together or work on an Abstract Wikipedia article together (volunteer-led). Everyone is welcome to join us on Google Meet <https://meet.google.com/xuy-njxh-rkw>. Fresh Functions weekly: 102 new Functions This week we had 102 new functions. This might be the first week where we ever had more than a hundred new functions. Here is an incomplete list of functions with implementations and passing tests to get a taste of what functions have been created. Thanks everybody for contributing! - add definite article to Lorrain form (Z32387) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32387> - "<instance> is a <class>" in Lorrain (Z32395) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32395> - X exists in N Ys, English (Z32399) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32399> - Malay second superlative form (paling) (Z32406) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32406> - X has Y, fully specified, English (Z32410) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32410> - English simple present collective sentence (Z32425) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32425> - abstract wikilink (Z32428) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32428> - item has statement with value for property (Z32431) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32431> - Portuguese word is feminine (Z32436) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32436> - State location using entity and class, Japanese (Z32442) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32442> - flatten map function (Z32453) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32453> - find up to n best Wikidata statement values (Z32456) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32456> - English short description for painting (Z32468) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32468> - [name] was born [date] in [place]. (Z32473) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32473> - X has Y, semantic + optional grammar, English (Z32496) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32496> - grammatical features indicate plural (broadly) (Z32506) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32506> - grammatical features indicate definite article, En (Z32516) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32516> - Latin simple present collective sentence (Z32522) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32522> - remove macrons from string (Z32527) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32527> - simple present collective sentence (Z32531) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32531> - Creative work - entity, class, creator, English (Z32536) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32536> - filter statements by property type unless excluded (Z32537) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32537> - [cs] prefix with v/ve (Z32541) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32541> - grammatical features indicate indefinite article (Z32550) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32550> - fallback string if empty or not a string (Z32556) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32556> - load and find one best Wikidata statement value 2 (Z32557) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32557> - number of all statements of a Wikidata item (Z32573) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32573> - number of specific statements of a Wikidata item (Z32577) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32577> - Creative work - entity, class, creator (Z32581) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32581> - group Typed pairs by first element (Z32585) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32585> - Intro for year in Czech (Z32588) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32588> - Find lexemes for a Wikidata item in language group (Z32599) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32599> - plural from wikidata item in language w/ features (Z32606) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32606> - English verb describing noun sentence (Z32621) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32621> - item indicates definite article, English (Z32645) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32645> - item represents a person (Z32663) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32663> - item represents a position indic. "the" in English (Z32668) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32668> - Japanese article-less instantiating sentence (Z32671) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32671> - is Kleenean not True? (Z32673) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32673> - Creative work - entity, class, creator, Japanese (Z32688) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32688> - item is a subclass of item or up to N more levels (Z32691) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32691> - apply a 3-param fn to a list of firsts, same 2&3 (Z32695) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32695> - is Unicode code point a combining mark? (Z32715) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32715> - create wikitable from caption and cell fragments (Z32731) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32731> - State location using entity and class, Dutch (Z32739) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32739> - English item label has equivalent alias with "the" (Z32749) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32749> - list of strings from Monolingual stringset (Z32753) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32753> - monolingual stringset from multilingual & language (Z32756) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32756> - first monolingual stringset in language from list (Z32757) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32757> - identical monolingual stringset (Z32758) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32758> - language of monolingual stringset (Z32766) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32766> - list of strings from multilingual stringset & lang (Z32772) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32772> - Czech cardinal (Z32780) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32780> - try synthesising IPA transcription for Lexeme Form (Z32787) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32787> - IPA transcription from Japanese kana text (Z32793) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32793> - Latin verb describing noun sentence (Z32831) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32831> - plural section title (single QID) (Z32839) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32839> - verb describing noun sentence (Z32843) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32843> - State location using entity and class, Latin (Z32848) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32848> - State location using entity and class, Swedish (Z32855) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32855> - are Functions' input and output types identical? (Z32864) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32864> - Wikidata link for item (Z32878) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32878> - Japanese simple present collective sentence (Z32881) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z32881> A complete list of all functions sorted by when they were created <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ListObjectsByType?type=Z8&orderb…> is available.

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