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Abstract-Wikipedia June 2026

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Newsletter #251: The illustrated encyclopaedia
by Denny Vrandečić 05 Jun '26

05 Jun '26

The on-wiki version of this newsletter edition can be found here: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2026-06-05 ---- The illustrated encyclopaedia We are very excited to let you know that starting this week the ability to add images to Abstract Wikipedia is available. Images are an important part of a modern encyclopaedia. They can complement textual descriptions, and often work across languages. Maps, diagrams, and photographs provide a way to convey spatial relationships, proportions, interactions and to illustrate a topic. Images can make a Wikipedia page be more lively, and make it easier to digest. A first example function creating an HTML fragment is available here: create Commons thumbnail image (Z36038) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36038> Clicking through an image will take you to the Commons page for the image, like on Wikipedia articles. For now, we only support images: not videos, audio files, maps, 3D models, data tables, or documents. We do support a variety of image formats, including animated PNGs and GIFs. SVG images also work, but their animations are not being displayed. The example function is available for you to explore, and you're welcome to create others. Documentation <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Wikifunctions/Images> is available — still a work in progress, but it covers the current scope and known v1 limitations. Caption support is not yet available but will be added in a future iteration. Images that are uploaded to individual language editions of Wikipedia are not available. This is an intentional limitation, and there are no plans on changing that. Only images from Wikimedia Commons will be available, as this is the space to share images across all Wikipedia editions. Also, images from third-party Websites will not be available. If you find issues, please let us know. As with every new capability, given the complex ecosystem we are in, we expect that some things that should work might not. Please report such situations, ideally on Phabricator, so we can fix them. A first image integrated in an article on Abstract Wikipedia can be seen here: Brač <https://abstract.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q922>. We are looking forward to seeing you use images in Abstract Wikipedia! Recent Changes in the software This week, we re-built how we register the code, which means that the special user rights (like "Connect a Test Case to its Function" or "Create new Abstract Articles") and groups (like "Functioneer"), now will only show up on Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia as appropriate, and not on client wikis (T407066 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T407066>). We also fixed a bug for Wikifunctions that meant that diff pages showed the old revision of a page underneath a diff, rather than the new one. Abstract Wikipedia wasn't affected. Volunteers’ Corner on June 8 The next Volunteers’ Corner will be on Monday, 8 June 2026 at 17:30 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1780939800>. We plan to have the following agenda: there will be time to ask questions and discuss all matters arising. If we have time, we will write a function together. Everyone is welcome to join us on Google Meet <https://meet.google.com/xuy-njxh-rkw>. Functions of the Week: main articles (Z36083) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36083> and main articles, complex ( Z33842) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33842> *Every week we present up to one Function in detail, to show off the possibilities of Wikifunctions. The Functions of the Week are usually community submissions. You can submit a Function here <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Function_of_the_Week/submi…>. This week’s Function of the Week was written by 99of9 <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:99of9> and copyedited by Feeglgeef <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Feeglgeef>. Thanks!* The functions main articles <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36083> and main articles, complex <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33842> are to be used on Abstract Wikipedia after a section heading to link to a separate article with more information about that subtopic. These links help the reader to quickly navigate to the topics they are most interested in, and are widely used across most language editions of Wikipedia. Our functions are modelled on the English Wikipedia Template:Main <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Main>, which takes a (usually short) set of articles to link to, optional alternative label strings for those links, and a parameter to denote and slightly change the behaviour of self-references. It returns a short inset referring to this link as the Main article for the subsection. The full version of our function, main articles, complex <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33842> is set up to accept three similar inputs and the language in which it should be rendered. The link items are entered as a list of Wikidata item references <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z6091>. The alternate labels cannot simply be strings, because they would not work in all languages. For now, we accept a list of objects, but do not yet support any functionality on these objects. In the future they may be populated with function references or other data structures with the information required to generate alternate labels. The self-reference parameter is a Boolean. The function returns an HTML fragment <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z89> as required for Abstract Wikipedia. The composition implementation <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z33847> deals with wrapping each language's output with an HTML div with attributes role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable", so the language sub-functions are just responsible for fetching and formatting the link name. Usually, the complexity of alternative labels and self-references is unnecessary. So the simpler version of our function, main articles <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36083>, only requires a list of items and a language as arguments. It wraps the complex version, passing default values for the unused arguments. This version is simpler to use and read in Abstract Wikipedia source code. Six tests are available, based on the prolific use of this function to structure the abstract article Australia (Q408) <https://abstract.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q408>: - *Main article:* History of Australia <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36085> - *Main articles:* Geography of Australia and Australian continent <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36086> - *Main articles:* Australian Government, Politics of Australia and Monarchy of Australia <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36087> currently failing due to a tracked bug, T427454 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T427454>, affecting Z13464 <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z13464>, which the composition relies on. - *Hoofdartikel:* Geografie van Australië <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36089> in Belgian Dutch. - *→ Hauptartikel:* Klima in Australien <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36088> awaiting an implementation in German. - a test of the default function <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z36090> testing in Arabic, a right-to-left language, and successfully generating ← تاريخ أستراليا with a link. I chose this example as Function of the Week to encourage further language configuration. Supporting simple links with labels in a consistent scheme is a very clearly defined purpose, and is a reasonably easy starting point compared to other natural language functions. It is currently only configured in English and Dutch, so further contributions would be welcome. It would also be interesting to discuss theoretical directions for the currently unused label-configuring argument. Fresh Functions weekly: 63 new Functions This week we had 63 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! - Season a month falls in (Northern Hemisphere) (Z35641) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35641> - Season a Month falls in (Southern Hemisphere) (Z35646) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35646> - Key reference for nth Key in Type (Z35652) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35652> - quoted Reference to Type from Key reference (Z35656) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35656> - Wikidata quantity from components (Z35663) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35663> - round Wikidata quantity to fixed decimal places (Z35666) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35666> - sentence separator (Z35672) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35672> - single space (Z35677) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35677> - apply0 (Z35683) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35683> - empty string "" (Z35687) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35687> - is Natural number not zero? (Z35693) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35693> - is Integer not zero? (Z35702) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35702> - is Integer non-positive? (Z35709) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35709> - is Rational number non-positive? (Z35714) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35714> - Sign of difference of Rational numbers (Z35721) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35721> - are Rational numbers different? (Z35727) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35727> - are HTML fragments different? (Z35732) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35732> - is HTML fragment empty? (Z35737) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35737> - is HTML fragment not empty? (Z35740) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35740> - extract aliases from Natural language object (Z35747) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35747> - join multiple HTML fragments with a separator (Z35766) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35766> - value of red channel in RGBA colour (Z35772) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35772> - value of green channel in RGBA colour (Z35774) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35774> - value of blue channel in RGBA colour (Z35776) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35776> - add tone markings to Igbo words (Z35780) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35780> - Sign of difference of Gregorian years (Z35792) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35792> - Get EF rating from estimated max winds (English) (Z35797) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35797> - labels of Wikidata item (Typed List [monolingual]) (Z35806) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35806> - monolingual text from list w highest listed lang (Z35809) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35809> - is monolingual text blank? (Z35811) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35811> - does monolingual text have content? (Z35815) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35815> - multilingual text from list of monolingual texts (Z35828) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35828> - mark mul text (Z35839) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35839> - signed numerator of unsimplified Rational number (Z35847) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35847> - prime divisors of Natural with their exponents (Z35860) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35860> - swap items in Typed pair (Z35864) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35864> - preferred implementation of function as ZID (Z35874) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35874> - return SignWriting in Unicode regex from string (Z35879) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35879> - replace all (regex, case-sensitive, Unicode-aware) (Z35883) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35883> - English MIT License attribution statement (Z35889) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35889> - SWU coordinate characters to integer list (Z35892) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35892> - convert SWU symbols to FSW (Z35901) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35901> - Time of day from components (Z35911) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35911> - NLG default text (Z35921) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35921> - string length equals number (Z35936) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35936> - iterate function over string to string (Z35941) <https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z35941> 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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