The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2025-10-08 ---- Decision on location for abstract content
Earlier this year, we held a community consultation about the location of abstract content for Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20Wikipedia/Location%20of%20Abstract%20Content. After reviewing all the feedback, we made a decision that follows community consensus.
For the abstract content, we will create a new Wikimedia project wiki. The new wiki is what could be called *“Abstract Wikipedia”*: it will have proto-articles stored in abstract content, which can be used to write out the article in an available language. Eventually, these articles can be integrated in the Wikipedia of that language. Now that we have decided to have such a wiki as its own project, we will soon kick-off a naming contest for this new wiki.
Over the years, the term *“Abstract Wikipedia”* has been shown to be an imperfect name. It can be ambiguous and confusing: people think of abstract art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20art, or something to do with computer science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20machine or mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20algebra, or they think of a Wikipedia made up of abstracts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20(summary) (short summaries, *e.g.* of research papers or real articles). They rarely think of what it was trying to reference, the philosophical contrast of abstract *vs.* concrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20and%20concrete. For the benefit of the project, we will be running a naming contest to find the most fitting name ahead of opening this new project.
A draft of the contest page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20Wikipedia/Abstract%20Wikipedia%20naming%20contest can be found on Meta, and we are looking for people to translate the page into as many languages as possible. We will kick off the naming contest next week.
In addition to the new wiki, we will also introduce a new datatype on Wikidata for references to Wikifunctions objects. This will allow the Wikidata community to have statements on Wikidata items connected to Wikifunctions functions. This could be used to connect the item with the abstract representation of the label or description, or a Lexeme sense with an abstract gloss, or other ideas with which the community might create.
In terms of the consultation we held earlier this year, this is Option 4 with a small part of Option 2 (as it will allow only for object references, not full-blown objects in Wikidata).
We are very thankful for all community members and colleagues who participated in the consultation and the decision finding process, and we are now confident that this is the best possible decision we can make at this point. Quarterly Planning for October to December 2025
As Q1 (July–September) has come to a close, we’d like to share what we have planned for Q2. (Note that the Foundation's financial year goes from July to June). We’ll share a full report on last quarter’s results and learnings soon but for now, here’s where we’re heading.
Our Q2 work (October–December) will tie back to our central objective for the whole year: *making more vital knowledge available across languages and topics.* To advance this vision, we’ll focus on two key results:
First, we’re continuing the annual key result we began in Q1: *Build the platform capabilities needed to validate that we can support the Abstract Wikipedia vision at scale.*
As a team, we organize our work around three areas: *Platform, Community, and Performance.* We’ll keep using this structure in Q2, with much of our focus on strengthening the technical foundation and supporting community growth. Platform
We are building the technical foundations we think are necessary for Wikifunctions to be the platform to power Abstract Wikipedia. This includes building new platform capabilities and testing Wikifunctions in diverse contexts to confirm and expand its value.
- *Custom component for Wikidata statements * *If we provide a custom component for viewing Wikidata statements on Wikifunctions, users will be more able to understand data fetched from Wikidata and feel less overwhelmed.* - *Shareable function calls:* *If we enable users to share direct links to specific function calls — including their inputs — contributors will be able to reproduce, verify, and discuss function behavior more easily, which will in turn speed up debugging, improve testing workflows, and support collaborative problem-solving across the Wikifunctions community.* - *Infoboxes Spike:* * If we look into the community’s Databox work on using Wikidata for infoboxes and investigate whether Wikifunctions might help, we will be able to identify a first experiment for Wikifunctions in infoboxes.*
Build Community
A key part of validating that we can support Abstract Wikipedia is that there are brilliant community folks interested and engaged in using and extending the tools and platforms we build to use it. We think that adding new ways of using Wikifunctions will encourage more people to get involved.
- *Wiktionary advocacy:* *If we socialize the availability of the conjugation table functions with the Wiktionary community, we will gain valuable feedback about function usage and insights into our user personas that we can apply to future rollouts.* - *Error advocacy:* *If we create community awareness about the ability to create and translate error messages on Wikifunctions, we will see an increase in the number of helpful error messages* - *Build corpus of NLG fragments:* *If we demo available semantic functions to the community, we will see an increase in grammatical functions by 50%*
Performance
For the Abstract Wikipedia vision to be a success, it needs to be not just a one-off demonstration, but a powerful, widely-used tool that supports many languages and contexts and can do so reliably, swiftly, and consistently. We think that spending a large amount of our effort this Quarter on improving reliability, scalability, and performance will help with this.
- *Orchestrator memory squashing:* *If we can prevent 10x memory consumption spikes, the orchestrator will be better able to handle Wikidata objects, supporting the utility of Wikifunctions as a platform for Abstract Wikipedia.* - *Rollout:* *If we roll Wikifunctions out to wikis that have Parsoid enabled, we will be able to continue testing whether the system remains performant and usable in increasingly broad rollouts*
Second, we’re introducing a new key result in this year’s annual plan: *Deploy an initial form of the new wiki for early community creation of Abstract articles.*
This marks an exciting step forward, with the goal of developing a first, minimal prototype. That prototype will eventually allow the community to begin experimenting with the creation of Abstract articles and provide valuable insights to guide prioritization.
For Q2, our work focuses on the foundational steps needed to enable this work, within the broad "Build Community" theme:
- *Naming of new Abstract wiki:* *If we finalize the decision for creating a new wiki and decide on a name with the community, we will be able to more broadly socialize the creation of this new wiki with our stakeholders and prepare for the logistics of a potential product name change.* - *Define MVP for Abstract wiki prototype:* *If we define an MVP for an Abstract wiki prototype that includes the barest possible experience for testing our back-end and NLG capabilities, and allows us to design iteratively, we will be able to plan and launch a live prototype in Q3.* - *Design explorations for Abstract wiki future:* *If we start talking to the community and exploring potential designs for the user experience of an Abstract wiki, we will be able to keep work moving forward in Q3.*
Recent Changes in the software
Last week was one of the team's regular Fix It weeks, where we spent our time trying to fix bugs and architectural issues we've noticed in the past while.
We extended the change from last week making long lists of labels in different languages more manageable (T391130 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T391130), we now use WikiLambda's codes for less-supported languages, and have tweaked the close button to work better (T405629 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T405629 and T405900 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T405900).
We tweaked the API used to run Test cases to not break in some circumstances, which would stop the page having any useful test run data on it. As part of work to improve the page loading when there are lots of Type results to display, we now queue these requests up and run them in sequence (T397542 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T397542).
As part of Wikimedia-wide language support work, we have added a new language Tsou Z1981/tsu https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z1981 (T380964 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T380964). Recording of October Volunteers’ Corner
The recording from this week’s Volunteers’ Corner is available on Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abstract%20Wikipedia%20Volunteer%20Corner%202025-10.webm. Thanks to David Martin https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:DMartin_(WMF), who built the function Z28701/Year-specific sentence about an item https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28701. Unfortunately, we stumbled into an issue with the built-in function Z861/Wrap monolingual text https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z861, for which now a bug is filed ( T406540 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T406540). Replacing the reference to that function, the targeted function is now fixed and working. WikiConference North America in New York City on 16–19 October
This year’s WikiConference North America https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2025/Main_Page will be on 16–19 October 2025 in New York City. On 18 October 2025 at 15:00 local time, community member Mahir Morshed https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Mahir256 will present the session How Different Languages Contribute to Abstract Wikipedia Content's Potential https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Submissions:2025/How_Different_Languages_Contribute_to_Abstract_Wikipedia_Content%27s_Potential. We are looking forward to an interesting and engaging session! Thanks to Mahir for hosting the session, and thanks to the conference organizers for preparing WikiCon NA! WikidataCon 2025 on 31 October – 2 November
This year’s WikidataCon https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Event:WikidataCon%202025 will be on 31 October – 2 November 2025. WikidataCon 2025 will be held online. On 1 November 2025 at 09:30 UTC, Genoveva Galarza Heredero https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Geno_(WMF) will present the session Wikidata and Abstract Wikipedia: the Now and the Future https://pretalx.com/wikidatacon-2025/talk/XGWHXM/. We are looking forward to celebrating Wikidata’s birthday with the Wikidata community, and for a session exploring Wikidata’s role in Abstract Wikipedia! Thanks to Geno for hosting the session, and thanks to the conference organizers for preparing WikidataCon! Fresh Functions weekly: 22 new Functions
This week we had 22 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!
- Gregorian dates are same day of month (Z28595) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28595 - Converting Hijri Date to Gregorian Date function (Z28600) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28600 - German noun declension table (Z28602) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28602 - get Beaufort Scale item (Z28605) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28605 - display two quantities, second bracketed (Z28611) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28611 - display quantity and parenthesised conversion (Z28614) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28614 - date of death from Wikidata item (Z28620) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28620 - read RGBA colour (Z28624) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28624 - default RGBA color reader (Z28628) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28628 - substring by index (0-indexed) (Z28630) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28630 - format RGBA color as #RRGGBBaa hex (Z28639) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28639 - alpha of RGBA color (Z28642) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28642 - fraction as hex (2 digit uppercase) (Z28645) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28645 - display RGBA colour (Z28650) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28650 - element by index (helper) (Z28661) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28661 - German article (Z28670) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28670 - Type has custom converters from code (Z28688) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28688 - untype list if custom converters (Z28691) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28691 - Year-specific sentence about item (Z28701) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28701 - Year-specific sentence about item, returns String (Z28707) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28707
A complete list of all functions sorted by when they were created https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ListObjectsByType?type=Z8&orderby=latest is available.