The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Status_updates/2025-10-15

The referenced visualization can be found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikifunctions_ZID_composition_trees.... ---- Kicking Off the Naming Contest for “Abstract Wikipedia”

We are kicking off a contest to name what we are currently calling “Abstract Wikipedia” https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract%20Wikipedia/Abstract%20Wikipedia%20naming%20contest: a new wiki to store language-independent content that can be used to create articles in Wikipedias.

We are still looking for translations of the voting page.

There will be two rounds of voting: the first round has the goal of generating many proposals and surfacing a few favorites from those proposals. The leading proposals from the first round are then taken to the second round of voting, in order to determine the actual name for the project.

You can already submit proposals and do early voting. There are already more than a dozen proposals! You can vote for as many proposals as you like, and enter further proposals all the way through to the end of the first round (although, proposals that enter late might have a harder time catching up).

*The first round of voting starts Monday, 20 October*. We plan to split the proposals into two pages to facilitate an easier voting experience, one page with the current top contenders and one page with all submissions. On Monday, we will also spread the word a bit further. It will still continue to be possible to submit new proposals, and you can vote for as many proposals as you want (but you must not use more than one account to do so). Voting will go for two weeks.

*The second round of voting starts Monday, 17 November*. We plan to take the top results from the first round, and ask for a vote in form of a ranking of the proposals. Voting will go for two weeks.

The winner will be established using the instant-runoff voting procedure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff%20voting. We expect the name to be announced early 2026, following the necessary legal and technical reviews. Visualizing functions https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/File:Wikifunctions_ZID_composition_trees.png

Community member 99of9 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:99of9 created this beautiful visualization of all the functions in Wikifunctions. Every dot is a function, and the color of the dot represents the return type. Every function connects to the function with the highest ZID in any of its compositions. This leads to a large tree.

The artist says: *“These tree versions only have one direction out of each function. They look at the composition(s) and find the highest ZID function called by the composition, and point to that. Eventually the paths converge on a root which is either a built-in or a function that only has code implementations. If we can write a composition for that root function, in the next dump it will be joined to a bigger cluster.”*

This visualization is one beautiful example of can be done with Wikifunctions as a dataset. There are many choices: about coloring, placing, which links to show, and much more.

Thanks to User:99of9 for this inspirational image! Recent Changes in the software

Last week was the proper start of the Quarter for us, so not much got landed in terms of user-facing changes.

We adjusted the labels in the category descriptions for embedded Wikifunctions calls that go wrong, to more consistently use 'Wikifunctions calls' not 'calls to Wikifunctions' (T404671 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T404671). Thanks to Amir Aharoni for flagging the mix. We also changed the system behaviour for embedded calls that are broken, to try them again more frequently, so issues with the system should fix themselves more quickly.

We now disable the publish button after you've clicked it, to avoid second clicks, and the connect and disconnect buttons in the table whilst loading, for roughly the same reason (T361628 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T361628). News in Types: RGBA colour type now with read and display function

The RGBA colour type https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28579 received a read https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28624 and display https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28650 function. No NLG SIG meeting in October

No proposals for the upcoming Natural Language Generation Special Interest Group meeting slot have been made, so we cancel this month’s meeting. If you want to suggest something for the upcoming meetings, please enter your suggestion on the NLG SIG page https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:NLG_SIG. 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! Slides from WikiCon presentation in Potsdam https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/File:Pr%C3%A4sentation_Wikifunctions_&_Abstrakte_Wikipedia.pdf

At WikiCon 2025 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiCon%202025 in Potsdam earlier this month, community members Hogü-456 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Hog%C3%BC-456 and Ameisenigel https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/User:Ameisenigel presented *Wikifunctions & Abstrakte Wikipedia* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiCon%20%202025/Programm/Wikifunctions%20&%20Abstrakte%20Wikipedia. No recording was made. The slides of the presentation are available on Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pr%C3%A4sentation%20Wikifunctions%20&%20Abstrakte%20Wikipedia.pdf (in German). Kudos to Hogü and Ameisenigel for holding the presentation! Fresh Functions weekly: 21 new Functions

This week we had 21 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!

- index of first sub-list (start) (Z28715) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28715 - Type has custom converters to code (Z28724) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28724 - every nth item of list (Z28735) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28735 - name and lifespan from Wikidata item (Z28748) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28748 - index of match in list (Z28755) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28755 - year from Wikidata time (Z28767) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28767 - Gregorian year from Wikidata time (Z28773) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28773 - year from item and property (Z28777) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28777 - English short description for album (Z28784) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28784 - item from item and property (Z28787) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28787 - default short description for albums (Z28797) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28797 - short description for album (Z28803) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28803 - German short description for album (Z28811) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28811 - display simplified Gregorian year (Z28818) https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z28818

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.