Abstract Wikipedia

Project

Abstract Wikipedia is a Wikimedia project for creating and maintaining encyclopedic articles in a language-independent way, so the same article can be read in many languages. It works together with Wikifunctions, a library of community-written natural language functions, and Wikidata, a community-edited knowledge graph.

The goal of this project is to help more people share more knowledge in more languages. Small and medium language Wikipedias can grow the number of articles available in their language, and editors can share knowledge from their communities with a wider audience.

How it works:

• Wikidata - stores structured facts and lexical knowledge about words and entities.
• Wikifunctions - a catalog of functions that anyone can write, call, and maintain. Contributors build multilingual natural language functions here, drawing on Wikidata's data and lexical knowledge.
• Abstract Wikipedia - holds content in a language-independent form. It uses functions from Wikifunctions to render natural language prose and articles across supported languages.

Together, these bring us closer to a world where everyone can share in the sum of all knowledge.

What is a function?

A function is a sequence of instructions that makes a calculation based on data you provide. Functions can answer questions like how many days have passed between two dates, or the distance between two cities. More complex functions answer more complex questions, like the volume of a three-dimensional shape or whether two species were alive at the same time. Functions are already common in everyday knowledge tasks. The templates known as {{convert}} and {{age}} on English Wikipedia are examples of functionality used across many Wikipedias, written in wikitext and Lua and copied by hand to each wiki that wants them. Wikifunctions builds a shared library of functions, written by volunteers, so this kind of logic can be written once and used across languages.

What is Abstract Wikipedia?

Abstract Wikipedia lets contributors describe the content of an article once, in a structured and language-independent form. Functions from Wikifunctions turn this content into natural language sentences, using data and lexical knowledge from Wikidata. The result is an article that can be expressed in any supported language, without a person rewriting it for each one.

This is especially useful for small and medium language Wikipedias, which can use it to grow the number of articles in their language and keep them current.

Timeline

• 2013–2020: Project discussion, research, and proposal
• May 2020: Project approved
• July 2020: Project announced; Development begins on Extension:WikiLambda; Mailing list and other channels created and in-depth discussions increase
• September 2020 – December 2020: Wiki of functions naming contest.
• December 2020: Start discussions for the Wikifunctions logo contest and submissions of proposals.
• August 2022: Launch Wikifunctions Beta
• July 2023: Launch Wikifunctions in production
• 2023/2024: Add more types to Wikifunctions
• 2024/2025: Using Wikidata in Wikifunctions
• April 2025: Ability to embed the result of a function call in pages, starting with dagwiki
• late 2025: First live functions for generating simple sentences in natural languages
• 2026: soft launch

Current status

Abstract Wikipedia is in its soft launch. The project is currently working with a set of pilot Wikipedias to try out abstract articles with their communities: Malayalam, Dagbani, and Igbo. We publish weekly updates about the project on Wikifunctions.

Participate

• Edit
  • Write and improve functions on Wikifunctions
  • Contribute to lexicographic knowledge in Wikidata. This helps Abstract Wikipedia generate more articles in more languages.
  • Create and improve abstract articles.
  • Translate the documentation pages on Meta-wiki.
  • Translate the software interface on translatewiki.net (completion statistics)
• Discuss
  • Read the weekly updates (subscribe)
  • Talk:Abstract Wikipedia
  • Dedicated mailing list
  • Main chat: Telegram or IRC #wikipedia-abstract^connect (bridged together) (current logs, old logs)
  • Developer chat: Telegram or IRC #wikipedia-abstract-tech^connect (bridged together) (logs)
  • Regular meetings:
    • Volunteer's corner: This is a monthly meeting on the first Monday, from 18:30–19:00 UTC. It is currently hosted on the Google Meet platform (link). It is an informal space for code review, talking about what volunteers have achieved or how to approach a task, which task is best to pick up next, and similar. Volunteers can come in with questions, show progress, discuss things, tell us about their plans, or ask for ideas. If you need someone specific from the development team to join in, please let us know in advance.
    • Natural language generation (NLG) on Wikifunctions: This is a monthly meeting on the third Tuesday, from 16:30–17:30 UTC. More information.
    • Previous office hours: 2021-12-20, 2021-08-14 (Wikimania), 2021-06-22
• Develop
  • If you want to help with development:
    • You can see information about the Extension at Extension:WikiLambda and some developer tips at Abstract developer cheatsheet
    • phab:tag/abstract wikipedia – Add feature requests and bug reports here. (See Phabricator for details on how to use it)
      • You can see a list of smaller development tasks – These are good first tasks for newer developers.
      • You can see these other good listings for open tasks: #fix-it tasks – unassigned tasks – nice-to-have tasks
    • You can email Sannita or write on the talk page if you'd like to work with us more closely.
• Try it out
  • If you’re interested in integrating abstract articles in your language community, reach out to us!