Welcome Zaree and Laura!
We are happy to welcome two new members on the Abstract Wikifunctions team!
Zaree Singer is supporting the team as a Lead Technical Program Manager for the Objective that our work falls under in the Annual Plan. Zaree will help ensure our work is delivered and support collaboration with teams working across the Objective. Here is Zaree introducing herself in her own words:
- "I am so happy to be working with the Abstract Wikipedia team as part of our broader objective of making more vital knowledge available and well illustrated across languages and topics. I was born in Australia, grew up outside of Boston, and am currently living in Northern Virginia. My background is varied, and I've been a chief of staff, a program manager, a consultant, and a change manager, but the general theme is I work with ambitious leaders to get hard work done. Outside of work, I can mostly be found shuttling my children around, but I also enjoy a nice long walk, being outside as much as possible, and cooking."
Laura Morgantini is joining the team as a Senior Product Manager. She will help shape the product direction of Abstract Wikipedia and work with the team to ensure the project grows in impact and stays grounded in community and user needs. Here is Laura introducing herself in her own words:
- "Hello everyone! I recently joined the Abstract Wikipedia team, and I'm so happy to be part of Wikimedia and this inspiring project. In my first few weeks, I've been exploring the many fascinating layers of the work, and it's very exciting to see how it connects knowledge across languages and communities. A bit about me: I grew up in Germany and now live on Vancouver Island, where I love spending time outdoors, climbing (and more climbing), or enjoying a good board game night. On the professional side, I've worked in product management on tools that help people share and access knowledge, from scholarly publishing to subtitling platforms that bridge language barriers.
- "I'm excited to learn from this community and build together."
Please give both Zaree and Laura a warm welcome!
Naming contest round 1 kicked off
The naming contest for what is currently known as "Abstract Wikipedia" has been kicked off. More than 80 proposals have been already submitted. We split the proposals into two pages: one page with the top-voted proposals so far, and a second page including the other proposals. Please participate and vote and decide with us the name for the new project!
The goal of the first round is to facilitate brainstorming and generating a wide array of proposals. We will then take the top-voted proposals into a second round in order to determine the community's favorite.
New proposals can still be submitted until the end of the first round. The first round of the naming contest goes until November 3.
Recent Changes in the software
This week we deployed several user-facing improvements focused on clarity and usability across Wikifunctions and the Visual Editor.
On Wikifunctions, empty typed lists and multilingual strings now display a clear visual indicator (T341069), making it easier to recognize when a list exists but has no items rather than appearing blank. Validation for empty reference fields (Z9K1) (T402831) was also added so users are now warned before submitting new or edited ZObjects with empty references, and the publishing dialog highlights affected fields with error states prompting them to "Enter a value." Additionally, the function selector (T398360) was improved to properly load lookup results when a function is pre-selected in test case pages. This ensures users can easily find and select other functions without needing to manually clear or retype text.
In the Visual Editor, a new "Default Value" checkbox (T402176) was introduced when inserting a function in a Wikipedia article. It clarifies when certain inputs such as Wikidata items or Gregorian dates automatically apply default values if left empty, making the system's behavior more transparent and predictable.
Abstract Wikipedia at WikidataCon 2025
This year's WikidataCon will be on 31 October – 2 November 2025. WikidataCon 2025 will be held online, celebrating Wikidata's 13th birthday.
On 1 November 2025 at 09:30 UTC, Genoveva Galarza Heredero will present the session Wikidata and Abstract Wikipedia: the Now and the Future.
On 2 November 2025 at 20:00 Berlin time, community member Mahir Morshed will present the session Mad Libs with Wikidata Lexemes and Abstract Content.
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 Mahir and Geno for hosting their sessions, and thanks to the conference organizers for preparing WikidataCon!
Fresh functions weekly: 24 new functions
This week we had 24 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!
- display year in English without AD after 99 AD (Z28824)
- is first year before second (Z28833)
- Later Wikidata time (Z28846)
- is year BC (Z28855)
- Display Gregorian year in Luxembourgish (Z28870)
- is year AD (Z28875)
- extractInitials (Z28902)
- Gregorian to Hijri date conversion function (Z28911)
- strong importance (Z28914)
- initials from full name of person (Z28917)
- is pythagorean triple (Z28925)
- extractFamilyName (Z28935)
- family name from full name of person (Z28940)
- simplified Type object from Type (Z28945)
- absolute value is greater than or equal to 1 (Z28963)
- is primitive pythagorean triple (Z28973)
- Uzbek short description for album (Z28977)
- digits in numerator of unsimplified rational (Z28982)
- dp from unsimplified numerator and denominator (Z28986)
A complete list of all functions sorted by when they were created is available.
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