Abstract Wikipedia is a 100&Change finalist

Wikimedia’s vision is a world in which everyone can share in the sum of all knowledge. And yet, some of the biggest challenges towards realizing this goal are the barriers that exist between our 300 language editions of Wikipedia. Finding a way to bring the different languages closer together was central to the idea behind my 2013 post exploring a multilingual encyclopedia. I imagined Wikipedia written in a language-independent way that could be used to fill the knowledge gaps that exist in many of its language editions.

In the following years, I explored this concept with linguists and other scientists around the world, developed prototypes, and kept refining the idea, presenting to scientific communities and publishing the progress in leading journals. This work received extensive feedback over time and received  encouraging recognition in the form of two Computing Research Association Blue Sky Awards. While all of these steps have been essential to our progress, no stakeholder has been more important to the success of this project than Wikimedia’s global volunteer communities. 

Abstract Wikipedia was first proposed on Meta in May 2020, and the Wikimedia community discussed, improved, and expressed support for the project proposal. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees passed a resolution of approval, and in July 2020, Abstract Wikipedia was announced. Since that time, it has been collaboratively developed with Wikimedia communities, who named it, gave it a logo, and helped with numerous technical decisions along the way.

Today, I am proud to share that this decade-plus of work and collaboration has been recognized by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which has selected Abstract Wikipedia as one of five finalists for their 100&Change competition. This competition provides a single $100 million, 5-year grant to fund an idea that makes measurable progress toward solving a critical problem of our time. Selected from 869 submissions, each of the five finalists will receive a $1 million grant.  The winner of the competition will be announced in late 2025.

What is the critical problem we want to solve? For many people speaking underrepresented languages, knowledge is not readily available, nor can they contribute effectively to the world’s knowledge on Wikipedia. 

The amount of knowledge that different language editions of Wikipedia offer varies dramatically: English Wikipedia is about to reach 7 million articles, German Wikipedia just reached 3 million, but more than a hundred Wikipedia language editions have fewer than 10,000 articles. Perhaps even more important than the number of articles though, is the size of a language community to help write, curate, and fact-check articles. More than a hundred thousand volunteers contribute to English Wikipedia every month, but most other language editions have only a dozen or so contributors. It is simply not possible to create and maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date encyclopedia with only a dozen people.

How do we aim to address this problem at scale? At a time when more trusted sources of information are badly needed, Abstract Wikipedia can be a vital communication tool with the power to quickly and extensively expand access to reliable knowledge on Wikipedia to billions globally. 

A shared fact base is essential for well-functioning societies and for the world to tackle big, global challenges. This is even more urgent as we see growing challenges to the integrity of the internet’s knowledge base including mis- and disinformation. 

With information in 300+ languages, Wikipedia is the most multilingual platform on the internet. To fully achieve its place as the world’s shared fact base, it needs more tools that volunteers can use to make knowledge available across more languages. 

That is where Abstract Wikipedia comes in. Tackling this more systematically, at scale, can help grow the quantity—and quality—of human-created and checked content and translations online. A global community creating human edited and maintained language-independent knowledge can provide millions of articles in hundreds of languages where they are currently missing, benefitting all Wikipedias, and aligning with our principle of supporting human knowledge contributors.

What has been achieved so far? We have made significant progress to date, starting with the launch of Wikifunctions in 2023—the first new Wikimedia project since 2012 (when Wikidata was launched). Designed as a repository of functions that can be accessed from any Wikimedia project, Wikifunctions contributors from over 50 countries have already created more than 2400 functions with names and descriptions for those functions in more than a hundred languages. 2024 saw us enable access to Wikidata data from Wikifunctions. 

And just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the first roll-out of Wikifunctions in a Wikipedia project. We share our collective progress through weekly updates—which just saw its 200th edition published! 

Winning the 100&Change prize would help us build on this communal momentum to accelerate implementation and meet the urgency of the moment: funding things like more strategic and sustainable expertise, infrastructure, and outreach. We are honoured to be a 100&Change finalist, and are deeply grateful to the many people who have helped us achieve all that we have so far. 

Abstract Wikipedia has been fortunate to receive ongoing support by the Wikimedia communities and funding from the Wikimedia Endowment, The Rockefeller Foundation, and Google.org. We look forward to this support and partnership with the MacArthur Foundation to create a future in which every human can share in the sum of all knowledge.