(Submitted on 8 Apr 2020)

Abstract: Wikipedia’s vision is a world in which everyone can share in the sum of all
knowledge. In its first two decades, this vision has been very unevenly
achieved. One of the largest hindrances is the sheer number of languages
Wikipedia needs to cover in order to achieve that goal. We argue that we need a
new approach to tackle this problem more effectively, a multilingual Wikipedia
where content can be shared between language editions. This paper proposes an
architecture for a system that fulfills this goal. It separates the goal in two
parts: creating and maintaining content in an abstract notation within a
project called Abstract Wikipedia, and creating an infrastructure called
Wikilambda that can translate this notation to natural language. Both parts are
fully owned and maintained by the community, as is the integration of the
results in the existing Wikipedia editions. This architecture will make more
encyclopedic content available to more people in their own language, and at the
same time allow more people to contribute knowledge and reach more people with
their contributions, no matter what their respective language backgrounds.
Additionally, Wikilambda will unlock a new type of knowledge asset people can
share in through the Wikimedia projects, functions, which will vastly expand
what people can do with knowledge from Wikimedia, and provide a new venue to
collaborate and to engage the creativity of contributors from all around the
world. These two projects will considerably expand the capabilities of the
Wikimedia platform to enable every single human being to freely share in the
sum of all knowledge.