Highlights from five recent episodes! Sandra Fauconnier notes the irony of centralization in the Semantic Web, Ad Strack van Schijndel discusses the workings of Juggel, Daniel Dobriy extols wikis for AI, Cory Massaro praises the translation abilities of Abstract Wikipedia, Shani Evenstein Sigalov discusses the role of nonprofits in AI, and more!

🕑 1 hour 32 minutes

Waldir Pimenta returns to talk about the recent Wikimania, the hackathon-to-development pipeline, unionization and other topics.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimania 2026 team challenges
• Map the Gap (Wikimania hackathon team project)
• Wikinewsie
• WISE (semantic image search for Commons)
• Wiki Fringe at Wikimania 2026
• Requests for comment: The future of Abstract Wikipedia
• Useful functions for article composition at Abstract Wikipedia
• Wiki Workers United
• "Wikipedia:WMF Community Tech team has been disbanded, engineers laid off"

Outline of episode:

🕑 1 hour 1 minute

Matthew Shell is an IT project manager who is the creator of the MediaWiki-based wiki farm GoalStriving. GoalStriving is intended for personal, private wikis; it is ad-free and pledges to never sell or share any user information.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• GoalStriving
• List of personal wiki software on Wikipedia
• Page Exchange MediaWiki extension

You can also see a video of this interview on YouTube.

🕑 1 hour 34 minutes

Dr. Shani Evenstein Sigalov is an educator, researcher, and long-standing Open Knowledge advocate, working at the intersection of education, technology, innovation and openness. She is the founder of the AI Bridges project at the Digital Humanities Research Hub at the University of London. She is also a former member and vice chair of the Board of Trustees at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Digital Humanities Research Hub
• AI-BRIDGES
• "World model (artificial intelligence)" Wikipedia article

🕑 1 hour 31 minutes

Cory Massaro is a staff software engineer on the Abstract Wikipedia team at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Cory Massaro website
• Abstract Wikipedia
• Wikifunctions
• WikiLambda MediaWiki extension
• "Wikilambda the Ultimate" (2026 paper by Michael Falk)
• We Can Be Luddites (Cory Massaro Substack account)
• "The Great Conversation: Complicated Translations of The Odyssey" (Benjamin LaBadie, February 2024)

🕑 1 hour 28 minutes

Daniel Dobriy is the founder and managing director of the company Dobriy AI. He is also a researcher at WU Vienna University and Austria's Bilateral AI Cluster of Excellence.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Dobriy AI
• Daniel Dobriy homepage
• Agentic Data Catalogue
  • Web of Data Catalogue
  • Search of Engine for the Web of Data
• WikiApiary
• ECHOLOT
• NeoWiki MediaWiki extension
• GraphHub

Clips from five recent episodes! Liam Wyatt considers LLMs as a vessel for Wikipedia content; Steve Shattuck weighs Cargo against Semantic MediaWiki; Paul Vodrazka lays out how he became an AI coder; Noam Cohen defends Wikipedia from charges of bias; Wandji Collins recounts becoming a MediaWiki volunteer; and more!

Ad Strack van Schijndel is the founder and CEO of Juggel, a Dutch company whose product, also named Juggel, is an AI-centered MediaWiki distribution. Before founding Juggel, he was the founder and CEO of the MediaWiki-based consulting company Wikibase Solutions.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Juggel
• Wikibase Solutions
• Juggel AI
• "MediaWiki for lazy people" - talk by Ad at MUDCon spring 2026
• NeoWiki MediaWiki extension

🕑 1 hour 3 minutes

Sandra Fauconnier is an art historian by training who works on digital projects in the cultural sector. She has worked at different times for Wikimedia Nederland, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikimedia Sverige.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Sandra Fauconnier user page on Meta-Wiki
• Sandra Fauconnier user page on Wikidata
• Sandra Fauconnier user page on MediaWiki Commons
• Structured Data on Commons
• Modeling works on Commons without a Wikidata item
• Sandra reading from the "Paul Otlet" article for WikiReadings

🕑 52 minutes

Wandji Collins is a software engineer and engineering manager at Tech Chantier, as well as a volunteer MediaWiki developer.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Tech Chantier
• Between the Brackets Episode 36: Derick Alangi
• Wiki Mentor Africa
• Lexicographical data on Wikidata
• Page Forms MediaWiki extension

🕑 1 hour 15 minutes

Noam Cohen is a journalist and writer who has written extensively about Wikipedia since 2007 for publications including The New York Times and Wired. He is the author of the 2017 book The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball, which was just released in paperback form with a new introduction by the author.

You can also see this interview in video form, on YouTube.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• The Know-It-Alls website
• Noam Cohen's Wikipedia user page
• "Wikipedia:Noam Cohen" page (includes links to Noam's articles about Wikipedia)

🕑 1 hour 11 minutes

Paul Vodrazka is a shift leader in the CNC (computer numerical control) department at the Winnipeg-based company Custom Castings. He manages the internal wikis for Custom Castings, and is also the author of the MediaWiki extension Layers.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Custom Castings
• "Computer numerical control" Wikipedia article
• Layers MediaWiki extension
  • Layers code on GitHub
• "Claude (language model)" Wikipedia article
• "Lindy effect" Wikipedia article

🕑 23 minutes

It's another BTB Digest! Hear clips from five recent episodes. Cormac Parle notes the challenges in structured data in Wikimedia Commons, Vera de Kok reminisces about her early years as a Wikimedia photographer; Stephen Harrison cautions against dismissing AI encyclopedias; Brian Wolff summarizes the philosophy of JavaScript gadgets, Shlomit Lir points out the tension between equity and neutrality, and more!

Steve Shattuck is a retired research assistant who created and runs the wiki AntWiki.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• AntWiki
• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
• AntWeb
• "Bamboo Specialist" category on AntWiki
• Australian Ants: Their Biology and Identification (1999 book by Steve Shattuck)

🕑 1 hour 14 minutes

It's the (belated) 25th anniversary of the founding of Wikipedia - and the 200th episode! For this special episode, we have the return of Liam Wyatt (username Wittylama), a longtime Wikipedia volunteer and commentator, the first-ever Wikipedian-in-residence, and now a Senior Technical Partnerships Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, to talk about Wikipedia's past, present and future.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikipedia Weekly podcast archive at Internet Archive
• Wikipedia 25 virtual birthday party (video)
• "Wikimedia Enterprise Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2024 – 2025" (November 2025 Diff blog post)
• "Announcing New Wikimedia Enterprise Partners for Wikipedia's 25th Birthday" (January 2026 blog post)
• "Nominating Wikipedia for UNESCO Memory of the World: The never before told story" (November 2025 GLAM-Wiki talk by Liam)
• "Dealing with AI web crawlers at the WMF" (May 2025 presentation by Giuseppe Lavagetto)
• "Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-Up Call" (January 2026 essay by Christophe Henner)

🕑 1 hour 11 minutes

Shlomit Lir is a writer, editor, and researcher at the University of Haifa, specializing in the politics of knowledge. Since 2024, she has been a public critic of Wikipedia, especially relating to its coverage of Israel.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• "The Bias Against Israel on Wikipedia" (2024 report for the World Jewish Congress)
• 2025 X post by Shlomit about then-candidate for the WMF Board of Trustees Ravan al-Taie
• "Smear Campaign Against Ravan, Wikimedia Foundation BoT Candidate" (response post by several Wikimedians)
• Larry Sanger's "Nine Theses on Wikipedia"
• "How Wikipedia's Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative" (2024 Pirate Wires article by Ashley Rindsberg)
• "Manipulated History" (2025 document for the World Jewish Congress)

🕑 1 hour 35 minutes

Brian Wolff is a longtime MediaWiki and Wikimedia developer. He returns to the podcast for (maybe) one last in-person discussion before his move to Calgary, Alberta. We talk about political goings-on at the Wikimedia Foundation, developments in the software world, and random thoughts on classic sci-fi.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• "Wikimedia Foundation appoints Bernadette Meehan as Chief Executive Officer" (Wikimedia Foundation press release, December 2025)
• "Cárcel a dos hombres por 'paseo millonario' a vicecónsul de E.U." (March 2006 article in El Tiempo about Bernadette's brief kidnapping)
• Commons Play Listener
• Victoria Doronina email about WMF board of trustees candidate removals, October 2025
• Temporary accounts for unregistered editors project
• "Encyclopedia Galactica" Wikipedia article
• "Stranger in a Strange Land" Wikipedia article

🕑 58 minutes

It's the holiday special! Special guests, a musical performance (all from the MediaWiki world), and a tale of a life-changing encounter.

🕑 1 hour 37 minutes

Stephen Harrison is a tech lawyer and journalist who has been writing about Wikipedia since 2018, including for Slate and The New York Times. He joins us to talk about all the Wikimedia-related events of the crazy month of October 2025, including the release of Jimmy Wales' book, Larry Sanger's "nine theses", some near-violence in New York City, and the launch of the site Grokipedia.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Nine Theses on Wikipedia by Larry Sanger
• "October Surprise: The 2025 Wikimedia Elections Fall into a Transparency Trap" (The Wikipedian blog post)
• WikiConference North America
• "Why Editing Wikipedia Is Becoming More Dangerous" (Slate article by Stephen Harrison, October 2025)
• Grokipedia
• Yaron's LinkedIn post about Grokipedia
• The Seven Rules of Trust by Jimmy Wales
• "Wikipedia co-founder slams 'Gaza genocide' page over 'egregious' anti-Israel claims" (New York Post article, November 2025)
• Jimmy Wales interview on Jung & Naiv podcast, November 2025

🕑 28 minutes

Clips from five recent episodes! Dan Andreescu considers a new "Datawiki" project, Wojciech Pędzich makes use of the Wikipedia sound logo, Thomas Chin retells a piece of Wikimedia development lore, SJ Klein contemplates the use of "Abstractese", Matt Latourelle explains Ballotpedia's neutrality, and more!

🕑 1 hour 57 minutes

Vera de Kok is a freelance photographer, developer and wiki consultant who was named Media Contributor of the Year at the 2025 Wikimania conference for her contributions to both Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• "I'm Wikipedia's "Media Contributor of the Year"!" (September 2025 blog post by Vera)
• View of Delft (Vermeer painting)
• Orator Matcher tool
• New Q5 tool
• VisualFileChange Wikimedia Commons gadget
• identifierInput.js Wikidata gadget
• WikiPortraits
• Youp van 't Hek Wikipedia article
• Prem Radhakishun Wikipedia article
• "Autistic editors" essay on Wikipedia
• Greater Netherlands Student Association Wikipedia article
• "Wikipedia is Autistic" episode of Autistic Culture podcast
• "The Impact of the Wikipedia Editing Course for Autistic People" (December 2024 Diff blog post)
• "Playing for the 'German Team' – A Neurodiverse Wikimedian's Journey to Nairobi, or Brigadoon" (September 2025 Diff blog post)
• Birch Bay, WA Polar Bear Plunge
• Wikipedia voice intro project
  • Mark Cousins Wikipedia article
  • Mikko Hyppönen Wikipedia article
• Doktershuis (Landsmeer) Wikipedia article (won Vera 4th place in a Dutch Wikipedia writing contest)
• Behringer U-phoria UM2 (microphone USB interface)
• Photo taken during temporary blackout at Wikimania 2025
• Photo taken during 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon
• Feline asthma Wikipedia article
• "Wie komt er alle jaren" on Wikimedia Commons

🕑 1 hour 17 minutes

Cormac Parle is a principal software engineer in the Product & Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team
• Wikimedia Foundation Structured Content team
• Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons
• Stoat playlist
• "Why you should give up on your dreams" (2021 talk by Cormac)

Matt Latourelle is director of technology operations for the wiki-based website Ballotpedia.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Ballotpedia
• "Ballotpedia and MediaWiki" (talk by Matt Latourelle and Joseph Sanchez, MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025)
• "How we categorize bias" (Ballotpedia essay)
• YouTube Ballotpedia channel

🕑 1 hour 25 minutes

Samuel J. "SJ" Klein is an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He co-founded the Knowledge Futures project, served as director of content for One Laptop Per Child, and was on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees from 2009 to 2015.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
• Wikimania 2006
• The Underlay
• Public AI Network
• Captured Podcast

🕑 1 hour 34 minutes

Thomas Chin is a software engineer in the Data Platform Engineering team at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Tea Time with Thomas & Ty podcast
• Wikimedia Foundation Data Engineering Team
• Thomas Chin user page on mediawiki.org
• Dependency injection in MediaWiki code (provided by the MediaWikiServices class)
• "embarassment" (2009 blog post by Domas Mituzas about Michael Jackson-related Wikipedia crash)
• "After using ChatGPT, man swaps his salt for sodium bromide—and suffers psychosis" (August 2025 article)
• "Sealed, sold, delivered: How blind boxes like Labubu became a viral obsession" (June 2025 article)
• Jesse's Teahouse > Pu'er Tea Oranges

A new BTB Digest! Cindy Cicalese is surprised about the popularity of her PluggableAuth extension, Luca Mauri extols the benefits of Federation, Edward Chernenko laments the difficulties in running a humor wiki, Marijn van Wezel discusses GDPR compliance, Markus Glaser offers a solution for collaborative editing in MediaWiki, and more!

🕑 56 minutes

Wojciech Pędzich (roughly pronounced "VOY-chek PEND-zhik") is a longtime Wikimedia volunteer, having served as an administrator on the Polish Wikipedia, a Wikimedia Steward, a member of the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee, a board member of Wikimedia Polska, an organizer of the Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) meeting, and an organizer of Wikimania, among other things. He is currently one of six candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election
  • Candidates
  • Wojciech Pędzich candidate statement
• Playboy Carti English Wikipedia article
• Wikimedia Sound Logo announcement, July 2023
• Project Rewrite, launched March 2021
• Guinness World Record for longest Wikipedia editathon (100 hours, September 26–30, 2023, Warsaw)

(Photograph by Robert Drózd, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.)

🕑 1 hour 33 minutes

Dan Andreescu (user name Milimetric) is a staff software engineer in the Data Platform Engineering team, and an interim manager in the Experiment Platform team, both in The Wikimedia Foundation.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Data Platform Engineering Team
• Experiment Platform Team
• Wikimedia Statistics (Wikistats)
• Wikimedia Experimentation Lab
• Edge Uniques project

🕑 2 hours 6 minutes

Richard Heigl and Markus Glaser (pictured, left to right) are two of the three founders and heads of the German consulting Hallo Welt!, along with Anja Ebersbach. Hallo Welt! is best known for producing the MediaWiki-based software BlueSpice.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• BlueSpice
• BlueSpice 5.0 announcement, April 2025
• BlueSpice release history
• BlueSpice Docker installation guide
• Cognitive Process Designer MediaWiki extension
• Checklists MediaWiki extension
• Checklist (or BlueSpiceChecklist) MediaWiki extension
• AboutBlueSpice MediaWiki extension
• CollabPads MediaWiki extension
• "Warum Barrierefreiheit so viel kostet" ("Why accessibility costs so much"), July 2025 article in Linux Magazin that quotes Richard and Markus
• Open HTML to PDF library

Marijn van Wezel is a part-time developer at the MediaWiki consulting company Wikibase Solutions. He is also working on a master's degree in computer science at Radboud University Nijmegen.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Marijn's user page on mediawiki.org
• Wikibase Solutions
• WSSlots MediaWiki extension
• CookieConsent MediaWiki extension
• CookieWarning MediaWiki extension
• WikiGuard MediaWiki extension
• ArrayFunctions MediaWiki extension
  • "Making your wiki Parsoid-compatible with ArrayFunctions" (talk by Marijn van Wezel and Jimmy van Delft at MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025)
• WSSpaces MediaWiki extension
• MWUnit MediaWiki extension

🕑 50 minutes

Edward Chernenko is a software developer, with extensive experience in MediaWiki development and consulting. He is also the administrator of Absurdopedia, a Russian-language humor wiki that is part of the loosely-affiliated Uncyclopedia family.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Абсурдопедия (Absurdopedia)
• Uncyclopedia
• Edward Chernenko user page on mediawiki.org
• Moderation MediaWiki extension
• AWS MediaWiki extension
• CreatePageUw MediaWiki extension

🕑 31 minutes

(Star-studded) highlights from five recent episodes! Trevor Parscal says the Wikimedia Foundation has become political, Selena Deckelmann sheds light on her management approach, Jonathan Lee complains about Fandom's tactics, Denny Vrandečić disputes the idea that Abstract Wikipedia could replace regular Wikipedia, Ward Cunningham recounts coming up with the name "wiki", and more!

🕑 1 hour 21 minutes

Luca Mauri is an IT manager who in his free time runs the Italian-language Star Trek wiki WikiTrek - which in turn gets much of its data from another wiki, DataTrek, which runs on MediaWiki in conjunction with Wikibase.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Luca Mauri homepage
• WikiTrek
• DataTrek
• "Star Trek" article on English Wikipedia
• PageToGitHub MediaWiki extension
• RecentActivity MediaWiki extension
• Wiki2Ban MediaWiki extension

🕑 1 hour 21 minutes

Cindy Cicalese is a principal engineer for the Developer Experience Group at the Wikimedia Foundation - but not for long, because she is leaving soon to go work at the startup Selfii, as their MediaWiki architect. Although not before serving as the general chair for the upcoming MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop (May 14-16 in Sandusky, Ohio, USA!).

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025
• Selfii
• PluggableAuth MediaWiki extension

🕑 2 hours 6 minutes

Denny Vrandečić is the Head of Special Projects at the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as a visiting professor at King's College London. He is the is main creator of the Wikimedia sites Wikidata and Wikifunctions and co-creator of the MediaWiki extension Semantic MediaWiki; he also leads the project to create the so-called "Abstract Wikipedia". This is his second time on the podcast.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• SPINACH ("SPARQL-based Information NAvigation for CHallenging real-world questions on Wikidata")
• Wikidata Walkabout
• Wikifunctions
• "Sketching a path to Abstract Wikipedia", Wikifunctions update, December 2024
• Abstract Wikipedia/Google.org Fellows evaluation, December 2022
• Abstract Wikipedia/Google.org Fellows evaluation - Answer, December 2022
• Abstract Wikipedia Wikipedia article
• "Large Language Models, Knowledge Graphs and Search Engines: A Crossroads for Answering Users' Questions" (2025 paper by Aidan Hogan, Xin Luna Dong, Denny Vrandečić and Gerhard Weikum)
• RSS Wikipedia article (stands for RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication)

Interestingly, after we finished recording this episode, Denny showed me, on a screenshare, some of the current capabilities of LLMs; we asked it different questions, and one of the LLMs (I think from the "Llama" family) stated that the name of this podcast was "My Favorite Dystopia". I have no idea where that came from, but it's an eerily apt description of this particular episode, with its discussion of a possible (though maybe unlikely) replacement of Wikipedia with a massive set of function calls. Somehow the AI knew.

🕑 1 hour 25 minutes

Ward Cunningham is the inventor of wikis (although he prefers to use the mass noun "wiki"), which started with his website WikiWikiWeb in 1995; by an incredible coincidence, this episode is being released on the exact 30th anniversary of the launch of WikiWikiWeb. Ward is also a computer science pioneer, and was heavily involved in the development of design patterns and agile programming. Since 2011, he has headed the development of the software Federated Wiki, originally known as Smallest Federated Wiki.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Ward Cunningham Wikipedia article
• c2.com - Cunningham & Cunningham Inc. website
• Portland Pattern Repository
• "Using Pattern Languages for Object-Oriented Programs" (1987 technical report by Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham)
• WikiWikiWeb
  • "Are Design Patterns Missing Language Features" wiki page
  • "Singletons Are Evil" wiki page
• Federated Wiki
• Federated Wiki Wikipedia article

🕑 1 hour 39 minutes

Jonathan Lee is the director of the MediaWiki-based wiki hosting company Weird Gloop.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Weird Gloop
• "Why we're helping more wikis move away from Fandom" (October 2024 blog post)
• The RuneScape wiki
• OSRS ("Old School RuneScape") Wiki
• Fandom RuneScape Grand Market tutorial video from 2017
• "How to Make an Old Fashioned" (Mahalo.com instructional video from 2010)

🕑 37 minutes

It's a BTB Digest episode! Bertrand Gorge lists his favorite extensions, Stephen Harrison contrasts himself with the characters in his novel, Richard Knipel justifies the Wikimedia Movement Charter, Tom Arrow (and others) consider the current state of Wikibase, Brian Wolff defends his old boss at the WMF, and more!

Selena Deckelmann has been the Chief Product and Technology Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation since 2022. Before that, she worked for around 10 years at the Mozilla Foundation, eventually reaching the position of Senior Vice President, Firefox.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Mozilla Foundation Wikipedia article
• Media knowledge beyond Wikipedia: Response from the Selena Deckelmann, CPTO at the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikimedia Commons talk page discussion)
• "Wikipedia's value in the age of generative AI" (July 2023 blog post by Selena)
• Abstract Wikipedia project page on Meta-Wiki

🕑 1 hour 27 minutes

Former Wikimedia Foundation developer Trevor Parscal returns to the podcast to talk about the happy (to many) news that Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a double life sentence for having created and run the "dark web" website Silk Road, was just released from prison. We also talk about the state of U.S. politics in general, and what it means for the tech world - and for Wikipedia.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Ross Ulbricht Wikipedia article
• "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes" (Meta blog post, January 2025)
• "What is 'debanking' and why are Marc Andreesen and Silicon Valley talking about it?" (Fast Company article, December 2024)
• "Google stabs Wikipedia in the front" (The Register article, January 2014)
• "Since legacy media propaganda is considered a "valid" source by Wikipedia, it naturally simply becomes an extension of legacy media propaganda!" (Elon Musk X post, January 2025)
• SPINACH Wikidata Agent

🕑 1 hour 15 minutes

Brian Wolff returns for a third episode! The security expert and longtime MediaWiki developer talks about his latest development projects, and Wikimedia goings-on, past and present.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• "New Calculator template brings interactivity at last" (Wikipedia Signpost article by Brian Wolff, January 2025)
• Calculator template on English-language Wikipedia
  • BMI calculator on "Body mass index" article
• "John Travoltage" online electricity simulator
• "NPR boss Katherine Maher opposed 'free and open' approach at Wikipedia: 'White male Westernized construct'" (New York Post article, April 2024)
• "Katherine Maher's Color Revolution" (City Journal article, April 2024)
• Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Equity Fund

🕑 1 hour 42 minutes

Adam Shorland, Tom Arrow and Ollie Hyde (pictured, left to right) show up together for the final episode of 2024! Adam (username Addshore) returns for his second appearance; he has since left Wikimedia Deutschland and now works at Lightbug. Tom and Ollie remain at Wikimedia Deutschland, both working on Wikibase development, with a focus on Wikibase Cloud and the Wikibase API, respectively.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Deutschland
• Lightbug
• "Alcohol preferences in Europe" Wikipedia article
• Wikibase Cloud
• "Visualizing Wikibase connections, using wikibase.world" (October 2024 blog post by Adam)
• Wikimedia API portal
• SPINACH Wikidata Agent
• Wikidata Query Builder

🕑 1 hour 19 minutes

Richard Knipel (username Pharos) returns, for a special holiday-esque episode! He talks about recent developments with Wikispore, the Wikimedia Movement Charter, and Wikimedia New York City; and then we listen to some freely-licensed music from Wikimedia Commons.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Movement Charter
• Wikispore
• "Grant project for Wikinews" proposal
• "World AIDS Day 2024 is marked around the world" (Wikinews article mostly written by Richard)
• "Wikicurious" Wikimedia NYC events
• WikiConference North America 2025
• New Years Eve Cosmic Turtle Drop + Public Domain Film Festival (December 31, 2024)
• The music:
  • Movement I ("Modéré") from the Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Robert Casadesus
  • Unnamed Azande-language song performed by Dominique Manzadi
  • "Grateful" by NEFFEX
  • "Ego sum pastor bonus" by Waclaw of Szamotuly, performed by Collegium Vocale Bydgoszcz
  • "Ochi chyornye" ("Dark Eyes") by Yevhen Hrebink and Florian Hermann, performed by Feodor Chaliapin
  • Movement IV ("Allegretto con variazioni") from the clarinet quintet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Vlad Weverbergh and the Terra Nova Collective
• WikiFlix

🕑 26 minutes

It's another BTB Digest, with clips from five recent episodes! Brent Laabs recounts the abortive renaming of Miraheze, Alex Stinson considers the uniqueness of different language Wikipedias, Paul Cereghino notes the challenges of finding wiki editors in the government, Valerio Bozzolan argues for putting conference videos on PeerTube, Asaf Bartov warns about "weaponized AI" on Wikipedia, and more.

🕑 1 hour

Stephen Harrison is a tech lawyer and journalist who has been writing about Wikipedia since 2018, including dozens of articles for the online magazine Slate as part of his Source Notes column. He is the author of the 2024 novel The Editors, which is about a group of editors of the fictional user-editable online encyclopedia "Infopendium" who are drawn together by dramatic events.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Stephen Harrison website
• Source Notes blog/newsletter
• Stephen Harrison's list of Wikipedia-related articles
  • More comprehensive list
• Reddit /r/pics subreddit (my apologies for casting aspersions - it's not that political any more! It was more political during the recent U.S. presidential election.)
• "Times of London: Wikipedia, AI, & THE EDITORS | An Audiobook Update" (October 2024 blog post)

🕑 1 hour 9 minutes

Bertrand Gorge is the co-founder of Triple Performance, a (currently) French-language-only wiki that holds resources for farmers. He also co-runs the company Neayi, which manages Triple Performance.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Triple Performance
• Neayi
• "Rotations en grandes cultures" (Triple Performance article about crop rotation)
• Neayi GitHub account
  • Triple Performance Google Spreadsheets add-on
  • Triple Performance Docker image

🕑 1 hour 10 minutes

Asaf Bartov is the lead program officer for the Emerging Wikimedia Communities project of the Community Development Team at the Wikimedia Foundation. He also runs Project Ben-Yehuda, which has been putting Hebrew-language texts online since 1999, and the Nemala project, which publishes Hebrew translations of Ukrainian-language works.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• "Wikimania 2019 - Asaf Bartov" (episode of the podcast Scuola di Pensiero)
• Project Ben-Yehuda
• Nemala initiative
• WMF Community Development Team
• WikiLearn
• Wikimania 2023 program
• "Defending our wikis against weaponized generative AI" (talk by Asaf at Wikimania CEE Meeting 2024)

Valerio Bozzolan is a software developer and Linux administrator, as well as the president of the Italian Linux Society, the founder and head of Wikimedians for Software Freedom, a member of the volunteer technical commission of Wikimedia Italy, and an open source consultant for Wikimedia Switzerland.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Istituto tecnico industriale statale Amedeo Avogadro (Italian Wikipedia article)
• Chiedi il rimborso del sistemo (in)operativo! ("Ask for a refund for the (non-)operating system!")
• PeerTube
• Wikimedians for software freedom
• "2021:Present and future" page
• "2022:Present and future" page
• FLOSS-Exchange listing
• video.linux.it (powered by PeerTube)
• Phorge homepage

🕑 1 hour 7 minutes

Paul Cereghino is a restoration ecologist for the U.S. federal government, where he also supports the development and adminstration of the Salish Sea Restoration wiki.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Salish Sea Restoration wiki
• Salish Sea Wikipedia article
• "Do you love seafood? Here's how to eat it responsibly" (NPR article, September 2024)
• "I Want To Eat Fish Responsibly. But The Seafood Guides Are So Confusing!" (NPR article, March 2017)
• List of all restoration efforts

🕑 23 minutes

It's another BTB Digest, with highlights from five recent episodes. Jeffrey Wang discusses competing for European users, Taavi Väänänen describes the RealMe extension, Megan Cutrofello defends video game wikis with "spoilers", Moritz Schubotz analyzes MediaWiki as a math publishing tool, Viktor Schelling reminisces on the early days of a consulting company, and more!

🕑 2 hours

Alex Stinson is Lead Program Strategist for the Campaigns Team at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Foundation Campaigns Team
• WikiProjects Campaign
• PetScan
• List-Building Tool
• Research on Language-Agnostic Topic Classification
• Esperanza (2005-2006 project on Wikipedia)
• CampaignEvents MediaWiki extension
• Programs & Events Dashboard description
• Programs & Events Dashboard

Brent Laabs (user name Labster) is chair of the board and acting president of the WikiTide Foundation, the nonprofit foundation that runs the wiki farm Miraheze.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Miraheze
• WikiTide Foundation
• Between the Brackets Episode 31: John Lewis
• All The Tropes wiki
• Miraheze-WikiTide merger FAQ
• Requests for Comment/Reorganization of Miraheze (December 2023)
• Requests for Comment/Miraheze's name and branding (April 2024)
• WikiForge
• DynamicPageList3 MediaWiki extension
• Miraheze finance page
• Miraheze donation page

Viktor Schelling is the Senior Principal MediaWiki Developer at Pegasystems.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Pegasystems Wikipedia article
• Wikibase Solutions
• FlexForm MediaWiki extension
• Open CSP
  
  

🕑 1 hour 28 minutes

Dr. Moritz Schubotz (developer username Physikerwelt) is head of research at the mathematics department at FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure. He is the author or co-author of the MediaWiki extensions Math and MathSearch, and the Mathoid application, among others.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Dr. Moritz Schubotz CV and publications
• Math MediaWiki extension
• MathSearch MediaWiki extension
• MathML Wikipedia article
• MathJax Wikipedia article
• Mathoid
• The MaRDI (Mathematical Research Data Initiative) Portal (Wikibase instance)
• zbMATH Open
• Wikimedia Community User Group Math

🕑 1 hour 43 minutes

Megan Cutrofello, better known as River, returns to the podcast. She is a freelance wiki developer who has worked with Gamepedia, Fandom and wiki.gg, among others.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• wiki.gg
• "What's going on with gaming communities moving from Fandom to Wiki.gg?" (2023 Reddit thread)
• River Writes blog
• The Sea of Thieves Wiki
• DRUID (Data Representation Ultra Infobox Design) infoboxes

It's a BTB Digest episode! Hear clips from five recent episodes. Steve Schneider describes his remarkably AI-centered approach to teaching, Birgit Müller boasts about her team's success in improving code review, Srishti Sethi considers the usefulness of developer outreach programs, Alan Ang lists the steps in getting a knowledge base onto Wikidata, Guillaume Coulombe compares MediaWiki expertise to martial arts, and more!

🕑 38 minutes

Taavi Väänänen is a site reliability engineer in the Wikimedia Cloud Services team at the Wikimedia Foundation. In 2022, when he was still just a volunteer contributor, he was named Tech Contributor of the Year by Jimmy Wales.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Taavi Väänänen homepage
• Wikimedia Toolforge
• CentralAuth MediaWiki extension
• RealMe MediaWiki extension
• "Fediverse" Wikipedia article

🕑 1 hour 28 minutes

Jeffrey Wang returns to the podcast to talk about his new-ish job at Microsoft, his much older job as head of MyWikis, the upcoming MediaWiki conference, AI, and various other things.

Some of the topics discussed:

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference 2024
• MyWikis
  • MyWikis Europe
• "Why People Don't Like Fandom Wikis" (2022 blog post)
• "Microsoft Azure is a ~$56 billion business" (Runtime article)
• "MediaWiki @ Microsoft" (talk by Jeffrey at EMWCon Spring 2023)
• Canasta
• GitHub Copilot

🕑 1 hour 9 minutes

Guillaume Coulombe is the head of Procédurable, a process consulting company with a focus on open source software and open data, and an even more specific focus on MediaWiki.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Procédurable
• Arbre-Évolution Coop
• "Understanding wiki collaboration in Quebec healthcare organizations" (2012 paper by Régis Barondeau)
• Wiki maraîcher
  • "Autoconstruction" (DIY) portal
• Fab Labs Québec
• Le violon de Jos
  • Collection of songs

🕑 1 hour 13 minutes

Alan Ang and Kris Litson (pictured, left to right) are both employees at Wikimedia Deutschland, the German Wikimedia chapter: Alan is a partner manager for Wikidata, while Kris is head of software communications. The two are both involved in evangelism for both Wikidata and its backend software, Wikibase.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikidata
• Wikibase
• "Linked open data" on Wikipedia
• Wikidata REST API
• Wikibase Cloud
• Wikimedia Deutschland data partnerships (includes contact email address)
  • List of some current partners
• Wikidata entries tagged as "big city"
• Wikidata Mismatch Finder

Srishti Sethi (also known as SrishAkaTux) is a developer advocate in the Language Team at the Wikimedia Foundation. Prior to the mass reorganization at the Wikimedia Foundation in summer 2023, she was part of the Technical Engagement team.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia outreach programs
  • Outreach programs success stories
• "Introducing Wishathon for Wikimedia's Community Wishlist!" (December 2023 blog post)
• March 2024 online Wishathon event
• Language Team Phabricator workboard
• Wikimedia MinT (Machine in Translation) service
• "MinT: Supporting underserved languages with open machine translation" (June 2023 blog post)

It's another BTB Digest! Highlights from five recent episodes. Bryan Hilderbrand considers the future of scientific publishing, Jan Ainali thinks about solutions for Wikidata's messiness, Tricia Burmeister recounts the challenges of changing a wiki's front page, Ilias Sarantopoulos praises the new Lift Wing software, Alissa Stern explains how her wiki became a communications hub for the people of Bali, and more!

🕑 1 hour 8 minutes

It's not quite a holiday episode, but it is an end-of-year wrapup, featuring William Beutler, strategic marketing consultant and author of the blog The Wikipedian, which went on hiatus in 2020 and is now thankfully back. William shares some of the stories that he's working on for his "Top 10 Wikipedia Stories of 2023" feature (his first year-in-review in three years!), and we reminisce on the past year, in both the Wikimedia universe and the tech world in general.

🕑 55 minutes

Birgit Müller is the Director of Product for MediaWiki and Developer Experiences at the Wikimedia Foundation. Before that, she was Director of Technical Engagement. From 2014 to 2019, she worked at Wikimedia Deutschland.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Birgit's user page on mediawiki.org
• MediaWiki Product Insights
  • Monthly MediaWiki Insights reports
  • November 2023 report - includes statistics about review time improvements

🕑 1 hour 52 minutes

Steve Schneider is a professor of information design at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly). He currently teaches a class, Digital Media and Information in Society, whose coursework is managed via Wikiversity and Wiki Edu, and also involves the use of ChatGPT by both teacher and students.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• "Mid-semester rookie report: Starting a wikiversity project & teaching a class with wikiedu assignments" (WikiConference North America 2023 talk)
• Digital Media and Information in Society course on Wikiversity
  • Wiki Edu assignments for Digital Media and Information in Society
• WikimediaCourse on Wikiversity
• ChatGPT session that led to the Wikimedia course
• ChatGPT session to create a Wikidata SPARQL query
• "TiddlyWiki" Wikipedia article
• SUNY Wikimedia Project
• "Monorail" Wikipedia article (has included a "possibly generated by LLM" warning since July 2023)

🕑 1 hour 5 minutes

Alissa Stern founded the organization BASAbali (later renamed BASAibu) in 2011, and the BASAbali Wiki in 2014. The BASAbali Wiki was originally intended to serve only as a dictionary for the Balinese language, but it has since grown to become a general communication hub for the Balinese community.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• BASAbali Wiki
• BASAsulsel Wiki
• BASAibu
• Indonesian Superhero Luh Ayu
• Balinese-language Wikipedia
• "BASAbali Wiki Recognized by US Consulate" (February 2023 blog post, Bali Discovery)

🕑 1 hour 4 minutes

Ilias Sarantopoulos is a Senior Machine Learning Operations Engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation. He has been at the WMF since 2022.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Foundation Machine Learning team
• WMF machine learning modernization plan
• WMF machine learning model cards
• "Wikipedia's Moment of Truth" (The New York Times Magazine article, July 2023)
• Meta's No Language Left Behind (NLLB) project
• Model Drift & Decay

🕑 1 hour 23 minutes

Tricia Burmeister is a senior technical writer at the Wikimedia Foundation, and part of the (relatively new) WMF Technical Documentation Team.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team
• Wikitech wiki main page restructuring diff
  • Phabricator ticket that relates to this change
• MediaWiki Product Insights page
• Toolhub
• MintyDocs MediaWiki extension
• Documentation > Toolkit
• Documentation > Patterns > Landing page
• Huggle documentation page
• Wikifunctions site

🕑 21 minutes

Clips from five recent episodes! Danielle Batson thinks about the future of genealogy, Ike Hecht considers the effect of AI on software, Tom Harriman describes the contents of Nuclepedia, Rita Ho praises the Content Translation tool, Allan Lim talks about becoming an amateur archaelogist, and more!

🕑 60 minutes

Jan Ainali is a codebase steward for the Foundation for Public Code. On the side, he's an all-around Wikimedia editor, enthusiast and evangelist, with a special focus on Wikidata. He co-founded the Wikimedia Sverige chapter, co-created the Wikidata-based online resource Govdirectory, and co-hosts the (mostly Swedish-language) podcast WikipediaPodden, and that's not even everything!

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Sverige
• WikipediaPodden
• Wikipedia Weekly live Wikidata editing playlist
• Foundation for Public Code
• Govdirectory
• Semantic Web Wikipedia article (with Tim Berners-Lee quote)
• Wikimedians for Sustainable Development
• OpenRefine
• Foundation for Public Code's Standard for Public Code

🕑 1 hour 16 minutes

Bryan Hilderbrand, MediaWiki consultant of TeGnosis and WikiWorks fame, is back on the podcast to talk about weighty matters like the future of science, the nature of truth, and whether periods need one or two spaces after them. 

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• SMWCon Spring 2023
•  Abstract Wikipedia > Google.org Fellows evaluation answer > Scribunto
• "What is Wikiask?" (WikiConference North America 2022 talk)
• Twitter/X Note ranking algorithm
• "No, California wildfires aren't caused by space lasers, and experts want people to stop asking about it" (2021 San Francisco Chronicle article)
• Mike Hughes (daredevil) Wikipedia article
• WikiJournal User Group
• Trofim Lysenko Wikipedia article
• "It's on Meta, but discoverable – organizational knowledge in a structured form" (Wikimania 2023 talk)

🕑 1 hour 14 minutes

Allan Lim is the founder of the wiki Beyond Angkor, which maps the locations of temples and other sites from the Khmer Empire, in modern-day Cambodia and surrounding countries.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Beyond Angkor
• Beyond Angkor Facebook group
• Khmer Empire Wikipedia article
• Douglas Latchford Wikipedia article
• "Unveiling the ancient Khmer world: Beyond Angkor mapping out over 13K SEA temples" (June 2023 article in The Phnom Penh Post)

🕑 1 hour 12 minutes

Rita Ho is the senior groups design manager at the Wikimedia Foundation. She was formerly a member of the Growth Team, and is still actively involved in growth-related projects.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Growth team - feature summary (slideshow)
• Graph of active editors over time for the English-language Wikipedia
• Suggested edits feature
• Growth team newsletter #26 (May 2023; includes analysis of Suggested edits)
• Content translation tool
• Article creation for new editors
• Translation task for homepage project
• GrowthExperiments MediaWiki extension
• Welcome survey project

🕑 1 hour 17 minutes

Tom Harriman is a senior learning project manager at the technical training center of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). He runs the NRC's wiki, Nuclepedia.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wikipedia article
• "Nuclepedia: Sharing Knowledge One Page At A Time" (EMWCon Spring 2020 talk, YouTube)
• Moodle Wikipedia article

🕑23 minutes

It's a BTB Digest episode! Anton Krom thinks back to abandoning SharePoint in favor of MediaWiki, Bryan Hilderbrand finds a role for wikis in a world of AI, Ed Sanders reminisces on the early days of VisualEditor, Sanjay Thiyagarajan explains going without sleep at hackathons, and Sam Wilson describes the Phonos extension.

🕑 1 hour 15 minutes

Ike Hecht, founder of the consulting company WikiTeq, is back to talk about weighty matters like AI, religion, and the singularity. Plus some pre-singularity thoughts on project management software and marketing.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• ELIZA Wikipedia article
• "Other Than In Computers, Civilization Basically Stopped Progressing In The 1960s" (2012 Business Insider article)
• Technological singularity Wikipedia article
• Zero to One Wikipedia article
• Blue Ocean Strategy Wikipedia article

🕑 58 minutes

Danielle Batson is the wiki community manager for the non-profit organization FamilySearch, which is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• FamilySearch
  • FamilySearch Wikipedia article
• FamilySearch Research Wiki
  • Family History Research Wiki Wikipedia article
• GoogleTranslator MediaWiki extension
• Replace Text MediaWiki extension
• Free online genealogy consultation from FamilySearch

🕑 1 hour 18 minutes

Sam Wilson is a senior software engineer in the Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation. This is his second time on Between the Brackets.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Community Tech team
• Phonos MediaWiki extension
• WikiEditor Realtime Preview feature
• UnlinkedWikibase extension
  • UnlinkedWikibase 1-indexed array bug
• Wikispore
• Module:ExtensionJson on mediawiki.org
• "State of Canasta" - EMWCon 2023 talk by Jeffrey Wang

Sanjay Thiyagarajan (username: Techwizzie) is a full-stack developer at JP Morgan Chase who has also done a significant amount of MediaWiki extension development as an intern and consultant at WikiWorks, my MediaWiki consulting company.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Sanjay's mediawiki.org user page
• GoogleDocCreator MediaWiki extension
• RegularTooltips extension
• PagePermissions extension
• WatchAnalytics extension
• AWS Graviton Hackathon project gallery
• GenieNet

🕑 1 hour 23 minutes

Ed Sanders is a Principal Software Engineer, as well as the tech lead, in the Editing Team at the Wikimedia Foundation. He has been involved with developing the VisualEditor extension since 2013. He has also helped with developing other applications, like the DiscussionTools extension.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Foundation Editing Team
• VisualEditor
  • VisualEditor on mobile
  • Edit check project
• DiscussionTools
  • Convenient Discussions JavaScript tool
  • reply-link JavaScript tool
• Patch demo

🕑 22 minutes

Have you missed any recent episodes? Well, here are some clips for you. Hear Eric Gardner defending Vue.js, Nathan Brewer praising computer scientists of the past, Simon Stier considering the complexities of nested data structures, Ariel Gutman advocating for one language for WikiFunctions, Waldir Pimenta recounting his adventures in translation, and more!

🕑 1 hour 42 minutes

WikiWorks/TeGnosis consultant Bryan Hilderbrand returns to the podcast, to talk about the upcoming Enterprise MediaWiki Conference (April 19-21 in Austin, Texas), and various other topics.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• EMWCon Spring 2023
• ChatGPT Wikipedia article
• WolframAlpha Wikipedia article
• Deep Thinking, 2017 book by Garry Kasparov
• EPIC 2014 (2004 video) Wikipedia article
• Abstract Wikipedia project page
• "The 20th anniversary of the rediscovery of calculus" (2014 blog post)
• Morton Effect (PDF file)
• WikiJournal User Group

🕑 1 hour 17 minutes

Anton Krom is a longtime MediaWiki administrator and consultant.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• WikiTeq
• Wikiask
• Canasta
• Anton on Upwork

Waldir Pimenta is the co-founder of Wikimedia Portugal, and an active translator of core MediaWiki and extensions. He has also been involved in developing various Wikimedia-related tools.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Portugal
  • Timeline of founding
• Cape Verdean Creole ("kea") translation statistics
• Unicode CLDR Project
• "Geeks and Nerds" xkcd comic
• tldr pages application
  • Community roles document
• Indeed's FOSS Contributor Fund guidebook
• Emma Irwin and [Microsoft's] FOSS Fund Program (Sustain OSS podcast)
• GitHub Accelerator
• GiveDirectly Wikipedia article
• The Giving Pledge Wikipedia article
• Open Collective Foundation
• Toolforge abandoned tool policy
• Wikimate MediaWiki API wrapper
• "Non-Hierarchical Management", Aaron Swartz, 2009
• Guido van Rossum on stepping down as Python's BDFL (YouTube video)
• DoOcracy (CommunityWiki)
• Teal organisation Wikipedia article
• Sortition Wikipedia article

🕑 1 hour 31 minutes

Ariel Gutman is a senior software engineer at Google, as well as a linguist. From May to October 2022, he was one of a group of Fellows, supported by Google.org, who assisted in the design and development of Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia. Several months after that, he co-authored an "evaluation" that was somewhat critical of the project.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic, Ariel Gutman, 2018
• Google.org fellowship announcement, April 2022
• Demo of a Scribunto-based templatic NLG system (video)
  • Rendering of curated Abstract Content
  • Source data for rendering
• "Ariel's goodbye letter", December 2022
• Abstract Wikipedia/Google.org Fellows evaluation, December 2022
• Abstract Wikipedia/Google.org Fellows evaluation - Answer, December 2022
• Grammatical Framework
• Functional programming Wikipedia article
• "One Ring, or a thousand flowers?" - essay by Denny Vrandečić, November 2022

🕑 1 hour 28 minutes

Simon Stier is a researcher at Fraunhofer ISC in Germany, as well as a freelance software developer and consultant. He is the developer of the MediaWiki- and Semantic MediaWiki-based Open Semantic Lab platform.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research (ISC)
• Open Semantic Lab on GitHub
• "Robotic sense of touch enabled by dielectric elastomer sensors and machine learning" (video about research project), YouTube
• OpenSemanticLab MediaWiki extension
• "OpenSemanticLab - SMW for Science and R&D" talk by Simon at SMWCon 2022, YouTube
• Multi-Content Revisions in MediaWiki
• JSON Editor tool

🕑 22 minutes

It's another BTB Digest! Hear highlights from five recent episodes. Lawrence McCray and Dave Anderson discuss some tradeoffs in data structuring, Cindy Cicalese shares developments in authentication, Marc Laporte promotes the use of structured data (in Tiki), Jacqueline Wong describes the difficulties in running a video game wiki, William Beutler ponders whether people should donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, and more!

🕑 48 minutes

It's the 2022 holiday special! Featuring an all-star guest panel (Daisy Chen, Richard Knipel, Trevor Parscal and Denny Vrandečić) weighing in on the current Wikimedia sound logo competition. Hear their informed opinions! And if that wasn't enough, you can then listen to Lex Sulzer reminisce about jumping into snowy lakes.

🕑 36 minutes

Nathan Brewer is the archival and digital content manager at the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) History Center. He manages the IEEE's Engineering and Technology History Wiki.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• IEEE Wikipedia article
• Engineering and Technology History Wiki (ETHW)
• ETHW Innovation Map
• ETHW Timeline
• IEEE Milestones Wiki
• List of IEEE Milestones
  • Public Demonstration of Online Systems and Personal Computing, 1968 ("Mother of All Demos")
  • Milestones selfies

🕑 1 hour 8 minutes

Eric Gardner is a senior software engineer on the Design Systems team at the Wikimedia Foundation. He has been heavily involved in the introduction of the Vue.js library into MediaWiki, and the creation of the related Codex library.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Eric Gardner WMF page
  • Eric's homepage
• WMF Design Systems Team
• Jekyll Wikipedia article
• 11ty (Eleventy) JS library
• RFC: Adopt a modern JavaScript framework for use with MediaWiki (2019)
• "Second-guessing the modern web" (Tom MacWright blog post)
• "Islands Architecture" (Jason Miller blog post)
• Astro web framework
• Wikimedia Commons Media Search 
• Codex JS library
  
  • Codex documentation

William Beutler is the founder and president of the creative agency Beutler Ink, which, among other services, assists clients with their presence on Wikipedia and Wikidata. Previously, he ran the longtime blog The Wikipedian, and he has co-hosted several film podcasts.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Beutler Ink
• William Beutler's personal Wikipedia account
• William's paid editing Wikipedia account
• Enter the Void podcast
  • Primer episode
  • Upstream Color episode
• The Wikipedian blog
  • "Year in Review" category
  • "Montgomerology" category
• "Wikipedia has Cancer" (essay by Guy Macon)
• Wikipedia and the Communications Professional: A primer
• "comprised of" (essay by Giraffedata)

🕑 55 minutes

Jacqueline Wong is a software developer who, in her free time, helps to host and maintain various video game-related wikis.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Another Eden Wiki
  • Another Eden Wiki:Discussion on Potential Fork
• "The online ad market is in decline and it's dragging down tech giants with it" (CNN article, July 2022)
• Tears of Themis Wiki
• Dragalia Lost Wiki
• Mr. Love Wiki
• NIWA - Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance

🕑 1 hour 5 minutes

Marc Laporte is a longtime administrator of the Tiki application, the open source project also known as TikiWiki and Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware. He also runs the related WikiSuite project, and the consulting company EvoluData.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Marc Laporte homepage
• Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware
• Tiki Admin Group
• Tiki Trackers
• WikiSuite
• EvoluData

It's another BTB Digest! Clips from five recent episodes. Matthew Westerby explains the challenges of storing dates, Lionel Scheepmans extols Wikiversity, Adam Baso and Julia Kieserman ponder the future of Wikipedia in a mechanized world, Brian Wolff shares his thoughts on Asana, and Jake Orlowitz recounts the highs and (somewhat) lows of working on The Wikipedia Adventure.

🕑 1 hour 9 minutes

Cindy Cicalese is a principal engineer for the Platform Engineering team at the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as the general chair for the upcoming Semantic MediaWiki Conference, to be held October 26-28 in Breda, the Netherlands. She was the first-ever guest on this program, and now she's back for an all-new conversation.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• SMWCon Fall 2022
• Wikimedia Foundation Platform Engineering Team
• PluggableAuth extension
• "Adding Multiple Identity Providers to PluggableAuth" initiative
• MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group
• WMF Inclusive Product Development initiative
• MediaWiki Cli (command-line interface)
• Keycloak Wikipedia article
• Network MediaWiki extension

Lawrence McCray and Dave Anderson (left to right) are the founder and lead developer, respectively, of the site Protoball, a wiki about the prehistory and early history of baseball.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Protoball
• "Doubleday myth" Wikipedia article
• List of Diggers
• Enhanced search page

🕑 1 hour 22 minutes

Jake Orlowitz is the lead of the management consulting company WikiBlueprint. Before founding WikiBlueprint, he worked at the Wikimedia Foundation, where his projects included The Wikipedia Library and The Wikipedia Adventure. He has been open about his former struggles with mental health, and Wikipedia's role in helping him overcome them. He can be reached at jorlowitzATgmailDOTcom.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Jake Orlowitz homepage
• "How Wikipedia Drove Professors Crazy, Made Me Sane, and Almost Saved the Internet" (Jake's chapter of Wikipedia@20, 2019)
• Welcome to the Circle: the Mental Health Book (Jake Orlowitz, 2019)
• The Wikipedia Library
  • Page on Wikipedia
• WikiBlueprint
• The Wikipedia Adventure
• GuidedTour MediaWiki extension
• "The Wikipedia Adventure: Field Evaluation of an Interactive Tutorial for New Users" (2017 conference paper, Jake Orlowitz et al.)

🕑 1 hour 7 minutes

Brian Wolff is back on the program - he was a longtime member of the Security team at the Wikimedia Foundation, then worked at Asana, and is now temporarily unemployed. He is still thankfully involved with MediaWiki as a volunteer developer.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Asana Wikipedia article
• Abstract Wikipedia Wikipedia article
• Filecoin Wikipedia article
• "Blockchain: A game changer for audit processes" (Deloitte article)
• Vector 2022 MediaWiki skin
• Code review statistics for core MediaWiki

🕑 1 hour 14 minutes

Adam Baso and Julia Kieserman are both developers in the Abstract Wikipedia group at the Wikimedia Foundation; Adam is the director of engineering, while Julia is a senior software engineer.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Abstract Wikipedia page on Meta-Wiki
• Wikifunctions Wikipedia article
• WikiLambda MediaWiki extension
• Not Wikilambda - Wikifunctions test site
• Abstract Wikipedia natural language generation proposal by Ariel Gutman
• July 2021 mailing list post by Dan Brickley about Cyc, the Semantic Web and Wikidata

🕑 30 minutes

It's another BTB Digest episode! Mike Cariaso explains why you should use SQLite, Tyler Cipriani talks about teaching deployment to volunteers, Dror Snir-Haim compares translation options, Alex Hollender defends sticky headers, Kunal Mehta criticizes Bitcoin miners, and more!