Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast

🕑 1 hour 9 minutes   Dan Barrett is a longtime developer and project manager who worked for fifteen years at Vistaprint, where he created, and oversaw the development and maintenance of, the MediaWiki installation. He has also written numerous technical books for O'Reilly, including the 2008 book MediaWiki: Wikipedia and Beyond.   Links for some of the topics discussed:   Daniel Barrett author page, O'Reilly Media MediaWiki: Wikipedia and Beyond book page Vistaprint CategoryTagSorter (Vistaprint MediaWiki extension) Machine Learning Crash Course, Google Developers "Open Source Software Turns 20-Something", LinuxInsider

🕑 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)

🕑 52 minutes 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

🕑 28 minutes 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

🕑 55 minutes 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

🕑 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

🕑 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.