Episode 195: BTB Digest 31
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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!
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Episode 194: Vera de Kok
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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: (September 2025 blog post by Vera) (Vermeer painting) tool tool Wikimedia Commons gadget Wikidata gadget Wikipedia article Wikipedia article essay on Wikipedia Wikipedia article episode of Autistic Culture podcast (December 2024 Diff blog post) (September 2025 Diff blog post) Wikipedia article Wikipedia...
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Episode 193: Cormac Parle
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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: (2021 talk by Cormac)
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Episode 192: Matt Latourelle
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 52 minutes Matt Latourelle is director of technology operations for the wiki-based website Ballotpedia. Links for some of the topics discussed: (talk by Matt Latourelle and Joseph Sanchez, MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025) (Ballotpedia essay)
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Episode 191: SJ Klein
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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:
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Episode 190: Thomas Chin
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki 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: podcast on mediawiki.org in MediaWiki code (provided by the MediaWikiServices class) (2009 blog post by Domas Mituzas about Michael Jackson-related Wikipedia crash) (August 2025 article) (June 2025 article)
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Episode 189: BTB Digest 30
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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!
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Episode 188: Wojciech Pędzich
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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: English Wikipedia article , July 2023 , launched March 2021 (100...
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Episode 187: Dan Andreescu
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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: project
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Episode 186: Richard Heigl and Markus Glaser
Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
🕑 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: , April 2025 MediaWiki extension MediaWiki extension (or BlueSpiceChecklist) MediaWiki extension MediaWiki extension MediaWiki extension ("Why accessibility costs so much"), July 2025 article in Linux Magazin that quotes Richard and Markus library
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🕑 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.