π 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...
Jan 30, 2024β’1 hr 12 minβ’Season 1Ep. 155
π 52 minutes 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 Wikimediaβs Community Wishlist!" (December 2023 blog post) March 2024 online Wishathon event Language Team Phabricato...
Jan 16, 2024β’51 minβ’Season 1Ep. 154
π 23 minutes 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!
Jan 02, 2024β’22 minβ’Season 1Ep. 153
π 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....
Dec 19, 2023β’1 hr 8 minβ’Season 1Ep. 152
π 55 minutes Birgit MΓΌller 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...
Dec 06, 2023β’55 minβ’Season 1Ep. 151
π 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" (WikiConf...
Nov 21, 2023β’1 hr 52 minβ’Season 1Ep. 150
π 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" (Fe...
Nov 08, 2023β’1 hr 5 minβ’Season 1Ep. 149
π 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...
Oct 24, 2023β’1 hr 3 minβ’Season 1Ep. 148
π 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 pag...
Sep 26, 2023β’1 hr 23 minβ’Season 1Ep. 147
π 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!
Sep 13, 2023β’21 minβ’Season 1Ep. 146
π 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 Wiki...
Aug 29, 2023β’59 minβ’Season 1Ep. 155
π 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 wildfi...
Aug 15, 2023β’1 hr 16 minβ’Season 1Ep. 144
π 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 )...
Aug 01, 2023β’1 hr 13 minβ’Season 1Ep. 143
π 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 ...
Jul 18, 2023β’1 hr 12 minβ’Season 1Ep. 142
π 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...
Jul 04, 2023β’1 hr 17 minβ’Season 1Ep. 141
π23 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.
Jun 21, 2023β’23 minβ’Season 1Ep. 140
π 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 ...
Jun 06, 2023β’1 hr 15 minβ’Season 1Ep. 139
π 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...
May 23, 2023β’58 minβ’Season 1Ep. 138
π 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...
Apr 25, 2023β’1 hr 18 minβ’Season 1Ep. 137
π 1 hour 2 minutes 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...
Apr 11, 2023β’1 hr 1 minβ’Season 1Ep. 136
π 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-li...
Mar 28, 2023β’1 hr 23 minβ’Season 1Ep. 135
π 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!
Mar 14, 2023β’22 minβ’Season 1Ep. 134
π 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" (20...
Feb 28, 2023β’1 hr 41 minβ’Season 1Ep. 133
π 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
Feb 14, 2023β’1 hr 17 minβ’Season 1Ep. 132
π 1 hour 44 minutes 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 [Micro...
Jan 31, 2023β’1 hr 43 minβ’Season 1Ep. 131
π 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 fello...
Jan 17, 2023β’1 hr 31 minβ’Season 1Ep. 130
π 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...
Jan 03, 2023β’1 hr 28 minβ’Season 1Ep. 129
π 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!
Dec 20, 2022β’22 minβ’Season 1Ep. 128
π 48 minutes It's the 2022 holiday special! Featuring an all-star guest panel (Daisy Chen, Richard Knipel, Trevor Parscal and Denny VrandeΔiΔ) 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.
Dec 06, 2022β’47 minβ’Season 1Ep. 127
π 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") Mile...
Nov 22, 2022β’36 minβ’Season 1Ep. 126
