Between the Brackets: a MediaWiki Podcast
Technology
About
A podcast about the people and ideas behind the MediaWiki software. Interviews with developers and users of MediaWiki, both for Wikimedia sites (Wikipedia, Wikidata, etc.) and the many uses of MediaWiki in companies, organizations, government agencies, etc.
Episodes
- Episode 207: Ad Strack van Schijndel
Ad Strack van Schijndel, founder and CEO of Juggel, an AI-centered MediaWiki distribution, discusses his company and his previous role as founder and CEO of Wikibase Solutions. The conversation touches on Juggel AI, NeoWiki, and related to…
- Episode 206: Sandra Fauconnier
Sandra Fauconnier, an art historian, discusses her experience with digital projects in the cultural sector, having worked for Wikimedia Nederland, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikimedia Sverige.
- Episode 205: Wandji Collins
Wandji Collins, a software engineer and engineering manager at Tech Chantier, also volunteers as a MediaWiki developer. The discussion references Tech Chantier, Wiki Mentor Africa, and the Page Forms MediaWiki extension.
- Episode 204: Noam Cohen
Journalist and author Noam Cohen discusses his work writing about Wikipedia for The New York Times and Wired since 2007. His book, 'The Know-It-Alls', was recently released in paperback with a new introduction.
- Episode 203: Paul Vodrazka
Paul Vodrazka, a CNC shift leader at Custom Castings, shares insights on managing internal wikis and his work on the MediaWiki extension Layers. The discussion touches upon computer numerical control, the Lindy effect, and Claude language…
- Episode 202: BTB Digest 32
This BTB Digest features clips from five recent episodes, discussing structured data on Wikimedia Commons, early experiences as a Wikimedia photographer, the implications of AI encyclopedias, the philosophy behind JavaScript gadgets, and t…
- Episode 201: Steve Shattuck
Steve Shattuck, a retired research assistant, details his creation and management of the wiki AntWiki. The discussion references resources such as CSIRO, AntWeb, and a book on Australian ants.
- Episode 200: Liam Wyatt
Liam Wyatt returns to Between the Brackets for episode 200 to discuss Wikipedia's 25th anniversary. Topics include the project's past, present, and future, AI web crawlers, and the nomination for UNESCO Memory of the World.
- Episode 199: Shlomit Lir
Shlomit Lir, a writer and researcher from the University of Haifa, discusses her public criticisms of Wikipedia, particularly its coverage concerning Israel. The episode references her 2024 report for the World Jewish Congress and other re…
- Episode 198: Brian Wolff
Brian Wolff, a MediaWiki and Wikimedia developer, joins Between the Brackets for a discussion covering Wikimedia Foundation affairs, software advancements, and classic science fiction, prior to his relocation to Calgary.
- Episode 197: Between the Brackets 2025 Holiday Special
Episode 197 of Between the Brackets is a holiday special featuring guests, music, and a story, all centered around the MediaWiki community.
- Episode 196: Stephen Harrison
Stephen Harrison, a tech lawyer and journalist who covers Wikipedia, joins the podcast to discuss significant Wikimedia events from October 2025. Topics include the release of Jimmy Wales' book, Larry Sanger's nine theses, an incident in N…
- Episode 195: BTB Digest 31
This episode features clips from five recent episodes of Between the Brackets, discussing topics such as a Datawiki project, the Wikipedia sound logo, Wikimedia development history, "Abstractese," and Ballotpedia's neutrality.
- Episode 194: Vera de Kok
Vera de Kok, recognized as Media Contributor of the Year at Wikimania 2025, discusses her work as a freelance photographer, developer, and wiki consultant, highlighting her contributions to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.
- Episode 193: Cormac Parle
🕑 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 Con…
- Episode 192: Matt Latourelle
🕑 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, MediaWi…
- Episode 191: SJ Klein
🕑 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 wa…
- Episode 190: Thomas Chin
🕑 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…
- Episode 189: BTB Digest 30
🕑 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 We…
- Episode 188: Wojciech Pędzich
🕑 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…
- Episode 187: Dan Andreescu
🕑 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 t…
- Episode 186: Richard Heigl and Markus Glaser
🕑 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-b…
- Episode 185: Marijn van Wezel
🕑 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 discus…
- Episode 184: Edward Chernenko
🕑 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 U…
- Episode 183: BTB Digest 29
🕑 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,…
- Episode 182: Luca Mauri
🕑 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…
- Episode 181: Cindy Cicalese
🕑 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. Alth…
- Episode 180: Denny Vrandečić
🕑 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-…
- Episode 179: Ward Cunningham
🕑 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…
- Episode 178: Jonathan Lee
🕑 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) Th…
- Episode 177: BTB Digest 28
🕑 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) con…
- Episode 176: Selena Deckelmann
🕑 1 hour 11 minutes 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 Sen…
- Episode 175: Trevor Parscal
🕑 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" we…
- Episode 174: Brian Wolff
🕑 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 discuss…
- Episode 173: Adam Shorland, Tom Arrow and Ollie Hyde
🕑 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…
- Episode 172: Richard Knipel
🕑 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…
- Episode 171: BTB Digest 27
🕑 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 challenge…
- Episode 170: Stephen Harrison
🕑 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 T…
- Episode 169: Bertrand Gorge
🕑 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 th…
- Episode 168: Asaf Bartov
🕑 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-langu…
- Episode 167: Valerio Bozzolan
🕑 1 hour 42 minutes 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 com…
- Episode 166: Paul Cereghino
🕑 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…
- Episode 165: BTB Digest 26
🕑 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"…
- Episode 164: Alex Stinson
🕑 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…
- Episode 163: Brent Laabs
🕑 1 hour 35 minutes 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 WikiTid…
- Episode 162: Viktor Schelling
🕑 1 hour 3 minutes 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
- Episode 161: Moritz Schubotz
🕑 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 MediaWik…
- Episode 160: Megan Cutrofello
🕑 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'…
- Episode 159: BTB Digest 25
🕑 21 minutes 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…
- Episode 158: Taavi Väänänen
🕑 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…