Episode 158: Taavi Väänänen

🕑 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

🕑 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 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

🕑 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 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)

🕑 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!

🕑 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.