Episode 191: SJ Klein

🕑 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

🕑 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, Denny Vrandečić disputes the idea that Abstract Wikipedia could replace regular Wikipedia, Ward Cunningham recounts coming up with the name "wiki", and more!