🕑 1 hour 42 minutes

Brian Wolff returns for a third episode! The security expert and longtime MediaWiki developer does an in-person interview to talk about his latest development projects, and Wikimedia goings-on, past and present.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Calculator template on English-language Wikipedia
  • BMI calculator on "Body mass index" article
• "John Travoltage" online electricity simulator
• "NPR boss Katherine Maher opposed ‘free and open’ approach at Wikipedia: ‘White male Westernized construct’" (New York Post article, April 2024)
• "Katherine Maher’s Color Revolution" (City Journal article, April 2024)
• Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Equity Fund

🕑 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 now works at Lightbug. Tom and Ollie remain at Wikimedia Deutschland, both working on Wikibase development, with a focus on Wikibase Cloud and the Wikibase API, respectively.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Deutschland
• Lightbug
• "Alcohol preferences in Europe" Wikipedia article
• Wikibase Cloud
• "Visualizing Wikibase connections, using wikibase.world" (October 2024 blog post by Adam)
• Wikimedia API portal
• SPINACH Wikidata Agent
• Wikidata Query Builder

🕑 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 freely-licensed music from Wikimedia Commons.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Wikimedia Movement Charter
• Wikispore
• "Grant project for Wikinews" proposal
• "World AIDS Day 2024 is marked around the world" (Wikinews article mostly written by Richard)
• "Wikicurious" Wikimedia NYC events
• WikiConference North America 2025
• New Years Eve Cosmic Turtle Drop + Public Domain Film Festival (December 31, 2024)
• The music:
  • Movement I ("Modéré") from the Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Robert Casadesus
  • Unnamed Azande-language song performed by Dominique Manzadi
  • "Grateful" by NEFFEX
  • "Ego sum pastor bonus" by Waclaw of Szamotuly, performed by Collegium Vocale Bydgoszcz
  • "Ochi chyornye" ("Dark Eyes") by Yevhen Hrebink and Florian Hermann, performed by Feodor Chaliapin
  • Movement IV ("Allegretto con variazioni") from the clarinet quintet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Vlad Weverbergh and the Terra Nova Collective
• WikiFlix

🕑 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 challenges of finding wiki editors in the government, Valerio Bozzolan argues for putting conference videos on PeerTube, Asaf Bartov warns about "weaponized AI" on Wikipedia, and more.

🕑 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 The Editors, which is about a group of editors of the fictional user-editable online encyclopedia "Infopendium" who are drawn together by dramatic events.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Stephen Harrison website
• Source Notes blog/newsletter
• Stephen Harrison's list of Wikipedia-related articles
  • More comprehensive list
• Reddit /r/pics subreddit (my apologies for casting aspersions - it's not that political any more! It was more political during the recent U.S. presidential election.)
• "Times of London: Wikipedia, AI, & THE EDITORS | An Audiobook Update" (October 2024 blog post)

🕑 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 the topics discussed:

• Triple Performance
• Neayi
• "Rotations en grandes cultures" (Triple Performance article about crop rotation)
• Neayi GitHub account
  • Triple Performance Google Spreadsheets add-on
  • Triple Performance Docker image

🕑 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-language texts online since 1999, and the Nemala project, which publishes Hebrew translations of Ukrainian-language works.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• "Wikimania 2019 - Asaf Bartov" (episode of the podcast Scuola di Pensiero)
• Project Ben-Yehuda
• Nemala initiative
• WMF Community Development Team
• WikiLearn
• Wikimania 2023 program
• "Defending our wikis against weaponized generative AI" (talk by Asaf at Wikimania CEE Meeting 2024)

🕑 1 hour 42 minutes

Valerio Bozzolan is a software developer and Linux adminstrator 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 commission of Wikimedia Italy, and an open source consultant for Wikimedia Switzerland.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Istituto tecnico industriale statale Amedeo Avogadro (Italian Wikipedia article)
• Chiedi il rimborso del sistemo (in)operativo! ("Ask for a refund for the (non-)operating system!")
• PeerTube
• Wikimedians for software freedom
• "2021:Present and future" page
• "2022:Present and future" page
• FLOSS-Exchange listing
• video.linux.it (powered by PeerTube)
• Phorge homepage

🕑 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 Restoration wiki
• Salish Sea Wikipedia article
• "Do you love seafood? Here's how to eat it responsibly" (NPR article, September 2024)
• "I Want To Eat Fish Responsibly. But The Seafood Guides Are So Confusing!" (NPR article, March 2017)
• List of all restoration efforts

🕑 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", Moritz Schubotz analyzes MediaWiki as a math publishing tool, Viktor Schelling reminisces on the early days of a consulting company, and more!