Wiki(pedi)a veteran, self-hoster, and at home on the net since the early days. This is where you’ll find everything about me and my projects, and where I write about whatever keeps me busy.
This is where I blog - irregularly. I write whenever a topic won’t let go of me, mostly about self-hosting, AI, digital policy, or the occasional demoscene find. Posts are mostly in German. The three latest below – all posts live in the archive.
Ich reg mich auf. Solltest du auch tun. Warum? Das EU-Parlament hat die Chatkontrolle zweimal abgelehnt. Diese Woche wurde sie trotzdem beschlossen. Von genau diesem Parlament. Klingt unmöglich?…
Read on →Wer in den letzten 15 Jahren versucht hat, das Blog Wikipedistik aufzurufen, ist auf einer leeren Seite gelandet. Doof. Das ist leider bei älteren Blogs keine Seltenheit (siehe…
Read on →How a database in my homelab quietly got corrupted - and how a recovery that would have taken days in the past became a quick, straightforward conversation, thanks to AI.
Read on →TIM, TMI - or the essentials about me.
I’m a computer and network kid. Thanks to my father (mathematician & computer scientist) I had a Commodore 64 as a child and an IBM PC early on, and I’ve been roaming the net since the 1980s. Connecting with people around the world has always fascinated me: first I dug through Usenet and the BBS systems of half the globe via an acoustic coupler, and later I ran a rather well-known BBS of my own for many years - the Britannia BBS.
From the early nineties on I was spending more and more time on the internet: still on Usenet, with Gopher (the World Wide Web didn’t exist yet), and above all on IRC, the Internet Relay Chat. When the WWW took off I was there early, building websites - private ones, but also sites for the city of Jülich, several libraries, and the IAEA.
In mid-2002 I discovered Wikipedia and promptly caught the wiki virus. I’ve been into wikis, free knowledge, and the communities behind them ever since: I wrote my diploma thesis on wikis in companies, I’m the 34.5th user of the German-language Wikipedia, was an admin there and on Wikimedia Commons (the “global media archive” of the Wikimedia projects), and spent several years on the board of Wikimedia Deutschland. Back then I blogged on Wikipedistik, which afterwards was offline for 15 (!) years - until I recently revived it (DE). I was also quite active in other collaborative projects and helped lay some groundwork - especially at OpenStreetMap.
After a brief stint in IT consulting (Web 2.0!) I ended up at Wikia, the later FANDOM. As Country Manager Germany I built up the international side, with a team of volunteers and employees and, later on, our own office in Cologne.
Then 2011 got turbulent: Wikia hosted GuttenPlag and later VroniPlag, and when the extraordinary plagiarism affair cost defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg his job, I was the press contact of a community that rightly wanted to stay pseudonymous. A very exciting and demanding time, but also one of the most fulfilling jobs I’ve had so far.
When FANDOM was later acquired and pivoted entirely to the English-speaking market, I left the company. Since 2019 I’ve been at Trusted Shops: I spent six years building up the product management department, and since the beginning of this year I’m leading the Finance Operations team, which we are building from scratch.
Away from work, most of my tinkering energy in recent years has gone into my homelab: lots of hardware, clearly too many containers & services, and the firm conviction that you can - and should - host (almost) all of it yourself.
Away from screens: I’m now dad of a 6-year-old daughter, and after spending most of my life in and around Cologne (with detours to the Eifel and San Francisco), I can now - and permanently - be found in Mettmann.
Milestones from three-plus decades online.
Officially for learning, actually mostly for games - and soon for first contacts into the demoscene.
My own mailbox BBS - the kids’ room becomes a switchboard with connections across half the world.
From now on the Britannia BBS runs several lines at once.
Not my first website, but the oldest one I could still dig up - still running here in its original state.
Caught the wiki virus in mid-2002 – back when links still needed CamelCase!
Wikis not just as a hobby, but as a research subject.
On Wikipedistik I write regularly about Wikipedia, wikis, and the community around them.
Several years on the board of the association behind the German-language Wikipedia.
The hobby becomes the job: joining Wikia, the later FANDOM.
As the press contact of the pseudonymous community, right in the middle of the plagiarism affair that cost the defence minister his job.
Joining Trusted Shops - and becoming a dad shortly after.
One NAS becomes a rack, a few containers become far too many - self-hosting and home automation turn into a serious hobby. 💶
Everything back under one roof of my own.
Assorted projects over the years - in rough chronological order.
Britannia: Proxmox, Docker stacks, and clearly too many containers - the engine room in the basement.
To the homelab section → CommunityCollaborative plagiarism documentation on Wikia - in 2011 I was the press contact of the pseudonymous community.
More → Free knowledgeActive in the German-language Wikipedia since 2002 – as an author, admin, and all over the community.
My user page → Free geodataThere early on, doing foundational mapping in the Eifel and in Cologne. Plus micromapping everything from trash cans to street lamps.
openstreetmap.org → ResearchMy 2006 diploma thesis plus the restored online survey - results in German and English.
tim-bartel.de/survey → Time capsuleA look back: one of my old personal homepages, online in its original state.
tim-bartel.de/1996 →Self-hosting with a slight loss of control.
My homelab answers - wherever might that come from - to the name Britannia. Clearly too many containers, Docker stacks for everything from media server, monitoring, and document management to retro gaming archive, and with all that the firm conviction that you should host it all yourself instead of relying on Big Tech clouds.
What exactly runs there, which mistakes I made along the way, and what’s actually worth it – ideally that will turn into posts on the blog (maybe in German). And AI has found a place in my homelab, too: Claude and I together rescued a corrupted database, and that impressed me enough to start blogging again...
Where else to find me.
Rarely, but still.
“You’ve got mail!”
If you don’t have my direct contact details, feel free to use this form. I’m looking forward to hearing from you (as long as it’s not spam :-D).
