(((Please someone help forwarding this email to wikimediaindia-l as I'm
not subscribed there. Thanks!)))
Thank you Yuvi and others for your determination pushing this first
MediaWiki regional list and other ongoing local initiatives in India. As
technical contributor coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation I have no
doubt that tools like this will help increasing and diversifying the
MediaWiki community and therefore the technical capacity of the
Wikimedia movement!
As you say this is our first experiment. Give us your feedback and
Expect some fine tuning on the go. The definition of MediaWiki regional
lists is documented at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups#Local_vs_regional and I'm still
editing that section almost on a daily basis based on our early
experiences with mediawiki-india.
The nature of this regional lists is related to the MediaWiki Groups, a
flavor of Wikimedia User Groups that the MediaWiki community is
developing with the approval of the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee. At
a MediaWiki community level we have agreed that those groups need to be
really local, covering an area that a regular contributor could cover
easily with public transport or a car to get involved in the activities
organized.
Under this perspective, a MediaWiki Group Gujarat would be more
appropriate than a MediaWiki Group India, and a MediaWiki Group
Ahmedabad would me more appropriate than a MediaWiki Group Gujarat. You
get the point. We have no plans to change this principle: MediaWiki
supporters in India always have the Wikimedia India chapter for more
complex activities at a regional or national level in India.
But this left a void to reach out potential technical contributors in
places where no MediaWiki local group exists. Imagine an engineer in
Bangalore, interested in contributing her skills in MediaWiki and
Wikimedia technical projects but not really interested in following the
day to day of Wikimedia India. mediawiki-india can fill now this gap,
and could help that engineer in Bangalore to find other peers in the
area and start working on a MediaWiki Group Bangalore.
This is how we expect the MediaWiki community grow locally in India and
elsewhere.
Yuvi, just a couple of comments related to your announcement:
On 12/29/2012 06:39 AM, Yuvi Panda wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> As part of growing a sustainable technical community around MediaWiki in
> India, a new mailing list has been created. You can subscribe to it at
>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-india
>
> Looking forward to having more Mediawiki hackers from India!
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Yuvi Panda* <yuvipanda(a)gmail.com <mailto:yuvipanda@gmail.com>>
> Date: Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 2:17 PM
> Subject: Welcome to the MediaWiki India List!
> To: mediawiki-india(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:mediawiki-india@lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Hello everyone!
>
> Welcome to the mediawiki-india list! This list is simply a place for
> like-minded folks from India working on MediaWiki/Wikimedia related code
> to talk about whatever they're doing. A good level of event planning
> would happen too, I think.
>
> Post random ideas you run into. Interesting tricks you've discovered.
> How completely horrible some gadget in some wiki is. Or how you've
> hacked mediawiki to be a storage engine for your public transport
> crowdsourcing project. Or how you are just getting started and want
> help. Ask for help in setting up a mediawiki instance for your company.
> For porting a gadget from english wikipedia to your own language's
> wikipedia. For anything, really.
Well, not anything. We need to be respectful with the existing mailing
lists and avoid unnecessary fragmentation. Let's direct topics and
people to the right lists, where the experts in each area are found. For
instance, generic MediaWiki questions in English still make more sense
in mediawiki-l.
The topics should cover what lists like wikitech-l, mediawiki-l and
other MediaWiki lists are missing e.g. regional coordination or support
in languages other than English without an own mailing list.
I'm sure you will find the balance.
> This is the first country-level technical mediawiki list, ever. We've no
> idea how this is going to be used, so please do go wild
>
> Happy hacking, everyone!
... and for exactly those reasons this announcement should be posted at
wikitech-l and mediawiki-l as well. Feel free fine tuning it with my
feedback. It might save you one reactionary reply or two.
Thank you and best wishes for MediaWiki community in India!
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
fyi
---
Harsh Kothari
Research Fellow,
Physical Research Laboratory(PRL).
Ahmedabad.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Sucheta Ghoshal <sucheta.ghoshal(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] First Ever MediaWiki Workshop in Kolkata!
> Date: 30 December 2012 1:54:09 AM GMT+05:30
> To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, Bengali Wikipedia <wikipedia-bn(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, mediawiki-india(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Reply-To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
>
>
> [Sorry, the subject part was missing on the last e-mail.]
>
>
> Hello Everyone,
>
> This is Sucheta. I am an OPW intern at MediaWiki, based in Kolkata. The newly formed Mozilla Community of Kolkata is organizing a 2 day ( Jan 5 - Jan 6 ) event dedicated to Free and Open Source Software and various Mozilla initiatives, where participants will get chance to interact with professional developers and renowned FOSS activists as well as some Mozilla Representatives from the Mozilla India Community. And they want to have a MediaWiki part as well and had approached me for the same. I had approached few people from MediaWiki and checked if they could come over. But Santhosh, Yuvi Panda, and Harsh Kothari seem to be occupied at that specific period of time, although they are ready to help remotely. So, I am planning to do one small workshop on MediaWiki there, with 10-15 students maybe. It would be great to have your support, and suggestions are welcome too.
>
> Here is the event’s official website: http://moztiatbesu.co.nr/
>
> I have been planning this workshop with Yuvi Panda and Harsh Kothari and here’s basically what we had in mind for the workshop:
>
> Userscripts and Gadgets:
> 'Lesson Plan':
>
> Environment (JS, Dev Toolbar, Common.js, importScript, mw.loader.load)
> Data (API, API Sandbox, actions)
> Accessing Data from the Environment (AJAX concepts, mw.API, mw.loader.using)
>
> Introduction to IRC: People should get the idea of the amazing community out there! So, I thought IRC environment should get them that feel, and would also help them for future work. I am thinking of introducing them to the channel #mediawiki on freenode.
>
>
> So, if you know people in Kolkata who would be interested in getting a technical introduction to Mediawiki, please ask them to attend! Do forward it to the relevant lists too!
>
> Thanks for the support!
>
>
> Cheers,
> Sucheta
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the mediawiki-india list! This list is simply a place for
like-minded folks from India working on MediaWiki/Wikimedia related code to
talk about whatever they're doing. A good level of event planning would
happen too, I think.
Post random ideas you run into. Interesting tricks you've discovered. How
completely horrible some gadget in some wiki is. Or how you've hacked
mediawiki to be a storage engine for your public transport crowdsourcing
project. Or how you are just getting started and want help. Ask for help in
setting up a mediawiki instance for your company. For porting a gadget from
english wikipedia to your own language's wikipedia. For anything, really.
This is the first country-level technical mediawiki list, ever. We've no
idea how this is going to be used, so please do go wild :)
Happy hacking, everyone!
--
Yuvi Panda T
http://yuvi.in/blog
Hi Yuvi, Quim
Thanks for making this. this will be very useful for growing MediaWiki community across the India.
Thanks
Harsh
---
Harsh Kothari
Research Fellow,
Physical Research Laboratory(PRL).
Ahmedabad.