Truly said Quim and Noopur. The idea and motivation behind mediawiki
group is to encourage open source activities, particularly about
MediaWiki. At the same time, it also brings to gather people who are
working and can work in this perspective. So every wikimedian should
welcome this .
Regards,
Samkit
On 03-Jan-13 8:08 PM, Quim Gil wrote:
Hi,
On 01/03/2013 05:11 AM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan wrote:
Hi,
I never mentioned anything about being part of the chapter.
The chapter was set up to promote the movement in India and it has done
so even in cases where a person/participant was NOT a part of the
chapter..
I merely asked what benefit the Group recieves by taking the User Group
route over the Chapter SIG route.
Harsh,
What are your thoughts on the Chapter-SIG model.
Can you describe this Chapter SIG route / model, or point to a URL
explaining it? The only thing I could find is
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/City_and_Language_SIG_subcommittee_chair but
nothing about process or even group activities can be found there.
In the meantime, let me add a bit more to Noopur's argument and my
previous reply.
The main motivation of MediaWiki groups is unsurprisingly
http://mediawiki.org - the open source software and its community
around. They can be created in Ahmedabad, San Francisco, Mexico City,
Berlin or wherever, but they share common needs, common activities,
common materials and so on.
MediaWiki Groups were born at
mediawiki.org because they were needed
to bring this open source community to the physical space. In a formal
sense they are just wiki pages with registered users signing up for
them. No non-profit creation, no formal membership... The whole
identity is based purely on activities organized.
It was a coincidence that the Wikimedia movement was about to approve
the User Groups while MediaWiki Groups were defined. We discussed with
the AffCom and we fine tuned the MediaWiki Groups requirements and
process in order to make them Wikimedia User Groups as well.
Then Harsh, Yuvi and also Sucheta showed up proposing a MediaWiki
Group India. At the end we decided that MediaWiki Groups need to be
strictly local, and that MediaWiki activities at a national level
should be better organized with the chapters, since they have already
the infrastructure for that. Then Harsh evolved the proposal to
MediaWiki Group Ahmedabad, Sucheta is already trying to gather
critical mass for a MediaWiki Group Kolkata, etc.
That's it. You can still argue that such organizations could be
handled a part of Wikimedia India SIGs, and that their promoters
wouldn't be required to be chapter members. I don't even disagree with
the idea, but in the right sequence of events: the motivation of these
groups is
mediawiki.org and therefore good alignment and coordination
within the MediaWiki community is what matters most. I have no doubt
that strong MediaWiki Groups will contribute to the strength of the
Wikimedia community and their related chapters.