My two cents based on two decades of experience in open source and
growing adoption and contributions in India:

Mediawiki is an open source project which has community members
contributing to it globally. Having a technical Mediawiki user group
with developers gathering together for face-to-face technical
discussions or coding is a well established norm on all open source
projects. Having a local user group mailing list is also fine. The
most important component to maintain a successful technical user group
is to have active members who find the group useful for learning best
practices in open source software development, contributing code,
localizing software interfaces and be active contributors to the
larger global code base.

It is irrelevant whether WMF or some staff member or some local
chapter member blesses this. Open source does not work on the basis of
needing someone's consent. It works when you have a local problem, bug
or feature you would like to develop and improve the software
(Mediawiki in this case) you use or want to improve. And you have more
than 2 active developers locally :-) The idea is to code not just
think and talk about it.

Harsh - if you have more than 3 developers who are serious, local and
want to learn more about Mediawiki, form your own user group
informally. It doesn't have to be a formal group (locally registered
society) unless you start collecting money. Keep the barriers to
coding and real work as low as possible. I will be happy to help if
you need it.

Hope this helps.
Best,
Alolita

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Anirudh Bhati <anirudhsbh@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't see the bunch of coders representing their case over on this

list.  I see Harsh as an active volunteer, who else is active?

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 12:10 PM, Arun Ganesh <arun.planemad@gmail.com> wrote:

Let me (take the effort) to skip through the many lines of diplomacy. What I

understand:

Bunch of coders want to form their own group so that the coders can focus

on.. coding and not going through endless email threads like this one.

I support!

PS: I'm no longer with WMF. But if there's one thing I learnt, creating

things is faster and more fun than trying to get consensus. And we

desperately need more people who can develop, minus the bullshit, or we are

never getting out of this well.

--

Arun Ganesh

(planemad)

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