On 01/03/2013 08:37 AM, Theo10011 wrote:
So, to summarize again, Quim, a staff member, and you, a
No, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups were proposed at the MediaWiki community and wikimedia-l, they were discussed also with the Affiliations Committee and they were finally approved and announced last month.
Then Harsh and other volunteers in Ahmedabad interested in MediaWiki decided to take that route, and announced their proposal in several MediaWiki and Wikimedia India channels:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups/Proposals/Ahmedabad
Harsh sent the proposal also to this list on Dec 14 (it didn't raise any reply until 15 days later, btw) http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2012-December/009013.h...
Second, MediaWiki *is* independent and might have nothing to do with Wikimedia. But then again, why are we on a list of Wikimedia asking Wikipedians to join or create the said group?
The MediaWiki community is a piece of the Wikimedia movement that can have ramifications out of it, like in the case of people using MediaWiki for their own websites.
Still, something like a proposal on a new MediaWiki Group Ahmedabad is clearly on-topic in this list. If you don't bother, then an option is just delete the email and don't bother. :)
To the extent of my knowledge, Mediawiki is a platform, a piece of software, in terms of real world implications it has no existence. Which would then lead the discussion back in to the circle, that went on the tech list about a MediaWiki foundation and an independent identity, because clearly that's the problem we have right now - shortage of committees, and groups and organizations to conflate a bunch of stuff rather than the actual work they are supposed to do.
I agree with you(r irony) here. And precisely because of this MediaWiki Groups are designed to facilitate ad-hoc work without any bureaucratic overhead. The paradox is that a thread like this is creating overhead (I should be doing other things right now, like the rest of people active in this discussion). Still I hope it's worth having the discussion once and forever. After this proposing and resolving on MediaWiki Groups should be a fast process letting focus the teams of volunteers on the actual work.
The simplest question is what would this achieve?
The simplest answer is:
- MediaWiki Group X members are empowered to represent the MediaWiki communiy in X. - For someone interested in MediaWiki + X it will be easier to find the right information and contacts to get involved.
There was a discussion about this at wikitech-l, see the thread starting at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-December/065333.html
If after reading the thread you have more observations about MediaWiki Groups then please share them at wikitech-l.
Thematic organizations are being discussed on Meta and if they should use Wikimedia or even Wiki in their name, I suppose some extension would apply to Mediawiki as well.
Well, no. "MediaWiki" with the sunflower logo are different things. But also, thematic organizations are meant to be heavier, incorporated organizations while MediaWiki Groups are lightweight and not incorporated. If a MediaWiki group is repeatedly misbehaving the whole problem could be (radically) solved by deleting a wiki page and blocking users - applying the (radical) problem resolution in the Wikipedia way. As soon as you have an incorporated organization things get more tricky.
But we are getting off-topic. If you want to discuss Wikimedia User Groups or MediaWiki Groups as such then the right place to do it is in their discussion pages or at wikimedia-l / wikitech-l.