I'll reply to your earlier post and state my main objection to this before stopping. I don't really care as much as I might be leading you to believe, so I should disengage. I care more for the larger picture. But I just want to point out some minor discrepancies that might be relevant.
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Quim Gil
<qgil@wikimedia.org> wrote:
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.
Ah, there are things like history and diffs to look timelines and contributions up. That page you link to, was actually created a month ago, by you.[1] You also made the majority, if not the entirety of the edits to it. :)
I don't know about ChapCom approval but I seem to have a fleeting recollection of a hasty timeline that was condensed into a month, close to half of which were holidays here or in the US. In my opinion, ChapCom didnt have time to do the due diligence, completely vet this and look at alternatives like the SIG thing in India, which might be considered now.
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
Yes, 15 days after you created the page.[2] Fast, how volunteers organize these days, now back in my day......... :P
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.html
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.
I can quibble over semantics here, point out how new "Mediawiki Community" is, and how there is a gigantic overlap between the two. How the highest established userbase in Wikimedia lends itself to the "Mediawiki community" but I am trying to avoid long explanations on a general topic, when this case concerns india for now.
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.
Please by all means, do those other pressing things. Don't let this concern you, it's a volunteer led effort so let the volunteers lead. As you mention above, if you don't bother you can just delete this thread. ;)
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.
heh. I didnt know you were so well versed about Thematic organizations. I don't believe you involvement in Thematic organizations or these groups predates or exceeds mine, I might be wrong though if the WMF staff created those too. Yes, things do get tricky, the issue is there's been 2 of those so far in India, then this grant to CIS and now this, quasi-organizational push. But anyway....
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.
Thank you for informing me about those lists. :)
Regards
Theo