I never said they 'had to be' on a closed forum. I presented the idea a while ago, didn't get much feedback from anyone, and had already started using Slack in the office, so I just created another channel. If you would like to create a different channel for developers and have a separate lot of discussions elsewhere, there's nothing stopping you. I have only offered to try to coordinate the work of developers, and the door's open for those who want to participate. 

John

On 17 January 2017 at 15:34, Fæ <faewik@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm still trying to understand why UK-based Wikimedia developer
discussions have to be on a closed forum.

As an example, with global discussions around issues or changes on
Phabricator, a key benefit is that it is easy to link to these
discussions and information on-wiki so that anyone can review them,
not just those that have set up accounts on Phabricator. Encouraging
wiki-project developers to join an invite-only channel to discuss
changes to their open projects behind closed doors, appears to force a
contradiction in values and remain an ethical barrier for potential
contributors.

At the point where any development might change Wikimedia projects,
whatever was done on a closed forum would have to be presented
publicly. Even abandoned ideas benefit the community by adding to our
store of common knowledge, if the discussions are available for future
reference rather than held in closed archives.

Fae

On 17 January 2017 at 14:51, John Lubbock <john.lubbock@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
> The other thing is that we have already started using Slack in the office
> for chat, and I have another slack channel for the Kurdish Wikipedia
> Project, so I've already gone down this path a bit of a way and to back out
> and start again because something else is open source would be quite
> disruptive for other work I'm doing. I'm trying to organise developers to
> come to one place to discuss this, and I've chosen Slack because it's easy
> and lots of people use it. I appreciate that it might not be ideal for some
> people, but I really can't spare the time and effort to start this all again
> from scratch.
>
> John
>
> On 17 January 2017 at 13:19, Katherine Bavage <katherine.bavage@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I'm not planning to join because I don't code (though I'm happy to join a
>> channel if you get to a stage where end user or design process feedback is
>> useful) but I would note that asking people to adopt new platforms 'just
>> because they are open source', rather than ones that are used by a lot of
>> people/ a lot of people are already familiar with, is pretty daft when your
>> ultimate goal is to benefit the open source community through the work the
>> channel fosters.
>>
>> As far as I know, for this type of work, Slack is the go to for most devs.
>> The Foundation use it without issue.
>>
>> On Tue, 17 Jan 2017 at 12:24 Gordon Joly <gordon.joly@pobox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 17/01/17 00:38, John Lubbock wrote:
>>> > It costs a lot of money, as far as I can see (it says Try for Free and
>>> > then takes you to a page where it asks you to pay $100 a month).
>>>
>>> ****
>>> We wrote Discourse, and we can host it for you, too.
>>> ****
>>>
>>> Yes, that is a hosting option. You can download and install for free. I
>>> am suggesting WMUK host the code on their own server...
>>>
>>> Gordo

--
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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