Hello Michael!
I would be interested in joining a mailing list aimed at assisting neophyte developers with getting started or in establishing private dialogues with friendly mentors and other neophytes.
Hm, how about a wiki page instead? The knowledge of mailing lists tends to get lost in their vast archives.
I have created http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_Wikipedia_hacker as a skeleton with some content. Please add to the structure, particularly the questions you find relevant for yourself.
I have some obsolete pentium systems that I could dedicate and set up for local testing and/or development activities.
Great!
I have substantial experience and exposure to a variety of software and system development projects and some applicable formal training but very limited actual coding experience.
The best way to learn coding is to look at code. Again, that's why I think installing Wikipedia is crucial for anyone, and it doesn't take much knowledge.
A problem for me, and I should have written that, is that I have never used PHP, MySQL etc. under Windows -- I'm used to Linux. Do we have any Wikipedia coders using Windows?
Regards,
Erik