I think this is the key point. Remember that this is the "developer summit"
and
not an "architecture summit", and as such anything MediaWiki-related is up
for
grabs. And if the topic of templates comes up, specifically what we need to
fix
in templates or what new features we should focus on next, who better to
have
there for that than the users of templates themselves.
I was basing my comment partially on the
mw.org page, which states
that the purpose of the meeting was to "push the evolution of the
MediaWiki architecture and the Wikimedia Engineering goals for 2016."
This kind of made it sound (at least to me) much more like
"architecture summit" then "anything MediaWiki-related"
Just to be clear, I think its great that people like template editors
come to technical events. I was just concerned that the material would
be mostly irrelevant to them if it was all about RfCs, which I appear
to be mistaken about.
Although, I will say its still kind of unclear what is expected that
these types of developers will be doing at the summit. Officially,
presentations are supposed to be "on organized discussions that start
online and aim to reach to agreements during the event". Its been a
while since I was a regular "template editor" or "gadget developer",
but coming to agreement at an in person event isn't something that
strikes me as being the wiki-way of doing things, and people who
primarily develop on wiki-pages probably aren't going to resolve on
wiki disagreements in such a forum (OTOH, my experience is a while
ago, and only relavent to one wiki, so who knows).
--
bawolff