On 12/11/2012 03:44 PM, bawolff wrote:
I'm actually quite curious to see if there are actually enough MW devs in a single city (Other then WMF's home town) to form a group.
"MediaWiki Groups are open to members of different specialties and levels of expertise. The richer and more diverse the better. Non-technical users willing to contribute and learn are welcome too!" http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups
This is not about devs alone, but about people interested in all MediaWiki aspects, like testing fresh software, translating strings, participating in the UX design of a feature, helping triaging forgotten bug reports or enhancement requests...
MediaWiki Groups are tools for reaching to new potential community members. If your starting point is "how many MediaWiki core/extensions hackers are there in my city" then I recommend you to widen your scope. Otherwise you are right: it's not even worth starting.
Wikipedia is a big thing globally and there is plenty of tech people that would be interested in contributing if they would know how or who to ask around.
One starting point in your city / region would be to check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup , attend the next meetup and start infiltrating the MediaWiki / tech agenda there. There is no point in keeping the traditional divide between readers/editors and tech/coders forever.
To be honest though, I kind of feel that if such "groups" were going to form, they probably would have already. Formality rarely makes people come together that wouldn't by themselves.
Time will tell. We are not attempting to convince you. :) As long as you point to the right URL anybody interested in forming a group and you attend the activities happening near you, it's all fine.