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.
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation