Hello all. We are about to kick off the October 2011 Coding Challenge, to which Erik alluded in his emails yesterday. I just wanted to offer a brief word of thanks to all at Wikimedia who have helped to put this together, and express my sense of what it is that we're doing.
This is an experiment. It may be brilliant, or it may not be. Offering a big prize for challenge winners may be a master stroke, or it may be a terrible mistake. The contest may yield lots of smart developers or lots of clueless noobs. There may be a torrent of new voices overwhelming #mediawiki and wikitech-l, or there may be no one at all. I have no idea what to expect, and I'm not about to pretend otherwise. I will be fascinated to see how the next few weeks play out.
One thing I am confident about: from everything I've observed about the Wikimedia technical community so far, I'm not the least bit worried about how noobs will be received. In some communities, this would be a note begging everyone to please, *please* not be to mean to the noobs -- but in this community, I only feel obliged to thank all of you in advance for being helpful and patient, as I know you will be.
If you have any questions or concerns about the contest, feel free to raise them here on the list, or address them to me personally.
--g