The last couple years we've done a big MediaWiki Dev Summit in January, around the time of the Wikimedia Foundation all-hands meeting. Invitations have been fairly broad to known developers, but there's a very strong feeling that newbies, non-technical people, and in general *the people MediaWiki is created and maintained for* are not welcome.
I think we should change this.
I would really like a broader MediaWiki Dev Summit that asks our users to participate, and asks "developers" to interact with them to prioritize and work on things that really matter to them.
I want template authors, Lua module authors, template users, power editors, folks working on the lines of defense for vandalism patrol and copyvio checking. I want people with opinions on discussion systems. I want people who have been editing for years and have experience with what works and what doesn't. I want people who wish they could edit but have a bad experience when they try, and want to share that with us so we can help make it better.
Thoughts?
-- brion