Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Groups are official: start your own!

2012-12-12 Thread Chris McMahon
On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 4:06 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:


 There used to be Wiki Wednesdays in London - not just MediaWiki or
 Wikipedia - but all sorts of wikis. Mostly corporate users. These
 petered out from lack of general interest, though. It surprises me, as
 I'd expect a lot of people using MW in London.

 Thank you for mentioning Wiki Wednesday.  Wiki Wednesday is a
long-standing institution that seems to have lost popularity over the past
several years.

Socialtext used to promote Wiki Wednesday pretty heavily in the Bay Area
and elsewhere:  https://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/ .  Socialtext today is
radically different than it was then, and Wiki Wednesday became much less a
priority for them.

Wiki Wednesday was the first of many such ideas:
http://ashub.blogspot.com/2005/06/tag-tuesday.html

Ward Cunningham is still doing Wiki Wednesday activities today:
http://twitter.com/WardCunningham/status/238315318345347074

On one hand, I think aligning Mediawiki Groups with the venerable
tradition of Wiki Wednesday might be worthwhile.  Wiki Wednesday is a
concept that already exists, and I think people like Ward would be happy to
see it promoted more than it has been.  On the other hand, interest in Wiki
Wednesday has died down in recent years, and that might reflect badly on a
new but similar project.

-Chris
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[Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Groups are official: start your own!

2012-12-11 Thread Quim Gil
MediaWiki Groups are now official - and recognized by the Wikimedia 
Affiliations Committee:


https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups/

Who wants to start one?

I just created

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups/Proposals/San_Francisco

as a real test of the process and a real example of a local group. Other 
local groups are welcome. If you are in San Francisco and you want to be 
part of this group add yourself to that page. Any ideas welcome!


Looking at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Events there are some local 
groups especially welcomed:


* Amsterdam
* Bangalore
* Berlin
* Brussels
* Buenos Aires
* Chennai
* Cologne
* Hong Kong
* Los Angeles
* Paris
* Pune
* San Diego
* Tel Aviv
* Washington DC
... and wherever you are sitting now.  :)


The gates for topical groups are also open. I will start pushing one 
about Testing / QA, also to test the process with a real example. More 
proposals?


Thank you to all the people that provided feedback about the MediaWiki 
Groups proposal and especially to


* Federico Leva (alias Nemo), who was especially helpful with his close 
marking and attention to detail - 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nemo_bis
* Bence Damokos was a perfect Affiliations Committee chair and helped 
fine tuning the proposal to make it fit with the Wikimedia User Groups - 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bdamokos


--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Groups are official: start your own!

2012-12-11 Thread bawolff
On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Quim Gil q...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 MediaWiki Groups are now official - and recognized by the Wikimedia
 Affiliations Committee:

 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups/

 Who wants to start one?

 I just created

 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups/Proposals/San_Francisco


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.

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.

-bawolff

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Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Groups are official: start your own!

2012-12-11 Thread Platonides
On 12/12/12 00:44, 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.
 
 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.
 
 -bawolff

It's possible that some people make one group because they are new and
it'd be cool. So we would have one more group listed. Would it last/be
useful? Who knows.



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Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Groups are official: start your own!

2012-12-11 Thread Steven Walling
On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 3:44 PM, bawolff bawolff...@gmail.com wrote:

 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.


Obviously robust MediaWiki Groups won't materialize overnight, but
providing a good structure and encouraging people to participate is
certainly not unwelcome or impossible to pull off. You'd think contributors
to the software platform behind Wikipedia would be less skeptical about the
power of a few committed individuals to grow a community, but I guess
people don't change. ;-)

Steven
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Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Groups are official: start your own!

2012-12-11 Thread Quim Gil

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

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Re: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Groups are official: start your own!

2012-12-11 Thread bawolff
On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 8:49 PM, Quim Gil q...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 On 12/11/2012 03:44 PM, bawolff wrote:
[..]

 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.

Hey I would if there was one in either of the two cities I currently
live in (University and home are in different cities). Heck no city
from either of the two provinces I live in even make it anywhere on
that page. [before I walk into the whole - you should start one
yourself, I'm much too lazy ;) ]



 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.

By all means, if stuff actually happens I'll be just as happy as the
rest of you :)


--bawolff

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