Groups

Drafting in progress! Feedback welcome in the Discussion page

MediaWiki groups organize open source community activities within the scope of specific topics and geographical areas. They extend the capacity of the Wikimedia Foundation in events, training, promotion and other technical activities benefiting Wikipedia, the Wikimedia movement and the MediaWiki software.

Topical groups
Topical MediaWiki groups collaborate with their logical counterparts in the wide FLOSS community. They are global groups, collaborating online.


 * They are in touch with communities within the same focus.
 * They participate in events of the same topic.
 * They promote related training and outreach activities.
 * They help improving the related documentation in wikimedia.org.
 * They collaborate with the related development teams.
 * Eventually some of them meet in WikiMania.

Fictional examples:
 * MediaWiki Lua Group
 * Mediawiki Puppet Group
 * MediaWiki UX Group
 * MediaWiki QA Group

Regional groups
Regional MediaWiki groups collaborate with Wikimedia chapters and local communities related with Wikimedia, free software, free culture... Their focus consists in face to face activities.


 * Organization of local events: meetups, training, hackfests...
 * Participation in events held in their area.
 * Distribution of merchandising.
 * Promotion of local contributors to global MediaWiki and Wikimedia activities.

Also for non-English speaking groups:
 * Localization of documentation and software in collaboration with TranslateWiki groups.

Fictional examples:
 * WikiMedia Germany Group
 * WikiMedia Australia Group
 * WikiMedia Bangalore Group
 * WikiMedia San Francisco Group

Precedents:
 * Wikipedia Engineering Meetup in San Francisco.

MediaWiki reps
MediaWiki groups require MediaWiki reps.

It's inevitable:
 * There needs to be a human link between the WikiMedia group and the rest of the community, including the Wikimedia Foundation and, eventually, a Wikimedia chapter.
 * Whoever is interacting on behalf of a WikiMedia group with other communities will be seen as a MediaWiki representative anyway.

Let's start simple: in order to become a MediaWiki rep you need to be endorsed by two Wikimedia Foundation members or MediaWiki maintainers.

Once we have a bunch of reps we can evolve based on need. See how e.g. Mozilla is organizing reps.

Communication
Creative thought is especially welcome to this section. Join the dicussion.

MediaWiki groups need to
 * 1) Discuss inside the group.
 * 2) Send notifications to followers.
 * 3) Broadcast important messages.

The MediaWiki community has traditionally resolved this with a combination of wiki (including discussion pages), mailing lists, IRC channels and blog posts, lately with some social media spice.

The starting point of any MediaWiki group is a landing page under /Groups. From there more communication tools can be obtained based on need.