Groups/San Francisco

MediaWiki Group San Francisco aims to become an independent catalyst for community activities related to MediaWiki and the technologies behind Wikipedia and related projects in the San Francsco Bay Area. All over the World the Wikimedia Foundation is trying to grow local groups and delegate to them the task of local outreach and community building. Having the headquarters of the WMF in the neighborhood makes more difficult to have this separation of roles, but this is where the MWG San Francisco comes to the rescue!

This group aims to structure the many ad-hoc activities happening already, empowering all MediaWiki community members. With the luxury to have such a quantity and density of MediaWiki contributors, we also aim to become a reference for other local groups growing elsewhere in the World.

San Francisco Bay Area is home for the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikia, WikiHow and probably other organizations developing MediaWiki software and relying on it. It is also a region full of software developers and other tech profiles, all of them using heavily Wikipedia on desktop and mobile. The WMF alone has more than 50 developers in this region.

We have got official recognition from the Affiliations Committee for a first period of one year, after which we would become a permanent group.

News

 * 2012-12-20: Group proposal submitted to the Affiliations Committee.
 * 2012-12-12: Proposal announced to wikitech-l and other lists.

Communication

 * The official channels of communication of this group are its |Discussion page and the wikimedia-sf mailing list.
 * The Wikipedia Engineering Meetup is a good occasion to meet face to face.

Precedents

 * San Francisco Hackathon January 2012, with 92 participants.
 * Wikipedia Engineering Meetup (188 members on 2012-12-20), organized by the Wikimedia Foundation Engineering team and open to all.
 * San Francisco MediaWiki Meetup Group, not really active but it's there.

See also


 * Wikimedia-SF mailing list, San Francisco Bay Area Wikimedians.

Contributors
Promoters
 * Quim Gil, working at the Wikimedia Foundation as technical outreach coordinator and pushing MediaWiki Groups anywhere. Eating own dog food by pushing this local group.--Qgil (talk) 17:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * More promoters welcome, especially when not affiliated to WMF for the sake of diversity.

Members
 * MarkTraceur (talk) 17:27, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Wonder (talk) 21:15, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Pete F (talk)
 * Zina (talk)
 * John Broughton (talk) 19:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Judytuna (talk) 20:15, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * JackHerrick (talk) 18:28, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Tom Mayer (talk) 19:17, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Other endorsements
 * Vicky/Eekiv: a volunteer with the Oakland Wiki, who is focusing on local history content and outreach. Eekiv (talk) 01:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * (((Other people not planning to be members of this group can also express public support))).