Wikimedia Technical Committee/Architecture Forum

The Wikimedia Technical Forum (Tech Forum) [last chance to change the name - note: acronym is currently WTF] is a venue for discussing high level technical topics, across teams, departments, disciplines, and roles. It is aimed primarily at senior engineers, but is open to anyone.

The Tech Forum was created as an extension of TechCom to provide a space for the discussions of technical topics that is broader than TechCom itself, but more focused than wikitech-l. Its scope and purpose are derived from TechCom's Charter.

Purpose
The purpose of the Tech Forum is the facilitation of high level technical discussions to create alignment and inform decision making [we should detail what we mean by alignment and decisions here, to root the purpose in organizational goals and operation]. Specifically, members are expected to:


 * Proactively raise high level technical topics and decisions to the attention of other group members
 * Carry information and discussions from the Forum into their teams
 * Take part in high level technical discussions and decision making, such as the RFC process
 * Participate in the preparation and discussion of RFCs, and provide feedback on Last Calls
 * Meet with other Forum members of members of TechCom in smaller groups for focused discussions

Operation
The Technical Forum operates primarily as a group on [are there open groups? is it possible to "follow" categories?] the Wikimedia Discuss Space.

TechCom will post minutes of all meetings to the forum.

TechCom will announce new RFCs and any Last Calls to Forum.

[....]

Membership
Membership is self-selected, anyone is free to join. Membership is not restricted to staff members, volunteers are welcome as well.

To ensure active participation across teams, disciplines, and roles, members may be asked every now and then whether they consider themselves up for active participation. This way, new members can be recruited in areas lacking active participants, thus ensuring a broad array of perspectives.

Individuals engaging in counter-productive behavior or violating the CoC can be excluded from the group at the discretion of TechCom, in consultation with CoCCom as needed. The ultimate decision over membership lies with the CTO.