FYI the JS parser is broken for some cases, but it works great for most things you want from message strings.

As for your original question, I don't think there is a forum that tries to unite the left-brained and right-brained wikipedians. There is a bit of a divide. I'll send an email right now to someone who might know better.

We don't have contests per se to try to steer the community, other than I guess GSoC, or reaching out to developers that we think are already doing good things.