User talk:MBisanz/Presentation

Just some links, in case you haven't read through them yet.

History of Wikipedia
Wikipedia:History of Wikipedian processes and people
A timeline at Wikipedia:2001 to Wikipedia:2009

Cheers, man. lifebaka++ 14:13, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Distinguish up front 3 things in the history, organization or development of "wikipedia":

The history of the Wikipedia project, which started with english wikipedia, grew to encompass other projects, and was ultimately vested in WMF as host and framework provider
The history of english wikipedia itself, as a project
The history of wikipedia, as the public often sees it and media often implies it, which is strangely reversed - a perspective in which there is english wikipedia and other projects related to it, and in which "wikipedia projects" is a sort of sub-field of "wikipedia = english wikipedia". An example of this was the NPG case where "wikipedia = english wikipedia" was taken as the core body of wikipedia, wikimedia, commons, and by inference other projects. other examples of it are when english wiki is treated as "the major wiki to be cited" rather than "just one of many equal footing wmf projects"

That's a common confusion - address it briefly and be clear which one you are speaking about and giving the history of. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good, Matthew.

Don't underestimate the ability of the listeners to get bamboozled, since it's very complex. You might consider opening each section with your conclusion, then unpacking it.
A few PP diagrams would be good, but there's probably no time for that.
You might mention the pyramidical hierarchy of Pillars, Policies and Guidelines. When did that develop? Maybe mention that the consensus model favours the status quo?
Perhaps characterise the community as a seathing, boiling mess that is corralled to a certain extent by those hierarchical structures. Tony (talk) 04:15, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good work. I added a few notes to fill it out. I think community bans are important these days and should be mentioned. It's also interesting how power has gradually moved from the developers and Jimbo to other people. There are many important topics to talk about in a relatively short space of time. Graham87 08:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]