On 20/02/2008, Cormac Lawler cormaggio@gmail.com wrote: I'm doing a
class next week on educational implications of wikis/Wikipedia - and part of that is to give a look at what happens "inside Wikipedia". You can find this at: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Inside_Wikipedia - please go edit/comment/fork as you see fit.
I gave a talk at a Linux conference a couple of weeks ago that you may find useful. The aim was to demystify Wikipedia bureaucracy for those who are comfortable using it but may run into common problems when trying to edit. I talked about two common areas for trouble, article deletion and dispute resolution.
Slides: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Who%27s_Behind_Wikipedia%3F_slides_Brianna_Laugher.pdf
Afterwards I spoke to a journo who more or less turned it into an article: http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1866322157;pp;1;fp;4194304;fpid;1
Possibly useful diagram (this is supposed to be on slide 4, it doesn't always show up...) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:English_Wikipedia_user_access_levels_diagram.svg
My talk was videoed but unfortunately that did not surface yet :(
Anyway I think this talk assumes too much for me to give it to an audience of teachers. At one interview I gave I found people did not know about the history tab, and the ability to view each previous revision. So I will put more emphasis on those things for a teacher audience, compared to a Linux tech audience.
cheers, Brianna