user:netesq

During his tenure as a student at UC Davis Law School, Prenatt was a member of the UC Davis Law Review[http://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/ UC Davis Law Review Home Page], a teacher's assistant for legal writing, and a certified student attorney for the King Hall Civil Rights Clinic[http://law.ucdavis.edu/clinics/index.shtml Guidelines for King Hall Clinicals]. Meanwhile, Prenatt was a frequent poster to USENET, where his byline attracted many queries about law school, UC Davis, and the city of Davis, California. This inspired Prenatt to publish the King Hall Law School USENET FAQ[http://faqs.netesq.com/king-hall.html King Hall Law School USENET FAQ] and a series of other USENET FAQs that paved the way for Prenatt's work as an Internet consultant for attorneys.

Prenatt worked as a volunteer editor for the Open Directory Project (ODP aka dMOZ) where he was awarded the status of "editall" shortly before his editing privileges were revoked in April of 2000. After losing his editing privileges at ODP, Prenatt wrote an insider expose of ODP for Traffick.com[http://www.traffick.com/story/06-2000-xodp.asp Traffick.com - Life After the Open Directory Project] and founded the XODP eGroup[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xodp XODP Yahoo! eGroup] as a free speech forum where ODP expatriates, ODP malcontents, and various other critics of ODP could discuss the future of the open content movement. XODP has since evolved into a business enterprise as well as a think tank and free speech forum for progressive ideas about how content on the Internet should be created and indexed.

After Jimbo Wales posted news of Wikipedia at the XODP eGroup in August of 2002,[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xodp/message/1720 XODP post by Jimbo Wales] Prenatt began contributing to Wikipedia.[http://en.wikichecker.com/user/?t=netesq NetEsq's Contributions to Wikipedia] Prenatt's first contribution to Wikipedia was an anonymous one.[http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Open_Directory_Project&oldid=147167 David Prenatt's first (anonymous) contribution to Wikipedia].. Prenatt is still an occasional contributor to Wikipedia, but he is also a frequent critic. Specifically, Prenatt believes that "project forks" for Wikipedia are long overdue.[http://blog.xodp.org/2007/02/dealing-with-jackasses-at-wikipedia.html XODP Blog - Dealing with Jackasses at Wikipedia and Citizendium]

In addition to providing confidential website evaluations for leading law firms throughout the United States and Canada, Prenatt is a frequent lecturer at Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) programs, providing the larger legal community with basic information about the Internet as well as information about the latest trends in website design, development, and promotion.

• [http://www.netesq.com/ Internet Esquire Home Page]
• [http://www.netesq.com/resume.html Resume of David F. Prenatt, Jr.]
• [http://blog.xodp.org/ XODP Blog]
• [http://xodp.sourceforge.net/ XODP at SourceForge]