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Annotation is now a web standard

hypothes.is

51–60 of 164 posts

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#51
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anyone using these? Annotations? Definitely. At least one member of the Hypothesis team came from Genius (formerly Rap Genius) which is the largest annotation service on the web.

Largest on the Web sure. But have you ever seen them on a non-scummy site? I haven't.

Some sites integrate the Genius JS code directly but they don't have to. As a user, you can freely annotate (nearly) any page on the web with the bookmarklet. I made numerous annotations on the famous Bloomberg "Code" article which you can see on the page at [1] or in summary from the page at [2].

For [1] to work, you need to either run the bookmarklet or Chrome extension. This isn't the norm though; most annotated pages can be viewed directly from the genius link, and you can even link directly to a specific annotation, for example [3].

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-co...

[2]: https://genius.com/summary/www.bloomberg.com%2Fgraphics%2F20...

[3]: http://genius.it/7163911/www.theverge.com/2015/6/24/8836087/...

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anyone using these? Annotations? Definitely. At least one member of the Hypothesis team came from Genius (formerly Rap Genius) which is the largest annotation service on the web.

Largest on the Web sure. But have you ever seen them on a non-scummy site? I haven't.

Why do you classify genius as scummy?

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#54

Is anyone using these? The blog post is put out by a company I've never heard of, and the credits listed on it include nobody who works on a browser, no major websites, and no comment-widget company. Historically, web standards where a committee gets together and decides how a feature is going to look without the buy-in of users or browser vendors have a very poor track record of adoption. The way actually-successful…

Only place I've seen them used has been to annotate the notes of a deep learning course at Stanford. http://cs231n.github.io/

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#55
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anyone using these? Annotations? Definitely. At least one member of the Hypothesis team came from Genius (formerly Rap Genius) which is the largest annotation service on the web.

Largest on the Web sure. But have you ever seen them on a non-scummy site? I haven't.

Genius is a non-scummy site, turned itself around ages ago.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#56
post #46

Federated comments/annotations sound really cool from a developer's point of view, but also seem like a nightmare for publishers. If you cede administrative control over the comments on your site, how do you control trolls/attacks/spam/etc.? Services like hypothes.is can do some filtering automatically, but this is missing the level above that - editorial privileges on comments on your own domain.

Perhaps the filtering would also be done by a third party. This isn't entirely foreign now: if you write an article online, you can't control the comments on reddit, HN or 4chan. However, users have some control over which comments they see, in that they can select which sources of comments they want, and each source has different moderation policies. The roles of publishing content and moderating comments are totally de-coupled from each other.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#57
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largest on the Web sure. But have you ever seen them on a non-scummy site? I haven't.

Why do you classify genius as scummy?

I'm on mobile, and all I'm getting are AMP links (ugh), but there are a lot of results when you google "Rap Genius controversy".

They tried dirty SEO tactics that Google ultimately punished them for, and their staff have made off-color remarks in the past. There's a lot more if you search for it.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#58
post #49
post #46

Federated comments/annotations sound really cool from a developer's point of view, but also seem like a nightmare for publishers. If you cede administrative control over the comments on your site, how do you control trolls/attacks/spam/etc.? Services like hypothes.is can do some filtering automatically, but this is missing the level above that - editorial privileges on comments on your own domain.

This is a moderator's worst nightmare. I don't think anybody on this team has ever had to deal with spam or brigading before.

It just decouples commenting communities from publishers of the content being commented on, it doesn't change (increase or decrease) the work required or tools available for moderation. In effect, it just provides a standard structure for consumer-driven discovery of what already happens in off-site discussions that already happen (e.g., via sharing and dicussing the source on social media.)

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#60

Is anyone using these? The blog post is put out by a company I've never heard of, and the credits listed on it include nobody who works on a browser, no major websites, and no comment-widget company. Historically, web standards where a committee gets together and decides how a feature is going to look without the buy-in of users or browser vendors have a very poor track record of adoption. The way actually-successful…

I use it because I like to highlight text whether its a news article, online text book, or HN comment. Then the next time I reference the material I already have the content I need.
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