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Annotation is now a web standard

hypothes.is

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Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#61

Post by QML »

nostrademons wrote: post #19

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.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

tomatsu wrote: post #16

Does it do anything to prevent spam?

Standard annotation providers will have the same spam-prevention challenges as existing comment/annotation providers; the standard is just a way to link annotations to the annoyed material when the former is maintained with a separate party from the latter.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#63

Post by rrix2 »

detaro wrote: post #40
bluejekyll wrote: post #2

I think this is great news. As someone who blogs irregularly, I don't want to spend a ton of time integrating each discussion area into my site. This seems like it could lead to a very elligent way to automatically get that integration. It would be great to also get notified as discussion is happening in the various sites, without reading the spec, it's not clear to me if that's part of the standard.

For notification of comments on other pages you might be interested in the Webmention spec (which is a lot simpler and has some active use already), which is a modernized take on pingbacks by the community around indieweb.org: https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention (There even are tools already to get notifications about twitter mentions etc. via it)

webmention standard can be integrated with static HTML through webmention.io and brid.gy; it's great for no-nonsense comment integration.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#64

Post by anamoulous »

andrewchambers wrote: post #53
lmm wrote: 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?

For one, the Genius proxy server violates copyright and does not provide an opt-out.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#65

Post by rrix2 »

jccalhoun wrote: post #30
tomatsu wrote: post #16

Does it do anything to prevent spam?

If this is going to be used they will have to figure out how to deal with spam, vandalism, and harassment.

I'm especially worried about harassment, honestly. The fact that your domain can be marked up in a browser with no moderation capabilities is just going to lead to worse gamergate style brigading and harassment.

https://ellacydawson.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/how-news-geniu...

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#66

Post by xg15 »

nostrademons wrote: post #19

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…

> The way actually-successful web features get standardized is that users start clamoring for it, which leads someone to build a hacked-up JS implementation of it, which leads to a company founded around that hacked-up JS implementation, which leads to competition, which leads to browser vendors building it into the browser, which leads to an open standard.

I'm more pessimistic. I'm wondering: Has there actually been a case where the "company founded around that hacked-up JS implementation" for a non-trivial feature did not happen to be one of the browser vendors themselves?

I used to lurk on the WHATWG mailing list and while the amounts of improvements they did to the web cannot be overstated, their descision-making process always seemed to be opaque to put it mildly: Features brought up by users where often debated back and forth without any clear goal until the spec editor basically said "we'll add it" or "we won't add it" with no clear reasons given. Other features "hit the ground running" that were apparently decided elsewhere and were only presented in the mailing list to discuss implementation details.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#67

Post by jdavis703 »

anamoulous wrote: post #64
andrewchambers wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you classify genius as scummy?

For one, the Genius proxy server violates copyright and does not provide an opt-out.

How does a proxy server violate copyright? Maybe I don't understand what exactly Genius is doing, but how is this different from say blocking ad servers in my hosts file?

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#68

Post by gph »

benmarks wrote: post #14

I like the idea of an inherent ability for annotations to exist, but I think the glue will still be annotation (read: comment) vendors. My head hurts trying to conceive of existing commenting platforms facilitating this - especially since they exist in large part due to these ease of integration thanks to their walled central storage. That said, the door for disruption is much more open than before.

Imagine if you could share annotations on a page between a certain facebook group you have, so instead of seeing a public comment annotation section you see only annotations from your group. Doesn't have to be facebook either, I'm guessing a browser plugin will come along that allows groups of people to share annotations, maybe you could even pick and choose whose annotations you want to see.

At least that's how I've imagined what they are trying to get at, haven't honestly looked too hard into the concept.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#69

Post by tyingq »

Reputation management companies are going to love this.

Currently, negative information (even if true) isn't as easily discoverable. This ties it all to every one of your pages. With, as far as I can tell, no direct control over moderation.

I suspect many website owners are more concerned about legit complaints that aren't easily discovered than they are about spam.

And, once reputation mgmt creeps in, that good (but negative) information will be buried with astroturfed annotations.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#70

Post by tyingq »

dragonwriter wrote: post #58
kakarot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It increases the discoverability significantly. The negative information or spam that's not on your site is suddenly...on your site.

It's like making it mandatory for restaurants to have a live updating Yelp! review display scrolling at the front door.

(assuming I understand the proposal correctly...I didn't see much control there for website owners)

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