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Annotation is now a web standard

hypothes.is

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Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#151

Post by deevolution »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #131

Comments you can't turn off and can't moderate and from which you can't ban misbehaving users seem to me like they will turn immediately into a cesspool of hate, bullying and stupidity. You'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now. Free speech, by awful people, is overrated and can result in disasters.

Its a double edged sword. I'm actually working on building an anonymous posting board for facebook where users can switch between their news feed and the anonymous board. Creating a non hateful, troll filled anonymous environment is a mighty challenge, but I dont believe its impossible and thats part of why im attempting to take this on. There are benefits and detriments to every annotation/commenting system out there. Moderation is a high priority, but i havnt been able to come up with a solution. This article also failed to mention how they imagine moderation fitting in. Is it possible to crowd source moderation, rather than centralize it? And can it be done with anonymity?

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#152

Post by libertymcateer »

This is pretty interesting. So, personal story:

* About a year and a half ago, I thought about getting into this field. I built http://lederboard.com as a result - it works pretty well, actually (plenty of bugs behind the curtain) but the idea was to try and open it up as a standard.

* If I do pick lederboard up again, I will likely convert it to use this open standard.

* My goal was always to have the 'features' of lederboard not be in the annotations themselves, but in the moderator controls, the ability to follow sites and specific users, etc., and to basically act like reddit-enhancement-suite for an internet-wide commenting system.

* However, I realized this was a truly tremendous mountain to climb. Like, crazily huge. So I wound up going in a different direction.

In any event, I think that the guys at Genius should take note of this and consider it very seriously. They raised a whole lot of money and, as far as I can tell, this is a direct shot across their bow and it has the backing of W3C, which is huge. I am pretty happy I didn't wind up in the middle of that fight. Though maybe I might get back into at some point.

In the meantime, I am focusing on easy-to-use encryption: http://gibber.it . I think that is probably a little more important right now. For background, I am a practicing attorney with a pretty substantial practice in software, startups, corporate finance and information law.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#153

Post by deadowl »

deevolution wrote: post #151
JulianMorrison wrote: post #131

Comments you can't turn off and can't moderate and from which you can't ban misbehaving users seem to me like they will turn immediately into a cesspool of hate, bullying and stupidity. You'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now. Free speech, by awful people, is overrated and can result in disasters.

Its a double edged sword. I'm actually working on building an anonymous posting board for facebook where users can switch between their news feed and the anonymous board. Creating a non hateful, troll filled anonymous environment is a mighty challenge, but I dont believe its impossible and thats part of why im attempting to take this on. There are benefits and detriments to every annotation/commenting system out ther…

Crowdsourced moderation, like downvote buttons on certain websites, hasn't worked particularly well. Wikipedia probably has the most appropriate moderation model I've come across. I'd mostly be concerned that annotation could become a stalker tool unless services are vetted for moderation.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#154

Post by dwhly »

anamoulous wrote: post #72
jdavis703 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://genius.it/11417147/news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1374...

The key difference is that proxy servers don't copy content. They reflect it. You can put any URL on the internet behind a proxy server-- that does not mean that the proxy server has already copied the entire internet. Nor does it mean that once a URL has been proxied by a proxy server does the content remain cached or copied-- since in our case at Hypothesis, and we presume at Genius, it does not.

This is a key distinction that separates proxies from caches and archives.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#155

Post by dwhly »

PeterisP wrote: post #132
dwhly wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the goal of making it a standard, and one in particular where annotation clients could listen to multiple annotation service providers, is precisely to avoid "Annotation Central". Our client does not currently operate this way, but our intention is to move that direction this year. Many underlying architectural changes are being made now to support that change.

Okay, to make this proposal work in practice initially, we do need some annotation service provider(s). Who is both (a) eager to be one and do the integration before there is a market/large community and (b) is trustworthy enough to be included by default in the largest likely annotation clients such as the major web browsers?

To state the obvious-- Hypothesis is eager, and is running one. If we can be so bold, we think we are also trustworthy. We knew that this could not work unless we also created a service.

We welcome all others.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#156

Post by sethish »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #131

Comments you can't turn off and can't moderate and from which you can't ban misbehaving users seem to me like they will turn immediately into a cesspool of hate, bullying and stupidity. You'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now. Free speech, by awful people, is overrated and can result in disasters.

But that's generally not how annotator.js is ever implemented. It has user authentication backends (several last I checked). And it is usually used within small teams in apps like http://www.annotationstudio.org/

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#157

Post by dwhly »

strictnein wrote: post #144

To be honest, this sounds horrid: https://www.w3.org/annotation/diagrams/annotation-architectu... An easy prediction: with wide usage of this, any page that generates a non-trivial amount of traffic will be in such a state as to make reading the annotations pointless at best.

I disagree. Dealing with large volumes of annotations is a UX challenge, but a very solvable one. Certainly current implementations don't handle pages w/ 10s of thousands or millions of annotations (think: the bible), but neither do traditional comment widgets.

Happy to have a more thoughtful discussion if you're interested.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#158

Post by anamoulous »

dwhly wrote: post #154
anamoulous wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://genius.it/11417147/news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1374...

The key difference is that proxy servers don't copy content. They reflect it. You can put any URL on the internet behind a proxy server-- that does not mean that the proxy server has already copied the entire internet. Nor does it mean that once a URL has been proxied by a proxy server does the content remain cached or copied-- since in our case at Hypothesis, and we presume at Genius, it does not. This is a key dist…

This does more than proxy, the genius proxy alters not just the underlying code that makes the content, it alters the way the content is intended to be consumed.

Re: Annotation is now a web standard

#159

Post by JulianMorrison »

deadowl wrote: post #153
deevolution wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a double edged sword. I'm actually working on building an anonymous posting board for facebook where users can switch between their news feed and the anonymous board. Creating a non hateful, troll filled anonymous environment is a mighty challenge, but I dont believe its impossible and thats part of why im attempting to take this on. There are benefits and detriments to every annotation/commenting system out ther…

Crowdsourced moderation, like downvote buttons on certain websites, hasn't worked particularly well. Wikipedia probably has the most appropriate moderation model I've come across. I'd mostly be concerned that annotation could become a stalker tool unless services are vetted for moderation.

Crowdsourced moderation always results in groupthink, without exception. If you don't forcibly specify and ruthlessly enforce the groupthink as something respectful, considerate, reasoned and elevated, then you will get Nazis, and you will turn into Reddit. This is an iron law of the internet.
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