Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

web.hypothes.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#11

Post by tannhaeuser »

xnx wrote: post #5

I've long felt that annotation was one of the greatest missed opportunities of the web. Every major content website implements commenting differently and often poorly. I'd much prefer to have comments come from a third party system where I can: own my own comments, not be subject to removal by the author of the content, and choose the group of people I want to discuss with. Imagine if hackernews discussions appeared…

HTML hyperlinks as they are - unidirectional - are a very long standing design decision the last futile revision of which was in 1099 or so with XLink. You probably have it seen in action with SVG-in-HTML (and SVG fragment inclusion in SVG itself) where it kindof rears its ugly head in that, for the longest time, you had to use xlink:href (with xlink bound to the XLink XML namespace). XLink itself is based on SGML/HyTime concepts from 1990s. I believe Sun back then patent-encumbered XPointer (which is the part of XLink for addressing fragments), and especially claimed IP rights on its representation of range addressing, which didn't help to make it popular I guess.

Before changing HTML link semantics though, HTML should really consider allowing placing href on any element rather than using the dedicated element though (with the expectation that this acts equivalently to an anchor link), like MathML does.

In general, I'm not sure hosting discussions on third-party aggregators such as discus.com is really a win for privacy, though.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#12

Post by tannhaeuser »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #11
xnx wrote: post #5

I've long felt that annotation was one of the greatest missed opportunities of the web. Every major content website implements commenting differently and often poorly. I'd much prefer to have comments come from a third party system where I can: own my own comments, not be subject to removal by the author of the content, and choose the group of people I want to discuss with. Imagine if hackernews discussions appeared…

HTML hyperlinks as they are - unidirectional - are a very long standing design decision the last futile revision of which was in 1099 or so with XLink. You probably have it seen in action with SVG-in-HTML (and SVG fragment inclusion in SVG itself) where it kindof rears its ugly head in that, for the longest time, you had to use xlink:href (with xlink bound to the XLink XML namespace). XLink itself is based on SGML/Hy…

Edit: 1999 lol

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#14

Post by ncr100 »

Does this fingerprint text to be annotated and collect annotations, allowing the "top rated annotation" to be the most strongly "trusted" annotation for this unique slice of text?

And does it ensure the integrity of the text, so that no bad actor may modify the text to turn it into "fake news"?

I think that ^^ could help diminish corruption of knowledge / the negative impact of information distribution which the Internet enables.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#15

Post by jchook »

Vinnl wrote: post #6
smarx007 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly on a tangent, but https://github.com/hypothesis/h/issues/777 could be a good target for https://solidproject.org/ to address. The Web Annotation Vocabulary is defined in RDF, so there should be zero overhead.

I'm not entirely up-to-date on the annotation spec, but if all that's needed is to host the annotations somewhere, then Solid should already support that. It's just not really clear to me how a user should find out that there are annotations about a page available somewhere. (I work with Solid.)

This seems pretty critical. I imagine the concept of annotations would benefit from "communities" of annotators who have a common interest.

Otherwise popular pages may get annotation overload and have a poor news-to-noise ratio.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#16

Post by kirubakaran »

armitron wrote: post #10
kirubakaran wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I'm working on exactly this with https://histre.com/

We've had enough problems stemming from the powerful parasitic middlemen that have ruined the Internet, we don't need more of them. Why would I ever give you my data? Because you promise not to sell it? Sorry that's not going to fly.

I understand. Thanks for the feedback. I think about this too.

I'm not an anonymous person. I've been a Hacker News user since the very beginning. I share my contact info in my profile. My reputation is my livelihood. I've never done anything shady and don't intend to start now :-) So I'd like to believe that people see that judge for themselves whether to trust me or not.

Knowing who is behind a product, at least for me personally, makes a difference. Just a couple of days ago I started a Youtube channel to openly talk about my thoughts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHkgOonAQd5haT8HHJhpg6g

But yeah I hear your concerns, and I respect your decision to not use my app.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#17

Post by kirubakaran »

shigeo wrote: post #8
kirubakaran wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I'm working on exactly this with https://histre.com/

Nice idea! Some cheapshots: 1. The comments aspect of this doesn't really jump out at me from the landing page. 2. The words "knowledge base" scare most people. 3. "You will be our customer and we promise to treat you the way we’d like to be treated too… with respect" is much more ominous with ellipsis than it would be with an em dash or a colon.

Thank you. Great points. I'll fix that.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#18

Post by onyva »

My biggest problem with it was the lack of support for frames. Many sites I use serve documents in frames making hypothes.is unable to see them. Also, why not work with NextCloud and create an app to annotate documents there. NextCloud over public or private share?

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#20

Post by kls »

kirubakaran wrote: post #16
armitron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had enough problems stemming from the powerful parasitic middlemen that have ruined the Internet, we don't need more of them. Why would I ever give you my data? Because you promise not to sell it? Sorry that's not going to fly.

I understand. Thanks for the feedback. I think about this too. I'm not an anonymous person. I've been a Hacker News user since the very beginning. I share my contact info in my profile. My reputation is my livelihood. I've never done anything shady and don't intend to start now :-) So I'd like to believe that people see that judge for themselves whether to trust me or not. Knowing who is behind a product, at least fo…

The problem is the change with success. Page and Brin where once idealistic hackers and even came up with a catch phrase of "Don't be evil", fast forward and it did not work and the reality is it probably had very little to do with them. Success and size whittle away at idealistic visions. You need to put together a framework before you are successful, on how you are going to enforce that your core values reflect with success and size and it has to have teeth. I am confident you are a good person and you are idealistic. The problem is, that you won't always be steering the ship.
Post reply on HN