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Google Sidewiki

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Re: Google Sidewiki

#91

Post by crazygringo »

phatfish wrote: post #72
bastawhiz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I desperately do not want this to succeed. Who moderates it? No moderation means a fractal of spam, hate, propaganda, and low-value posts. You cannot have a system like this that's resistant to Sybil attacks without centralization or federation (or at least not without forcing users to get into crypto to use it... No thanks). You either accept that it's centralized, and it becomes siloed (see: reddit, Twitter) or you…

Yup it sounds awful, at least with Reddit and to a much lesser extent Twitter the conversation is kept somewhat in control by people having to subscribe to a Subreddit or follow accounts that interest them. Imagine the signal to noise ratio on some random NY Times article, or any other moderately popular website. I expect most people are thankful the NY Times only enables comments on selected articles.

> Imagine the signal to noise ratio on some random NY Times article

Yes, it's pretty fine on the articles they enable it for. They're sorted by upvotes so the first few comments are usually pretty decent. There's no reason to think it would be different on the articles they don't enable it for, since they're enabled on a wide range of types of articles (straight news, divisive opinion, etc.).

> I expect most people are thankful the NY Times only enables comments on selected articles.

I think it's the exact complete opposite -- nobody is thankful for that. Comments don't appear unless you click to open the comments panel, so anybody who never wants to see comments, never does. But of course people who do want to see comments, are prevented from doing so if they haven't been enabled.

Re: Google Sidewiki

#92

Post by ListenLinda »

udkl wrote: post #66
albertzeyer wrote: post #45

There are browser extensions like Reddit Check or What Hacker News Says which will show Reddit and/or HN comments on any website you visit. So it's very similar in functionality. Sometimes it can be useful. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-check/mllce... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/what-hacker-news-s... There are more variants of these extensions.

See also : https://hypothes.is A lesser known but great tool

Where is the self-hosted variant?

Re: Google Sidewiki

#93

Post by andromeduck »

bastawhiz wrote: post #67
crazygringo wrote: post #42

I also desperately want something like this to succeed. I want to be able to see others' reactions on all NYTimes articles, for example, not just the handful each day they enable comments on, or the occasional one submitted to HN. And I want it to have all of the standard functionality -- hierarchical comments (like HN and Reddit), upvoting and downvoting, auto-collapsing tangential threads with less votes (like Redd…

I desperately do not want this to succeed. Who moderates it? No moderation means a fractal of spam, hate, propaganda, and low-value posts. You cannot have a system like this that's resistant to Sybil attacks without centralization or federation (or at least not without forcing users to get into crypto to use it... No thanks). You either accept that it's centralized, and it becomes siloed (see: reddit, Twitter) or you…

I want it to be a small-ish group of people I care about.

Re: Google Sidewiki

#95

Post by Accujack »

zeryx wrote: post #90
bastawhiz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, those would be the lists of approved channels that clients use Who moderates the list of channels? Who decides which curated lists of channels are available? > most people won't be viewing channels that don't moderate. Who decides the moderation policies? Who enforces that the moderators are doing their jobs, nominates new ones, and fires ineffective ones? > Does that make sense? Nothing you described is techn…

I know crypto is a curse word here, but what you're describing is literally a perfect use case for IPFS and a DAO

...or just basic public key crypto for non repudiation and authorization of admin actions.

Re: Google Sidewiki

#96

Post by Accujack »

crazygringo wrote: post #75
bastawhiz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I desperately do not want this to succeed. Who moderates it? No moderation means a fractal of spam, hate, propaganda, and low-value posts. You cannot have a system like this that's resistant to Sybil attacks without centralization or federation (or at least not without forcing users to get into crypto to use it... No thanks). You either accept that it's centralized, and it becomes siloed (see: reddit, Twitter) or you…

OK, let's spitball. Maybe too much for an HN comment, but here we go: - Define an open protocol - There are multiple viewers (browser plug-ins), so different users can choose a different viewing/comment ranking interface experience - There are multiple "channels" of comments for any piece of content, but usually channels will be topic-wide, sitewide, or even internet-wide. All content for a channel comes from a singl…

I agree with your idea - I've been working on a similar one for a while.

However, what you write above could almost completely describe USENET news groups. Learning what worked for USENET news and what did not will give you a starting place for this idea.

For the most part, USENET discussions worked just as well as Reddit discussions according to the skill and motivation of the moderators, although that was the very early net and most of those involved were educated white men, not teenagers or nations engaging in information warfare.

I'm continuing to work on a design for a federated discussion system just because I think the world needs discussion boards that aren't bound by national law or corporate desire any more than necessary.

However, I think the original intent of the sidewiki stuff was slightly different. That said, they could be a combined system, with one presentation of the various groups/subs/channels being via a reddit like website, and another being a side bar attached to a web browser window. It depends on what is being discussed.

Re: Google Sidewiki

#97

Post by _def »

paradaux wrote: post #51
crazygringo wrote: post #42

I also desperately want something like this to succeed. I want to be able to see others' reactions on all NYTimes articles, for example, not just the handful each day they enable comments on, or the occasional one submitted to HN. And I want it to have all of the standard functionality -- hierarchical comments (like HN and Reddit), upvoting and downvoting, auto-collapsing tangential threads with less votes (like Redd…

Your url comment reminds me of the concept of the semantic web [0] Whereby we can have a structured machine readable and pure URL structure backed by ontology and linked data. There's a project that is working on this for Wikipedia called Dbpedia. [1] [0] Unfortunately this concept has been completely bastardized by random research groups shoehorning the technology for EU grants, from my experience working in one suc…

That reminds me of Wikidata[0], which aims to be a general purpose semantic knowledge graph, which runs on Wikibase[1], a MediaWiki extension set that you can run yourself for any collection of data.

[0] https://wikidata.org/

[1] https://wikiba.se/

Re: Google Sidewiki

#98

Post by vineyardmike »

zeryx wrote: post #90
bastawhiz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, those would be the lists of approved channels that clients use Who moderates the list of channels? Who decides which curated lists of channels are available? > most people won't be viewing channels that don't moderate. Who decides the moderation policies? Who enforces that the moderators are doing their jobs, nominates new ones, and fires ineffective ones? > Does that make sense? Nothing you described is techn…

I know crypto is a curse word here, but what you're describing is literally a perfect use case for IPFS and a DAO

How would IPFS help here? IPFS is a data-replication utility - it doesn't work well for mutable data (eg. comments).

Re: Google Sidewiki

#99

Post by _def »

bastawhiz wrote: post #81
LightBug1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who moderates wikipedia?

Editors, controlled by a (mostly benevolent) centralized authority

I really don't think that is the case, but I'm interested to hear why you think it is. In my understanding the community is not controlled by a central authority.

Re: Google Sidewiki

#100

Post by defrun »

wpietri wrote: post #77
crazygringo wrote: post #42

I also desperately want something like this to succeed. I want to be able to see others' reactions on all NYTimes articles, for example, not just the handful each day they enable comments on, or the occasional one submitted to HN. And I want it to have all of the standard functionality -- hierarchical comments (like HN and Reddit), upvoting and downvoting, auto-collapsing tangential threads with less votes (like Redd…

Funnily, this is an idea that keeps recurring. I talked with a would-be founder circa 1999 who wanted a discussion sidebar for every website. He too was excited about wresting control of the experience of a site from the site's owners. My memory is kinda fuzzy here, but I think this is what the idea turned into: https://web.archive.org/web/20000301142549/http://www.shopto... It looks like it went from being a global…

> a much clearer revenue model

can you please explain the business model?

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