Freeing the Web from the Browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#71

Post by here-for-karma » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #55

machiaweliczny wrote: post #30

I would love a web where you can comment with your forum circle on any URI available on internet. Eg. I open some research paper and I click "comments" in web browsers. And I see comments from /r/machinelearning, hackernews etc. Also real time chat would be awesome to have for each of websites. Nowadays it work for me like this - found something interesting X - type "X site:myforum" in google to learn more about it F…

That could erase forum-ness of people and turn comments into a big heap of voices. Personally I wouldn’t like my forums if they were just a random people hanging around. Moderators and implicit rules do form what a forum is, what you do on it , but with “just comments on URI” all will be lost. While your wish feels great, it has downsides, since as an entire humanity we’re still not ready to discuss anything.

Could maybe try some machine learning for moderation. I'd imagine the non-contributors share some amount of the same communication patterns.

Every time I see a problem that requires a lot of repetitive work that most people would not like to spend a lot of time doing, I always try to think of how it could be automated with computers that don't get tired

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#72

Post by dosy » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

machiaweliczny wrote: post #30

I would love a web where you can comment with your forum circle on any URI available on internet. Eg. I open some research paper and I click "comments" in web browsers. And I see comments from /r/machinelearning, hackernews etc. Also real time chat would be awesome to have for each of websites. Nowadays it work for me like this - found something interesting X - type "X site:myforum" in google to learn more about it F…

This utopian alternative is probably the internet the search engines fear, so the current consensus that this would make things "too messy" is presumably what the search engines want you to think.

But wouldn't it be the embodiment of the original dream of a decentralized, democratized web? Where loose collectives of people can self-organize their content, discussion and publishing around shared topics of interest, with minimal outside interference?

If I were a big search incumbent, I'd buy the patent/ startup to this, and put it on a shelf someplace no one would ever see. And I'd keep doing this everytime it was independently developed, until I had such a strangle hold on the global internet / the regulation was so locked down, that this sort of upstart decentralized "siloless / nomadic / free ranging" discussion / open hypermedia system could never come to be.

Thank god we don't live in that kind of a world, where just a few internet companies control and determine the majority of the world's interactions with the internet. Oh, wait...

Thinking about it...Somehow I don't think it was the browser's fault. The problem, I think, was that governments were too weak / slow / isolationist to ensure the internet be preserved as a true public resource / global commons. Sad. But I'm sure the story is not over. Not yet.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#73

Post by wpietri » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #68

machiaweliczny wrote: post #30

I would love a web where you can comment with your forum circle on any URI available on internet. Eg. I open some research paper and I click "comments" in web browsers. And I see comments from /r/machinelearning, hackernews etc. Also real time chat would be awesome to have for each of websites. Nowadays it work for me like this - found something interesting X - type "X site:myforum" in google to learn more about it F…

there have been dozen of solutions like this since the 90s that came and went. specially during the "browser toolbar era". and there migth be new one poping up now. in the end it is a privacy nightmare. see stylish extension privacy problems last months.

Yup. Circa 2000 I remember talking with one of those entrepreneurs about joining. He was so sure that being able to comment on everything was a the next step forward in the web. At the time I found the idea both intriguing and suspicious, but the guy, a former surgeon, was such an obvious pain in the ass to work with that it ended for me there.

In retrospect, I recognize it as part of a common genre: grand ideas that are necessary only in theory, not in practice. It's easy enough to add commenting to any web page if the owner wants. It's easy enough to discuss any web page elsewhere, like here. And the grand idea treats good discussion as equivalent to global randos posting comments, which is demonstrably false. Real discussions are gardens that require careful tending.

My first defense now against grand ideas is, "That sounds cool, but who needs it enough to pay regularly for it? And why would this be better for that person than whatever they're doing now?" It turns out that many grand ideas only make sense from a 40,000-foot perspective; if you look at it from the point of view of somebody on the ground, it's obviously just a fuzzy cloud.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#74

Post by masukomi » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

did i miss something or does this article COMPLETELY ignore the amazing possibility for abuse this opens up?

Now any a-hole can make a public link in your page (or whatever future form that takes)? Nah, no way _that_ could go wrong. The word "abuse" appears literally zero times in the 200 page pdf.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#75

Post by romaniv » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

xtf wrote: post #64

Most documents are linked regarding the topic. If you go on a math page, you've got math links. Ancient and holy texts could be referenced in multiple ways, because it could be interpreted in multiple ways (or the correct way is unknown), but not something like guides. If a guide is written in more than one meaning, it is not a good guide. Learning should be more seen like a tree, you go down the route of branches an…

The simplest counter-example is Wikipedia. Most links on any page could lead to generic term definitions, or they could link to explanations of how those terms work withing the context of the page.

I.e. a link to "synthesizers" on a page about FM synthesis could lead to a generic article on synthesizers, or to a list of FM synthesizers released up to date.

And that's just the most obvious example. Having different "linking contexts" would allow to add more links without turning the original document into a mess.

Again, using Wikipedia as an example, you could add another "context" to the page by linking various paragraphs to citations. That would be much more user-friendly than what they do right now with bracketed numbers.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#76

Post by jhbadger » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #10

While this is somewhat cool, I have a few comments: > The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices and catalogues to find what they are looking for. True, but most people aren't researchers. Heck, I think most people don't even know what indices are :) > The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are mere…

The majority of people may not be professional researchers, but the Web certainly has encouraged amateur research, even on seemingly frivolous topics. There are countless wikis detailing every single character and place in movies, cartoons, and video games. Before the Web, this would have required physical conferences, actual paper publications, and so on. Some of this of course existed (think SF conventions and fanzines) but on a much smaller scale.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#77

Post by tim333 » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

>One could imagine a system in which multiple sets of links could be associated with a single resource to accommodate this, allowing for a range of different viewpoints on how things are connected.

You can kind of do it yourself by quoting the thing in a public comment eg "Freeing the Web from the Browser" https://www.reinterpretcast.com/open-hypermedia

and then saying it reminds me of whatever eg. the semantic web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web a bit

Then anyone gooling the title may come across stuff like this.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#78

Post by joesavage » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

masukomi wrote: post #74

did i miss something or does this article COMPLETELY ignore the amazing possibility for abuse this opens up? Now any a-hole can make a public link in your page (or whatever future form that takes)? Nah, no way _that_ could go wrong. The word "abuse" appears literally zero times in the 200 page pdf.

Abuse of this sort of functionality is definitely something I've thought about, but discussions around these sorts of ecosystem issues weren't my focus in this work. Ultimately, there are solutions. For starters, you almost certainly don't want every link or comment from any user to show up automatically for everyone the instant it is made. There's a fantastic comment by user 'enkiv2' over on lobste.rs about this (relating to design decisions around Xanadu) that also roughly reflects the kinds of assumptions that I've been making in my prototyping about how this might work in practice: https://lobste.rs/s/p0sgoj/freeing_web_from_browser#c_vivphl

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#79

Post by hiccuphippo » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

machiaweliczny wrote: post #30

I would love a web where you can comment with your forum circle on any URI available on internet. Eg. I open some research paper and I click "comments" in web browsers. And I see comments from /r/machinelearning, hackernews etc. Also real time chat would be awesome to have for each of websites. Nowadays it work for me like this - found something interesting X - type "X site:myforum" in google to learn more about it F…

I remember there used to be a Firefox extension that added comments/wiki per url. The problem is lack of popularity.

Something that integrates the HN/Reddit thread about a url to the side might work and might not need the mass of users since it's using the other platforms for the comments.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#80

Post by vxNsr » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

masukomi wrote: post #74

did i miss something or does this article COMPLETELY ignore the amazing possibility for abuse this opens up? Now any a-hole can make a public link in your page (or whatever future form that takes)? Nah, no way _that_ could go wrong. The word "abuse" appears literally zero times in the 200 page pdf.

This is exactly where my mind went, the amount of spam even small time bloggers have to contend with in their comment sections is astounding, now imagine if every page on the internet had a comment section and no filtering, or moderation.... Even today youtube comments suck because of the near total lack of moderation.

Even sites like this one or the verge with paid and volunteer moderators who in theory monitor things 24/7 I still see useless spam. I'm not even talking about individual people with opinions some might find offensive, I mean just outright spam advertising.