
Annotation is now a web standard - kawera
https://hypothes.is/blog/annotation-is-now-a-web-standard/
======
nostrademons
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 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.

Trying to skip steps doesn't seem to work. If you build the feature without
users who want it, nobody will use it. If you build the company without the
prototype, you won't get a working implementation. If you build it into the
browser when there's a dominant monopoly company, people will continue to use
the company rather than the browser's version (this is the story of Google vs.
IE+Bing & Facebook vs. RSS & semantic web). If you standardize it before it's
been adopted by multiple browsers, people will ignore the standard (this is
the story of RDF, the semantic web, and countless other W3C features that have
fallen into the dustbin of history).

And if any one of those parties are not at the table when the standard is
written, they'll ignore the standard anyway.

~~~
flexie
First, this would require that the browser vendors adopt the standard, right?
How long time does that usually take? Is it a few months for Chrome/Firefox
and a few years for Safari/IE, or how would that usually play out?

~~~
Yaggo
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. Safari has one year release cycle for major
versions. IE isn't getting new features, but Edge is updated much more
frequently than IE ever was.

------
gaxun
I spent about 40 hours in December and January implementing a browser
extension for Chrome and a server that speak the web annotation protocol and
use the web annotation data model in this specification.

It was very easy to pass the tests the W3C working group used to verify that
they had two working implementations of the data model and protocol. Most of
the test default to passing if the specified tag is not present. Basically,
it's not clear whether a serious, real attempt to use this has been made. I'm
unconvinced that the specification is robust enough to be useful without
ending up with a lot of vendor lock-in.

The toy extension was playing around with using these annotations to alert
publishers and potentially other users of typos in their articles and pages.
It would be nice to have a side channel to report typos other than just using
the comment section or trying to find an email address. Will the "meta web"
ever catch on?

I never published it but I still might add a page about my experience on my
website. I have posted about the idea there before.

~~~
gaxun
I'm not sure where else to complain so I will just leave this example here. I
was frustrated reading the specification because it contradicts itself.

The data model has a required field called `id` which is an IRI (like a URI)
that is basically a globally unique identifier.

The protocol allows an annotation to be transmitted _without_ the `id` field
attached.

Why? Is the field required or not.

In my toy implementation I had my browser client attach a v4 UUID as the `id`
field before sending it to my server. But it would have still been valid
without it.

~~~
gsnedders
> I'm not sure where else to complain so I will just leave this example here.

All of the specs, in their "Status of the Document" section, say:

> This document was published by the Web Annotation Working Group as a
> Recommendation. If you wish to make comments regarding this document, please
> send them to public-annotation@w3.org (subscribe, archives). All comments
> are welcome.

I'd guess, therefore, you should complain there (I have no idea if you have; I
haven't looked through the archives!). Of course, there are plenty of W3C
groups where specs have became pretty much totally abandoned as soon as
they've reached REC, so it's totally plausible nothing will happen. :( (This
tends to come about because groups are chartered to work on specs and bring
them along the REC-track till they reach REC; unless a further version is
being worked on there isn't necessarily any group actually with maintenance of
the spec in-scope.)

~~~
gaxun
I tried emailing two of the names listed at the time, for two different
purposes. I got a little bit of a response from one, nothing from the other.

I read the "rules" for W3C groups and in order to actually participate you
need to be a member of a big organization and all this other stuff. I'm not
sure anyone would have listened.

~~~
gsnedders
Almost all W3C groups nowadays do almost all their work in public on public
mailing lists; actually being a member of the WG is rarely a requirement for
participation.

And if it was sent between the spec becoming a Candidate Recommendation and
going to Proposed Recommendation, it must (in theory) have been addressed. If
not, something's gone wrong process-wise with how the group was operating (and
from poking around a bit, it seems likely it did). Le sigh. :\

~~~
gaxun
Thank you for the explanation. This has been my only experience with the W3C
system and as an outsider it was very intimidating. I'm certainly willing to
accept the idea that I wasn't going about things the right way or
understanding what I was reading!

~~~
gsnedders
Many of the smaller, newer groups with fewer people with a background in the
W3C end up being somewhat dysfunctional and with odd processes and that almost
certainly makes it feel harder to participate than it should be.

From prodding around a bit (notably [0], which sadly _is_ in Member-only
space, but plenty of administrivia is there, and in principle no technical
work for almost all groups), it seems like every issue reported to the Working
Group (regardless of where) should have ended up with a GitHub issue, with [1]
being meant to have been all issues while the specs were in CR.

Pointing in the specs to a mailing list to report issues, and then relying on
someone to copy them into GitHub, seems doomed to fail: it's far, far too easy
for one thing to not get copied. Really the "Status of the Document" should've
pointed to GitHub for new issues being filed (possibly with a fallback to the
mailing list for those unable to use GitHub for organisational or other
reasons).

[0]:
[https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/chairs/2016OctDec/0143....](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/chairs/2016OctDec/0143.html)
[1]: [https://github.com/w3c/web-
annotation/milestone/3?closed=1](https://github.com/w3c/web-
annotation/milestone/3?closed=1)

------
blueyes
I know Dan Whaley, the author of the post, personally. This is not about
promoting a company. This is about allowing people with knowledge to combat
fake news. He has been working to make annotation a web standard for years.
The fake news that he, in particular, is worried about is climate change
denial. The pages of the WSJ and much of the Web are riddled with BS. This
annotation enablement will allow, for example, climate scientists to set up
channels that annotate the falsehoods and point to credible sources and facts.

~~~
skywhopper
How will these annotations be seen by anyone not already on board with the
message? Maybe that's all that it's for? If not, how do you keep it from being
overloaded by trolls?

~~~
hakanito
It would be interesting to have some kind of wikipedia system together with
the annotation stuff. Community edited fact checking. "Wikifacts"

------
mcbits
This is the first I've heard of this annotation initiative, so maybe I'm
misunderstanding... Annotations are tied to a particular location within the
content but maintained independently of the content and publisher?

What happens if the content changes? Random example: Someone highlights a
picture of salad and notes "my favorite food!" and then the publisher changes
the image to show roadkill instead of salad.

~~~
gaxun
There is no built-in detection of content changes in the standard, but it is
designed to be potentially robust to changes.

It depends what type of specifier you use. The data model provides a number of
specifier types. A "text position selector" would lock in the annotation at a
certain point in the text like the 142nd character. An "xpath selector" would
use a DOM-like notation to place the annotation.

If your annotation is a "highlight" then you would need to use these selectors
within a "range selector" with a specified start and end point.

If you want your annotations to be robust to content changes, you will
probably need to use multiple specifier types. This is allowed by the
specification but it felt very clumsy to me to implement.

If the target is available at multiple URLs, there is something available to
handle it, but the hosts of the content need to add links to the canonical URL
so your annotation software can use that.

------
robbles
Federated comments/annotations sound really cool from a developer's point of
view, but also seem like a nightmare for publishers. If you cede
administrative control over the comments on your site, how do you control
trolls/attacks/spam/etc.?

Services like hypothes.is can do some filtering automatically, but this is
missing the level above that - editorial privileges on comments on your own
domain.

~~~
kakarot
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
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.)

~~~
tyingq
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)

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

It's more like AR technology existing and allowing consumers to have any
review source they choose accessible and popping up live reviews as they walk
by businesses (actually, without the actual AR part, mobile virtual assistance
like Google Now provide that _today_ based on geolocation, so much it's really
something that already exists in physical space extending into cyberspace);
but, yes, you control your content, but not what other people say about your
content, and not how other people find and share what other people have said
about your content.

~~~
tyingq
I'm assuming browsers will implement this natively, with a default provider,
much like they do search engines.

I'm not saying it's necessarily bad.

It is, though, more discoverable than anything preceding it in this space,
assuming browsers leverage it. It would likely create a fair amount of churn.

------
soheil
A lot of startups/websites exist solely and sometimes to a large extend
because there is no standard annotation capability on the web, e.g.
Stumbleupon, Reddit, Hackernews! (Medium highlights), comment sections on any
page (even NY Times articles!) Sites not having direct control over which
comments should stay and surface to the top and which ones should go is going
to be huge.

In my opinion this will open up the web immensely and make the web much more
democratic, will be interesting to see how major players react.

~~~
skybrian
Or maybe 4chan will have fun with it for a while, and then everyone else will
decide it's a cesspit and turn it off? I don't see anything in the proposal
about how comments get moderated.

In the meantime, we can keep using Hacker News.

~~~
deevolution
Should the author have the privelage of moderating their comments? They could
shave off all the comments that threaten the authors argument. Suddenly its
become a single sided debate.

~~~
grzm
It's a complex subject, isn't it? I can see that possibly be an issue, and
some might abuse it, just as others may use annotations in an abusive fashion
as well. I can sympathize with sites wanting to some level of moderation, at
least to remove abuse. How one does that is a challenge.

~~~
tikl1
As said in others answers, there will be multiple annotations sources so each
one will have it's own moderation to do and users will have the choice to
subscribe to any or all of them.

Therefore the moderation will not have anything to do with the content owner.
It's comparable to reddit or HN : would you complain that content owner have
no control over discussion about their content on those sites ?

------
hyperion2010
Congrats to all the hypothes.is folks and everyone who worked on this!

I have been working with the hypothes.is folks for almost 2 years and have
been using hypothes.is for manual tagging and automated annotation so I'm a
bit biased. I have seen criticism that the standardization process was
premature but given how hard it is to get browser vendors to implement things
I think this could make a difference. That said, the way Microsoft did their
annotation in Edge was just to take pictures of sites.

One of my hopes is that things like annotation can pull us back from the brink
of the javascript apocalypse since it is very hard to annotate arbitrary
states of a running program.

------
state
I first met someone working on hypothes.is at a party about, I don't know,
eight years ago? Ten years ago? They pitched me more or less this exact idea.
It seemed interesting at the time.

Is this really how long it takes to realize something like this? Sort of
boggles my mind.

~~~
macintux
Given how many years Ted Nelson spent on (the admittedly more ambitious)
Xanadu concept, it doesn't overly surprise me.

------
foxhedgehog
I've been wanting to provide a high-fidelity many-to-many commenting system
inside of a text editor or browser since I was in college. My thought was that
if you could annotate something as complex as Shakespeare:

[http://imgur.com/FgsyAco](http://imgur.com/FgsyAco)

then you could annotate legal documents, code, and other high-density texts as
well.

I've long felt that existing solutions fall down in a few ways:

1\. UX -- this is a HARD UX problem because you are potentially managing a lot
of information on screen at once. Anybody staring at a blizzard of comments in
Word or Acrobat knows how bad this can get.

2\. One-to-one -- Most existing exegesis solutions like genius.com only let
you mark of one portion of text for threaded commentary, which is not ideal
because complex text like the above example can have multiple patterns working
in it at the same time:

[http://imgur.com/x6BKKQW](http://imgur.com/x6BKKQW) (a crude attempt to map
assonance and consonance)

Really, what a robust commentary system needs is to map many comments to many
units of text, so that the same portion of text can be annotated multiply (as
this solution attempts) but also so that the same comment can be used to
describe multiple portions of text as well.

3\. Relationships between comments -- It's great that this solution gives
threaded comments as a first-class feature, but you also want to be able to
group comments together in arbitrary ways and be able to show and hide them.
In my examples above, there are two systems at work: the ideational
similarities between words, and the patterns of assonance / consonance. You
could also add additional systems on top of this: glossing what words or
phrases mean (and in Shakespeare, these are often multiple), or providing
meta-commentary on textual content relative to other content, or even social
commentary on the commentaries. You need a way to manage hierarchies or groups
of content to do this effectively. No existing solution that I am aware of
attempts this.

I literally just hired somebody yesterday to start work on a text editor that
attempts to resolve some of this, but it's an exceedingly hard problem to
solve with technology.

~~~
gaxun
> Really, what a robust commentary system needs is to map many comments to
> many units of text

This is actually built into this specification. From the Web Annotation Data
Model [0]:

    
    
      - Annotations have 0 or more Bodies.
      - Annotations have 1 or more Targets.
    

So one "Annotation" object can have multiple bodies (descriptions) attached to
multiple targets.

> 3\. Relationships between comments

This sounds more like an implementation detail of a client than part of the
protocol or data model put forth by the W3C group.

However, I believe this can kind of be done server-side with the Web
Annotation Protocol [1]'s idea of Annotation Containers. Your server can map a
single annotation to multiple containers. So perhaps you have an endpoint like
`[http://example.com/a/`](http://example.com/a/`) and you want to arrange a
hierarchy of comments. You could provide a filtered set of the annotations at
`[http://example.com/a/romeo/consonance/`](http://example.com/a/romeo/consonance/`),
and similar endpoints.

So basically what I'm saying is it seems like the protocol here isn't going to
get in your way, it's just incentive to use this particular model for storing
and transferring your data.

[0]: [https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/#web-annotation-
princ...](https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/#web-annotation-principles)

[1]: [https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-protocol/#container-
retriev...](https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-protocol/#container-retrieval)

~~~
foxhedgehog
If the protocol supports these features, then that's great and I'd love to see
it adopted.

------
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](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](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.

------
JulianMorrison
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.

~~~
deevolution
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?

~~~
deadowl
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.

~~~
JulianMorrison
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.

------
pen2l
I wonder how Genius feels about this news. But they were the ones rooting for
this future, so probably they will be happy I think.

~~~
tedmiston
Genius has done a lot of work on annotation pinning. I remember hearing Tom
Lehman discuss it in their dev meetup series when they expanded to annotating
the whole web. Still, I'm not sure that it actually took off on the greater
web as lately it seems they're doubling down on rap content and industry
connections.

I haven't dug into how the standard addresses all of its edge cases yet, but I
hope that it handles pinning well ie, if the underlying text is edited or
deleted and it's unclear whether the annotation should persist.

~~~
mst
I really enjoyed the WaPo article that was a Trump speech with genius
annotations. What that means for genius, no idea.

------
benmarks
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.

~~~
gph
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.

------
wyc
The online book Real World Haskell[1] has used a more integrated form of
annotation via comments directly under each passage. It's pretty fun to
observe how the comments play into the content...sometimes they're wonderfully
constructive and other times they derail more useful discussion. It'll be
exciting to see how these social norms evolve with the technology.

[1] sample chapter, [http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/programming-with-
monad...](http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/programming-with-monads.html)

------
Animats
So who manages Annotation Central? Disqus? Google? Facebook? The State
Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the
People's Republic of China?

~~~
dwhly
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.

~~~
PeterisP
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?

~~~
dwhly
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.

------
bluejekyll
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.

~~~
detaro
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](https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention) (There
even are tools already to get notifications about twitter mentions etc. via
it)

~~~
rrix2
webmention standard can be integrated with static HTML through webmention.io
and brid.gy; it's great for no-nonsense comment integration.

------
netcraft
Annotation itself is great, but there are other (unsolved?) problems - I just
recently came across this very implementation thanks to a HN comment - after
trying it out it suffers from not being able to tied to revisions of pages -
install the plugin and go to the home page of any major news outlet - there
are comments from years ago - that works fine if its a news article - but not
on a page that changes every day if not hourly. Also to get rid of comment
widgets on pages you need to be able to subscribe which I don't see any way of
doing.

------
tomatsu
Does it do anything to prevent spam?

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

~~~
rrix2
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...](https://ellacydawson.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/how-news-genius-
silences-writers/)

~~~
dwhly
We agree that this is an issue that deserves attention. We've discussed it
here.

[https://hypothes.is/blog/involving-page-owners-in-
annotation...](https://hypothes.is/blog/involving-page-owners-in-annotation/)

------
Falkon1313
This sounds like a great way to reduce spam and trolling. It would give you
the choice to see discussion by friends_and_family group, your
professional_colleagues group, your casual_social_friends group or whatever
instead of by the random_youtube_comment_trolls group. A possible downside
would be that the filter bubble and confirmation bias would be web-wide if a
user only selects groups that they agree with (as many would be likely to do).

~~~
aethertron
It'd be good for there to be a way for each site to suggest recommended
annotation services.

------
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.

~~~
confounded
Why care?

All your points could also be made about Twitter.

Avoiding astroturfing is a serious problem, but one that extends way beyond
imaginations for this web standard.

~~~
tyingq
If this plays out as outlined, browsers would natively tie the comments to
your site. That's the difference.

Mentioned above, like making restaurants display live scrolling Yelp reviews
at the front door.

If not, then, perhaps more like Twitter.

~~~
confounded
Only if you opt-in to a widely astroturfed (likely general-interest) public
annotations provider. I know I wouldn't. I don't think there's a browser
vendor who'd go for this experience as default.

~~~
tyingq
Perhaps I'm not understanding. Website owners will attempt to AstroTurf
whatever annotation system is associated with negative comments on their site.

------
Dangeranger
If I leave an annotation with this standard must that annotation be public?
Are there options for private annotations?

How much private data about my browser and my host am I leaving when an
annotation is created?

Is there a practical way to delete these both from the page and the public
record, or would they be stored in perpetuity?

~~~
no_protocol
> If I leave an annotation with this standard must that annotation be public?
> Are there options for private annotations?

The protocol specifies that annotations are shared over HTTP, you can have
them behind whatever kind of locks you want.

> How much private data about my browser and my host am I leaving when an
> annotation is created?

The specification doesn't store anything like this. But since everything
happens over HTTP, the client/server you use may include things like that.
Since it's a standard, you should be able to use whatever programs you wish.

There are fields specified to include things like author name, creation date,
etc. It will depend on your client how they are used. They aren't required.

------
thekodols
This is such a great project. The potential here is just immense. I wish dwhly
and everyone at hypothes.is the best of luck.

P.S. This url - [https://hypothes.is/register](https://hypothes.is/register)
\- accessible from most pages by clicking "sign up" in the top-right corner,
presents an error and doesn't redirect anywhere.
[https://hypothes.is/signup](https://hypothes.is/signup) works fine, however.

------
antman
The hypothesis team gives for their product only dev install instructions,
there is only an old docker recipe, the offline install seemed to go through
their website for authentication and when I asked on their IRC for proper
installation instructions they said its on theirr TODO (last year).

I think that proper installation instructions,perhaps with docker compose, are
more important than blog posts about annotation importance.

------
jachee
This is interesting. I hope it doesn't slow things down too much or become
another spam vector.

Aside: That interactive SVG slide-show is pretty impressive in itself.

~~~
dwhly
> That interactive SVG slide-show is pretty impressive in itself.

That is @shepazu's work.

------
perlgeek
I'm curious to see how the legal front proceeds when this becomes more
popular.

Somebody will post a slanderous comment on a company's website, the company
will be very unhappy, and sue the comment provider for blending the comment
into the company's website.

Is that free speech? Or is the comment not protected, because it's shown on
the company's website, and thus should be under the company's control?

------
strictnein
To be honest, this sounds horrid:

[https://www.w3.org/annotation/diagrams/annotation-
architectu...](https://www.w3.org/annotation/diagrams/annotation-
architecture.svg)

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.

~~~
dwhly
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.

------
StevePerkins
Man, normally I hate it when people on HN talk about an article's layout or
font kerning rather than its content.

However, this thing is just completely illegible without reading glasses and
150% zoom... and it's still uncomfortable even then.

I would be surprised if this company has anyone age 40 or up who actually
looks at their own website on a regular basis.

------
SZJX
I've been wanting this for ages. Didn't have time to get down to implement it
myself. Hopefully somebody can finally implement it well. Guess one difficulty
is commercial model. But just as Pocket and Instapaper were acquired for their
data, hopefully this company (or anybody out there) can do a similar thing.

------
aaronharnly
From Vannevar Bush's celebrated 1945 article, "As We May Think"[1], imagining
the "memex" that is recognized as the conceptual forebear of hypertext and the
web:

First, the core concept of associative indexing:

 _Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the
artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in
storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is
found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass... The human
mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its
grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of
thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells
of the brain._

Introducing the memex:

 _Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized
private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex"
will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books,
records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be
consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate
supplement to his memory._

Associating one item with another is the essence of the memex:

 _This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items
together is the important thing._

 _When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code
book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be
joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there
are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of
these on each item._

Adding one's own annotations and links, and then sharing them to colleagues,
is the vision:

 _First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy
article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent
item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items.
Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main
trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes
evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to
do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through
textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of
longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through
the maze of materials available to him._

 _And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend
turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital
interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still
failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings
up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever
runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side
excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he
sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to
his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more
general trail._

Arguably we still do not have a satisfactory realization of the memex. The Web
is not quite it; nor the personal Wiki, nor the personal mind-mapper, though
each comes close. Perhaps the web with annotations will realize the dream?
Though note that Tim Berners-Lee recognized in 1995 that even with a Memex, we
might fail to organize our larger technical and social structures: "We have
access to information: but have we been solving problems?"

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-
we-m...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-
think/303881/)

[2]
[https://www.w3.org/Talks/9510_Bush/Talk.html](https://www.w3.org/Talks/9510_Bush/Talk.html)

~~~
Turing_Machine
"Arguably we still do not have a satisfactory realization of the memex."

Yup.

A related issue: Ted Nelson's original idea for hyperlinks had them working
both ways. When one document linked to a second document, the second document
would _automatically_ get a link back to the first. His idea also had what he
called "transclusion" \-- sort of like block-quoting someone else's text, but
with the feature that when the quoted text was updated, any document which had
transcluded it would also automatically get updated.

Of course, there are some practical issues there, not the least of which is
(as several others have mentioned) vulnerability to spam.

------
huula
I'm using a self-made web page annotation extension on chrome everyday. It
let's you mark the important information on any webpage, which is very useful
for docs that you will come back and visit frequently.

------
adamnemecek
this will fundamentally change the internet

~~~
jimmies
fundamentally change how?

~~~
Demil
My guess is that It's going to improve the transparency and correctness of
ideas. Every website will be like some sort of Reddit but more transparent
because the publisher will not be able to censorship you. Also, cross
identity. People will start having 1 public profile for every website. I can
be Demi on hacker news, Reddit, Youtube, etc.

~~~
mememachine
Thaat would be a really wonderful thing. Although im not as much a fan as 1
profile universally.

~~~
Demil
It can be a good thing. Imagine Donald Trump saying that Obama wasn't born in
USA. Obama or anyone could create an annotation with a witty response on that
particular sentence or video time frame and a link to the PDF with his birth
certificate. Trump could also defend himself inside the "fake news" by
commenting directly and exposing the malicious attempt of manipulation.

~~~
kelvin0
You just described twitter.

------
sanqui
This sort of reminds me of Google Sidewiki:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki)

------
anc84
This is fantastic! hypothes.is is such an inspiring project, thank you!

------
ChrisNorstrom
Anyone know of a way to annotate online the way Microsoft Word does? Where it
highlights the content and points an arrow to it's annotation kept on the
right side of the page?

------
soheil
If this is going to be such a fundamental part of the web as claimed and
integral layer, Annotation seems like a peripheral term and not whatever this
ends up as deserves.

------
niftich
I profess I don't know much about the company, but this effort is a
continuation or an application of the W3C Linked Data Platform [1] initiative
that are attempts to put Tim Berners-Lee's ideas [2] about the Semantic Web
into practice, with renewed vigor and buy-in from many interested parties, and
not speccing for its own sake.

Adoption is always the question that matters most to the public; arguably
TBL's mid-2000s vision for the web as a Giant Global Graph [3] has been neatly
cloned and co-opted by Facebook's concrete, incompatible, and inward-flowing
Hotel California implementation [4], but if a new wave of startups and
bigcorps can create a rich ecosystem using community-designed standards, the
outcome may be different this time. Or maybe not, but I applaud and support
them in trying, and I will evangelize the same.

What's different from the mid-2000s, you ask? For one, the ideas behind REST,
despite often imperfectly or incompletely applied, have nonetheless entered
community consciousness. Hard-fail-if-invalid attitudes have been replaced by
a tolerance for imperfections, both in the community's rejection of XML-
derived data formats, and an acceptance of the web's often haphazard,
something-is-better-than-nothing nature. APIs implemented using HTTP over the
Web are a mainstay instead of experimental integratons, and a new wave of
commercial players is eager to exploit whatever competitive advantage against
the incumbents.

The big content gardens have all pushed incompatible "protocols" (we call them
APIs, but they behave like protocols) [5], which gives them network effects
but also locks them (deliberately) out of the open web (i.e. a Facebook
comment on a Facebook post that was spawned by sharing a web link is not a
comment on the link; it's a comment on that Facebook post). Meanwhile, systems
that can build on top of these standards to implement two-way data flow --
both inward and out -- can present richer experiences, while not precluding
the usual business models and monetization schemes that are in use today. And
even if commercially this all flops, we'll have nice specs and vocabularies to
use where metadata is paramount: science, research, government, and the like.

[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/ldp/](https://www.w3.org/TR/ldp/) [2]
[https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html](https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html)
[3]
[http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215](http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215)
[4] [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-
api/overview/](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/overview/) [5]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12893852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12893852)

------
fiatjaf
Where will be the annotation data stored?

~~~
detaro
One of the specs is "Web Annotation Protocol—describes the transport
mechanisms for creating and managing annotations in a method that is
consistent with the Web Architecture and REST best practices."

[https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-annotation-
protocol-20170223/](https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-annotation-
protocol-20170223/)

So I guess they imagine you get an account with some service somewhere and
then store your annotations there?

~~~
fiatjaf
Well, I think that is the entire problem.

~~~
detaro
An open protocol gives at least a shot for compatible self-hosted/locally
running solutions, assuming client makers actually implement it.

~~~
fiatjaf
Yes, ok, you're right.

I think, however, that doing that for all the things in the world each people
would like to store, is too complicated to be true.

I only say that because I was an enthusiast of things like the remoteStorage
protocol -- not what it has become actually, but the idea behind it. I would
prefer something like remoteStorage to be standardized instead of a different
protocol for each thing.

Perhaps Urbit is in the same space as remoteStorage, only much more
complicated.

------
jimmcslim
The ghost of Third Voice awakes...

------
jlebrech
double edged swords, could be good for trolls and also good to fight trolls
(if moderators use it)

------
visarga
The annotation system of the web is reddit.

