
Show HN: MyTwoCents – browser extension to put a comment section on any website - trahn
https://mytwocentscomments.website/
======
brownbat
I love the idea of disaggregating content production from moderation, they are
very different competencies, and these annotate everything approaches are a
great way to follow that philosophy. Google Sidewiki was one of my favorite
shut down projects, this one looks even cleaner.

I think moderation and community are hard to tack on, though those might be
necessary to make these projects as popular and usable as social networks, to
get the network effects rolling. Without them this risks becoming either
"4chan everywhere," or "your one comment no one ever reads everywhere."

Genius had an annotate everywhere feature that ran into the moderation issue:
observer.com/2016/03/genius-web-annotator-emma-dawson-alana-massey

Probably out of scope for you, just think those are interesting untackled
problems in this space.

~~~
dudzik
It could be interesting if you tap into the resource of an existing website
(Something like hn or reddit). It already has a community build around it and
moderation in place.

For example, if you are on an article and click on the extension you could see
the corresponding page on hn. If the article hasn't been added then it could
be added.

~~~
brownbat
I really like this idea.

HN is too curated to cover literally every site or article (and that's a good
thing), but you could have a sidebar that federates multiple comment
outlets... "Here's what people are saying online..." Like pingbacks, but less
opt in.

If nothing is found, the sidebar could push new comments to a special purpose
subreddit, or some other default backstop.

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new299
I applaud anyone who gets things finished and released. "chat on any website"
extensions seem to pop up with some regularity though and it might be
instructive review the others. One I found with a quick google search which
has some useful comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4628577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4628577)

~~~
trahn
Thanks for the heads-up. :) Will do a bit of research. But yeah, I recon it's
not that novel a concept and have heard of others who had the idea before. For
me it was/is more of a fun project to get back into coding a bit... but still
want to see where I can take it. ;)

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olav
How does this relate to existing tools like
[https://web.hypothes.is/](https://web.hypothes.is/) or even W3C
recommendations [https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-annotation-
protocol-20170223/](https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-annotation-
protocol-20170223/) ?

~~~
trahn
Didn't know either of those existed. Will check them out.

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laci27
Great idea and great execution! You are right with FB comments for now. I'm
super excited about what you created and I'm thinking of some ways to
collaborate. will keep you posted here (if you want or not:) )

~~~
laci27
So you basically created something more similar to Sumo, but instead of the
site owner installing the tools, the end user does. So it could be much more
than just a comments section... still can't put my finger on it, but still
very excited:)

~~~
trahn
Don't really know Sumo, but yeah, it's all client-side. It could be used for
anything. I was just thinking of commenting on news articles where there's no
comment section but still a need for it. Could also see it used on video sites
to discuss movies/shows/etc. The thing is, we have a bit of a marketplace
(chicken and egg) problem, as it needs users to be useful. That's why I'm
trying to promote it to specific communities around specific websites (which
is a maybe too vast pool :D ). If you have any ideas where it could be useful,
let me know. :)

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foxhop
Part of the reason to have comments as part of your site is for SEO and
capturing the long tail from user generated content.

Basically rank higher on keywords searchers actually use by letting them use
their own words on your site.

Disclaimer: I run Remarkbox
([https://www.remarkbox.com](https://www.remarkbox.com))

~~~
JeanMarcS
You forgot the other reason on many sites: showing more and more ads at each
step :-)

------
INTPenis
Didn't firefox attempt this a few years back? They had a chat feature that
worked on each website and only between firefox users.

I can't find it on google now but I'm sure this happened.

~~~
laci27
Edge and Opera also had/have a similar feature, yes. The main thing is that
users didn't know about them, or they were too early. With an extention that
you install, you're more likely to use it... besides I think that all this
needs is a hardcore community of users, and it will grow from there (just
learn from other's mistakes: more recently Soundcloud).

~~~
INTPenis
Just found out it was Mozilla Talk.

I actually thought it was good to be "forced" upon every Firefox user.
Unfortunately it came during mass migrations to Chrome.

Because if it's an extention you won't have the same impact. If it's forced
then you can be sure to connect with every other user of that browser and see
what they've said about the website you're browsing.

Of course I fear the security issues in such a feature. One XSS vuln and
EVERYONE is affected.

Edit: I misunderstood. My memory was that it was a built-in feature of Firefox
that worked on every site. But Mozilla Talk requires a server infrastructure.
Of course, makes sense now that I think about it. Where else would your
messages be stored.

Perhaps some sort of p2p thing but I don't think Mozilla would go that route
yet. It's not mature enough.

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meesterdude
I have a suggestion for a niche you might find explotable: cryptocurrency
exchange trollboxes. Maybe a different version that automatically (or only)
works for them. Poloniex removed theirs when users complained about the
service - others like bittrex or coinbase don't have them. They're things
where the sites don't want them (or are too lazy to) but users do use it for
support/community too.

~~~
trahn
Will try to promote in these circles! thanks.

------
jquip
This is really nice trahn.. Please get some funding to get the word out before
Disqus or any other comments app having a user base replicates the same. It
isn't technically hard, but the business case is viable and people will want
to invest in the minds that envisioned it and made this possible (you guys :)
) and see where it can go.

~~~
trahn
Thanks jquip. I guess, it's not that novel an idea, as you can see from some
other comments here. The thing is it's a bit of a marketplace problem - gotta
have users to be useful. Will see, where I can take it. Also, I'm a bit of the
bootstrap/solopreneur mentality... :D Will have to see. :)

~~~
hsrada
A feature suggestion:

If another user has posted a comment on an article you are currently viewing,
perhaps you can change the extension icon to indicate so. That could be a
trigger to open the comment section.

Otherwise, I'll probably keep being disappointed upon opening the section in
websites that don't have comments in them.

Note : I haven't actually installed/checked the extension out. Sorry if this
feature's already there!

~~~
trahn
Yeah, it's already there. :) It shows the number of comments (>0) on the icon.

------
KajMagnus
This looks interesting. How do I know if someone else has left comments at a
website / page I'm visiting? I probably wouldn't want to open the comments
sidebar on each page, to find out. And I wouldn't notice if there's some small
notification icon. The only things I'd react to, is blinkng light, and sound
playing "There are comments". But is that too intrusive? To me, a voice saying
"There are comments" would be fine.

Who is going to moderate comments? I'm afraid people who say evil angry things
to other will dominate a discussion system like this, as is usually the case,
when there is no strict moderation, right. Well maybe as long as you use
Facebook Comments, it has moderation features already?

~~~
trahn
It has a comment count on the extension icon, which looks like this:
[https://imgur.com/a/XWrcN](https://imgur.com/a/XWrcN) My first version was
more intrusive and put an icon with comment count on every website, but I
decided against this, as it needs "read all your website data"-permission for
the extension, which can be off-putting. Now, the comment section only gets
injected when the icon is clicked.

Re moderation: Yeah, it has the usual FB comments features, i.e. you can
report to Facebook and I could also assign moderators I guess (which I don't
really plan to do; don't know if that would work site-wide - I guess only for
the whole extension, so any site). I'm thinking Facebook comments shouldn't
get as out-of-hand as other systems, where it's easier to just create
fake/anonymous/throw-away accounts...

------
netman21
Nice. I remember using something like this in the 90s. It was much less
elegant. It got a lot of funding and disappeared during the dot com bust. It
was written up in the Industry Standard, a trove of good ideas worth re-
visiting in that magazine.

------
rambojazz
Where is the code?

~~~
trahn
what do you mean?

~~~
rambojazz
The [addon page]([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/mytwocents/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/mytwocents/)) says it's released under "Mozilla Public
License, version 2.0", which is a free software license AFAIK. So... where is
the code?

~~~
trahn
Hey, I just clicked the first license as I didn't know what I was doing. I
don't have the code public anywhere right now, but if you download the
extension it's there to see, right? What license should I put it under?
Anyone?

~~~
rambojazz
Just choose a free one [1], then share your code somewhere (github.com,
notabug.org, your own website...)

[1]
[https://tldrlegal.com/licenses/browse](https://tldrlegal.com/licenses/browse)

------
rahimnathwani
I like the Hacker News Sidebar browser extension for this:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
sideba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
sidebar/ngljhffenbmdjobakjplnlbfkeabbpma)

I guess there must be something similar to display Reddit comments in a
sidebar.

------
flabetvibes
And how does this relate to [https://epiverse.co/](https://epiverse.co/),
another existing tool?

~~~
trahn
again, don't know it, will check it out. :)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15938982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15938982)

------
dcsan
What were the OSS versions of commenting plugins - that don't need a browser
extension. Mobile browsers are not going to be able to use this.

I run some sites that are used in China, where FBcomments/disqus are blocked.
As a site _owner_ I'm also responsible for policing my comments section. But a
separately hosted solution could be an interesting way around that.

------
trahn
I know many of you won't like that it uses Facebook comments but i chose it
(for now) for a couple of reasons: 1) mainstream appeal 2) ease of integration
3) FB already has comments on some links. If people use the extension I'm
thinking of Disqus as an alternative or - more longterm - a P2P solution.

~~~
Gys
Switching to Disqus will hardly increase the appeal for most of the same
people that dislike FB. See for example these stats on Disqus:
[http://donw.io/post/github-comments/](http://donw.io/post/github-comments/)

~~~
franciscop
I made a similar project but using HN comments embeded in your website:
[https://comments.network/](https://comments.network/)

However HN asked me to put it down and cancel it so it's discontinued now.

~~~
hsrada
> However HN asked me to put it down and cancel it so it's discontinued now.

What issue did they have with it?

------
pascalxus
Honestly, i was going to build this. But, I kept thinking that there wasn't
that strong of a need for it. Also, in order for someone to see comments on
something, someone else would have seen the site first and commented there, so
it kinda depends on network effects.

------
dudzik
I quite like this idea as it removes the need to include a comment system
yourself. No need to include intrusive javascript or make the design visually
littered. Can an author moderate his articles?

~~~
trahn
Hey, thought I replied to you. Apparently not, sorry. Moderation is only with
FB right now. You can arrange your own moderation as well, put I'm not sure if
I can scope it by domain or something or only for the entire app (i.e.
extension), but it's probably not something I would go for. More here:
[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments)

