Hypothes.is and the IndieWeb
Last night I saw two great little articles about Hypothes.is, a web-based annotation engine, written by a proponent of the IndieWeb:
Hypothes.is as a public research notebook
Hypothes.is Aggregator ― a WordPress plugin
As a researcher, I fully appreciate the pro-commonplace book conceptualization of the first post, and the second takes things amazingly further with a plugin that allows one to easily display one’s hypothes.is annotations on one’s own WordPress-based site in a dead-simple fashion.
This functionality is a great first step, though honestly, in keeping with IndieWeb principles of owning one’s own data, I think it would be easier/better if Hypothes.is both accepted and sent webmentions. This would potentially allow me to physically own the data on my own site while still participating in the larger annotation community as well as give me notifications when someone either comments or augments on one of my annotations or even annotates one of my own pages (bits of which I’ve written about before.)
Either way, kudos to Kris Shaffer for moving the ball forward!
Examples
My Hypothes.is Notebook
The plugin mentioned in the second article allows me to keep a running online “notebook” of all of my Hypothes.is annotations on my own site.
My IndieWeb annotations
I can also easily embed my recent annotations about the IndieWeb below:
Hypothes.is as a public research notebook
No highlighted text in this annotation.
From an indieweb perspective, it’s probably far easier, more productive, and better interface if hypothes.is both accepted the webmention protocol as well as sending webmentions. This way one could post their comments (highlights may be slightly tougher) directly to their Known (or other site) and the webmention protocol could handle the posting to hypothes.is. Similarly when one annotates a page, hypothes.is could webmention the page, so the post author/site admin would be aware that the page was marked up. As an “example”: http://stream.boffosocko.com/2016/from-an-indieweb-perspective-its-probably-far-easier-more-productive
Curated by chrisaldrich.
appreciate your help
I think that a major part of improving the issue of abuse and providing consent is building in notifications so that website owners will at least be aware that their site is being marked up, highlighted, annotated, and commented on in other locations or by other platforms. Then the site owner at least has the knowledge of what’s happening and can then be potentially provided with information and tools to allow/disallow such interactions, particularly if they can block individual bad actors, but still support positive additions, thought, and communication. Ideally this blocking wouldn’t occur site wide, which many may be tempted to do now as a knee-jerk reaction to recent events, but would be fine grained enough to filter out the worst offenders. Toward the end of notifications to site owners, it would be great if any annotating activity would trigger trackbacks, pingbacks, or the relatively newer and better webmention protocol of the WW3C out of the http://IndieWebCamp.com movement. Then site owners would at least have notifications about what is happening on their site that might otherwise be invisible to them. Perhaps there’s a way to further implement filters or tools (a la Akismet on platforms like WordPress) that allow site users to mark materials as spam, abusive, or other so that they are then potentially moved from “public” facing to “private” so that the original highlighter can still see their notes, but that the platform isn’t allowing the person’s own website to act as a platform to give reach to bad actors. Further some site owners might appreciate graded filters (G, PG, PG-13, R, X) so that users or even parents can filter what they’re willing to see. Consider also annotations on narrative forms that might be posted as spoilers — how can these be guarded against? (Possibly with CSS and a spoiler tag?) Options can be built into the platform itself as well as allowing server-side options for truly hard cases. My coding skills are rustier than I wish they were, but I’m available to help/consult if needed.
Curated by chrisaldrich.
