Google SideWiki Brings Comments To Everyone 221
Rophuine writes "Google has launched a product called SideWiki. It takes the form of a plug-in to Firefox and Internet Explorer which allows users to mark up the web by adding comments which can be seen by anyone else running SideWiki."
Google's version joins a long line of attempts to impose a layer of comments on the Web, including
Microsoft's Smart Tags and Third Voice.
"this sucks" (Score:2, Insightful)
itll be 99% 0f the comments especially on slashdot
Misnamed product (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline on Google's Get Google Sidewiki [google.com] page reads, "Contribute helpful information to any web page." Yet this is being released to the general public, which is the same group that is responsible for most of the crap already on the internet. SideWiki should probably be renamed to Creeping Crud (hello, Wizardry fans) to more accurately describe the end result. But hey, you have to run SideWiki in order to see other SideWiki users' crud, so I guess it's a closed universe and therefore okay.
Terrific. (Score:5, Insightful)
No Thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I had an idea like this once (Score:4, Insightful)
There has been hundreds of such plugins for both IE and FF for ever. The problem with them is that they're not build in to the browser and no one uses them. Its quite possible it would be really small amount of users using it even if it was build-in, since its not really why the users are there on the site and it just forgots. It would probably be full of "nice site", "hi everybody!" and "first!1!" comments too.
Re:"this sucks" (Score:3, Insightful)
itll be 99% 0f the comments especially on slashdot
Actually it'll be "this sucks-beta".
Mission Implausible (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to see how this would be useful without moderation. Hard to see how moderation could be implemented in a practical way.
Sync With Other Commenting Apps (Score:3, Insightful)
Sad and lame.
How do site owners disable it? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think any business wants comments from morons presented alongside official content. If google want to provide a service allowing people to comment on one of my personal sites, they can damn well provide a web reachable URL. There's no way I'm installing a plugin to keep track of what's going on outside my moderated commenting system.
and what if I don't *want* comments on my site? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a little disturbed that I cannot find reference to any way that the site owner can "opt out" of having a sidewiki hooked to their pages. At least with Microsoft SmartTags, there was a way to disable them with a meta tag in the html header, and unlike Microsoft, Google has enough geek fanboys who think Google shits gold out there to make this feature take off.
I used to have comments enabled on my Flickr photos, but jokers kept on leaving suggestive remarks about my wife (she's pretty hot, IMHO). So, I turned it off. When talking about this with a colleague yesterday, we came up with the "ugly kid" scenario:
Imagine you have a family site with pictures of your kids on it and some jerk writes, "man, you have ugly kids" on the sidewiki. What do you do? You can't remove it. Will it be filtered out automatically by Google with their so-called "quality algorithm"? Just because there will be no anonymous posts, don't think that people won't do things like this.
Seriously, has anyone seen anything about a way to turn this off for your site? I'm not against free speech and all that, just don't add it to *my* content without my permission. Whether sidewiki is considered part of the page content is academic: the visitor will see it attached to your page.
Been there, Done that. (Score:5, Insightful)
All I can remember is the amount of spam and junk that was written up, mostly on webpages that people didn't like or who were rivals. A lot of companies got VERY upset about the system, and the company what created the software pulled it.
Bad idea. Put this one back in the box and try something else Google. Bad idea.
Yahoo already has Searchpad (Score:3, Insightful)
Yahoo already has Searchpad. Honestly, Yahoo's search results interface is chock full of features that people aren't noticing until someone like Google copies it.
Re:Terrific. (Score:4, Insightful)
And spam. Lots and lots of spam
Re:Does Sidewiki phone home? (Score:3, Insightful)
How else do you think google knows what comments are left for any particular page?
Re:and what if I don't *want* comments on my site? (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I'd say a good tactic is to put a lot less "user content" on the web! No need to worry about its misrepresentation or misuse then!
I also don't understand people willingly handing over vast chunks of personal stuff to major companies to do with as they see fit.
My objections are not just to do with a distrust of private industry - I don't understand people handing over stuff to "free" projects either.
How to resolve Troll comments (Score:3, Insightful)
Add a rating system, not unlike Amazon has for it's products. Basically, viewers can rate the comments up or down; significantly negative comments will eventually be eaten by the system. Significantly good comments will be presented in order of appearance. Additionally, it would be good to have a section presenting the 3 comments with the fewest votes, so the viewer would be likely to add his own vote to those.
Re:Mission Implausible (Score:1, Insightful)
It would be useful in a corporate environment where the public isn't involved. We've had our own system to do this since at least 2000 for mock-ups and prototypes. It was a good competitive advantage back in the day. Still is, although it's less unique now.
Subversive idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Extrinsic annotations. It is something that has certainly been talked about for years, though has never really gained much traction. It is also implicit (in part) in some standards like RDF. It comes down to this: How to you say something about content where you do not control the content, and still have your comments seen? Today, if the White House puts out a press release, you can certainly comment it on your blog, on Twitter, in comments to a news article, etc., but you have zero power to make your comments appear in the context of the original press release. The content author is king, and those with high Google PageRank have disproportionate (though not undue) exposure and influence. Sure, we have blogs, which encourage reader commentary, but this is exclusively at the sufferance of the page owner.
But now, with extrinsic annotations, anyone can comment on anyone's web page and have it appear in the context of that web page. I can comment on the White House press release, and so can everyone nut in the world. This is totally subversive and can easily be used for good or evil, but since this is the web it will likely be used for spam and porn more than anything else.
The challenge is how do you prevent this approach from collapsing under the oppressive weight of the vast banality of mass humanity? The web had the same problem, which PageRank solved (in part). We may need something analogous to tame the new "meta web".
Re:Yahoo already has Searchpad (Score:3, Insightful)
ah... that because no-one is using Yahoo. They rolled out a new portal the other day, did anyone notice? No.
Re:Misnamed product (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and what if I don't *want* comments on my site? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh boo hoo! And what if users TALK about your site using their vocal cords?? Site owners must have some technology for disabling users' vocal chords while accessing their sites.
Lemme sum up the comments.. (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Your gay!
2. This is gay
3. NOOB ASS
4. your a noob ass
5. your a fag
6. this is for fags!!
7. BuY v1agr4 n0w
8. 0b4ma will kill us all!!
Re:and what if I don't *want* comments on my site? (Score:3, Insightful)
If users talk about my site, it isn't instantly accessible to the whole Internet in a permanently archive-able form.
It's a take on the Out of Sight, Out of Mind principle.
Mandatory Installation (Score:2, Insightful)
If you own a Web site, then you are forced to install this.
Otherwise how could you know what insightful comments have been posted against your web pages.
And then, of course, you will be tempted to comment on other pages.
Exponential growth!
Re:Mission Implausible (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, there's no practical way to moderate comments. Everyone, mod parent up!
Re:I had an idea like this once (Score:4, Insightful)
Even omitting the bullshit comments, these things can go two ways.
1) it'll remain unpopular, making sure that there are too few comments to ever make it useful.
2) it'll become popular, making sure there are too many comments to be usable.
Either way I'm taking the shortcut by just not bothering with it.
Re:How this will unfold.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The trolls will stake out territories early, like a game of Risk, only with Slashdot instead of Kamchatka. We'll know this era as the Internet War.
whitehouse.gov will be an epic battlefield
Re:How do site owners disable it? (Score:3, Insightful)