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Google SideWiki Brings Comments To Everyone
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.
About 12 years ago, I had the thought that it would be great if there was a way to annotate any web page, and make the annotations viewable by others. I never could figure out how it would actually work, but I'm glad to see that something like my concept has come to fruitition.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
itll be 99% 0f the comments especially on slashdot
To clarify, SideWiki requires the Google Toolbar, which itself requires IE6 (or later) or Firefox 2 (or later).
The headline on Google's Get Google Sidewiki 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.
Despite the name, Sidewiki is not a wiki such that people can edit, prune, and synthesize information, nor is it moderated in any way. It's just a comment system, with no way to amplify the signal vs the noise. It's also unclear how people are supposed to use it- e.g., what to post (which is a significant failing imo). Interesting as an approach to layer user comments onto webpages, but not useful yet. Arstechnica pretty much nailed it with the following:
This new offering from Google is intriguing in some ways and it shows that the company is thinking creatively about how to build dialog and additional value around existing content. The scope and utility of the service seems a bit narrow. The random nature of the existing annotations suggest that the quality and depth of the user-contributed content will be roughly equivalent with the comments that people post about pages at aggregation sites like Digg and Reddit.
What makes Wikipedia content useful is the ability of editors to delete the crap and restructure the existing material to provide something of value. Without the ability to do that with Sidewiki, it's really little more than a glorified comment system and probably should have been built as such. As it stands, I think that most users will just be confused about what kind annotations they should post.
A whole new way to astroturf.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
It takes the form of a plug-in to Firefox and Internet Explorer
What, Google aren't even releasing plug-ins for their own browser first? What kind of endorsement is that?
Before this can be truly successful, there needs to be a feature which blocks all comments which can be traced back to active members of 4chan or Youtube.
Experience has provided me with some skepticism regarding the intelligence of crowds. This Sidewiki would be like having a running commentary on the web, written by the same type of people who write Youtube comments and -1 rated comments on Slashdot.
Thanks, but no thanks. Hope that one dies in beta, unless they figure out how to filter out the crap, and bring the valuable contributions to the top. They could start by testing their filters on Youtube.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
...only works with IE and FF.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Cluttered browser window + Wiki nonsense != desirable plug-in
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
What about all the spam that comes through comments? Now why would Google create another way for advertisers to....oh, wait...
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
They show the world just how ignorant and stupid the rest of the world is. Kind've makes you wonder how we got this far with civilization.
Hard to see how this would be useful without moderation. Hard to see how moderation could be implemented in a practical way.
I've tried but failed to successfully remove the plugin that allows me to see real kudzu.
When I first read about this (after reading this summary) it seemed somewhat intriguing. Who knows, perhaps it could allow some useful knowledge to be slapped on some of the webpages and articles on the internet that are scant on details or technical info. However, after looking at the download page of this little plugin, it appears that you can sync this service with " Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles" which means, to me at least, that if I am reading an article regarding a new possible HIV vaccine, rather than have helpful comments with related studies and scientific journal entries attached to it, the article will instead hemorrhage a barrage of comments that have to do with people fearing getting AIDS from public restroom toilet seats and the "ZOMG 70ta11y @w3some HAWT girl the b@ng3d at a 9427y last night"....who had AIDS....
Sad and lame.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Google Search already has the SearchWiki that doesn't seem overly popular because no one remembers it exists when writing about the "new" feature. Wasn't it already supposed to "bring comments to everyone"? I think people are just not interested in commenting websites, or rather, the ones posting comments won't be doctors and academics as shown in their example. Google lives in an ideal world where comments are relevant.
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.
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.
There was a system out about 6 or so years ago that would allow anyone to post a virtual "sticky" note on a web page and anyone else who had the program could read it. Same concept as what Google is trying.
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. Honestly, Yahoo's search results interface is chock full of features that people aren't noticing until someone like Google copies it.
Kriston
Does this give Google a real-time ping with the URL for each and every page I visit?
the enemies of trolls are legion, and trolls are under siege. however, recent technological research has uncovered an entirely new parallel dimension of troll content overlaying the entire web, without any of the typical anti-troll technology in place
a fertile, virgin land, a new world, ready for colonization and plenty of glorious trolling like "no, u stfu!" and "This web page sounds like typical Obama style fascist socialism"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It has no support for Linux nor for OSX. It is also a toolbar. Toolbars are for companies that want to track you. I encourage everyone to uninstall their toolbars (every one of them). They are unnecessary and take up space on the screen. It shouldnt' be necessary that this be part of a toolbar.
a) On a 404 page - "This page has been moved to ____" b) On paid content websites - "You can download it at [thepiratebay link]" c) Talk to the author (oh god, I'd rage at this) - "Hey, it didn't work in my IE6!" or "You used 'their' incorrectly" I can't think of any other case that has not been covered by conventional moderating system.
How long before all you see are Viagra ads?
Yes, it's a great idea, the only problem is making it actually work. Some folks have been trying for almost fifty years.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Dontcha see? This is an employment program for lawyers. Billions more opportunities for libel/slander suits.
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.
I remember this being done before and thinking how incredibly cool it was. I believe it was a plug-in released at least five years ago.
Then I went to Amazon.com and was assaulted by people posting gay porn all over their home page with the plug-in. I doubt that company survived the bubble.
Hope they didn't patent it...
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".
The installation installs a toolbar that is stuffed full of all sorts of crap that I DO NOT WANT, like trying to get me to log on to google and sending usage data to google and a redundant google search field. Hopefully someone will do this better, like Third Voice used to do it.
I think it's similar to http://www.stumbleupon.com/.
there have been applications and plugins like this for a while. Nothing new.
Now we can have penis jokes on every web page!
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!!
oogly boogly!
I went to take a look and it won't let me install this as an individual firefox plug in. Instead, its just a new feature of the Google Toolbar.
Cue the musical vikings: spam spam spam spam. Followed by the dancing astroturfers, posturing political whiners, beggars of all descriptions, and every other audience-seeker that sane audiences are trying to avoid. Popular sites will see their popularity getting hijacked in service of idiot causes and losers that deserve to stay in their present obscurity.
Of course, we'll need another Firefox add-in to block crap from known sleazebags and protect from the malignant content that will turn out to be embeddable (scripts, nasty links, etc.) in this SideWanki.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Think about it - Google is constantly tuning their relevance algorithms.
What is more relevant than if someone takes the time to comment on a site?
There is absolutely no benefit to un-moderated comments for users and definately none for site owners/administrators....
So, who stands to benefit most from this freebie?
This would make the World of Warcraft forums even more illegible.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
I'm surprised it's not Gooble SideWave.
I suppose that no googlites in their ivory tower has heard about the firefox trademark issue, and certainly has no idea how trivial it is to determine if a browser is firefox based despite it's silly name.
No, they insist I go from Iceweasel 3.5 to Official firefox 2.0 in order to try out their toys.
Let me think about this tradeoff for a second. Hrm. no.
"Does it matter that this waste of time is what makes a LIFE for you? Hmmmmm?"
I can't wait to see the "helpful" web site comments people will add. The Internet has become the ulitmate cowards tool for making statements/comments without having to provide proof or back it up (or face your "opponent")
Another great tool from Evil Google! (see how it works?)
comments all over /. are worried about the signal-noise ratio. It is sure that it will be used for spamming/defacing purpose. But using private comment server or user based white listing or even friend approved comments, you will improve the experience. Of course, it will reduce the amount of comments you will access. But probably for the best.
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!
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Hackers love to mess with stuff, and now they can mess with Sidewiki in an attempt to XSS something into people's websites. What's to say hackers don't start using this to provide other hackers with details on how to break into so-and-so's website? And what's preventing them from hacking at Sidewiki in an attempt to push a keylogger to every browser that attempts to go to a login page?
Whatever happened to hoodwink'd? That was an excellent service. It required enough of a learning curve to participate that it was never subject to the same lack of intelligence that plagues YouTube comments and the like.
I like exclusivity (when I'm among the included, anyway). :)
<:
.... oh by the way, this seems to only be offered as part of google toolbar.
I don't think I'd ever use this if it just gave every page on the web youtube comments. However, if I could restrict the comments to just a certain group of people, it might be cool. If my favorite blogs, slashdot, etc (the places where I already look at the comments), had a way to make a SideWiki "community" where I was only exposed to their comments, that'd be great. Of course, the comments would become much more sparse, but I think I'd tend to look at the same pages as them anyway.
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
I'm going to use this to mark up websites that spam or push spyware. So no, it would not be a good idea to give webmasters the overriding ability to moderate the comments for their own site.
The real question is, "Why are you so hung up on Malda's penis?" Most of us more normal people never give Malda a thought, much less his penis. If you really, really, really want to make Babby Malda, you should discuss it with him in private. Really, jealousy gets you nowhere.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
A few years ago I hired a landscaper who wouldn't return my calls or fix his shoddy work after screwing the job badly. If I wanted to warn others about this, I could use Sidewiki to leave a note about my experience. I'm sure he would disable it if he could, but the fact that he can't is the beauty of such a system. I'm not changing his content or using his server--I'm using a Google service.
This will be awesome.
The first iteration will have everybody posing unmoderated, and anon. The 4chan guys will quickly demonstrate to Google the foolish error of it's ways.
The second iteration will allow moderation via some sort of community ranking or tagging. This will seem awesome until the spammers write bots to boost their spam postings to the top of the moderation heap. Google will be shamed again.
The third iteration will allow people to create accounts, and track their karma. Users will be able to filter out comments below a certain level, and moderate statements they disagree with as 'trolls'.
It then will be the perfect system.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
They rolled out a new portal the other day, did anyone notice? No.
I'll have to go take a look. I heard nothing about it.
Reply to That ||
I can visit your webpage with Firefox, even If you don't like it. And save your photos, even If you don't like that. I can print your website, and store it forever, even zip that, and send to other people.
I can see your website in a monocrome monitor (hell.. yea, there are people, artist types that will hate that). I can EAR your website, with a reader. I can "touch" your website with a 3d printer, etc..
On the web is the user that control the experience.
Do you know CSS? Is Cascade Style Sheet. The browser make rules for the size of the font of H1, the owner of the website add his rules, and finnaly the user can overwrite all rules with his personal rules. On the web, you don't control what is on the screen, is ME who control that.
-Woof woof woof!
Maybe they have developed a "helpful information" filter?
Really, if they have - I'll buy me some of that.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
What I mean by that last point is that you'd have the ability to 'mod up' posters rather than comments, and moreover your moderations would only apply to you. No one else would see your mods, nor would you see anyone else's, except that you would have the option to make your mods recursive: if you moderate Bob at +1, then maybe you would see Bob's +1-modded posters at +0.5, and those posters' +1-modded posters at +0.25, and so on.
Of course, the moderation and PGP signatures would be completely optional, and would be applied in addition to regular spam filtering like that of existing Usenet and email clients.
Back in 1996 or so I had a Netscape 4 plugin that did this.
Someone tries to do it again every few years.
*sigh*
People need to study their history.
Google may succeed in this because of the wide distribution of their toolbar, but that is the only difference in this effort.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Sidewiki sucks. If you are the manager of a website you don't have any control about the comments (ads?) There must be a way to cancel that crap.
By the way, here is a cartoon about it: http://www.thescientificcartoonist.com/?p=214
I wonder if Google will put advertising banners at the top of the sidewiki bar, as another way to make themselves money off other people's content?
The NCSA httpd 0.4 release in 1993 announced support for Group Annotations, which was basically this. So all of you "I had this idea four years ago" people need to get in line behind Marc Andreesen, who had this idea, dear god, 16 years ago.
It never really took off--I think even though httpd supported annotations, I don't think Mosaic itself ever really did.
Snide wiki?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1: I don't really care what millions of morons think about a page
2: no way I'm installing a google toolbar to do this? You probably have to install their bloatware downloader (which installs services on your system!)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I wonder how long it will take until someone has implemented a botnet that uses SideWiki as its C&C channel. Probably about a week.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Take a look. I saw this extension half a year ago and thought it was a great idea. But it was so sluggish and under-used that I abandoned it about a week in.
Diigo (http://www.diigo.com/) is something I've used for a while, and found very useful. Google Sidewiki sounds a lot like it.
This is an idea I see as being potentially useful as a corporate communications app - allowing people inside a company to add commentary on documents on their own Intranet, and also comments visible to others in the same company/community on documents on the public web. I wonder whether Google will sell the server for this as a product? If not, it should not be too hard to reverse engineer.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
It's called a wiki, but from what I've seen I don't see any wiki functionality at all. It looks a lot more like a blog, or rather the comment section of a blog to me.
Why do the call it wiki when I can leave a comment, but not participate in a kind of "review of this page" site? Basically, when it is not a wiki?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's an interesting problem with no clear answer.
I've seen sites where the attacks are so outrageous and crazy that it moves from the internet out into the real world of harassment, abusive litigation and physical assault. Driven by fears of this kind of attack, I've seen site owners become VERY controlling and hyper-aware of the people looking at their material. I can see their point, but I still half-think that the fear isn't fully necessary and that free-range policies can still serve very well if you embrace them intelligently.
The Slashcode system is brilliant. I don't think people realize just how remarkable an accomplishment Slashdot is. It has been running with no holds barred on the managerial side wrt public comments, and the world hasn't ended. It's still here and healthy.
The trick is to allow full anonymity, allow user moderation, and to provide content which will attract sane people and keep them informed of sane things. --So long a population sane people of good-will are in the majority, (and social engineering aside, it generally is), then the site doesn't require massive, fear-driven control measures.
Look at YouTube; asinine comments are often "thumbed" down or overwhelmed by more reasonable responses. The world certainly has a lot of crazy assholes in it, but there are a lot more regular people. And while regular people are easy to turn into monsters if you feed them false data, you are not without power here; controlling the site content is the best way to socially engineer the minds of the regular populace. --I don't promote the removing of choice from people or manipulating people. No way. But if you give lies what they call for, (The Truth), then you are giving people the material they need to behave rationally, which generally they want to do.
This Google Wiki thing simply needs a public moderation system and good "Feng Shui" in order to regulate the natural growth and behavior patterns of the communities which flow through it. --I tend to believe in high control in the environment design and construction phase, and then 90% hands off when you set it loose. --The remaining 10% being occasional tune-ups and maintenance.
-FL
Everyone install the toolbar, go to the SideWiki information and installation pages, and comment them as "this feature sucks, everyone should use yahoo." Feel free to use profanity. Then we'll see what google thinks about this.
Wasn't this idea already rejected in the past because it would effectively modify the work of the author of the webpage, in violation of international conventions giving this right exclusively to the author ? (I believe it's the moral rights under the Geneva convention).
Ka Pin Yee's CritSuite was the best inline comment implementation out 12 years ago. Too bad nobody ever figured out how to speed it up! Inline comments are the only way that commenting the web will work - you have to be able to point at *THIS* spot and leave a comment that declares *THIS* to be completely incorrect - along with a hyperlink to why you are correct.
And to the commercial website operators out there who fear this kind of comment on their pages. . . Better start advertising truthfully and actually stepping up to the promises that you make your customers - - leaving an unmoderated comment system attached to your commercial website is a sign of STRENGTH - - that is, an indication of a strong company that overcomes adversity and doesn't lie to customers. Or just keep doing it your way and see how that works out.