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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.
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.
A whole new way to astroturf.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Cluttered browser window + Wiki nonsense != desirable plug-in
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
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.
Hard to see how this would be useful without moderation. Hard to see how moderation could be implemented in a practical way.
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!
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
How else do you think google knows what comments are left for any particular page?
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.
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".
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!
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!
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
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.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.