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Google SideWiki Brings Comments To Everyone

Posted by timothy on from the obvious-things-are-hard-to-get-right dept.

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.

5 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. No more than a tech demo by Raindance · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. No Chrome? by francisstp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:No Chrome? by Syniurge · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Chrome will support it built in to the new version.

      Hmm, wrong:

      Peter Kasting says
      From the article: "It will also eventually be integrated into Google's Chrome Web browser."

      I am a Chromium developer, and as far as I know, this is untrue; I believe the hope is to make this a Chrome extension, not something that's part of the base product.

      (from the Ars Technica comments)

  3. Oh goody. Youtube comments everywhere by dschl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Oh goody. Youtube comments everywhere by Bazman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Did you not read the links from TFA:

      http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=157294

      It might work, or it might suck. Only one way to find out...