AnnotationWikiArchive

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Here some theory and general ideas; see AnnotationWikiImplementation for news.

As the original CritLink server of KaPingYee is currently down, you might use BaylesWikiAnnotator? at the end of this page. This is a working, slightly Wikified patch of the CritLink script. A Google search showed that there seems to be no other survivor of this software gem, accessible for public use. Oct 26, 2002, 05:42 PST FridemarPache

: :update: I took mine down too. I think we may as well strive to use the developing web standards for annotation. I don't have time to work on it right now, so there is currently no available wiki annotator. -- BayleShanks

One view sees the main benefit of such a combination that you can annotate ReadOnlyWebPages?. For instance, imagine going to nytimes.com to read a news article, and finding community-maintained annotations on that article that identify/point to further sources, disagreements, misquotes, etc. Essentially, you are Wiki-izing the entire web by allowing Wiki's to create annotations that point from any webpage into a related WikiPage.

Another view includes WriteAlsoWebPages? like WikiPages or WebDavePages? as targets of annotation. In general, if the annotation topics are offtopic in the target, then it might be preferable to opt for external annotations. E.g. a socio-linguist wiki observes the discussion in a programming oriented wiki and analyses the style and communication strategy of the observed posters.

See CritLink for a discussion of proposed benefits to combining CritLink and wiki.

See AnnotationWikiImplementation for news on what has been done and (slightly) technical discussion on how we should proceed.

FridemarPache was the originator of these ideas.

An action plan

Phase 1:

: Do it manually

Required: the "owner" of a wiki and its community to accept the new paradigm.

Phase 2:

: Merge a wiki script with CritLink to benefit from the combined properties of both collaborative systems.

Required: Perl Programmer. (S/he could do it in a pay- or donation-based Wiki, e.g. creating their own in SeedWiki farm, ...).

So my question to the community of communities. Who has or can set up a fresh wiki to start phase 1? It will be a community with n=2, so it is an ideal seed, because it starts without inherent conflicts. -- FridemarPache

The idea of an annotation wiki is now realized as a plug-in of the Firefox-browser: Wikalong creates an expandable/collapsable sidebar going along with normal browsing activity. On the other hand you can use the wiki as a "conventional" wiki. With at least the most recent versions of Firefox (I tested with 1.0.7), Wikalong requires that you re-start the browser, though it initially appears that the installation failed.

As a selfdescribing example there is an annotation to this wikipage. -- fred1

AnnotationWikiArchive

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