Hypothes.is / Peer Review for the Internet (W4F)

Session Topic: Hypothes.is

Convener: Dan Whaley

Notes-taker(s): Judi Clark

Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:  peer review

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Notes: http://digitalidcoach.com/2011/10/iiw-xiii-hypothes-is/

Hypothes.is is a peer-based global commenting and annotation system for documents and media. Open source distributed non-profit infrastructure.

Currently we have a commenting system, but it’s problematic: comments not enabled for all pages, additions at the discretion of site owner, located at bottom of the page (instead of in-context), also sometimes there are a lot of comments (thousands). Another problem: no permanence to the system; e.g., TechCrunch replaced Disqus with Facebook comments. Also channel may be limited to a region or country.

Why these efforts fail:


 * No reputation model… (long list, quick review)

Design criteria: works inline, community moderated reputation model, works everywhere, context-aware, pseudonymous, works across media types.

This is a good time, based on work being done in this community: Open Annotation Collaboration (using this standard with a reputation model).

Stance model: ability to support or challenge what’s being said by others, make an observation, offer link, ask question… Why annotation and stance? gauging credibility: ratings of meaningless qualities, gross characterizations, loss of fidelity. We can do better.

Hypothes.is has a Reputation Fellows Program, upcoming workshops to help think through some of the problems in reputation.

Diversity of interfaces: plug-ins, URL, wesite, API, links/reveals from pages.

Action flow: Highlight, Annotate, Submit. Heatmap along right edge, view annotations, moderate.

Use cases: news/blogs, legislation, regulations, meeting minutes, TOS, journal articles, ballot measures

Lots of work to optimize all dimensions. Long list of advisors. Timeline puts them in alpha testing in first half of next year, beta testing later in the year.

Notes source: http://digitalidcoach.com/2011/10/iiw-xiii-hypothes-is/