8 ms·
Greenwich: an experiment in collaborative links
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- welcome_dragon 2y agoSo webrings?
- tootie 2y agoExactly my thought. Maybe an idea worth dusting off. Web rings were a thing when search barely worked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring
- camtarn 2y agoSort of, but webrings needed the site owner's involvement and couldn't have new links added by people just viewing the website.
- jerf 2y agoNo, those have very different characteristics. This is a variant on annotation.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoEverything old is new. The poor child thinks he's invented webrings.
- bee_rider 2y agoWebrings were an alternative discovery solution to search, right? They died because there weren’t needed when search got incredibly good. Now that search kind of is… not good, maybe they could be tried again.
- disturbed_devil 2y agoThanks for the condescending comment dad
- junto 2y agoStrongly feels like decentralized trackbacks and pingbacks which died because they turned into spam monsters. This turns it into a centralized problem, but a problem nevertheless?
- photonthug 2y agoHonest question, is blog spam still a huge problem today if you’re not running a buggy old Wordpress stack, or better yet, not using Wordpress at all? I would think scammers and spammers would just focus on lucrative targets like instafacetok and yelpazon reviews in 2024. And is seo hacking based on comment threads really still a viable business, or we are mainly worried about links to malware? I get that new platforms of any kind are certainly likely to be targets of vandalism, but it’s surprising that everyone seems to be suggesting that every new/unpopular/niche platform will immediately be targeted by what amounts to organized crime. Even if I had evil intentions and an army of thousands to craft malware and scams, I wouldn’t task even one of them to poke around on platforms with less than like 10% of the market, because why bother?
- diggan 2y ago> Honest question, is blog spam still a huge problem today if you’re not running a buggy old Wordpress stack, or better yet, not using Wordpress at all? Yes, the most basic ones just go by form fields, easy to see if you expose some sort of comment form and add a hidden "first_name" field users don't see, but the bots are stupid enough to fill out all fields no matter their visibility. The more advanced ones won't get caught in that, but there are tons of general tools for automatically spamming even hand made forms/fields on the fly.
- tingletech 2y agoHow is this different from the public annotations in https://web.hypothes.is https://web.hypothes.is ?
- photonthug 2y agoWell, one difference I notice is there are no links inviting me to “contact the sales team” or “join our webinar training partners”.
- ay 2y agoReminds me of https://ruby-talk.ruby-lang.narkive.com/buiXXTZh/what-is-hoodwink-d https://ruby-talk.ruby-lang.narkive.com/buiXXTZh/what-is-hoo... :-)
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoYes totally! The framing of "web graffiti" was something I played with, but didn't like the association with spam or purely artistic purpose.
- eykanal 2y agoThis seems like a great idea designed for well-intentioned people. Unfortunately, the internet is running a bit short on well-intentioned people. The potential for abuse here is enormous. I have a difficult time seeing this becoming anything other than a cesspool of ads, 4chan-style joke links, and general inanity.
- bee_rider 2y agoThis seems like maybe a good use for some federated social media or web of trust methods? Like I don’t trust the internet in general to curate these links. But one could surely find networks where the average voter could be trustworthy…
- eykanal 2y agoWas thinking that when I wrote the comment. Unfortunately, spammers have gotten very good at gaming web of trust techniques (see amazon product reviews). This is a Hard Problem™.
- arkh 2y agoInvite only networks were you're responsible for the people you invite à la what.cd : your invitee does something against the rules? They get banned and you get banned.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agolike this idea too!
- ansible 2y agoThat is basically the idea behind https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ . There's approximately zero spam or other bad behavior. You can look at the full user tree (https://lobste.rs/users https://lobste.rs/users) and see if there's anyone you know who might be willing to invite you to join.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago> why not let anyone contribute to any webpage? I can think of a few reasons.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agohaha true, I think the thing I am most after with this experiment is a more collaborative "alive" feeling outside of social networks. but of course we don't want to grant everyone write access to every part of every page.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI still like it. Even if it is flawed I totally agree that the web could be so much more than social networks. Where to start?
- SrslyJosh 2y agoUnfortunately, if this succeeds, you'll need to figure out a way to prevent (or mitigate) spam and other abuse. It's an awful problem, and I'm not sure if there's any way to really deal with it. A PGP-style web-of-trust might work, but that has its own downsides.
- jsnell 2y agoThe title feels pretty clickbaity. I might be missing something, but this feels like another distributed annotation system for the web, an idea that's been tried and retried for what feels like decades a this point. Why will this one work when the other attempts didn't? Is it just about this being more restricted than those past systems? (The example that came to mind first was Google Sidewiki, but it looks like there's a bunch of these listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_annotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_annotation)
- camtarn 2y agoI guess the focus in this one is on adding links rather than discussion, which from a look at that Wikipedia page, seems unique. But yes, it seems a bit like a small twist on an extremely old idea.
- photonthug 2y agoAlso there’s really not that many systems on the page, some were not actually launched, or were proprietary. So old idea or not, it kinda looks like any contributions in this area would be worthwhile.
- jerf 2y agoIt does seem a variant on annotation. I'd commend to the poster my analysis of the network utility of such systems I developed after pondering on them for quite a few years (I was interacting with them in the 1990s): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576213 I commend that to the author in the spirit of learning about the space and thinking through the implications, because I believe people are more likely to solve problems when they understand what they are, and think through them, and don't just try to blunder past them with hope and moxie. That post was written about generalized text annotation and I stand by it in that context. However, as you deviate from the system being analyzed, the analysis becomes less appropriate. One of the problems generalized annotation systems have is that there are an arbitrary amount of textual comments that can be added to a page. That is what turns the popular pages into a unpleasant cacophony. The range of links is somewhat more restrained. Plus, links are just... links. Textual comments are arguing and flames and generally tiring on any popular page. (Though I'd watch out for people learning how to turn "links" into arguments.) It is possible that a shared cross-linking system might work, but I'd strenuously suggest thinking very very hard before adding in any sort of inline "conversation" system. It is very, very obvious and very, very tempting... and it immediately puts you back into the generalized web annotation space, which is strewn with corpses, many of them very very well funded. You can have a "community forum" where people can talk, and perhaps even should, but putting it inline on the page is basically a known-fail. If you think you've got a solution to that I'd try to be very sure that you've got a very strong proposition on exactly how yours is different than the previous attempts. Anyhow, I would just generally suggest to the author that this is one of those "obvious ideas" that hasn't happened because in general they flame out so quickly that you don't even find out they existed before they've already collapsed, not because nobody has ever tried it. Be sure to consider what has happened in the past. Also, as a hint from previous efforts: It looks like you may be trying to bind links to specific text on the page. As you've probably already discovered, that's harder than it looks, and however much code you've written for it, I guarantee you it's even harder than that. I'd strongly suggest considering just binding links to pages and not trying to bind it to text at all.
- cxr 2y agoThis has been done a lot. Marc Andreessen was going to put it in Mosaic. Hypothes.is is the most semi-well-implemented modern incarnation I am aware of. Recently, I came across this paper which describes an implementation called "Weblinks" (terrible name) that focuses on just the links. Haven't used it, but it's thoughtfully designed: <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3465336.3475123 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3465336.3475123>
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoThanks! Yeah I recall Marc talking about related ideas with Mosaic actually now that you mention it.
- ghusto 2y agoDon't want to be that guy throwing word-turds at someone's actual work, but both ideas (making any webpage editable, and trusted err, well I guess webrings) have tried and died more than once. I can see how webrings died when social media took over — not that I believe social media to be superior in any way — but I never understood why making webpages editable never took off. There were a few attempts, most requiring extensions. EDIT: Chrome-only extension? Now I don't feel so bad about those thrown word-turds ;)
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoThanks for checking it out ghusto! No need to apologize. What other solution would you expect outside of the Chrome Extension? You just mean you want a different browser supported?
- ghusto 2y agoYup, Firefox :)
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoCool, thanks!
- SrslyJosh 2y agoSafari, please. =) Also, it'd be great if this was an open standard so that anyone could write an extension for any browser.
- manbitesdog 2y agoDon’t let the negative comments get to you. The idea is interesting, and there are plenty of ways to curb spammers (just look at Stack Overflow). Also, this isn't the same concept as webrings.
- saylisteins 2y agoI think this is an interesting concept! Please don't let the negative comments get to you. One suggestion is to maybe allow users/community to have a walled garden in regards to writing rights. This would help with moderation, and allow users to subscribe to the walled gardens/bubbles they are most interested in.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoThanks! All good, I think some people are interpreting this as 1) me thinking this is some sort of groundbreaking novel idea and 2) that I am trying to scale this in a venture scale sort of way haha. Neither are true. The walled garden idea came up elsewhere too, really like it and considered it. Just have to think through details and add the user management side.
- ClaraForm 2y agoWould you consider incorporating the AT protocol into it? It would be nice if every reader had their own moderation filter, like a web of links, but-bluesky-ified.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoooh interesting, will investigate that
- pikseladam 2y agoIt looks like An IndieWeb Webring project. You can check it out here: https://xn--sr8hvo.ws/ https://xn--sr8hvo.ws/ "This proof-of-concept webring is a way for folks adding IndieWeb building blocks to their personal websites to find (and be found by) other folks with IndieWeb building blocks on their sites!"
- bargle0 2y agoClient side webrings. What is the plan for fighting bitrot and bad-faith actors?
- beowulfey 2y agoI love this idea and agree you need a form of curation. Is there a mechanism for "ranking" links? Or reporting? I think a simple UI that lets you up or downvote (after clicking) could be pretty effective at reducing spam.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agototally, this is a feature I am working on. might even just do a report feature and remove anything that has been reported too many times by different people before doing true ranking.
- dcow 2y agoPlease add a mobile safari extension. I wouldn’t see myself using this in any other context.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agointeresting, thanks for the suggestion!
- sva_ 2y agoThis sort of thing seems to be doomed to fail from the start as the web is so large that any attempt of building a user base will spread itself too thin to really take off imo.
- Werewolf255 2y agoOh yeah, I remember the old StumbleUpon browser extension from the early 2000s myself! Good times.
- robertclaus 2y agoThe early days of StumbleUpon were great! I think it might also be a perfect example of why a lot of the comments here are pessimistic about content quality staying high over time.
- bschmidt1 2y agoSo many haters in here hahah I think it's a cool project and was a creative blog post. Reminds me of the early days of the web. Ignore these insufferable know-it-all haters on Hacker News. These people are the worst! Some aren't even real people. The ones that are bots are probably HN itself because https://greenwich-for-chrome.replit.app/ https://greenwich-for-chrome.replit.app/ is a threat. This is the coolest part IMO, has Twitter or HN like potential.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoAppreciate it!
- bschmidt1 2y agoSure thing, just installed the extension and tried a few! Kinda like Pinterest + HackerNews I dig
- surfingdino 2y agoWe don't hate it, we just know it's going to be hijacked by SEO bros.
- bschmidt1 2y ago[flagged]
- lkrubner 2y ago"The way we discover interesting websites needs innovating, why not let anyone contribute to any webpage?" I remember there was a website that did this in 1999, using frames to allow people to post comments on any website. The courts shot this down as an illegal infringement of trademark. Does anyone remember the name of that website that did this?
- shark1 2y agoSimilar to https://web.hypothes.is/ https://web.hypothes.is/
- Multicomp 2y agoI've wanted a distributed annotation system for a while, probably it will end up having some sort of advanced block list and follow list and follow me for my block list approach, potentially an activity pub-based system might work, but in the meantime I want to try this one because I've missed the sidewiki boat and want to try it. Once it can be on Firefox at least, I can try it.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoYeah definitely. Going to build out a first version of block lists / reporting this weekend. Someone else wants a firefox version too so might start there in terms of additional browser support. Thanks!
- ergl 2y agoThis is cool. One way of solving spam problems might to only show links of people you explicitly follow / trust in some way, although that means associating identity to the posts. You could have a setting to toggle between only showing links from people you trust or from everyone, to get around the bootstrapping problem at first.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoThanks! Yeah I think this is likely the direction I will take things.
- shadytrees 2y agoreminds me of why the lucky stiff's hoodwink.d project, in a good way
- surfingdino 2y agoIf it doesn't have a Cutty Sark pub it's not Greenwich.
- namuol 2y agoIf this is interesting/novel to you, you might be surprised to learn there’s a W3C standard for annotating the web which never really caught on. https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/ https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/ It deserves more attention, particularly from browser vendors and social media platforms, but the incentives have never been in place. One commercial application built on the standard is hypothes.is, but I’ve lost track of their efforts years ago.
- froh 2y agoI love it :-) However, would it be possible to come up with a UI that doesn't need to "Read and change all your data on all websites." ? I feel uncomfortable with that.
- onlyfootnotes 2y agoyeah almost certainly! let me think through updating that, thanks for the feedback!