Scripting News - Latest Comments in My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Mark Dzmura — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:59:32 -0000

Don't even bother resisting. Ultimately this capability (in many forms) will become just another layer in the increasingly complex internet ecosystem. Each of us will be able to choose and save, then selectively turn on and off our preferred sidewiki / commentary / annotation / markup for each content provider we visit, to the point of simultaneously layering several annotations. How will we make these choices? People will vote! New web technologies will aggregate this info and provide us with ready access to the annotations. Some people will even MAKE a LOT OF MONEY doing this!! Unbelievable, huh?? But ultimately, commentary without a lot of votes will not have much traction with large numbers of users.

Of course, the only problem with this is when a small number of powerful entitites can control aspects of this technology. But that's the same problem we already have with the media! Bring it on, and let's fix the problems. Of course, we should always be able to quickly and easily view a site "naked" !!

Reminds me of my brother, the teacher, complaining that "some pimple-faced eighth-grade miscreants can prevent me from getting another good teaching job by killing my score on ... (teacher rating site of week) out of spite and vindictiveness". NEVER happen, I said. (Well, almost never.) It might take awhile, but the truth will OUT.

I have long wanted to be able to do a similar kind of thing (in the audio/video space) to "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" so that - instead of just throwing things at my television - I, and others, can offer our fellows a "real time" commentary layer over the beltway talking heads who control the scope of the much of the media conversation in this country.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Steve Rothman — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:38:38 -0000

My apologies, Ronen, I'm not trying to be cynical at all. I'm sorry that I came off as arrogant. Of course I don't know absolute truth, only my opinion.

I would never walk into anyone's home (friend or not) and write on their wall or rearrange their furniture. It would be a violation of their privacy and their right to a secure home.

On the other hand, if I'm in a public place, and someone hands me a printed leaflet, I feel it would be ok for me to write my comments on the leaflet and then share it to someone else.

You have voluntarily placed your website on the internet where it can be accessed by billions of people. And I'm sure you hope that many people will read it. Is this more like the inside of your house, or more like a pamphlet being handed out to the public?

Ronen, I'm glad you have made your website public, and I certainly hope you keep it that way. Don't worry that a few people may make comments on it, and that a few other people will see those comments. If there are certain parts of your site that feel very sensitive to you, that it would make you feel violated if someone commented about them without your permission, then maybe you shouldn't put those particular bits on your public site?

Ironically, btw, I'm not a SideWiki user anyway - because my browser of choice doesn't support it. -Steve

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

ds_canada_e — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:46:26 -0000

It is harder to walk out front of a house and hand out fliers.

The volume of people walking by a house is always going to be much lower than the potential maximum of visitors to a
Web page, because the ease of access factor is so much higher. All you need is a computer and Internet access.

Existing laws are playing catch up with the Web.

There is an implicit assumption that SideWiki is a valuable technology. I remain unconvinced of that fact.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

iamronen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:58:10 -0000

Steve,

It would be great if we could converse without cynicism, and I, on my part, will try to do that.

You speak as if there is an absolute truth, and that you've got dibs on it. I am guessing and assuming that most people, to date, view my web-pages pretty much the way I wanted them to be seen. I place attention and intentions both into the content and into how it is presented, and I believe that viewers do too (even if unconsciously). You see, there is no truth, there is choice. You (and Google) can choose to respect my choices or ignore them - and to me that says something.

Do you usually walk into your friends houses and start hanging notes on the wall or rearranging the furniture the way you think it should be - I am guessing not. Does the fact that it's easier to do on-line make it right?

I don't see a blog or website linked to your profile - so in a way this discussion is theoretical on our part, so I'd like to offer you another perspective, one which does involve you directly. Let's suppose that there was an absolute truth, and that you are on to it and absolutely right. To make it easier on you we can also assume I am an eccentric person with whimsical behavior. If I were to take your advice and take my website offline, would that, in your eyes, make the Internet a better place?

All Things Good
Ronen

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Steve Rothman — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:47:13 -0000

iamronen, you can easily have total control over exactly the way people view your website if you don't put it on a public webserver. Have your site on your own computer, and bring people over to your place to view it, in person, on your computer. They will then see precisely what you'd like them to see. If you make your site available on the internet you have lost control over how people view it (and gained the possibility of a much bigger audience). As far as courtesy, I think it should be made clear to the viewers that any annotations were not made with your approval - and I suspect that will be quite clear on SideWiki.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Steve Rothman — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:35:19 -0000

If you're doing something illegal with speech, whether spoken or written or etched into lenses then there are already legal remedies for that situation. We shouldn't restrict technologies (like printing or lens-etching or SideWiki) because of the possibility that someone may commit libel or disturb the peace or whatever. If it's legal to hand out a flier on the public sidewalk that accuses the owner of being a criminal, then yes, it should also be legal to hand out the modified glasses.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Phil Wolff — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:37:41 -0000

Google has been adjusting the browsing experience for years. Google Translate rewrites your page in French. Their PageRank widget shows how famous your site is. Users have the power to change typefaces and font sizes to better suit their reading habits, to replace images with alt-text to support the visually impaired, etc. Firefox extensions automatically block ads placed by site owners, show from which countries the pages are served, DNS info about the domain, trust/safety of the site. I don't think that's the problem.

The great offense appears to be showing comments about a page in visual proximity to the page without the page author having any control over those comments.

Sidewiki could evolve to address these concerns.

First, federation. I'd hope there would be many hosts of sidewiki content and that you'd be able to subscribe to one or more of them. Hosts might be shared by people with similar values or interests (the Monster.com sidewiki service, the Slashdot sidewiki service). This reduces the concentration of power held by Google.

Second, moderation services would give you some influence over what appears next to your pages, perhaps even how much. I'd want change alerting, sentiment analysis, sidewikis respecting robots.txt bans, and DISQUS-style moderation of sidewiki content.

I agree with Jake that sidewiki creates the power for abuse without practical means of redress. Evolution along these lines might cut abuse and add back tools for giving site owners at least the illusion of control.

iamronen says courtesy comes from being able to cultivate the flavor of conversation. Without giving some tools to site owners, Google's sidewiki will remain rude.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

iamronen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:46:36 -0000

I think of this as a matter of courtesy. I'd like there to be a way for me to turn away abusive and rude people (and links) from my website. If Google, or anyone else, can't respect that basic courtesy - then I'd like to show them the door.
http://www.iamronen.com/200...

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

wordsforliving — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:17:58 -0000

Very interesting perspective. I never thought of it that way before, but can definitely see this point of view. In my mind, the Google SideWiki was a way for me to blog easily. I'm not a problogger, just love to blog. With the SideWiki, I could send a post right to my Blogger blogs from the page I'm looking at and my post would link right to that page automatically. I'm not the type to try to invade someone's space or be malicious, but I can see how someone who loves to troll could use the feature against someone. Hopefully, something will be put in place to give the site owners more control over the SideWiki comments.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Modern Day Peasant — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:55:04 -0000

Very well said and I most certainly agree with your position. Thanks for writing it!

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

@silverton — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:59:47 -0000

This seems like a reasonable bare minimum for all annotation layers on personal, individual web sites, Ravi.

Our social identities have always been the result of complex and all too often irrational negotiations between social context, individual psychology, and human behavior. It's going to be a real challenge to maintain this awkward and all too imperfect balance -- if we can even call it balance -- moving forward. This become particularly interesting as growing numbers of researchers -- from physicists to ethicists, and every domain in between and beyond -- engage in research that differentiates and contemplates the roles of PAST evolutionary advantage of such human meaning and experience versus FUTURE implications for the identity of our very species; as we move forward into increasingly science-fiction-like terrain of augmented reality, extended cognition, brain computer interfaces, brain machine interfaces, and perhaps even communication features and functionality very much akin to a primitive direct digital telepathy.

By comparison, today's hopelessly primitive pages, symbols, and protocols indeed express the earliest inklings of such inevitable advances, and it's not utterly improbable that we are today setting the stage for more than we can yet fully imagine, much less accurately articulate.

However gradually this process unfolds, to date, all kinds of evolutionary boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred as information becomes our very existential abode, as Dave clearly describes. This isn't the last we'll hear of such debates in a growing number of seemingly obvious -- and what many will surely argue as inconsequential -- contexts. The inverse of what seems utterly obvious to some will represent the only logical and reasonable path, to others. Of course, this much has always been so.

Having been raised in the West, I can certainly understand and share a strong preferences to err on the side of preserving rugged individualism; on the other hand, the experience of having worked with and learned from many others raises just enough doubt for me to question my own biases, however obvious they may seem to me, today.

So, with the deepest and utmost respect for Dave -- for I too have long opined, even ranted, upon this issue of Online Identity Management http://tr.im/identityman -- the following link may represent yet another potential violation of the proposed Web Annotation Policy http://webnotes.net/?PmajRU (note that Mac Safari seems to fail to load the Sticky Note that accompanies the highlighting).

As always, I yield back the balance of my time and ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks; or to even entirely reverse my opinion upon grokking new, better, or more accurate information. ;-)

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Chris Janton — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:33:16 -0000

http://www.hypernews.org/~l...

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Jake Savin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:03:32 -0000

I have a friend who was once accused of date rape. Via graffiti. On the inside of a women's bathroom stall, in the college commons. In spite of its untruth, it pretty much wrecked his college dating possibilities, the desired effect, I'm sure.

Say someone went to my blog and said I steal source code from my employers, or that I lied on my resume, or that I'm a racist, or any of a million other horrible untrue things they could potentially say about me. Things that could potentially adversely affect my livelihood, and therefore threaten both me and my family. I think that's wrong, and I shouldn't have to police my own website for this crap. It's enough trouble to moderate comments already, and if it gets to be much more trouble I'll just turn them off. But I can't turn this off, and I never opted in.

To say that this debate is only about modifying the content in the user's browser, and that it's the user's right to do so, is to completely miss the point. The point isn't who owns the user's browser and how it presents content. The point is that systems like this are ripe for abuse, and that if Google were acting responsibly, they wouldn't be exposing content owners to the kinds of risks we're talking about without letting them have the least bit of say in the matter.

Not to mention that users won't understand the difference between the content on the site and the comments.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

ds_canada_e — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:30:51 -0000

This house analogy is stretched pretty thin.

I stand there and hand passersby a pair of glasses which have the phrase "The owner of this house is a known criminal" etched into the lenses such that this phrase appears when anyone looks through them.

Does my right to free speech cover this? Would it be different if I was standing outside your house?

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

rcastro0 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:26:00 -0000

As a web surfer, a blog reader, I wouldn't mind having the option to read comments to any and every site, from a given (closed or open) community of people. In fact, I would value it. I like the slashdot commenting system the most, and there I find people whose comments I value and I know I would like to consider. What if their comments (my /. friends) were available all over the web? That would be great -- that would be valuable.

However as a blog writer (not so frequently as you, Dave, but still...) I do feel a little hurt every time a banner ad shows up in my site. I mean, come on, I took so much care with my words, and now these alien words are right there, polluting it!

But I guess if people want to visit my "evolution theory" posts and only see comments from their creationist pals... it is their right, isn't it?

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Andrew Whitehouse — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:41:19 -0000

At the risk of stating the obvious, what's acceptable (based on copyright law) applies to real people doing things in the real world.

When you create a digital work you own copyright in that work. When you serve it from your web server you publish it, and do so with an explicit or implied licence on how it can be used. For example: "No part of the site may be reproduced in any form whether electronically or otherwise without the prior consent of <content owner=""> ... You shall not Frame or Rebadge the Web Site, or otherwise integrate it into any other system, except with the express advance permission of <content owner="">".

I see a trend of content creators reclaiming their content from third party sites, and this should include tightening up how it can be used. Caching is usually fine (and useful), but I feel that limits need to be more clearly defined on how content can be framed.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

CoCreatr — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:23:48 -0000

Thanks for the lively topic and the discussion. I think I get it with the house and sidewalk metaphor. For me, the line is overstepped when someone from the public sidewalk modifies the public impression of the house by projecting an image on one of the walls.

Are we witnessing a repetition of the HTML framing issues? http://www.bitlaw.com/inter...

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Yule Heibel — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:12:15 -0000

Interesting. I hadn't heard of Sidewiki before - but I've been using Diigo for years. Since few people paid attention to Diigo, I wonder if this is a new problem or a problem of scale... Diigo is a small David compared to Google's Goliath. When they did it, it seemed innocuous. Now that Google is doing it, it doesn't.

From my ex-academic p.o.v., I've always felt "entitled" to mark up someone else's webpages (and even felt good about being able to do it digitally, for it saves printing out text and annotating it in pencil). When Diigo became better known, I made my annotations private - I realized other people could see this stuff even if they didn't want to. Others might be less modest, though...

Tricky problem. I don't think it's the same as standing on a public sidewalk and "choosing" to look at your house through pink sunglasses or whatever. It's more like rearranging the shrubbery around your yard, so as to signal to others on the public sidewalk what it is they should perceive first. And that is quite a different kettle of fish than deciding on the color of sunglasses for yourself.

You're being given the power to create a frame, which will be seen first by some people (those signed in to Sidewiki, or Diigo). (I like to think we Diigo users are a better class of people, but I know I'm probably just flattering myself here... )

We did learn something about the power of framing from George Lakoff, didn't we? It's not sunglasses we're talking about.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

dave — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:37:19 -0000

Glad you don't run the world Roger.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

rogerben — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:15:16 -0000

Dave: your site is your space, and my browser is mine. If you allow me to load your site in my browser, you do so with the knowledge that each browser/plugin/extension is going to do something different with your content.

So that's pretty much nothing like my relationship to your bank account. I'm not allowed to see or change anything about your account without explicit permission.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Ravi Pinjala — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:24:24 -0000

What would be really nice to see from SideWiki is a simple way for the owner of a site to administer SideWiki for their site. I should be able to drop a file in the root of my web server with a salted password hash (or, better yet, an openid?), and use that to get access to an administrative interface. This, plus having SideWiki content clearly separated from the actual content of the page, would make it a welcome addition in my book.

There are also security issues, of course, but given Google's fascination with sandboxing in the web browser I think they're probably on top of that.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Steve Rothman — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:42:41 -0000

I just realized that something happened to Dave and his family today that is much more important than this silliness. I'm sorry I hadn't realized it before, and Dave - you have my sympathy. That's a terrible loss.

As far as a fence, joypog, , sure David could build a fence, but I don't think that changes anything. If the fence is the only thing I can see from the sidewalk, then the fence itself becomes the metaphor for the public web site. As a pedestrian I can view his fence or his house or whatever I can see with my glasses or not. If Dave wants to control the way I see his private creation, then he should not make it visible to the public. If it's visible to the public, then the public can choose how to look at it, I think, and that includes the possibility that some member of the public (or a company) can offer a filter of some sort for another member of the public to use when viewing public things from the sidewalk.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Justus P. — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:58:21 -0000

I guess to stretch the analogy a bit further, is there a way that Dave can build a 10' high fence so that you can see his house only under his terms? (ie he can unlock the gate but he will let you into the front yard only if you take off those garish glasses)? I guess that is where the opt out / opt in question comes up.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Zacqary Adam Xeper — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:53:51 -0000

I get what you mean, there is something to be said about the fact that Google is doing this, versus some guy working in his spare time. In the long run, though, I don't see it having much of an effect. Or people liking it, for that matter.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Justus P. — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:49:23 -0000

sorry man, I don't see it. I understand the question and concern, but I don't see where you delineate the line more specifically than "big conglomerate (ie google) = scary."

Personally, I think that any megacorp is free to create a forum where people can post comments. After all, the commenters own the copyright over their comments no matter how that content was inspired -- and the commenters are free to comment where they please - whether on your sandbox or on google's sandbox. That said, I do agree that there may be an exceedingly good case to boycott the google sandbox.