Spec Annotation Experiment Invitation

Hi, folks–

As you know, we've been working on integrating Annotator into the 
WebPlatform.org project, specifically to make it easier to annotate 
specifications. The Web Annotation WG is one of the first working groups 
to approve using this as a feedback mechanism (which seems appropriate).

I'm convinced that in-band annotation will be a far superior feedback 
and discussion mechanism than W3C's traditional mailing list approach. 
But just how we execute on that, and what combination of software we 
use, is still an open question.

So, this is an open invitation for any annotation projects or vendors to 
get involved in the experiment. This includes annotation authoring 
clients, reading clients, storage and search servers/repos, and any 
other annotation tools that may be out there (e.g. data visualizers, 
reasoning engines, or things we simply haven't thought of yet).


As mentioned, our initial approach is to use the Annotator project, 
since it's open-source, has a large, active, and diverse contributor 
community, provides the core features that we need (an in-browser 
sidebar-based client for authoring and reading, and a searchable backend 
annotation repo), and because we've gotten integration support from 
Hypothesis. We are also open to working with any other projects or 
organizations.

We feel there are enormous benefits to working with multiple annotation 
projects. It gives us the opportunity to try lots of different options, 
avoids lock-in to any single solution, road-tests our annotation 
specifications to get valuable experience, gives us multiple 
interoperable implementations for when we try to advance along the 
Recommendation track, and contributes to a thriving annotation ecosystem.


There will be technical considerations that need to be addressed; right 
now, Annotator doesn't support the Web Annotation or Open Annotation 
data models, but that's going to be fixed within weeks. Once that 
happens, we should be able to easily share annotations between other 
servers and clients. I would like to use that time to prep other 
services to make sure that all the pieces will work together.


So, if you'd like to work with us to use your annotation project as part 
of this spec annotation experiment, please join the dedicated Spec 
Annotation Community Group [1], where we will be coordinating. I've 
started jotting down some initial requirements and phases in the CG wiki 
[2], and I welcome suggestions for improving them.


As Frederick noted, we plan to work closely between the Spec Annotation 
CG and other relevant groups, including the Web Annotation WG, the 
Social Web WG, the WebApps WG, the HTML WG, and any other groups that 
have deliverables that will bear on implementations (e.g. Robust 
Anchoring, Selection API, HTML editing APIs, ActivityStreams or other 
social APIs, and so on).

We'll also be coordinating with working groups that want to use the 
annotation tool, including this WG, the Audio WG, and others.


Happy Thanksgiving, for those of you celebrating that, and happy dinner 
plans for everyone else!

[1] http://www.w3.org/community/spec-annotation/
[2] https://www.w3.org/community/spec-annotation/wiki/

Regards-
-Doug

Received on Wednesday, 26 November 2014 19:02:46 UTC