- From: Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 18:07:14 -0700
- To: Michael Erard <michael.erard@gmail.com>, philg@mit.edu
- Cc: public-webhistory@w3.org
* Michael Erard <michael.erard@gmail.com> [2013-08-14 15:11-0400] > Hi, > > I'm a journalist with a magazine assignment to write about online > comments and commenting environments, and Ian Jacobs at W3 > recommended that I write to this list. I'm looking for definitive > answers to these questions: > > 1. What was the first website to offer the ability for readers/users > to leave comments? (A Wikipedia entry on "blogs" says that Bruce > Ableson at OpenDiary.com was the first but I've been unable to > confirm this as yet.) A few early ones that come to mind: Daniel LaLiberte's HyperNews project (begun Mar '94) was a general web-based discussion system (not really user comments; meant to be more collaborative) http://web.archive.org/web/20000925134254/http://www.hypernews.org/HyperNews/get/www/collab/conferencing.html?nogifs https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.infosystems.www/Gu8x1kvEDHI/Xohjt5MrCZ0J In the mid-'90s web sites commonly used guestbooks to allow readers to post comments; here is a reference from Mar '94 but I don't know if this was the first: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.infosystems.www/YlknwGoATXg/ZJCRPqhDy4gJ There were hundreds of sites with guestbooks by the time I made this list (Aug '95, I think): http://impressive.net/people/gerald/1996/ugweb/guestbooks/ Philip Greenspun's photo.net site had user comments some time in the mid- to late-'90s but I am not sure when that feature was added (philg, care to comment?) -- Gerald Oskoboiny http://www.w3.org/People/Gerald/ World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) http://www.w3.org/ tel:+1-604-906-1232 mailto:gerald@w3.org
Received on Friday, 16 August 2013 01:07:17 UTC