Re: Control on the right to create annotation

Misha Glouberman summarized:

>The question, then, is whether there's a way to force pages into being
>annotatable, for those users who do want to see the comments.

The web is used for very different purposes and by very different players.
A tool, that allows commenting on _any_ page, might result in a throwback
of the web as a media itself. Information suppliers might migrate to some
secure protocols or whatever. Public annotation on any page might be not
the best strategy for the coherent development of an emerging new media. I
think we have to respect, that some information does not want to be
commented.

Certainly, commenting web pages would bring the Internet back to its roots:
an interactive many-to-many media. But the penetrating commenting facility
has to be introduced softly. I believe in self regulating mechanisms: If
web commenting is going to be widely accepted, one-way-minded information
providers might get convinced, if they see, how it works and that their
customers may demand, to give and see feedback. Otherwise executives might
overreact, if someone blackens a companies reputation.

In Web4Groups we suggest to handle that with a <nodiscussion> tag, that can
be used by scary webmasters. If a user is going through the w4g proxy,
buttons are added: "Start discussion", "Join discussion" or "Sorry,
provider of this page does not allow public feedback". In the latter case,
people might send an e-mail to the webmaster. Or we might offer a link to a
discussion, that has a similar content like the ongoing one here, thus
bringing the issue on a meta-level.

Misha Glouberman wrote in his article

"Groups currently working on web-based conferencing have less-than clear
political goals, and so propose technologies with less-than-ideal political
implications. Systems for commenting on web sites are politically critical.
Their politics should not be left up to technological accident."

Agree. In Web4Groups we have a strong Technology Assessment task in
parallel, working on these issues, mainly supported through a set of user
groups (science, administration, interest group), that verify and comment
design options and the results. We have asked them, how they would react if
their pages would be commented. Their answer was clear:

Question C4. measures the reaction of the users to possible comments on
their publications in the net (NA 24).

 Thanks for the input                                  62 %

 Shut up                                                1 %

 I will participate in the electronic discussion       27 %

 I should have been notified immediately               10 %

(Source: http://www.soe.oeaw.ac.at/w4g/user/stat5.html)

--Roland


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Roland.Alton-Scheidl@oeaw.ac.at       http://www.soe.oeaw.ac.at/~ras/
Research Unit for Socio-Economics     Austrian  Academy  of  Sciences
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Received on Sunday, 25 August 1996 14:51:18 UTC