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These were generally called metaweb tech when they were popular about 15-20 years ago. The problem was that everyone had to have a particular author's plugin t
by kristopolous 7y ago
These were generally called metaweb tech when they were popular about 15-20 years ago.
The problem was that everyone had to have a particular author's plugin to see the extra content.
Some of them were better than others, allowing cross referencing, citation insertion, and a number of other sophisticated features.
I don't know if they still are around.
Sites like reddit and hn are really inverted versions of this concept, fixing the basic problem that most sites don't have commentary.
What may be an interesting hybrid is to search the commentary aggregators when you land on a site and then show the hn/digg/whatever comments and permit replying if the credentials are known
- rtpg 7y agoI wrote a chrome extension that went the opposite direction: hit the extension button and you would get a list of hacker news and reddit submissions for that URL. Was super useful for finding some cool comments on a page I’ve since moved to Firefox and gave up on the extension, but it might be an easy port...
- air7 7y agoFirefox extensions are nowadays (since Quantum) web-extensions and are almost identical to chrome's so porting should be quite simple.
- syx 7y agoyou just described exactly what I've done a year ago [1] I always promised myself to rewrite it for Firefox but was too lazy. [1] https://github.com/syxanash/commentdat https://github.com/syxanash/commentdat
- tetizera 7y agoI'd love to have this extension! Let us know if you ever pick up that extension. I do have one question though. Links on e-mails usually have "?utm_campaign=id_campaign&utm_source=nytimes" for example. Is it possible to avoid duplicates? To this day this is one of the major headaches for mods on Reddit. There's also the mobile links for the same news article.
- syx 7y agoThis was more of a kludge than a serious project, but glad I was not the only one to find this useful, will definitley continue working on it. >Is it possible to avoid duplicates? I thought about this as well in the past but never actually found a solution. Maybe someone here knows if there's research or an algorithm to uniquely identify the URL. Edit: typos
- weaksauce 7y agoStripping out the query string probably works for 80%(maybe even more) of the sites. Maybe that by default and then an option to search for the whole url as a fallback?
- 333c 7y agoSome pages will link to a canonical URL in the head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element
- the_duke 7y agoFYI: converting a Chrome to a FF extension is easy to do now. They are mostly the same, and Firefox has a compatibility library that stubs most of the incompatibilities.
- comntr 7y agoYep, I didn't have to do much other then doing if(chrome.contextMenus){...} to make this extension run on Firefox and Firefox Android. But I intentionally chose the <iframe> approach to minimise the browser-dependent surface, so the <iframe> draws the UI and the extension only makes a few basic things like updating the icon color.
- gitgud 7y agoSame as the [1] extension I wrote last year. Firefox was easier to incorporate than I thought though, the API is almost identical. [1] https://newsit.benwinding.com/ https://newsit.benwinding.com/
- MetallicKat 7y agoThis is nice. Exactly what I am looking for!
- ekzy 7y agoI wrote a similar extension too! Looks like we all had the same idea https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-lookup/ekfmfhhfalhmiacchemmhapffjaolffo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-lookup...
- Jaruzel 7y agoYou might be able to do with just a bookmarklet into the algolia search for HN. EDIT: I've just created a proof of concept that works: http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/hnlookup/ http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/hnlookup/
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- comntr 7y agoSo it effectively runs arbitrary javascript in the current page? I mean, if I run it on my online banking page, it'll have access to everything. The extension isn't ideal either - access to the current URL is too much - but at least it can't run arbitrary JS in the page itself.
- Jaruzel 7y agoIf you look at the bookmarklet, you'll see that the JS in it only fetches the URL and appends it to an Algolia search query. Nothing is sent to any other server. It's all done in your browser. Hacker News has exactly the same type of bookmarklet on their 'bookmarklet' link at the bottom of every page[1]. Arguably this method is safer than an Extension. --- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html https://news.ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html
- toyg 7y agoYeah, this has been tried over and over. Unless it becomes a standard browser feature (and decentralized, e.g. dht-backed), it's always been a nonstarter for technical reasons alone. Also, if you start from an anti-censorship anti-moderation position, in this day and age, you are likely to attract the worst of society right off the bat.
- mehdix 7y agoThe technical problem here is way easier to solve than the social one. You'd want to avoid having hatespeech or some attack being planned on URLs of your blog. This is by definition a tricky problem. Should moderation follow us to the remotest and most deserted corners of the web? Should prying eyes follow humans all the time, even on this abstract ocean of digital content? On technical side I think we'd need some sort of widespread micropayment mechanism baked into major browsers or at least Firefox. Then decentralized commenting solutions will follow.
- solstice 7y ago(Re: micropayments) Sigh... Flattr seemed so promising back in 2011.
- comntr 7y agoData is the payment.
- mehdix 7y agoHow one would actually pay their server bills with data except by selling that to third parties [replace with your favorite agency]?
- comntr 7y agoI'd expect some ML stuff, like training some models, etc. Such comments in raw form hardly have much value. What adtech usually pays for is data pinned to user ids.
- floatingatoll 7y agoIs solving this "basic problem" ethical? The implied assumption here is that it's a "basic problem" that most sites do not have a readily-discoverable public commentary board. Sites such as Reddit, HN, and Facebook are popular, readily-discoverable public commentary boards about other sites. This much is true. However, it is incorrect to say that the absence of this is a "basic problem" as stated above. Given the past few years* of events and discoveries about the human impacts of these public comment boards, it may be that we incorrectly solved a "problem" that turned out to be a feature keeping humanity from harming itself with its own speech. * three examples, cited by paraphrase: "speech encouraging harm to others"; "coordinated worldwide attacks upon individuals"; "like counts may do psychological harm"
- brokenmachine 7y agoThe printing press has also been nothing but trouble.
- floatingatoll 7y agoThe printing press has nothing inherently to do with worldwide instantaneous coordinated global same-day information sharing. A better analogy here would have been the telegraph, as that would at least serve as evidence on its own a rudimentary connection to whatever pithy point you’re trying to make with this reply. Unfortunately, your chosen example does not connect the dots so readily. Please clarify?
- brokenmachine 7y ago>it may be that we incorrectly solved a "problem" that turned out to be a feature keeping humanity from harming itself with its own speech OK. Explaining ruins the humor but I'll explain. The pithy point I was making is that a bunch of words on a comment thread is not likely to harm humanity any more than the printing press did. Or the writing on a toilet stall wall for that matter, now that I think about it. The larger point I was alluding to is that the people who would call for the banning of text from a printing press are probably the people we should really be worried about.