annotations of "10 Thoughts After 100 Annotations in Hypothes.is"

You can use click on the < button in the top-right of your browser window to read and write comments on this post with Hypothesis. You can read more about how I use this software here.

I regularly check in on comments for this website and will generally respond!

Although Hugo works with a number of commenting systems, I’ve chosen to use the social annotation software Hypothesis as the social layer on this website.

Years ago, I helped build a storytelling platform called Hi (a simplification of its original name: Hitotoki, now shuttered and archived) and one of the things I’m most proud of our team having concocted is the commenting system. We had tens of thousands of users and almost no issues with harassment. You could comment on anyone’s story and your having commented would be public — a little avatar at the bottom of the page — but the comment itself would be private. This allowed folks to reap the public validation of engagement (“Whoa! So many comments!”) while simultaneously removing any grandstanding or attacks. It wasn’t quite messaging. It wasn’t quite commenting. It felt very much like a contemporary, lighter take on email, and in being so was a joy to use. Here’s what the bottom of an entry looks like: "Commenting" on Hitotoki

I just wrote a long, considered, friendly, and I hope helpful comment here but -- sorry, I have to see the irony in this once again -- your system wouldn't let me say anything longer tahn 1,500 characters. If you want more intelligent conversations, you might want to expand past soundbite.

But note well, my friend, that all of these people are speaking to you with intelligence, experience, generosity, and civility. You know what’s missing? Two things: First, the sort of nasty comments your own piece decries. And second: You.

Comments are enabled via Hypothes.is

This week, host Bob Garfield did a piece ostensibly about the problems newspaper sites have with website comments. Unfortunately it just came out sounding like another old journalist kvetching about how everyone on the net is an idiot. You can listen to the story here.

Another good time to slow people down is when they’re about to post something nasty online. Friction-positive design can help here, too. Civil Comments was an app you could apply to your comments section that forced commenters to rate three other comments before posting their own.

Trisha Prabhu was fourteen years old when she was named a Google Science Fair Global Finalist for her ReThink plat-form, which, according to research she presented at the event, reduced teen hate-posting by 93 percent! How did she do it? Very simple. Let’s say you’re on a social media platform using the ReThink technology. You’re about to post a hateful mes-sage. ReThink catches it; when you hit “send,” a screen pops up that says:ReThink has detected that this message may be hurtful to others. Are you sure you want to post this message?93 percent of adolescents who saw that intervention didn’t post.