Published: Mon 08 August 2011
By Andrew Jennings
In Technology .
tags: MozNewsLab
Opine is a proposal for taking the closed comment modules that exist on
websites around the world, opening them up and unifying the commenting
experience across the internet:
Design details
Here is a prototype (no longer active). It's
the same one used in the video and it's not yet very functional, just
motivational. :) Once you get there, press any key to pull up the
commenting layer or wait a few seconds for it to come up automatically.
(Disclaimer: The authors' names I chose are popular internet
personalities and bloggers I follow, but the comments are entirely made
up just so I could throw a prototype together! Although they represent
some of the sentiments I remember reading around the internet, I made no
attempt to match people with their true opinions. If I have offended
you by the quote I've flippantly put next to your name, then first of
all I'm honored that you read my blog! Second, let me know in the
comments and I can remove you from my prototype.)
The form on the right is where you can leave comments and rate the
underlying article. The interface should be expandable so it supports
long-form comments as well as shorter ones. It should integrate with a
user's blog and social networks, offering the option to automatically
post to those venues, when appropriate. In the rating options, I have
specifically included an evaluation option of "well-written but I
disagree". Not everyone will use it, but many people are open-minded
and willing to hear alternative viewpoints when they are presented in an
articulate manner. An important goal of opine is to help the internet
mature from an echo chamber into a place for productive disagreement.
The sections in the other columns are different categories of comments
specifically relevant to you, the user. The one on the top left shows
discussion by your friends and those you follow on your social
networks. Only short-form comments are shown, but it is intended that
longer responses from blogs and other sites will be referenced even if
they can't be fully included. These comments are aggregated directly by
the browser from blogs and social networks across the internet, which
means the content owner can't censor the discussion or stifle dissent,
when it comes from those you respect.
But Opine is not meant to exclude the author from the ensuing
discussion. Indeed, there is probably no voice more important to
include. For this reason, you will see another very important section
of the page at the top of the second column, the author's picks, where
the author can provide responses and highlight third-party comments that
enhance the discussion. Additionally, the system will provide hooks for
the content owners to be notified when comments are left anywhere on the
internet and a plug-in architecture for websites to integrate the
comments back into the underlying webpage if they desire.
The other two sections, "recommended" and "popular", are mainly
placeholder sections at this point. They are examples of categories
that would be very useful to people and we hope they can be implemented
at some point, but both of them will probably require third-party
aggregation services to function properly, so they may not qualify for
the initial version of Opine. In general, the commenting layer will be
configurable and extensible with skins and add-ons, and these sections
might be great candidates for add-ons by competing aggregation services.
Opine will probably start out as a browser extension, but it is the type
of feature that would be useful to people who aren't technical enough
even to install a browser extension. Since we don't want to exclude
them from the discussion that takes place, hopefully Opine will progress
to a point where it can be considered for inclusion in the core browser
functionality.
Benefits for news organizations
As a Knight-Mozilla project proposal, it's important to address the
benefits this project from the perspective of a news organization.
Opine can rescue news organizations from the work of implementing and
maintaining their own commenting system and save them a lot of the
drudgery of moderating it. It will also allow the news organizations to
pool their resources, if they desire, in creating valuable tools to
monitor the comment stream, curate the author's picks section, and
provide add-ons to help their users participate in the stream.
As I said in the beginning of the video, commenting on article webpages
is becoming less useful by the day as more of our discussion happens on
blogs and social networks across the internet. Comment threads on
websites need a fundamental re-organization to maintain their relevance
in today's framework of social discussion.
The ultimate reason for news organizations to get involved in this
project might be that it will happen even without them. Witness
Re:Poste , a project by a fellow MozNewsLab participant. And Google
Sidewiki . And Chatifier . All are projects to further separate
webpages from the commenting and discussion about them. And, to be
honest, as this project has developed in the back of my mind for the
past few years, the idea to involve news organizations and make sure
they play their deserved role in the open commenting layer never once
entered my mind until I became involved with MozNewsLab. By supporting
and promoting the development of an open commenting layer for the
internet, news websites can proactively create a future of comment
threads that they can be involved in, instead of being increasingly
marginalized by the flight of substantive commenting to blogs and social
networks.