Web annotation

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Web annotation can refer to online annotations of web resources such as web pages or parts of them, or a set of W3C standards developed for this purpose. The term can also refer to the creations of annotations on the World Wide Web and it has been used in this sense for the annotation tool INCEpTION,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> formerly WebAnno.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This is a general feature of several tools for annotation in natural language processing or in the philologies.

Annotation of web resources

With a web annotation system, a user can add, modify or remove information from a Web resource without modifying the resource itself. The annotations can be thought of as a layer on top of the existing resource, and this annotation layer is usually visible to other users who share the same annotation system. In such cases, the web annotation tool is a type of social software tool. For Web-based text annotation systems, see Text annotation.

Web annotation can be used for the following purposes:

  • to rate a Web resource, such as by its usefulness, user-friendliness, suitability for viewing by minors.
  • to improve or adapt its contents by adding/removing material (like wiki).
  • as a collaborative tool, e.g. to discuss the contents of a certain resource.
  • as a medium of artistic or social criticism, by allowing Web users to reinterpret, enrich or protest against institution or ideas that appear on the Web.
  • to quantify transient relationships between information fragments.
  • to save, retain and synthesize selected information.

Annotations can be considered an additional layer with respect to comments. Comments are published by the same publisher who hosts the original document. Annotations are added on top of that, but may eventually become comments which, in turn, may be integrated in a further version of the document itself.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Web Annotation standard

In the Web Annotation standard, Template:Quote

Basic view on the Web Annotation data model

The basic data structures of Web Annotation are

  • target (the element being annotated, e.g., a web document or a part of it),
  • body (the content of the annotation, e.g., a string value), and
  • annotation (the element that serves to relate body and target of an annotation)

The body can be a literal value or structured content (a URI). The target can be identified by an URI (e.g., fragment identifiers) and/or a selector that defines a domain-, resource- or application-specific access protocol, e.g., offset-based, XPath-based, etc.

Web Annotation was standardized on February 23, 2017 with the release of three official Recommendations by the W3C Web Annotation Working Group:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Whaley2017">Template:Cite web</ref>

These recommendations were accompanied by additional working group notes that describe their application:

The Web Annotation data model is also provided in machine-readable form as the Web Annotation ontology.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Note that this ontology defines the Web Annotation namespace (https://www.w3.org/ns/oa#), and that this namespace is conventionally abbreviated as oa. This is the abbreviation for Open Annotation, a W3C Community Group whose specifications formed the basis for the Web Annotation standard.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Web Annotation supersedes other standardization initiatives for annotations on the web within the W3C, e.g., the earlier Annotea project discontinued after 2003.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Web Annotation can be used in conjunction with (or as an alternative to) fragment identifiers that describe how to address elements within a web document by means of URIs. These include

Other, non-standardized fragment identifiers are in use, as well, e.g., within the NLP Interchange Format.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Independently from Web Annotation, more specialized data models for representing annotations on the web have been developed, e.g., the NLP Interchange Format (NIF)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> for applications in language technology. In early 2020, the W3C Community Group "Linked Data for Language Technology" launched an initiative to harmonize these vocabularies and to develop a consolidated RDF vocabulary for linguistic annotations on the web.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Web Annotation Systems

Comparison of web annotation systems

Many of these systems require software to be installed to enable some or all of the features below. This fact is only noted in footnotes if the software that is required is additional software provided by a third party. Template:Sort-under

Annotation system Template:Verth Template:Verth Template:Verth Template:Verth Template:Verth Template:Verth Archives Viewing annotations API Open Source Template:Verth Notes
A.nnotate Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:No Template:Yes<ref>See A.nnotate notifications</ref> Template:Yes Template:No Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:No (proprietary) Template:Unknown Can annotate PDF, ODF, .doc, .docx, images, as well as web pages (but only a limited number in the free version)
Annotorius<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Yes, via Google Firebase plugin<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Yes Template:Yes (BSD)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Yes<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> JavaScript image annotation library and plugin to OpenSeadragon, also supports simple text annotations
Diigo Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:No Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:No (proprietary) Template:Unknown Public annotations are only allowed for establishedTemplate:Definition needed users. Group tag dictionary feature to encourage tagging consistently within a group.
Hypothes.is Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Chrome, via.hypothes.is Template:Yes Template:Yes (MIT, BSD) Template:No,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> but listed on Web Annotation wiki In February 2015, different features were announced,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> such as private group annotation, semantic tagging, moderation, etc. Web Annotation integration was discussed in 2014.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Org-mode (with extensions) Template:Yes Template:No Template:No<ref>Technically, public annotations are possible via the "publish to HTML" feature of org mode -- but no method for notifications or discovery of public annotations written by others is currently known.</ref> Template:No<ref>But local annotations can be exposed to a firefox browser using Fireforg.</ref> Template:No Template:Yes Template:No Template:Yes Template:Unknown Emacs-based; requires technical knowledge to set up; not as user-friendly as some other solutions; non-Latin characters allowed in notes but not in tags
Recogito<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes Template:Yes (Apache) Template:Yes Annotation of named entities, linking with maps and knowledge graphs, developed by the Pelagios network,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> popular in Digital Humanities

Discontinued web annotation systems

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System Notes Date Discontinued
Mosaic Browser An early version of the Mosaic browser was tested with collaborative annotation feature in 1993<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> but never passed the test state. Never passed the test state
CritLink Perhaps the earliest web annotation system. Developed in 1997–98 by Ka-Ping Yee of the University of California.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> CritLink worked as an HTML "mediator", hence not requiring additional software or browser extensions but having limited support for modern JavaScript-driven websites.
Annotea A W3C project that tried to establish a standard for web annotation. Annotea was conceived as part of the semantic web. According to the website, Annotea development stalled in October 2005.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
ThirdVoice A system launched in 1999. It was targeted by a campaign called Say No to TV,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> led by independent web hosts which likened ThirdVoice to "Web graffiti."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was shut in April 2001 because it couldn't generate enough advertising revenue to stay in business.<ref>Third Voice Trails Off, Wired News, April 4, 2001</ref> April 2001
Delicious Founded in 2003 and provided cloud bookmarks with optional descriptions (a form of annotation) of up to 1000 characters. It was rumoured that it would be shut down in 2010, but it was only actually finally shut down in 2017 when it was acquired by Pinboard, a competitor. 2017
Wikalong A Firefox plugin created in 2004 that provided a publicly editable mediawiki page in the margin of any webpage. (It was later accessible in other browsers via a bookmarklet.) Common uses were note-taking and discussion about the website. On Google, the Wikalong margin provided a variety of useful tips and shortcuts for searching. The project was discontinued in 2009 when the storage wiki went offline. It had been suffering from link spam abuse.<ref>Wikalong Firefox Addon, Oct 1, 2006</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 2009
Fleck* Launched in 2005 with much publicity as a stick-it notes application for the web. A patent, funding and marketing didn't stop it from failing. Discontinued in 2010.<ref>Farewell Fleck.com, "The Next Web", May 10, 2010</ref> 2010
stet Stet was the Gplv3 comment system.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Crocodoc Launched in 2007, dabbled in web page annotation as part of its broader mission. It was originally developed in Adobe Flash. It was acquired by Box.com in 2013<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the web annotation side of it was shut down two years later.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 2009
Blerp Launched in 2009. A multimedia, extensible tool for annotating web pages with widgets viewable by any other Blerp user.
Google Sidewiki Launched in 2009. A part of Google Toolbar that allowed users to write comments alongside any web page. It was discontinued in December 2011. December 2011
SharedCopy An AJAX based web annotation tool that allowed users to mark-up, highlight, draw, annotate, cache, sticky-note and finally share any website.
Genius Web Annotator Formerly knows as News Genius, launched in 2016.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> As of May 2022, the Chrome and Wordpress extensions are discontinued, and the bookmarklet provided on the official website does not work. As of August 2022, it is not possible to log in and leave new annotations.

See also

References

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Further reading

  1. Web Annotation Data Model
  2. Web Annotation Vocabulary
  3. Web Annotation Protocol
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