Talk:Web annotation

Latest comment: 6 months ago by Chiarcos in topic Discontinued web annotation systems

Untitled edit

Hello maintainers, I'm the developer of truth.ee please consider adding my site to the list if it pleases you. The applicable columns for truth.ee are likely to be "public notes" and "highlighting" with the note column explaining that truth.ee allows anonymous or trip-code-based posting and has support for overlapping highlights (extension supported on Chrome and Firefox). Please let me know if I should edit the article myself, thanks kindly Truthee annotation (talk) 19:37, 13 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

What about adding http://hypothes.is ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.117.91.190 (talk) 18:35, 14 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

155.144.251.120 07:37, 20 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

What are these Wikipedia:Reference links introduced by Fwappler? eg: Wikipedia:Reference desk#Web annotation::How is an annotation layer visible to users sharing the same annotation system???

That's a very good question. Another good question is how they got left in the article for two years. Dreamyshade 05:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Balaitous (talk) 07:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC) I have included the reference to co-ment. But co-ment is not a Web annotation system in the sense of the definition given on top of the entry. It is a Web service for submitting text to Web-based annotations. Other exists such as STET or system used in PLoS-One, etc. Would it be better to create a Wikipedia entry "Text annotation"?Reply

That sounds right Balaitous. Better than making one large "Annotation" page for all medium. Links between the two pages would be appropriate. 82.45.8.208 (talk) 06:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

Text annotation page is now created. Feel free to review it and accordingly remove the new article template. I will then create the link in this page and remove Stet from the list of examples as it belongs in the new page.--Balaitous (talk) 16:23, 29 March 2010 (UTC)Reply


I am currently looking for a good web annotation system to use. This page could help me more if it could tell me some of the following:

  • Which systems are popular and actually being used.
  • Which systems require registration and which are "open".
  • Which systems offer public data, accessible without requiring specific software (e.g. via public HTML,XML,JSON).
  • Who is running each system? A for-profit company, or a for-good foundation?

Basically I don't want to start putting content into a system that I don't trust. Maybe Wikimedia should be running the public web annotation service! 82.45.8.208 (talk) 06:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Reply


Acording to their user manual, ShiftSpace do have public notes. Edited accordingly --Maryna Ravioli (talk) 00:48, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply


Thirdvoice didn't fail because of 'lack of success' but more because they had too much success. Too much abuse made it unmanageable. BorisVeldhuijzenvanZanten (talk) 08:47, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply


PushNote needs to be added now that its 2011. 110.174.169.36 (talk) 01:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)Reply


Scrible.com should to be added as well -- 30.6.2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.81.143.114 (talk) 16:21, 30 June 2011 (UTC)Reply


When Hypothes.is was doing competitive analysis of the web annotation space, they created a useful spreadsheet with a historical list of prior tools/efforts with associated data which might be useful for inclusion on this page: See the spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f86L7vgHUW9wSLNNSunhjmtxtg6KlCOVpHGKbqUzW-Y/edit#gid=0Snark35 (talk) 22:46, 3 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

Former web annotation systems edit

The Annotea wp article does not say "former" nor do the linked pages

Where is the reference ?

G. Robert Shiplett 19:26, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


The description of Crocodoc is incorrect- it no longer uses flash or supports image annotation. I work for the company, so I'm afraid I might count as a COI, but here's a more factual description to replace the one that currently exists: API version can annotate PDF, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, and.xls/.xlsx (in beta) and works on mobile devices. Zoelleegner (talk) 20:24, 3 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Application dependency and/or browser-compatibility? edit

For, in practice, being clear whether something works with and/or requires Firefox, or Chrome, or whatever: a section or column that describes this dependency should be added.

While not necessarily browser-dependent tools, if the tool requires and/or can-work-with another program, it should be noted. Tools that annotate HTML pages, or annotate live web pages either privately, private grouply, publicly, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.228.189.97 (talk) 14:29, 13 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

It is currently noted in "Technology" which is neither very straightforward nor very intuibile/transparent/clear (not a clear view visually). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.228.189.97 (talk) 14:33, 13 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Adding Evernote and OneNote? edit

Both Evernote and Microsoft's Onenote should definitely qualify to be placed on this list. Even though they are listed in the "Comparison of Notetaking software" page, they also deserve entries here. Evernote is one of the most full-featured web annotation programs out there, and OneNote has it's interesting web annotation features as well. If something like reddit, which doesn't save anything offline, and doesn't allow annotations, can be included in the comparison, Evernote and OneNOte certainly should. if nobody has any objections, I'll be adding them soon. Leostaley (talk) 06:36, 25 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

Does OneNote really have this feature? I don't think so, but I heard that it's coming to Microsoft Edge for Windows 10 - which should DEFINITELY go in this article, rather than OneNote. <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 14:23, 5 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

original research edit

This article is sadly lacking references. The feature matrix has been cleaned of original research. Any details placed in there need to be supported by a reference, not just personal experience. --RadioFan (talk) 13:06, 10 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

I think rather than blanking rows out of the table, it would have been better to put a template at the top of the page that says "needs references!" As it is, your change in this revision from June seems to significantly decrease the usefulness of this page. But that's just my opinion, no[citation needed]. Arided (talk) 23:37, 13 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Diigo's features and "established users" edit

Diigo keep changing their mix of features available for free users. Public annotations were once available freely, but now it isn't. Web archival (caching) changed status between being freely available and not.

The article currently describes public annotations as being reserved for "established users" which lacks definition. Does "established" mean "paying"? Or is there a merit or social reputation system in place? I wasn't able to find any explanation on the eligibility of creating public annotations anywhere on Diigo's help system.

--A. Gharbeia (talk) 23:22, 14 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hairy vs Untitled edit

Dear all,
I added stet before reading that #Untitled section, User:Balaitous. I used both stet and Hypothesis, and don't see much difference between them. Text annotation is a completely different thing. You may call me old-fashioned, but I cannot help considering paper a relevant part of the difference:

  • Annotations on paper last as long as the hard copy, unless transcribed to new editions of the original. The owner of the hard copy, in general, has no right on the annotated text but is the author of the annotation.
  • Annotations on a database may last independently of the original, but need special handling when the annotated text changes. They are not automatically ported to new editions, although they survive minor changes —that depends on storage details; in principle, the whole annotated text can be cached along with each comment.
  • The current definition is wrong, since neither Hypothesis nor stet allow to modify or remove information from the web page associated to a comment. That definition suits better a wiki than an annotation layer. Ditto for 2010 definition. It is implicit in the term annotation that it can be distinguished from the original.

In short, what the heck is a web based text annotation and how is it different from a web annotation? I would understand if we talked about annotating images, but...
ale (talk) 12:22, 28 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

2020 restructuring edit

Dear all, in the context of the COST action Nexus Linguarum. European network for Web-centred linguistic data science, we are conducting a survey over techniques for annotation and language resources on the web. Some results are going into this page. Hence the recent restructuring and expansion. If you feel anything of the new stuff is too far away from the original scope of this page, feel free to revise ;) What I find important is to have a clear, basic introduction of the Web Annotation standard. In this context, I am not sure whether the list of discontinued web annotation systems is of any use. Best, Chiarcos (talk) 13:19, 6 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

I added two public tools that implement the Web Annotation standard. As they do, they should fit that page. Also, I moved the systems below Web Annotation standard in order to mark whether they actually implement that standard. However, the original web annotation tool list was really focusing on social annotation, whereas these tools don't, but can be used for different purposes. Am I even right? I see people removing tools for being web-based annotation rather than web annotation, but where does that definition come from? The definition on the top of the page doesn't make the difference. The definition under "Annotation of web resources" does is but is unsourced. In case of doubt, I'd remove that restriction, unless a reference can be provided. Chiarcos (talk) 14:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Good Annotations Image Annotation edit

Regarding Toni Koraza edit, reverted by Schazjmd, I would also like to add the tool doesn't seem to be a web annotation tool like the others, but rather a web-based image annotation tool. --Diegodlh (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 13:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

Discontinued web annotation systems edit

What is the point of having these? Are they relevant, anyhow? Chiarcos (talk) 14:34, 18 October 2023 (UTC)Reply