Annotation Engine

Another tool like the CritLink Mediator to enWeb the Web has been authored by WendySeltzer.

AnnotationEngine is a tool that may be superimposed over existing Web pages subjecting them to collaborative annotation ala Wiki. AnnotationEngine wraps Web pages much like Crit Link Mediator except that it arranges comments in a frame next to the document. There are little graphics appropriately positioned in the text to signal for notes and links . You can see this new tool in action here:

• http://eon.law.harvard.edu/cite/annotate.cgi?view=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AnnotationEngine

which will wrap AnnotationEngine around this page.

If you are a Wiki developer or booster take a look at the AnnotationEngine. There may be some possibilities for integrating Wiki with this form of annotation. Perhaps what you see may suggest a new tangent for one of the many WikiWikiClones.

The whole idea of two levels of editing with a Wiki read/write page server using mediation like the AnnotationEngine or the Crit Link Mediator is quite mind expanding. As a Wiki add on this would be one step up from AppendOnly which permits visitors to to add a comment at the foot of the page. (2004: Implemented. See WikalongExtension.) You can see the notes appended at the bottom, rather than on the side, with the Printable page option of the AnnotationEngine This can be best appreciated by taking a look at this page using that option:

• http://eon.law.harvard.edu/cite/annotate.cgi?view=c2.com/cgi/wiki?AnnotationEngine&action=print

This mediator software, both Crit Link Mediator by KaPingYee and AnnotationEngine by Wendy Seltzer, is open source.

Home base for the AnnotationEngine project is at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School:

• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projects/annotate.html

-- JohnDeBruyn (December 25, 2000)