Choose your metaphor.
HTML protocol permits us to connect to an existing document, but
not to enter into it, to add to it, to expound on it. That's a bit more difficult.
We might also ask if it's also necessary. Trying to add notes in the margins of
a web document is essentially a translation of a print-based metaphor into a digital
setting, and even for someone with a strong attachment to that metaphor, it's
far from clear that it's the preferred one.
A sidebar, for instance, is the solution offered by Wikalong.
This tool is essentially a page-specific wiki. As the main page of the Wikalong
site explains:
Wikalong is a Firefox Extension that embeds a wiki
in the SideBar of your browser, indexed off the url of your current page. It
is probably most simply described as a wiki-margin for the internet.
When a Wikalong user reaches a web page upon which he or she (or any other user,
though private notes are apparently under development) has commented, that comment
appears. It looks like a simpler (and much less attractive) little brother to
uTOK. Does it make sense for me to try to free myself from the margins
metaphor if the people developing Wikalong attach themselves to it? I'm not sure,
nor am I sure that in this case the use of the margin metaphor is truly accurate.
The fact that this tool is presently only page-specific, rather than text-specific
to a pinpointed place within a page makes it seem
more like a toy than a tool. As seem to happen all too often with tools such as
these, the comments I've seen on many Wikalonged pages are mostly in the "way
cool" category, and don't seem to develop into a fruitful conversation.
If we don't restrict ourselves to the margins metaphor, numerous additional possibilities
arise. Talkbacks and discussion forums embedded within web pages are, after all,
annotations to an existing page. They also are page-specific rather than text-specific,
but they certainly offer a solution for creating space
for unofficial data on an official page (a very apt description of precisely
what marginalia does). More often than not, however, when we try to use these
tools for garnering information useful to ourselves, we discover that, like with
the scribbled notes in the margins of a textbook or a library book, it's hard
to know who to trust.
Go to: In the margins of cyberspace.