Projects to add "backlinks" to the web:

by Robin Hanson

This list began from one compiled by Chris Peterson at Foresight

More lists can be found at WWW Collaboration and Annotation systems


NCSA Annotation Proposal Each server must respond to a "annotations" request with the name of a server which answers requests for annotations. To add an annotation, send it to this server, which decides whether "the user is allowed to do so". An annotation includes a password for approving changes.
John Walker's "HackLinks" Includes design constraints: "No browser/server changes", "Keep it simple" and "Backlinks enabled on a document-by-document basis" (i.e., at the document author's discression).

The plan last I heard was that John will code this design during September '95. At the moment I see a ` plea for funds for this project.


Low-rent Backlinks Proposal to extend one or more of the big Web databases, to allow searches on the HREFs of anchors--searches on the actual literal pathnames which address the anchor target.
Hanson's Find Critics Asks what is needed, at minimum, to make it easy to find criticisms of web documents.
HyperNews ( see also) can create a list of comments at the end of a Web page.
CoNote You have to be authorized, relative to a group of people who share documents, to read or to add annotations to a document.
Public Annotations Wants Mosaic modifications to support. Annotations to be stored in an "annotations" subdirectory of each users' "public_html" directory next to where of user who had document.
Shodouka Ka-Ping Yee wrote code that fetches the URL at the other end of an incoming hit, and puts it in a list. The URL above takes you to this list for his Shodouka page. This shows that it might be possible to automate some parts of the collection of backlink information. The status of each backlink may be: Links are moved among these classifications according to the results of attempts to retrieve the document containing each backlink.
Stanford's ComMentor The architecture assumes the use of special browsers (or wrappers for existing browsers), which might create a barrier to adoption. The current proposal appears to be structured around a notion of membership in a group as a basis for filtering/reading annotations.

Uses "Meta-information servers". Not a minimal proposal - bundled w/ lots of stuff.


Robin Hanson August 28, 1995