From P2P Foundation

Web Annotation

URL = http://www.communitywiki.org/en/WebAnnotation

Definition

"Web Annotation is the idea that the whole web should be open to edit by those reading the web sites. People could then leave notes for themselves and each other, about the site specifically or about the content of the site (and those notes would then show up other places where the content shows up.)

There are several ways to do Web Annotation:

• The most basic kind of annotation is bookmarking (Social Bookmarking). One person tells other people that a site is interesting enough to link to.

• Another simple kind of annotation involves having users rate web sites. One person tells other people a little more information on how interesting it is.

• A more complicated kind is to have a parallel web, an Overlay Web, as it were. When several people write comments about a particular web page, one who views (through the lens of a OverlayWeb) that web page, sees all those comments.

• Another is to annotate names and phrases, which we call Phrase Annotation. When several people write comments about a particular phrase, one who views (through the lens of a —-) any web page that contains that phrase, sees all those comments."

(http://www.communitywiki.org/en/WebAnnotation)

More Information

1. See our entry on the Overlay Web
2. Annotation Tools