Dear all,
I have applied for the Prototyping Inline Comments for the Google Summer of
Code.
Essentially, the project is an extension that allows any wiki user to
select text and then make an inline comment or a reply to an existing
inline comment. Imagine: a user lands in a Wikipedia article, selects one
sentence and leaves an inline comment that others can optionally read and
reply to.
Users can make useful comments regarding specific part of articles, which
will be a part of collaborative work. The key benefit is to users to
collaborate easily - because this actually allows you to point to something
and comment in direct reference to it. It's like pointing your finger to a
piece of paper and telling your friend sitting next to you, which can only
be done in person and is currently impossible over the Internet. So it's a
really powerful feature for collaborations since it makes one of the
Internet-impossibles into a possible action.
That was for the insertion of a new comment. For the replying part, it will
be a format will likely be similar to how threads are like in a forum, for
the prototype.
As I go along the project, I will be posting more technical details and
updates. From now til the end of the project, I do hope to get everyone's
feedback along the way :)