Quartz annotations
Annotations are an experiment, and we consider this a beta release of the feature. The idea is to encourage thoughtful commentary and substantive contributions. Because you are annotating a specific paragraph, the discussion ought to be much more directed than usual. We’ll also reward your great annotations by featuring them more prominently, responding to you, and removing others that are off-topic or abusive.
Other websites have been an inspiration to us as we’ve built annotations.Soundcloud allows users to annotate audio; Gawker Media, images; and Medium, text. Rap Genius, originally focused on hip-hop lyrics, has recently expanded its mandate to letting people “annotate everything.” And our own product engineering director, Michael Donohoe, whose team built this new feature, has been toying with these ideas for a while. (Michael has written a piece about how the design and architecture of annotations evolved over time.)