Alternative annotation services

[Last10K]

Hi, I see the alternative annotation services is still experimental but is there additional documentation on this feature? For example, what are some use cases that would prompt a website to use this configuration or why would a website not want to use the public Hypothesis service? Is this so annotations can be hosted outside of Hypothesis? Any insight on this feature is appreciated. Thanks.

[Robert Knight]

Hello,

I'm afraid we haven't written any additional documentation for this feature beyond what is on that page. The "apiUrl" needs to point at some service that implements the same API as our "h" service (https://github.com/hypothesis/h), which is most likely to be an instance of "h" since there are no other implementations of the API.

A publisher might use this feature if for any reason they were not comfortable with annotations being stored in a system they don't maintain. Journalists working with sensitive documents, corporations not wanting references to commercially sensitive documents going outside their walls etc.

There is a related feature called "third party accounts" which allows a publisher to integrate Hypothesis with an existing account system, so that a user can annotate documents without having to separately sign in to Hypothesis. Third party accounts look to the client very much like another annotation service, but can be run either by us (as we do for elifesciences.org for example) or by the publisher themselves.

Kind regards,

Rob

On Fri, Apr 6, 2018 at 2:35 AM, Last10K <am...@last10k.com> wrote:

Hi, I see the alternative annotation services is still experimental but is there additional documentation on this feature? For example, what are some use cases that would prompt a website to use this configuration or why would a website not want to use the public Hypothesis service? Is this so annotations can be hosted outside of Hypothesis? Any insight on this feature is appreciated. Thanks.

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Kind Regards,

Rob

[Last10K]

Thank you for this detailed reply. We have a similar use case in that we are okay with having annotations reside with Hypothesis but we do not want competitors to have access to them via the API. Can you confirm this is possible or not? 

On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 5:14:03 AM UTC-7, Robert Knight wrote:

Hello,

I'm afraid we haven't written any additional documentation for this feature beyond what is on that page. The "apiUrl" needs to point at some service that implements the same API as our "h" service (https://github.com/hypothesis/h), which is most likely to be an instance of "h" since there are no other implementations of the API.

A publisher might use this feature if for any reason they were not comfortable with annotations being stored in a system they don't maintain. Journalists working with sensitive documents, corporations not wanting references to commercially sensitive documents going outside their walls etc.

There is a related feature called "third party accounts" which allows a publisher to integrate Hypothesis with an existing account system, so that a user can annotate documents without having to separately sign in to Hypothesis. Third party accounts look to the client very much like another annotation service, but can be run either by us (as we do for elifesciences.org for example) or by the publisher themselves.

Kind regards,

Rob

On Fri, Apr 6, 2018 at 2:35 AM, Last10K <am...@last10k.com> wrote:

Hi, I see the alternative annotation services is still experimental but is there additional documentation on this feature? For example, what are some use cases that would prompt a website to use this configuration or why would a website not want to use the public Hypothesis service? Is this so annotations can be hosted outside of Hypothesis? Any insight on this feature is appreciated. Thanks.

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For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

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Kind Regards,

Rob

[Robert Knight]

Thank you for this detailed reply. We have a similar use case in that we are okay with having annotations reside with Hypothesis but we do not want competitors to have access to them via the API. Can you confirm this is possible or not? 

Are you looking to annotate internal web pages/documents, or publicly accessible URLs?

It is possible to create private groups in Hypothesis whose annotations can only be read by members. You can do this from the client. Security is quite basic at present in that it uses an “anyone with the secret link can join” invite model. Groups which require explicit invites to join are on our roadmap, but for the moment if you need a higher level of access control you will need to run your own instance of our “h” service.

Kind regards,

Rob.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hypothesis-forum/3adf589b-14fb-4099-b9bf-f1e8edf9a248%40googlegroups.com.

[Last10K]

All web pages to be annotated are publicly accessible URLs. If users do not setup private groups, the annotations are retrievable via Hypothesis' API just by passing in the uri / url of the public web page - http://h.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api-reference/#operation/search 

Is there a way to prevent this? Again, we are just concerned competitors will use our annotations.

[kat...@hypothes.is]

Hi there,

At present it is not possible to prevent people from using the API to retrieve public annotations on public URLs from the Hypothesis service. As Rob mentioned above, you would need to use our private groups feature to prevent others from accessing those annotations.

Best,

Katelyn

[Last10K]

Hi, Katelyn. I used the contact Hypothesis google form to submit a request for a publisher group a couple days ago. I haven't received a response yet but I know your team is busy :) It looks like a good feature that will satisfy our requirements so looking forward to a response.

[kat...@hypothes.is]

Hi there! I *thought* I replied to your inquiry yesterday, but as it turns out I... replied to myself. D'oh! Sorry about that! 

Anyway, what I meant to send yesterday was:

>It sounds like what you are trying to accomplish is annotations which are viewable only by group members. This can be accomplished using private groups, which is a feature that's available to everyone. You can create a private group by logging into your Hypothesis account at web.hypothes.is and selecting Groups > Create new group from the top right corner of your user activity page.You would then invite users to join your private group by sharing a link to the group with them.

If I misunderstood and private groups won't accomplish what you're looking for, please let me know!

Best,

Katelyn

[Last10K]

Hi, Katelyn. I replied to your response but it shows 'this message has been deleted'. Can you confirm what the process is for establishing a publisher group? I feel this is the best solution for us. Thanks again.