Use Hypothes.is for collaborative annotation and discussion of notebooks?

Hi all,

I see that many questions on the forums are regarding python notebook. Would it make sense to use hypothes.is for these purposes, so that all communication and discussion can be in one place, pointing from the line in the notebook? It makes it easy to find answers as well.

What do you think?

I’m not sure… It is nice to link to line numbers, although you can always use a gist for that - but I feel like having proper topics, seeing new comments, managing users, etc are all major benefits of this forums that we wouldn’t have through hypothes.is.

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To be clear, I am only suggesting an additional way to discuss notebooks => If you have a question about a particular line/section of notebook, then choose hypothes.is, for all other purposes use forums?

Yes, I am not sure if hypothes.is will notify about new comments, I agree that would be valuable.

The problem with forum only approach is that, when I wonder about some aspect of the notebook, it is hard to find if any one else is in the same boat without reading over all the comments on that topic. This can lead to repeated questions too. Can you elaborate on how we can leverage gist ?

Having said that, I have only started using Hypothes.is since a couple of days and loving it so far. Not sure how well it works for a bigger group like this.

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Hi @sravya8,

I am trying hypothes.is at the moment. However, the annotation seems not working for notebooks running locally nor opened on github.

Did I miss something? When I open hypothesis extension and start to highlight some text on local or online notebook, hypothesis has no response.

[update]
I have just made it working. In order to use annotation with jupyter notebook, I did the following:

  1. save jupyter notebook properly with .ipynb extension
  2. and open it in a text editor, copy everything
  3. paste it into a new gist and publish it
  4. copy the link and paste the link to nbViewer
  5. then hypothesis annotation is working on Google chrome

Here is my question on plotting loss function on Redux.ipynb using hypothesis annotation, I would appreciate a lot if anyone can help me with the question as well.

[update]
Annotation is working on jupyter notebook markdown text locally, given you go to chrome extension and under hypothesis, check allow access to local URL.

Thanks
Daniel

@Daniel Thanks for the update! I have not tried it on notebooks yet. So, thanks for your update :slight_smile:

OK I’m willing to give this experiment a go :slight_smile: But when I go to that link, I can’t see any annotations or highlights or anything that shows me what the question is, or how I respond.

BTW, the other popular annotation site is http://genius.com/web-annotator , I believe. Any differences?

I checked both these places to find your question about lesson1 notebook: Github, and Gist. But no luck. Are you sure you published to “public”?

From quick browsing they seem very similar, found following differences so far:

  • Genius supports upvotes and UI looks a little more sophisticated than hypothes.is.
  • Genius does not support private groups.

@Daniel “check allow access to local URL” does not seem to help for me for notebooks on github. Am I missing something?

Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for checking my question. I tried the link again, and as you said the page annotation does not show it self and the highlighted text. (ideally, it should automatically take us to the highlighted area)

However, when I tried it on my chrome, I had to make 3 clicks to go to the highlighted text I made. See the picture blow

[update]
I see why there is no automatic screen movement to the highlighted area. Now this link is working, screen will go to highlighted text automatically.

Previous link won’t take us to the highlighted text automatically because I shared the whole page link (top right) not the specific annotation link (bottom right).

I will give a try to the other site.

Thanks again

Daniel

Hi @sravya8,

You are right that notebooks on github cannot be annotated. That’s why I tried to gist the notebook and open it with nbviewer, then you can annotate on the nbviewer page. Please go back to see my first update for details.

Best,

Daniel

Hi @sravya8,

I am sorry for this late reply. You are right, the reason why you didn’t see the question is due to the fact the annotation was made under a private group I created. So, even I shared this annotation through a public (note group) share link, you and @jeremy could only see the page but not the annotation (as annotation only belongs to group).

I made a new public annotation with the question here

Best,

Daniel