My vision for the replywise protocol and replywise project is to create tools to facilitate deeper engagement among posters and responders on internet newsfeeds. If we are to assemble here on the web, and we are assembling here on the web, i want more than a chronological stream of 1000 comments in 300 threads. My idea for addressing this need is replywise. This early beta version achieves two important goals: 1) it organizes replies by respondents, and 2) it allows you to group comments by search term.
In the inchoate recesses of my mind, I envision a chacophany of conversations as rich as a beatnick cocktail party in a Grenwich Village loft circa 1963. I imagine adding many more features that will allow people to vector into conversations as easily as they do in real life, except virtually here with people geographically distributed and perhaps many people. My vision is to allow for people to assemble virtually and to mix and breakout and reform and explore together in dialogue. The result, I imagine, is to synthesize a better understanding of our worlds at on the micro-scale of a shared hobby among friends to the macro-scale of governance models for nations.
I am not sure yet whether this objective will be best served through some kind of organized team or a crowd sourced solution. For the answer to that I am waiting for feedback from the marketplace, from you. If people would step forward from the crowd and share their thoughts about how we can enrich and improve from these humble beginnings I would be most pleased. Together, we may determine how best to move forward as a "corporate" body. Today, replywise supports only Substack posts. However, I see no reason why these methods may not be applied to any place on the internet where comments are shared. I welcome and encourage your feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
Meanwhile, I would like to invite as many of you who are interested to try out replywise and see for yourself how we may start down the path of improving communication on the internet. At a minimum, i believe powerusers of Substack will benefit from the enhanced visibility that replywise gives to the comment sections of your favorite posts.
- Jim Marks, jim.david.marks@gmail.com