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Comment by pconner | Hacker News Reader

I use Genius almost exclusively for its rap annotations, so reading news on this platform felt strange to me. While I can definitely see its merits for lyrics/poetry, I'm not sure how much I like it in this context. I think that expository/news articles should be written well-enough that annotations (other than hyperlinks, I guess) are unnecessary.

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The point of this annotation was for someone who disagrees with the author to offer a point by point take down in the context of the original article.

You could understand the article (at least the view the author wants to promote) just fine without the annotation--the annotation provides a counterpoint that systematically undermines the premise of the article. [edit spelling]

Agree! I was going to reply to some of Sam's comments, but stopped because this is not at all what Genius was designed for and my reply to his comments wouldn't fit the UX.

Did you notice the comments button?

Ah, that's the first use of the annotations for this that I've seen. The only other "news" I've seen on Genius before was statements from Genius or a16z, and the annotations only provided more in-depth explanations of the text.

I'm of the opposite opinion. I loved it! The concept seems similar to Hypertext [0] (or what it was supposed to be). Would love to see how they handle first-hand commentary from multiple conflicting voices!

[0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext

I actually found the UI excellent when reading this. You get to see counterpoints and clarifications inline, and you can see exactly what phrase or sentence is being addressed.

The only improvement I could see is if it was more prominent who is giving the verified annotations. It's listed twice at the top but they're easy to miss. Might be nice to have each person's avatars and names take up the side next to the first few paragraphs.

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