**Type of activity:** Pre-scheduled session
**Main topic:** Handling wiki content beyond plaintext
== The problem ==
A number of users want to add "out of band" data to articles, tied to a particular place or range in the article:
* Google Docs-style comments (or suggested edits) on articles, anchored to a specific part of the article
* Pronunciation annotations for spoken wikipedia (#wikispeech)
* Translation correspondence information for the Content Translation Service
* Translation correspondence as an alternative backend for the Translate extension
* Citation regions (there's an alternative proposal using {T114432})
* Handle merge conflicts by attaching edits as temporary annotations, then fetching those edits against the current version.
It is proposed that an [annotation service](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Amazing_Article_Annotations) be built to serve these use cases.
== Expected outcome ==
* Gathering additional use cases for an annotation service.
* Defining core API
* Diving into what it means to pull an annotation against an old version into the present. How should "fuzzy" matches be marked?
== Current status of the discussion ==
* The Parsoid team originally thought of these as use cases for "stable IDs". But a satisfactory spec for stable ids couldn't be found.
* Annotation server idea was pitched to the 2016 Editing Offsite
* A [IEG grant proposal page for the annotation server](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Amazing_Article_Annotations) exists
* A rough prototype has been built, based on [hypothes.is](https://hypothes.is/) to implement the functionality of [Extension:Translate](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate)
== Links ==
* {T148734}, especially https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T148734#2735168
* {T149660}