So, this is some serious Web 2.0 action: Instructables user zachninme (and ex-intern) wanted to have a rating system for comments on the site (so far, we only allow users to rate the instructables themselves.) He built a Greasemonkey script that any Firefox user can install; this injects a rating interface into all the comments whenever that user visits Instructables. Then, he wrote a backend using the new Google App Engine that collects all of the ratings, aggregates them, and pushes the show/hide logic back to the user’s Firefox client.

Voila: instant community/social feature, completely disintermediated from our site. The web being what it is, nowadays, he doesn’t have to run a server or get permission from us. Innovation accelerates…

Here’s a link to his announcement.

Related Posts:

• Instructables Superfan (January, 2008)
• Explorer Destroyer (November, 2005)
• Party Like It’s 1929 (October, 2008)
• CSS Cleanup (April, 2008)
• The History of Instructables (August, 2008)

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