About Project Little Island
Project Little Island is a host-agnostic universal commenting system, bridging the gap between independent subject-oriented discussion boards that are separated from the subject itself, and owner-hosted discussion systems that are often subject to strict limitations and censorship. It provides a means for visitors to a site to communicate with one another regardless of the conditions at the site itself.
There will be times when a visitor to a web site wishes to respond to an article they've read only to find there is no commenting system provided at the article itself. This necessitates the visitor leaving the site, locating an alternate forum, perhaps having to register a new account, and then composing a comment that also links back to the original web site and the article they wish to discuss, one that then sends readers away from the discussion. This is a process that, at best, places the user's comment and its readers at a considerable remove from the subject and, at worst, may well lose them altogether.
At other times a site will provide a system for leaving comments, but the visitor finds that their post is censored for nothing more than being critical, or for running afoul of the site's policies. This is not to suggest that site maintainers should not be able to control material hosted on their own service, but rather that such censorship, while necessary for a private body, may not be in the interests of the visitors. For instance a hardware manufacturer may not want comments on a product landing page that reveal the item's shortcomings. Yet this information is not only valuable to the visitor, but essential.
What Little Island provides is a means to discuss on-line material at the source rather than at a remove, and to bypass the often necessary (though occasionally unnecessary) restrictions imposed by hosts. It is not the intention that Little Island usurp the authority of website owners and maintainers to control the content available through their services, but simply to provide another, more integrated layer of public communication.
Little Island has the potential to be a powerful tool, but one that, admittedly, could be as destructive as it is constructive. It may be utilised in the spirit of Enlightenment, allowing users to share opinions, information and experience. It can (and no doubt will) be used by those less well-intentioned to spread disinformation, abuse or just noise. However, it is in the nature of such technologies to be double edged. How many forms of communication would exist today had we not developed those that could be misused?
Little Island will be what its users make of it. This is all that can be asked.
David O'Farrell - Little Island Developer
2009