What is the Universal Edit Button?
Today the global Wiki community launches a new tool which aims to make editable web pages as recognisable as those with RSS feeds. Called the Universal Edit Button it will appear in bowsers address bars as a green icon with a pencil like this:
Does the Universal Web Editing Button matter?
According to the The the universaleditbutton.org wiki, the Universal Web Editing Button (UWEB) is going to allow www surfers to recognize more easily than at present when a visited site is open for editing by the public. So that’s handy for those of us who are already inclined to contribute to see the opportunity, and might also serve as an invitation to those who don’t edit wikis as a general rule, not having yet come across the idea of collaborative document building through public participation. As the editable web becomes better known and even commonplace, the UWEB button may become regarded as a badge of distinction and then serve as an incentive for organisations and site developers to add publicly-editable pages to their external sites, in order to be able to display the UWEB proudly.
To see the universal edit button in a browser, users will currently need to download a Firefox extension, (installation notes). In time, it is hoped that all browsers will include this feature as they have done for RSS feeds, and the original vision for an editable web will be one step closer.