EC 404 ·Psychology and Economics

Welcome

What this course is, what to do with the right margin, and what the system does and doesn't know about you.

5 min read ·Last edited Aug 18, 2026 · Revising ·slides (PDF, 476 KB)

Slides PDF · 476 KB

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What you’re looking at

This site is the course reader. Lectures are written and re-written here in public, in front of you, over the course of the term. If you click into a lecture and notice typos or phrasing that doesn’t quite work, that’s because most of these are still drafts — and your reactions, in the right margin of the page, are how I find out.

How the margins work

Every paragraph, heading, and blockquote on a lecture page has a quiet ”+ ask” affordance that appears when you hover. Click it (or click the paragraph itself) and a composer opens in the right margin; type a question, observation, or suggestion, submit, and your comment appears next to that specific paragraph, attributed to your display name. You can reply to other students’ comments and replies thread underneath. There’s a small rate limit — roughly one comment every few seconds, thirty per hour — to keep the conversation a conversation and not a flood.

If a paragraph’s text changes substantively in a later draft, its annotation thread is severed and a new thread starts on the new version. That’s a deliberate choice: a comment that says “I don’t follow line 4” doesn’t make sense once line 4 has been rewritten. If you’ve never used a margin-comments system before, the picture below should help.

Fig. 1. How a comment lives next to a paragraph. The wide column on the left is the lecture itself. When a particular paragraph prompts a question or reaction, you click that paragraph; a small composer opens to its right, and what you write becomes a tiny italic note in the margin, attached to that exact paragraph and nothing else. Whoever reads the lecture next sees your note next to the line you were responding to.

What this system knows about you

A pseudonym and a password hash — that is the whole list. When you sign up you provide a username (which is what you’ll log in with), a password (the only thing you need to keep safe), and a display name (your pseudonym — what other students see next to your comments). The site never asks for your email or your real name; it does not connect to MSU SSO; it stores no NetID, no enrollment record, no campus identifier.

Comments are written next to your display name, so other students see something like QuantumOtter next to your replies — never your real identity, never even your username. The picture below maps out who can see what.

Fig. 2. Who can see what about you. From top to bottom: the outside world (ad networks, search engines) sees nothing — this site shares nothing with anyone else, because there's nothing for it to share. Your classmates see your pseudonym (something like QuantumOtter) and what you wrote, but not who you are. The database file on the server stores three things: your username, a scrambled version of your password, and the pseudonym you chose; I can read that file because I run the system, but no one outside MSU can. The "scrambled" password is an Argon2id hash — even if someone stole the file, your real password could not be read back out of it. The bottom layer is you, the only level that knows your real name.

What it doesn’t protect

I want to be honest with you about what this is and isn’t.

Because this system runs on my own infrastructure, I — as the operator — can see the row that links your username to your pseudonym. There is no cryptographic blind between us. The privacy guarantee is that I don’t look unless there’s a real reason to, and that no third party — no advertiser, no platform, no analytics service — has any of this data, because there’s nothing to share. Passwords are stored as Argon2id hashes; even if the database file were stolen, your password would not be recoverable.

The other thing no system can protect is you, from yourself. Your prose is recognizable. If you write with a distinctive voice, classmates can probably identify you over the course of a term — no cryptographic scheme will prevent that. If you need true anonymity for something serious — a concern about another student, a question you’re embarrassed to ask in class — write to me on paper or come to office hours. The margin is for engaging with the material, not for confidences.

If something here doesn’t sit right with you, the system is open source. Read the code, then come argue with me about it.

Try it

Hover any paragraph on this page and you should see the + ask appear in the right margin. Click it, sign up with the join code I’ll give you in class — pick a username (private; what you’ll log in with), a password, and a display name (public; your pseudonym, like QuantumOtter) — and post something. If it works, your annotation will appear next to whatever paragraph you commented on, attributed to your display name. Welcome.