page of text . com
I just came across an interesting take on collaborative editing: page of text . com. Barebones simple, it's for groups who don't need a full-fledged Google Doc or Wiki. No registration required: just go and start a "page of text". I kinda like the idea (not that I have a use for it at the moment).
I also think it's a bit odd that they like to put spaces in their URI when not using in a technical sense, but whatever.
Update: apparently once created, a page cannot be manually deleted, which I find rather unpleasant. My guess is that if a certain amount of time passes without being viewed or edited, it will get cleaned out, but I really don't like that a user has no way of removing a page.
I've thought long and hard about what it would take to do page deletion, but keep bumping into a brick wall, which is that pageoftext.com is stateless. In other words, it doesn't care who you are as long as you have the right URL. That means that any person who created the page is not special when compared to others, and that anyone with the URL could delete the page. For more popular pages which are prone to having many editors, I could see someone deleting the page "just because". I may be missing something, and there may be an easy fix, but I haven't been able to think of it.
Of course, if you really want a page deleted, you can always email me and I'll trash it for you. Old school for the win. ;)
Gordon McCreight on December 10, 2008, 19:48
Hm. My only thought is to have a user enter their email address when creating a page, and emailing them a unique Delete This Page link.
I know that's not ideal because it's not quite as "stateless" as it is now, but some people might be willing to go for it.
Noah on December 23, 2008, 23:26