Quick Topic

Tired of talking about wiki here? Try taking it to QuickTopic.

TedAnderson starts a conversation on QuickTopic about Wiki including CliffordAdams, a couple of others, SteveYost (QuickTopic's creator), and WardCunningham (who makes a cameo appearance):

http://www.quicktopic.com/1/H/VFjcqpwI57gfTNQcnWlb.html

And the tree off of which the Wiki discussion above branched

http://www.quicktopic.com/1/H/emxb7z9ubBnT5eAuc8l/p13.1.0.5.6

You'll have to ignore the porn-site spam that the owner hasn't yet removed.

QuickTopic uses a compartmentalized Web page. The new entries are appended at the "bottom" of the page. See AppendOnly discussion of four or more years ago with JimCoplien. QuickTopic has email notification like JimCoplien's OrgPatterns of several years ago. Another connection is that SteveYost, QuickTopic's creator, has his own wiki in FishBowl mode going at: http://www.quicktopic.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?BlurCircle.

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When you start a QuickTopic the first message will contain, more or less, what follows as a place-holder for your first message. When you are at your QuickTopic page, click "Post a new message" to replace this with your own words.

Note that you and your group can subscribe to get email for newly posted messages, so you won't have to monitor this web page for new messages.

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How to link to a Quick Topic page

If you want to create a link from another Web page to this discussion forum, you can use the HTML text below in your page's HTML source:

http://www.quicktopic.com/6/H/YX32j9xeDyUttXW8Rox

It's a good idea to include the URL of your own page in this first message, so readers can navigate back and forth. You can do this by just typing your page's full address, starting with "http", in your first message. Quick Topic will automatically turn this into a link. For example: http://www.quicktopic.com

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Change of name for this service

SteveYost explains: We've changed our name to Quick Topic(SM), after seeing that thousands of people found our service great for all kinds of single-topic discussions. You can now reach us at http://www.quicktopic.com/ .

Take It Offline(SM), our previous name, came from the biz-speak phrase that means "let's take this discussion to a smaller forum later". It denoted the original concept of creating a space for side discussions from existing forums.

We're the same company, and we'll continue to add features to support all the creative uses you make of Quick Topic. It'll always remain preposterously easy to use!

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To summarize then, it's intended for quick discussions, and it's largely like UseNet except (or in some cases including) that it's

• anonymous
• moderated
• publicly accessible
• impossible to find unless someone gives you the URL
• non-editable, which implies that you get discussions/threads

Add to that it's

• not rated by Google (simply because Google can't find it)
• very easy to access, including where desired, by email.

Fair summary?