###Table of Content
- File and content online editing
- Anonymous file and content editing
- Anonymous text sharing
- Online LaTeX editor for quality technical, scientific, academic, multilingual, etc. papers
- Anonymous online LaTeX editor
- Drawing and schema
- Anonymous drawing
- Wiki
- Anonymous wiki
##File and content online editing
As part of their file sharing products, some services do provide online file editing as well. For example, ownCloud makes it possible to edit .doc and .odt document for 5 simultaneous editors. They are also planning to provide online editing for any LibreOffice documents, spreadsheet, slides, etc. based on Collabora. Google is well known to provide real time editing of documents, spreadsheets and slides through Google docs. If one user has created an account, s/he can then give the "can edit" permission to "anyone with the link", thus allowing some kind of anonymous editing.
As part of the Knork EU project, we described our experience with Sway for creating presentations, reports or personal stories. Sway is a product of Mircosoft which require a Microsoft account. This tool will produce a presentation website and offers option to transform them into "classical" slides.
##Anonymous file and content editing
Etherpad is an online text editor providing collaborative editing in real-time. It offers minimalist editing options (bold, italic, lists, etc.) but can be extended with add-ons. It provide a chat and a very nice history visualization showing all the changes like a "movie". It can be installed on your own or school server. On their website, they also list many public instances like the riseup pad which provide strong anonymity. Again, before using a public instance, do a background check of the service provider and decide if you trust them prior using their services.
EtherCalc is a web spreadsheet. Anyone who has (or who can guess) the link to a sheet can edit it anonymously (IP address is collected) and see changes form other users in real-time. EtherCalc can be also installed on your own (school) server.
ProtectedText is an online notepad (pure text, no formatting at all) that will encrypt and password protect your text. So only users with the URL and the password will be able to edit the text. If multiple users try to edit the same text at the same time, they will not be synchronized (no real-time, only a reload option) so they risk to overwrite each other changes. Under a single URL, the users can create multiples texts, each under another tab.
##Anonymous text sharing
Similar to anonymous file sharing some tools like ZeroBin or Øbin offers a way to share text anonymously. The text is encrypted on the browser before being send to the server, so only the users who get the URL to it can decrypt and read the content; even the server owner is not able to access the content. They offer option to keep the text forever or to delete it after a certain period of time (few hours, 1 day, 1 month, etc.) or after first access. ZeroBin also offer a commenting option.
##Online LaTeX editor for quality technical, scientific, academic, multilingual, etc. papers
As part of the Knork EU project, we described our experience with ShareLaTeX that can be used for collaboratively writing quality technical, scientific, academic, multilingual, etc. papers, articles, books, theses, presentations, poster, etc. ShareLaTeX is an online collaborative LaTeX editor. LaTeX is a typesetting system following the WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) paradigm for editing a structured document.
When multiples writers work at the same time, they will see each others’ edits in real time (limited to two collaborators in the free version). There is also an option to allow anonymous editing by making the document public and thus allowing unlimited amount of collaborators. The development (test) version offer a way to add comments similar to Google docs; anyway, it has always been possible to have a comment in the tex source. With the pay version or if you install the tool on your own institution server, ShareLaTeX offers file history with an option to roll back the changes to an older version or to merge back some previous changes without losing newer edits. It also offers an option to synchronize with Dropbox and GitHub, thus allowing working offline and merging back the changes once back online.
It exists many other LaTeX online editors such as Overleaf, Papeeria, Fidus Writer etc. Authorea offers advantages like unlimited editors for a document and synchronization with GitHub with the free account. It also has a nice built in tool to get the bibliography reference directly from DOI or to search from author/title/keyword. The following text is an example how Authorea was use to write an essay.
##Anonymous online LaTeX editor
Most of the online LaTeX editors require to create an account before being able to edit text. For more anonymous editing, one option would be to install ShareLaTeX to your own (school) server. Another option would be to use the JaxEdit which allow anonymous editing and password protected for viewing or editing.
##Drawing and schema
As part of the Knork EU project, we described our experience with Draw.io for creating mock-ups and prototypes. I was also making my students using Draw.io during database course to for example draw Entity-Relation diagrams. This tool can be used anonymously saving the drawings on the computer or synchronized with file sharing tools like Google drive or dropbox and thus allow the real-time collaborative editing.
As part of Google Docs, it is also possible to do some basic drawing. Google Drawings offers the possibility to draw line and curves as well as basic shapes and insert images and text. It is however not possible the do "hand drawing".
##Anonymous drawing
Some whiteboard online tools allow to anonymously do "hand" drawing collaboratively in real-time. For example, CoSketch.com or MegaScopes.com WhiteBoard offer that service. For the latter, I would recommends that you first request a private session and share that link; otherwise, the risk is that the the drawing in the front page may hurt one's sensibility (since they can be edited by anonymous users...).
##Wiki
Wiki does allow collaborative editing of linked pages online. The wiki engines usually do provide asynchronous editing (not real-time). They do offer possibility for rich editing (headings, font style, bullet list, etc.), insertion of media elements (images, videos, sounds,...) and many extra features like automatic generation of table of content and more. Most of them also come with a very good history tool (maybe not as powerful as a version control system) that allow to name and comment the changes, compare different version of a page (for example side by side with highlighting of the changes), revert or merge older changes, etc.
Wikispaces do offer free wiki for educational purpose. The users will have to define a username and give their email before being able to edit a class wiki. It exist many other wiki hosting services.
##Anonymous wiki
If your institute own a server, you could install a wiki engine such as MediaWiki (the same engine as wikipedia) or DokuWiki. Depending on the configuration, they will allow anonymous editing.
You could also contribute to an existing wiki. Some of them, such as WikipediA, do allow anonymous editing.
thanks this will come in handy for sure!!! Good Job :D