Public folders for reading lists

Feature requests
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#1

It is very useful in some situations to be able to create public folders, to provide “reading lists”, for example, on a certain topic. It does not look like such capability is provided by Paperpile, and if it was provided - the folder would disappear, once the owner stops paying for the subscription.

Have you ever considered addressing this scenario? Would it be conceivable to allow paid subscribers create public folders that would exist even if the owner is no longer paying?

Mendeley has this feature.

1 Like
#2

You can do this now. Just create a shared folder and share the “Weblink”.

At the moment we don’t delete user data even if a user cancels a subscription, so these public pages don’t get lost.

We might make this a more prominent feature and adapt for the specific use case of public reading lists. Whether Mendeley has this feature or not does not really affect this decision though :wink:

#3

Ah, good -thanks! Few followup questions:

  1. it doesn’t look like tags show up in the shared folder view - is this a bug or missing feature? Would be great to filter by tags. Reading list type of shared folders can grow very big very quickly.
  2. is it possible for the recipient to add individual papers from the shared folder to their library? I can’t really test it with one account
  3. suggestion - would it make sense to provide a more condensed view of the list?

I respect this decision of yours, but to me it makes a lot of sense to learn from the existing capabilities of similar tools. You may not consider this in your decision process, but your users will always be “shopping” for features.

#4
  1. it doesn’t look like tags show up in the shared folder view - is this a bug or missing feature? Would be great to filter by tags. Reading list type of shared folders can grow very big very quickly.

Labels are not included by design. It’s kind of a complicated topic and there is another current thread about how to deal with labels in shared folders: Tags in shared folders The fact that I have not answered yet it is that we are not exactly sure what’s the best way to deal with it.

  1. is it possible for the recipient to add individual papers from the shared folder to their library? I can’t really test it with one account

Yes. Please have a look at our help pages. There is a screenshot how that looks under “Copy shared papers to your personal library”: https://paperpile.com/help#guide-sharing

  1. suggestion - would it make sense to provide a more condensed view of the list?

Probably. We’ve chosen a simple design and basic features set for these shared pages. That seems to work ok and at the moment we don’t have immediate plans to change them. There have been other discussions how to improve e.g. with more sorting options: More sorting criteria for shared folder websites.

I respect this decision of yours, but to me it makes a lot of sense to learn from the existing capabilities of similar tools. You may not consider this in your decision process, but your users will always be “shopping” for features.

There was no deeper meaning in my comment about Mendeley. We are happy about any ideas we get no matter where they come from. It’s just really hard by itself to judge whether a feature makes sense for our customers or not. In this decision process it’s not really relevant if a feature makes sense for another product with other users with potentially quite different needs.

#5

BTW - very nice that I get a notification when a thread I started gets linked to…

Also nice to know that you’ve seen and are considering the comment, though you don’t yet have a solution :smile: