Data stored and shared on the Internet is almost universally cumulative. If the history of Internet information were a word-processor document, it would include an endless stream of new sentences, along with lots of “strikethrough” phrases (like this one) that reflects edits and updates without ever deleting the originals.

Reddit hosted an online experiment over April Fool’s weekend that was ultimately governed by the same rules. But on its face, “Place” was different. Archives and time-lapse videos will forever exist to show off how Place worked, but its special trick—that its contents, at any moment, would only contain a single here-and-now statement created by thousands of people—is not the kind of thing that an Internet archive or Google cache can easily recreate.

“Together, you can create something more”