- installed the OpenID extension for simple account creation
Registration is open, so account creation is simple now! Is there that much increased ease with OpenID?
- set "collaborate" as default for any page
This is a question of the extension's defaults--I assume that most people will not want to have that default, but there is a way to enable it on page load--set collaborate=true in the URL, or use the link in the text field above the edit box.
- set collaborate as default in all newly created accounts
That preference is actually pretty much deprecated, but I'll consider fixing it up and using it again. I want the switch behavior to be part of the testing, though, so I'll keep it as-is for now.
Thanks for the feedback!
Oh, and bonus: If you go to http://etherpad.wmflabs.org/pad/ you can play with the Etherpad Lite interface without integration into MW.