Waterfall Staff

Community Update

Some major news and then some minor this update.

First though, a big welcome to everyone who's joined over the last few days - I hope you're enjoying the site so far!

App

First, the major news, and unfortunately, it's not good. As you know I've been working on the app alongside the rewrite, and I've been trying to get it into testing programmes. Unfortunately, the apps have been rejected.

After following up with contacts, it turns out this is primarily because of the type of app it is in relation to the team behind it - in short, to get a UGC (user generated content) app published, you need a large moderation team, and the balance sheet to prove you can pay them. Since Waterfall is one guy and a Patreon, that's clearly not happening any time soon. Unofficial figures I've been quoted say at least 15 full time, paid moderation staff, which means about a $500k a year income.

It's unlikely the Patreon will suddenly see a few zeroes on the end of the current income, so this, unfortunately, means the app is effectively dead at this point. There are ways around it - sideloading on Android for example - but I don't think putting effort into something that'll benefit 1% of the site's existing users who are okay with disabling their phone's security and technically competent enough to sideload in the first place is the solution here, and I think that effort is better spent elsewhere.

Following Bug Fixed

You may have noticed a bug with following last night - this has now been fixed. Unfortunately this probably means blocking is weird in some way, so expect that to be compromised right now. I'll be looking into this.

UI Update and Future

The staff post poll has ended, and updating the UI has won out. This'll be the next major feature update and, given the app isn't a thing anymore, I'll try to make it even more mobile friendly since right now mobiles miss out on a few features because of space constraints.

I'll also be adapting my schedule a bit - I spent a year flat out working on the rewrite, and a year before that working on the original Waterfall, which has left me tired. Given this wasn't meant to be a full time job, I'm going to adjust the hours I spend working on the site to reflect that, and finally take some time to work on the other projects I've shelved over the last couple of years. All of these can be supported at the site's Patreon, so feel free to donate a few bucks to keep things running. There'll be a post-mortem of the whole rewrite process on there soon, for those curious about the takeaway and technical details.

This doesn't mean the site won't be updated - indeed, security bugs will be fixed as soon as humanly possible when they're discovered/reported - but minor bugs will be a little slower. This reflects the fact that, hey, this is one guy who isn't really doing this to make money, so I think that going forward the "best effort" approach is the safest and sanest. I'll be targeting at least one bug fix a day.

As usual, suggestions and bug reports can be filed on the GitHub, including letting me know of areas where the help articles are lacking. Check the footer for a link!