pip pip to you, mysterious orb!

they know damn well that most people accomplished the thing well before them

they’re brave enough to face that social stigma anyway

that’s how much they want to accomplish the thing

their determination should inspire your praise, not your mockery

it’s actually really fucking impressive

additionally:

As someone not involved in the development of pillowfort but am a web developer, I think you should lower your expectations, but not for the reason you think.

Pillowfort is a baby. A newborn. A smol bab. If you were here during the early days of Tumblr, think of that. 

Pillowfort simply cannot be the immediate solution to your woes. It needs to be nurtured and cared for to become a mature and happy adult. 

If you want Pillowfort to work, they’ll need feedback, advice, bug reports, etc. This is a chance to make Pillowfort the Ao3 of Fanfiction.net. It’s not gonna happen overnight, you need to give it time and love and it’ll get there. 

If you don’t want to pay money to get into the beta, that’s ok. It will be open to the public soon enough and you won’t have to pay a dime. Their financial model moving forward sounds good (a subscription fee for super extra features), but even an Ao3 model would work swell for them probably. 

We’re living in an interesting time on the internet. Governments across the world are cracking down on content and yet community run websites are starting to thrive more and more. 

most of the criticism i’ve seen of pf so far ultimately come back to this

is it an alright platform with a good community? yes. does it have a lot of potential? yes. does it have a lot of problems still being worked out? yes.  are the staff open and responsive? absolutely. do i recommend it? yes, if you’re willing to live in a house while it’s being built.

One of the great things about PF is that the staff is listening to the userbase. They want to know what we want and need. We got features like mutuals-only post locking and readmores months before they were originally slated to roll out, just because so many people not only wanted them but said that those were at the top of their wish lists. Yes, that’s right, they actually listened to user feedback - solicited it, even, with surveys! - and then changed their plans based on that feedback. More than once.

There are a lot of cool features that are planned but not yet implemented. There are a lot of bugs. But one of the things that’s been most fun about watching this site grow (I’ve been on there since February) is the moment every few weeks when BAM! we get a major feature we’ve been waiting for, or a major bug magically disappears.

If you don’t want to deal with bugs and lack of features, that’s fine, totally understandable, but don’t shit on the site just yet. None of us knows for sure what it’s going to look like a year from now. Once it’s out of beta and had a chance to work through the inevitable growing pains that will come after that, if you still think it’s going about things all wrong, by all means, warn people away from it.

But right now, if you’re not sure about some of it but are at all curious to see how it turns out, come join us and let Staff know about your concerns. Strike up conversations about the features you think are most important. You have the chance to influence the shape of this site in a way that is rare, and that Tumblr has never given a shit about.