#plurality app

More about Me

Again, I am Circuit; but you may call me Ci or Circi.

I use any/all pronouns.

My pronouns.cc card!

More about the Blog

This blog is mainly run by me and possibly a few other members of my system.

Tag List:

⏻ Important = Important Posts

⏻ Announcements = Announcements either regarding the app, the blog, or something else

⏻ Updates = Updates about the app

⏻ Other = Anything else

Q&A

“What’s your stance on system discourse?”

I think all origins of systems are valid, harassment and hate is never okay. <3 TLDR; I consider myself Pro-All Origins and Anti Syscourse.

“Is there an estimate for when the app will release?”

Nope! I have literally no idea.

“What will the app be available on?”

Hopefully Android, iOS, you name it. I’m hoping to get it everywhere I can if possible.

“Why even consider this if you don’t know anything about code?”

Because I’m sick and tired of plural folk getting pushed out of tools that can help them, I want a space where they can safely log things without it being shut down.

“How will you pay for the servers, keeping the app in app stores, etc?”

I’m trying not to worry about the financial aspect of things at the moment, but I’d say it’ll likely be supported by both my own money and donations from supporters.

Thank you so much for reading! I really hope that I can get this project up and running as soon as possible.

Simply Plural afawk crashed primarily due to its developer remaining solo. Its use skyrocketed far past the scope of what one plural can manage and instead of scaling its development by adding more hands, Amaryllis tried to do it all themselves until they couldn't even do that.

How many of these new projects are being solo dev'd? How many brilliant, creative collectives are pouring their mind into making a piece of technology that a couple dozen other plurals are all independently making something very similar to?

The seeming 'obvious' solution is for these developers to congregate, collaborate, and end up with a few joint projects that they all work on. Then the few that do make it to production or w/e are the commonality of all their ideas, each dev sharpening the others and everyone sharing the load. Sounds classy and perf.

BUT, then you run into the age-old pitfalls of group work.

Creative differences that might be resolvable but someone feels snubbed. Differences of opinion where there is no win-win. Differences in workstyles and methodology.

Regular drama, ppl who like to come up with ideas but do not contribute, ppl who are not team players and will never listen to feedback, etc.

Time. Everybody's doing this stuff in the margins of their daily life and a lot of us are disabled and burnt out. Getting shit moving and keeping it rolling is very difficult and does not typically magically happen on its own through inertia (though momentum of excitement and organic collaboration can go a long way with stuff don't get me wrong). Then there are time zone differences and how hard it is to schedule one meeting between any more than 3 ppl.

Management. Yeah, unfortunately long-term projects typically need some form of management. That doesn't need to mean ppl who hold power over others, but dear god do ppl love feeling like they are important and have power (see also: literally any discord mods) and boy does that come with its own can of worms.

And then at this point you might start thinking "well jesus, if group projects are so difficult and logistical nightmares then maybe solo dev is actually easier" and in some ways, I think I agree? But you still run into the bottleneck of limited resources, limited capacity, as well as the same pitfalls for drama somehow but also then development can be so slow-moving as well. Like we want to make a plural app, have wanted to since before all this empty space in the 'market' showed up, but we've done very little in the year since the idea's inception bc it requires us having to learn how to code from scratch.

I don't have a list of ingenius solutions to this conundrum re: solo vs team development. I just think it's worth talking about and seeing where and when it might be helpful for us all to be in closer loops with similar projects and seeing where pooling our resources and peoplepower can be of while keeping in mind the tradeoff between the obstacles of solo development and those of team development and remaining vigilant to the pitfalls of either stream of production.