I just saw the email and felt like reading an April's Fools joke. Even as a software engineer who loves throwing away code or simplifying existing systems with abstractions, I think this a giant mistake.
The uncompleted state of a to-do is what makes it a todo. Being able to follow a 'roadmap' like that also adds flavor to in-progress products, which (initially) WIP was all about (before increasingly becoming a 'just-in-time' lifestyle blog).
I loved the /todo command to jot down ideas & tasks on-the-go, in a more 'micro' fashion than creating a GitHub issue on a private repo (more friction; no public visibility or accountability). The burndown chart was also a nice touch.
Eliminating todos in favor of 'posts' (status updates) brings the platform awkwardly close to X/Twitter, albeit with a smaller (but less toxic) community, fewer features, no monetization for creators, and so on. Product differentiation is lost.
Personally, I don't see the point in replicating Twitter for a specific niche (makers). It renders WIP a high-priced mini Twitter with hashtags & pages for projects (formerly 'products'), possibly better served better by separate Twitter accounts, or a free (self-hosted) microblog with theming, etc.
This 'RFC' was made 6 hours ago, but now todos already got nuked. Long before WIP users in different timezones even had a chance to give feedback, which I find hardly reconcilable with 'curious to get your views'.
As promised I received a ZIP with my 200+ pending todos (and their attachments), but I'm not happy with diluting WIP's unique identity (to become Twitter?), nor the way this change was rolled out.
A few hours after writing the post I took another look at the usage data and the added code complexity. I realized two things:
Recent usage of this feature is even lower than I initially thought. Near zero
The added code complexity was way more severe than I thought
Although it’s unfortunate for the very few people who did use it, I don’t think it’s fair for the whole community to bear those costs in terms of slower product development.
Considering all that, I chose to move forward immediately rather than wait for additional community input. The usage data said it all.
I have the tendency to overthink these types of changes rather than bravely move forward and make progress. This was me trying to do better, but it actually may have been wise to hold off and give you and the couple of other users who use this feature to share their perspective.
My apologies I didn’t do that.
With regards to todos setting WIP apart, I agree. I LOVE that people share the actual things they have done rather than random posts. That’s the reason for WIP’s existence.
I made the Twitter reference as an admiration to the simplicity of their product. I think we can learn a lot from that, but that doesn’t mean we need to become exactly like it.
When I say we can merge todos/posts/comments into the same record type that’s more of a comment on technical implementation, than UX or product. For example right now I have implemented comments twice, once for posts and once for comments. Same with notifications and a few other things. The more code they can share the simpler the codebase, the faster we can add other features people are asking for like better privacy controls, a nicer API for third-party integrations, etc.
Hopefully that addresses your concerns about the future of WIP.
With regards to the pending todos functionality, I haven’t actually deleted them from the database and I am in no rush to do so. The email was intentionally written a bit “alarmy” so people who care would take action sooner than later.
The changes I made to remove the functionality can be reverted relatively easily. But for reasons shared above I still think the right decision is to remove it, even if I didn’t plan and communicate it properly.
Given your 200+ pending todos, I understand your frustration. If there’s anything I can do to help move you these to a new platform I’d love to help. I can export them in any format. Personally I use Telegram’s “Saved Messages” feature for this and it works very well.
I just saw the email and felt like reading an April's Fools joke. Even as a software engineer who loves throwing away code or simplifying existing systems with abstractions, I think this a giant mistake.
The uncompleted state of a to-do is what makes it a todo. Being able to follow a 'roadmap' like that also adds flavor to in-progress products, which (initially) WIP was all about (before increasingly becoming a 'just-in-time' lifestyle blog).
I loved the /todo command to jot down ideas & tasks on-the-go, in a more 'micro' fashion than creating a GitHub issue on a private repo (more friction; no public visibility or accountability). The burndown chart was also a nice touch.
Eliminating todos in favor of 'posts' (status updates) brings the platform awkwardly close to X/Twitter, albeit with a smaller (but less toxic) community, fewer features, no monetization for creators, and so on. Product differentiation is lost.
Personally, I don't see the point in replicating Twitter for a specific niche (makers). It renders WIP a high-priced mini Twitter with hashtags & pages for projects (formerly 'products'), possibly better served better by separate Twitter accounts, or a free (self-hosted) microblog with theming, etc.
This 'RFC' was made 6 hours ago, but now todos already got nuked. Long before WIP users in different timezones even had a chance to give feedback, which I find hardly reconcilable with 'curious to get your views'.
As promised I received a ZIP with my 200+ pending todos (and their attachments), but I'm not happy with diluting WIP's unique identity (to become Twitter?), nor the way this change was rolled out.
Thank you for your honest feedback ❤️
A few hours after writing the post I took another look at the usage data and the added code complexity. I realized two things:
Although it’s unfortunate for the very few people who did use it, I don’t think it’s fair for the whole community to bear those costs in terms of slower product development.
Considering all that, I chose to move forward immediately rather than wait for additional community input. The usage data said it all.
I have the tendency to overthink these types of changes rather than bravely move forward and make progress. This was me trying to do better, but it actually may have been wise to hold off and give you and the couple of other users who use this feature to share their perspective.
My apologies I didn’t do that.
With regards to todos setting WIP apart, I agree. I LOVE that people share the actual things they have done rather than random posts. That’s the reason for WIP’s existence.
I made the Twitter reference as an admiration to the simplicity of their product. I think we can learn a lot from that, but that doesn’t mean we need to become exactly like it.
When I say we can merge todos/posts/comments into the same record type that’s more of a comment on technical implementation, than UX or product. For example right now I have implemented comments twice, once for posts and once for comments. Same with notifications and a few other things. The more code they can share the simpler the codebase, the faster we can add other features people are asking for like better privacy controls, a nicer API for third-party integrations, etc.
Hopefully that addresses your concerns about the future of WIP.
With regards to the pending todos functionality, I haven’t actually deleted them from the database and I am in no rush to do so. The email was intentionally written a bit “alarmy” so people who care would take action sooner than later.
The changes I made to remove the functionality can be reverted relatively easily. But for reasons shared above I still think the right decision is to remove it, even if I didn’t plan and communicate it properly.
Given your 200+ pending todos, I understand your frustration. If there’s anything I can do to help move you these to a new platform I’d love to help. I can export them in any format. Personally I use Telegram’s “Saved Messages” feature for this and it works very well.