the future of pronouns.cc

to be clear: i am not planning to shut down pronouns.cc. yes, the title is kinda clickbaity. sorry about that.

if you’ve checked the changelog, code, or issue pages of pronouns.cc lately, you can probably tell that not much has changed in the past [checks notes] ten months.

as for the issues, this wasn’t my intention, and i’m sorry about that. the sheer amount of issues (and emails, though at least that number is private…) that were piling up has really burned me out on the support side of the project, and i’m still trying to figure out how to deal with it better.

as for the code: i’ll be honest, i don’t like Go anymore. Go is the language that the backend is written in, so this is kind of an obstacle to continuing to work on it. additionally, in hindsight, i made some bad decisions in terms of architecture for both the backend and frontend, that couldn’t be fixed without a full rewrite.

so that’s exactly what i’ve been working on for the past almost year! after a few false starts, including a Python rewrite that i sadly lost motivation for a few weeks in (Python is a good language, and i will die on this hill) i’ve finally got something close to feature parity with the current version of pronouns.cc. it’s still not complete, so i can’t give an exact ETA, but i’m working on it as much as i can without overwhelming myself.

most things will stay the same for you

the rewrite is not changing how profiles look in general. a few things might be moved around very slightly, and some wording will change, but the basic structure is not changing. settings and the profile editor will look different, but have the same functionality:

it’s like a game of spot the difference, but a laughably easy one

finally, not everything is extremely wide for no reason anymore!

moderation

the other big problem right now is moderation. i never expected the site to get this big, and the moderation tools i made aren’t suited for a team. this means that i’m still the only moderator, and still the only person with access to the support email. while i’m still not 100% decided on the moderation tools i’ll add to the rewrite (except for what’s already in the current version) i am building it with a moderation team in mind, so with any luck… soon enough, i won’t be the only moderator anymore.

better accessibility

have you ever noticed that basically nothing on the current site works without JavaScript? no? well, it doesn’t, and that’s a problem. it’s not just nerds who disable JS, it can happen to anyone with a slow connection. this is one of the big decisions i regret making with the current version, and i’m happy to say that the rewrite (mostly) changes this! i intend for the entire site to be readable without JS (most notably, paginating the member list) as well as for most edits and authentication.

(i think the current version already does a fairly good job at being accessible to screen readers, but i’ll still try to improve it!)

better log in

early on in the development of pronouns.cc, i decided that there was “no reason” people would want to link multiple accounts of the same type (i.e. Discord accounts or Google accounts) to one pronouns.cc account. in hindsight, this was a huge mistake. losing access to the only linked Discord or Google account is by far the biggest reason for people losing their accounts altogether, and it’s sadly not something i can help with.

as such, with the rewrite, pronouns.cc will finally support multiple accounts per type. you’ll be able to link three Discord accounts, three Google accounts, three Tumblr accounts, and three fediverse accounts. i’m afraid this won’t help people who have already been screwed over, but at least for now, this is the best i can do.

but that’s not all! i have added email/password support to the rewrite too, so you won’t have to rely on external accounts at all anymore. this might not launch immediately when the rewrite is finished, as it requires some extra infrastructure, but it’s coming.

…unless you’re a developer

as this is a completely new codebase, i had to start building the REST API from scratch again. enough of the endpoints have changed that it doesn’t feel right to keep calling it the same version, so i bumped it up to v2. however, because this is a rewrite, API v1 isn’t available (at least, not yet). i will try to write an APIv1 compatibility layer to have a transition period where both versions are available, but i can’t guarantee anything. though, the site is still in beta, so this is to be expected, really.

speaking of developers, the rewrite is also open source, and available here! i’m not accepting contributions just yet while i’m still adding existing features, though.

so, what now?

i’m fairly confident i can deploy a testing version relatively soon. i’m not promising any actual dates, though–i’m notoriously bad at meeting those. after some testing i will migrate the actual site. everything will transfer over, of course!