DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN NANOWRIMO
Time to talk about something I haven’t really talked about before.
Nanowrimo. You know the challenge to write 50k in a month? That starts in November, and usually people start coming out of hibernation to start planning for that now.
And to plan, they often find their way to the forums to find others who are gearing up and thinking about turning October into Preptober.
Only… the forums are closed this year. Why is that?
Well… https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSYcdosGLoPFI_Dc--vuC9Bl4-OUFGcmHgBRt2aHSRVWBPc6su4AMFY5iDgZGyC379Zm8C7zhBd2zuf/pub
NaNoWriMo 2023 controversy summary
Wait sorry that’s a long document though as someone who has been keeping up with this since late October 2023 and knows a lot about what’s going on, this is the most accurate summary I know of offhand.
So… short version? NaNo has been crumbling for a while, between dismissing people’s dislike of the 2019 redesign, not handling conflict well in general, leaving MLs feeling unsupported and unappreciated, and allowing a culture to grow in which a forum mod became the sole moderator of a fast moving teen forum.
This forum mod was accused of grooming. Several people compiled evidence to show why they believed that. The staff at NaNo did nothing. They claimed an investigation happened but no action was taken for months.
I read through a thread where many concerns were discussed and barely listened to. I watched many members of the community went from hopeful and believing in the organization to angry and disheartened over the course of several months after being treated like children, being told things would happen that never did change.
Then things came to a boiling point in November, and the Board got involved. They shut down the forums and started investigating. We had hope. Then they started treating us the same way the staff had.
There are currently no known MLs as all were removed before April, as they need to be vetted and go through some training, only there’s no word on when that is going to happen.
There were barely any proper events during April and July, and some events NaNo advertised were hosted by their sponsors.
There’s a lot more that I could get into, but I think the more I try to explain the more likely I am to get it wrong and there is enough misinformation about this controversy out there.
For now, the latest is this post on zen desk about AI.
Yeah… I have no faith left. Do not even look at NaNo’s official site. They don’t deserve to think they’re getting people to participate. Especially since all they want is money these days.
If you’re looking for a substitute word tracker, I highly recommend trackbear.app. It’s still in beta, but I’ve been using it all year, and I enjoy it. There’s a goals option that includes the graph and par line we all enjoyed with NaNo, and there’s leaderboards to have fun with your friends.
Yeah, watching Nano go down hill has been super disheartening.
