Nanowrimo has paused all sign ins to the YWP

This was most likely in response to concerns raised about the fact that although new educator accounts couldn’t be made, classrooms were still open, users could still join classrooms and access private messages. There was no warning, and there is currently no way for users to retrieve material on the site.

Access had now returned!

How to Delete your NaNoWriMo Account

NaNo has done dubious things over the years that prompted me to stop using it, but this most recent dubious thing has tilted me from "not using it" to "deleting it." If you're like me, here's what to do:

It's incredibly easy, and I'm hoping that if a lot of us delete - especially people like me, with long-time accounts who have won NaNo repeatedly, who have also supported them monetarily in the past - then perhaps they'll get some kind of message about what a shit idea this LLM stuff is.

They probably won't. But. I'm an optimist.

If you’ve posted on the forums since the site moved in 2019, your posts will NOT be deleted along with your account—they will be assigned an anonymous user number instead.

If you don’t want them to remain, even anonymized like that, you would need to request through Zendesk that they remove your forum posts (good luck with that) or go through and delete/alter them yourself before deleting your account.

Nanowrimo supports AI.

Zendesk post titled ‘What is NaNoWriMo's position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)?’

Besides there being no mention of scraping or of stolen material, or even any idea of they’re talking about generative AI or older proofreaders, this statement is horribly classist and ableist in itself, essentially implying that lower class and/or disabled writers need to use AI to make their works ‘suitable’ for the upper class market.

If I could get a little personal, that is so fucking stupid. I’m disabled, I’m relatively new to writing, and my work is rough as fuck around the edges. Disabled people can write. We don’t need AI to do it for us, even if it was completely 100% ethical, which it really is not.

So yeah. Nano is pro AI, if you want another reason to hate them.

Update, they added this paragraph in what seems to be an attempt to dissuade ‘abuse of ai’ (whatever that is) but kept all the classism and ableism.

So it looks like NaNoWriMo are happy to have AI as part of their community. Miss me with that bullshit. Generative artificial intelligence is an active threat to creativity and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in creative fields.

Please signal boost this so writers can make an informed choice about whether to continue to take part in such a community.

watching @nanowrimo within a single hour:

im juust in literal awe of this fucking mess.

Hello, Male TF Community: NoNotNolan here, I hope you'll indulge me for a bit. We are, sadly, not strangers to instances of questionable appearances of minors in erotic fiction. We are mostly, however, very good at course correcting and making sure that people cut that shit out.

You know who isn't good at that? @nanowrimo Yes, it turns out that "I'm going to write 50k words in a month" has an actual website to it, like Inktober. Who knew? If you never knew that, you should continue being ignorant. If you did know that, please cease and desist using their website. They are not good people anymore. NaNoWriMo used to be about encouraging up-and-coming writers. Now it's about selling the brand, attempting to make money, and hiding anything that makes them look bad.

Which is why they made the baffling decision to try and hide instances of child endangerment and grooming on top of blatant racism. They were notified in May, and refused to take action for over six months-- even then, it was only because users escalated the issue when it was clear that the official organization was going to do nothing.

There's a summary of the NaNoWriMo Grooming Scandal HERE.

But Nolan, if the old leadership is gone, shouldn't we give the new leadership a chance? Well, not if that new leadership is going to use the name for cheap and sketchy sponsorship deals. Like AI generated writing, of all things! You know-- the literal opposite of what a beginning writer should be using?

It's utterly disgraceful. They have since deleted this post, but good news! Screenshots are forever.

Tracks with everything I’ve seen from them. This’ll never change will it?

so you mean nanowrimo and the ywp were operating illegally since... ever?

Nano has turned authoritarian.

Yeah I’m going there.

Here’s what’s been happening:

The response?

Kilby, Kenzie, Kat, Kim, we found your name from copyright info. And yes, y’all. She has three pen names.

And we’re not harassing you. We’re asking for answers and you’re banning people, kicking people, painting us as bad actors when we just want you to do better. You’re the one trying to make this a dystopian ‘us and them’ shitshow.

Oh and I saw that meeting. I saw you talk about a budget you don’t have. I saw you dodge so many questions. I saw you talk about continuing to use a background check company that was investigated by congress after concerns were raised. I saw my friend plead for the YWP and our place on nano, and I saw you reduce us to the money and say that you apologised. When the only apology we got was gaslighting.

Cut the collective punishment.

Cut the fucking abuse.

An extra thing: Kilby sent a separate email to every ML who registered for the meeting, current or not.

However,

That email also contained a link to the video, spreading it further amongst the MLs, some who had registered but not attended.

Which is also a privacy violation!