#nanopocalypse 2023

[shadelorde]

Hello,

I’ve been a participant of NaNoWriMo for six years now, and a forums participant on the Young Writer’s Program for three years.

You might be wondering what’s happening on the forums, either on the YWP or the main NaNo site.

As far as I’m aware and have been involved, we brought up some concerns about neglectful moderation behavior on the adult site. Several adults supported us, and came out with their own allegations about neglectful or abusive moderation (for example, a moderator luring teens to a fetish website, who was fired but not banned, another one posting openly about porn who is still a moderator, and similar concerns.) On the YWP, our moderators, Rob Diaz and Marya Brennan have allowed open bullying and instead tone-policed those who fought back. They have allowed predator behavior on the site in several circumstances under the statement of “it does not explicitly violate our Codes” (despite it being open predatory behavior), and Rob Diaz has said racist things to another user in response to a Thanksgiving PSA.

The Board of Directors has now said that they did not know there was a separate YWP forum in the first place.

On the YWP side of things, the forums are being shut down indefinitely, and we are awaiting another response from the Board of Directors.

Please do not donate to NaNoWriMo.

Contact local schools and make them aware of the situation, and discourage advertising the YWP to kids.

I will reblog other posts from my fellow YWP users that h give more specific details.

[max-illustrator]

this was me. i said damn the mods. i said motherfucking damn the mods. and you know what marya did? she removed my post and messaged me,

“I have removed one of your posts for profanity and also being abusive. If I see that happen again, I’ll temporarily block your account. Let me know if you have any questions about what’s okay to post or not.”

she called me, abusive, for saying fuck the mods.

and of course naturally, considering the forums were shutting down anyway so i had nothing left i repeated my message. it was one minute after i posted that, i got banned. guess what? still they let a predator go unbanned, still they don’t prioritise the ACTUAL danger, but they ban a 15yo kid who’s hurting their ego.

[full-of-malice]

what a lovely day i bet everything on the nanowrimo forums has been resolved and there's no wild new information that's going to make me hate the staff even more...

[trigger warning on the last two images for bombing and terrorism]

here's some screenshots of brand new info and a testimony that came straight from the nanowrimo forums. this is only one part of the testimony. there is so much more.

each day the staff is revealed to be more and more corrupt. we're not gonna go down silently.

i'm going to spread the word as much as possible because everyone who has been part of nanowrimo deserves to know

[i will be updated this with text version for each image later, i'm currently unable to but i will later]

[abearthatwrites]

NaNoWriMo just released their survey.

You'd best believe I called out HQ every chance I got.

[abearthatwrites]

And the NaNo forums are shut down. The last forum thread, which had somehow escaped notice, has just been locked.

Ah well. At least I caught it before it got locked. I didn't find out until after the other threads were locked that Ivan the Icy came up in conversation yesterday, so it gave me the time to share my own testimonial with that particular game...

[full-of-malice]

me and my friends are being bitter about ai and nanowrimo again. as one of the kids who was part of the group that made the tag of "#nanopocalypse" as a term for what was happening on our website as we were silenced and groomed and our lives went to shit. our lives were falling apart. it was the nanopocalypse for us. that's why we called it that and have referred to the entire situation as that. and we were the only ones who actually put anything in the "#anti nanowrimo" tag to begin with to talk about our hatred and struggles with being groomed. a desperate and ignored attempt to call awareness

so as someone who put in the work and lost days of my life and will not be the same person again and put tears and long days while trying to juggle my school and personal life, checking in on my friends and ensuring that they were okay, it feels really shitty honestly to watch tumblr take the nanopocalypse tag so they can make themselves feel good by talking shit about the ai policy. it's Exhausting. you guys are a solid year late in support and hatred for nano that we could've used when we were trying to get the website halfway shut down. we have been Trying to tell you. there were tiktoks, twitter, threads, youtube videos, tumblr posts, and it's just exhausting that suddenly the trendy hatred of ai is what gets popular. idk if feels like you all just jump on the trend to be the cool savior and hate on ai and write their posts that do nothing informative of helpful and just say "fuck nanowrimo" instead of hating on it for the actually important reasons.

nanopocalypse was the specific instance a year ago in november of 2023, when ywp (young writer program) website users were sick of being abused, neglected, and being in the dark. the mods started banning us just for voicing our issues and wanting change. we took to. the adult forums and talked to adult users who were in the midst of the own issues as well. we finally found adults who believed our struggles and were on our side. on their website there was child grooming involved too, the fbi was allegedly getting contacted it was so bad. after years finally someone was listening. yet within days they turned on us and told us we were too young and had no place in "their home" of the website and that our concerns for our community and wanting to be involved were no necessary. they started twisting our words against us and picking us apart. i spent days fighting with adults just for basic things, adults who claimed not two or three days ago that they supported us and would fight for us and were so sorry for the way we were treated only to turn around and treat us remarkably the same. there was one nanopocalypse.

it's exhausting to have to reiterate our struggles to people on the internet who don't and won't listen, but don't use our terms that we a group of abused and groomed teens made for a one time occurrence and tag that was for us and our struggles a place for us to talk and raise awareness. a place that got ignored until a year too late so ai issues could talk over us.

so fuck nanowrimo. not for the ai, but for the children who suffered for years in silence. the ai should be an afterthought, not the front of the problem.

if anyone's interested either in a separate post or in the reblogs i'll make an extensive list of any youtube videos, tiktoks, tumblr post links, and twitter links that i know of on the situation if you want. i will gladly answer any question anyone has because i've tried to educate people on this for a long time and no one will listen

[mysteriousubstance]

Hi! I'm a YWP member and have been since I was 14 (3 years ago now) I go by Kins and Cori int he site and I guess I can go by that here toi. didn't know about the issues with the mods until this last year. I should have seen it sooner.

I have spent many many hours on that site and I call it my home. I have only a few horror stories because I was one of the lucky ones (who also isn't POC). I didn't go through as much as this but I should have seen it.

I remember vividly when someone told us to kill ourselves. The mods took forever to do anything on the situation to the point where this is where it escalated to.

I remember when someone manipulated and treated people like shit. They threatened their sibling with their parents who were unsupportive. The mods didn't do anything for a long time.

I remember the Speak Out movement, where people criticized the mods and were silenced. When they tried to go to the main site, they were told they were cross posting things that didn't belong there. So people left the website for 2 days until the mods actually listened. Things improved but only for a bit. The mods started a public moderation record. But that's not what we needed. We needed consistent moderation. We needed someone who would actually help in those situations.

I remember hearing that there was a predator and that the mods did nothing for a LONG FUCKING TIME. I lost some of my sense of safety on a place I kind of grew up in.

Right before the forums shut down, some people were criticizing the mods. They were threatened by being banned. People were swearing and were banned. But I swore too and didn't even get a warning. There was clear favoritism and I think my friends deserved more than this.

And now I hear about the main site and that there was a predator as a mod and at this point I'm not even surprised. I have witnessed so much harm done and no one deserved it. NO ONE DESERVED IT. They were valid and deserved to be listened to.

I love the place I've spent so long in. It's helped me get through some of the most difficult times. But that wasn't by any help if the mods. It was by the help of my friends who were there when few adults were. I am a stronger person because of it, but I don't think it should have gone this way.

Hello,

I’ve been a participant of NaNoWriMo for six years now, and a forums participant on the Young Writer’s Program for three years.

You might be wondering what’s happening on the forums, either on the YWP or the main NaNo site.

As far as I’m aware and have been involved, we brought up some concerns about neglectful moderation behavior on the adult site. Several adults supported us, and came out with their own allegations about neglectful or abusive moderation (for example, a moderator luring teens to a fetish website, who was fired but not banned, another one posting openly about porn who is still a moderator, and similar concerns.) On the YWP, our moderators, Rob Diaz and Marya Brennan have allowed open bullying and instead tone-policed those who fought back. They have allowed predator behavior on the site in several circumstances under the statement of “it does not explicitly violate our Codes” (despite it being open predatory behavior), and Rob Diaz has said racist things to another user in response to a Thanksgiving PSA.

The Board of Directors has now said that they did not know there was a separate YWP forum in the first place.

On the YWP side of things, the forums are being shut down indefinitely, and we are awaiting another response from the Board of Directors.

Please do not donate to NaNoWriMo.

Contact local schools and make them aware of the situation, and discourage advertising the YWP to kids.

I will reblog other posts from my fellow YWP users that h give more specific details.

[thimblelin]

hey everyone. none of this is going to make a lick of sense if you don’t know me. but for the past few years, @ghostpunked and i, as well as many others who have shared and reposted as well, have been forced to take up jobs as volunteer moderators on the nanowrimo ywp in light of the mods incompetence.

we did not want this job. we had this job forced upon us by the sheer fact that if we hadn’t, the ywp would have fallen apart. many of us would have lost the one place we called our “internet home”. as a teen in florida, where i struggle so often irl with laws and my identity, this was especially hard. i fought for what i knew was right because i knew the mods would never do it for me.

this is wrong. on so many levels, the actions of the nanowrimo organization’s moderation team are wrong. nothing will ever stop me from saying that what they have done is wrong. what they did was inherently harmful to so many kids and teens on those websites.

what did they do? others have already said it, but here’s what i’ll say: they created an inherently harmful environment for kids and teen writers to exist in, advertised it as “safe and fun,” and refused to act upon dangerous situations within the community. and they did this over many years.

i am tired of being silent about this. i will not shut up. i will not let marya erase the words i have said. i will keep coming back.

do not support the nanowrimo organization until this is fixed. don’t donate a drop of your money until they finish their investigation and reform their moderation team. tell your school what is happening and remind them why they should pull out of supporting the program. tell your kids. tell the parents of writers you know. tell your teachers, and teachers tell your students.

i will not sit down and shut up any longer.

Days since the NaNoWriMo staff has disappointed its community:

0

[jacobitajoe]

okay mutuals this is going to make absolutely no sense to you because you probably aren’t even aware that I’m a writer but please don’t donate to National Novel Writing Month and spread the word. literally so many things have happened both on the YWP and adult forums that this post sums up great and I have witnessed most of this stuff. I don’t have the right words to say it in a professional manner it’s just super bad.

and thanks to people who support us in advance because the mods sure didn’t.

Days since the NaNoWriMo staff has disappointed its community:

0