While the fastest novel I ever wrote was in 2 weeks, I've never participated in NaNoWriMo. I clicked the link and read some of the comments on YouTube (I know...) and I guess I'm confused. This is...
While the fastest novel I ever wrote was in 2 weeks, I've never participated in NaNoWriMo. I clicked the link and read some of the comments on YouTube (I know...) and I guess I'm confused. This is something that can "shut down?" Why? Did somebody try to extract money out of this? There are board members? And I see comments about a child predator? I can understand needing a little money to run a website, but it seems to me that this thing ballooned way out of proportion over the years. If you want to spend November writing a book, just do it. Find like minded people. Why do all these things devolve into grifters trying to scam and why do people go along with it?
It was a non-profit that did more than just run a once a year writing event. See the Community and Programs section on their Wikipedia article. And having a board of directors is actually a legal...
Did somebody try to extract money out of this? There are board members?
It was a non-profit that did more than just run a once a year writing event. See the Community and Programs section on their Wikipedia article. And having a board of directors is actually a legal requirement for all/most non-profits, AFAIK. IIRC, even Tildes technically has one too.
I suppose it reads to me as a grift. I know the organization helped and inspired a lot people over the years but it can still be a scam at the same time. Reading Wikipedia, it seems like it...
I suppose it reads to me as a grift. I know the organization helped and inspired a lot people over the years but it can still be a scam at the same time. Reading Wikipedia, it seems like it started as a cool grassroots thing but devolved into something top heavy. It’s collapsing because they stopped being able to get money out of people and my interpretation from the YouTube comments is that this wasn’t unexpected.
Almost all nonprofit board members are volunteering, not paid. A staff of 12 trying to manage 800 volunteers on a budget of just over a million is a frugal, frugal situation. As someone who has...
Almost all nonprofit board members are volunteering, not paid. A staff of 12 trying to manage 800 volunteers on a budget of just over a million is a frugal, frugal situation. As someone who has managed the finances of a nonprofit, not a single thing about this looks like grift, just a bunch of people who were underresourced and thus unprepared for the realities of running the organization they had built.
I don't think it was a grift. I suspect it was, like most non-profits that collapse under their own weight, started by well meaning people wanting to do good in the world who just got in way over...
I don't think it was a grift. I suspect it was, like most non-profits that collapse under their own weight, started by well meaning people wanting to do good in the world who just got in way over their heads, tried to do way more than they could reasonably handle, and made a bunch of poor decisions along the way.
This doesn't bode well as this is more or less the way I operate my day-to-day life.
well meaning people wanting to do good in the world who just got in way over their heads, tried to do way more than they could reasonably handle, and made a bunch of poor decisions along the way.
This doesn't bode well as this is more or less the way I operate my day-to-day life.
From what I've read in the Reddit thread, the vast majority of their funds, over 99%, went to salaries, not programs. There's other stuff that sticks out in their Wikipedia, YouTube, the Reddit...
From what I've read in the Reddit thread, the vast majority of their funds, over 99%, went to salaries, not programs. There's other stuff that sticks out in their Wikipedia, YouTube, the Reddit thread, but honestly I'm just some nobody outsider who's looking at the whole thing skeptically.
It also appears the current director who announced the shut down has essentially blamed the community for not contributing enough money. And even though they have announced they are closing their doors, the donation page is still up.
I'm not trying to start something or make a stink. Just my personal view of the organization is something I would never contribute financially to. It seems sketchy. That's all.
The example in that reddit threads are two developers paid ~100k who live in the bay area. That's quite underpaid for the bay area, and the NaNoWriMo site and forum was one of the main things they...
The example in that reddit threads are two developers paid ~100k who live in the bay area. That's quite underpaid for the bay area, and the NaNoWriMo site and forum was one of the main things they hosted. It feels like complaining that Wikipedia spends it donation money on engineerings working on the site. What else do you expect them to do?
It feels like not just assuming the worst, but assuming the catastrophic worst in an unknown for no good reason. It'd be like if you found someone sitting on a bench on the street and went "WHY ARE YOU A HOMELESS UNEMPLOYED WASTE OF SOCIETY".
It's not a salaries/programs dichotomy. Most of the cost of running a program is the cost of the people to run it. Also, your'e misquoting that thread; 99% was public support, not the percentage...
It's not a salaries/programs dichotomy. Most of the cost of running a program is the cost of the people to run it. Also, your'e misquoting that thread; 99% was public support, not the percentage of their costs which were salaries. Again, not graft, not unreasonable.
I get your skepticism, but what do you think an organization like this would spend much money on other than salaries? They ran an event for writers, an accompanying online forum, and iirc some...
I get your skepticism, but what do you think an organization like this would spend much money on other than salaries? They ran an event for writers, an accompanying online forum, and iirc some outreach programs for young writers. These are all things where the vast majority of the cost is in human time, so it shouldn't be a shock that they spent more on salaries than on anything else. It would be far more suspicious if they were spending tons of money on something other than salaries. Spending on salaries would be spending on programs.
I stopped really doing NaNo well before they really went downhill anyway, and ofc people can still do the challenge of writing 50,000 words a month in November without the org. But I think criticizing them for paying salaries to their very few paid employees is the wrong way to go about it. The money they took in from fundraisers was always pretty modest anyway, and the non-financial reasons they deserve criticism are way more egregious.
For full context on why NaNoWriMo shat the bed in recent years, there is a Google Doc outlining the drama, directly accessible from nanoscandal.com. The TL;DR is: Several of their moderators were...
Several of their moderators were hit with child grooming and racism allegations, with a lot of documented evidence. One of the mods supposedly ran a fetish site that included content involving minors, and had lured underage users of the forums there on multiple occasions. Another mod openly complained about the promotion of a colleague being a "diversity hire."
NaNo (the org) dragged their feet throughout this whole scandal and did a whole lot more to censor, shut down discussion and deny any wrongdoing than actually investigate the allegations. The board hadn't even become aware of the scandal until months later. By then, it had already blown up into a viral shitshow on social media.
One of the worst responses from HQ was to remove all MLs from their post and make them sign what is effectively an NDA-ridden gag clause contract to return, which may not even be legal under US employment laws.
Generative AI was permitted for use in NaNoWriMo 2024. This announcement angered a lot of people due to AI slop generally breaking the spirit of the challenge, and the post they made addressing this was really condescending, making a lot of problematic ableist and classist statements, i.e. that disabled people need AI to write.
The fallout was immense: loads of lost sponsors, every volunteer ML either being fired or resigning, every author on their Writing Board resigning.
What really bugs me is that there is no announcement nor official acknowledgement about this on the NaNoWriMo website. Their communication went out purely via email and via a YouTube video from one of the main people behind the org, not even on the org's official YouTube. Around April Fools nonetheless...
NaNoWriMo was the inspiration for Timasomo. Sad to see it go. I do know the organization had some pretty big controversies recently (something to do with AI?), but I don’t have a pulse on them or...
NaNoWriMo was the inspiration for Timasomo. Sad to see it go.
I do know the organization had some pretty big controversies recently (something to do with AI?), but I don’t have a pulse on them or what actually happened. Does anyone know the details?
Apparently there were pretty serious grooming allegations against a moderator of their forums (who also allegedly ran an "adult baby" fetish site) a few years ago that forced them to temporarily...
Yeah, the article I linked to talks about that: Pretty fucked up. :/
Yeah, the article I linked to talks about that:
It took massive pressure from users (including proof of other rule violations) to have the moderator ‘de-modded’, but even after having their powers removed six weeks later, they remained active on the forums — they weren’t banned from the site — and able to interact with teens. The ex-moderator apparently “continued to post in threads with their moderator username [as though in] a position of continued authority” for six months after being ‘de-modded’.
NaNoWriMo the organisation is shutting down, allowing NaNoWriMo to continue in it's original form, a yearly event where people write a short novel in a month. Now I can describe myself as doing...
NaNoWriMo the organisation is shutting down, allowing NaNoWriMo to continue in it's original form, a yearly event where people write a short novel in a month. Now I can describe myself as doing "NaNoWriMo" without appearing to support a dysfunctional company.
As someone who isn't a writer, I was unaware until this post that NaNoWriMo is not exactly what you described : a time of year where a bunch of writers try to write a novel. Nothing more formal...
As someone who isn't a writer, I was unaware until this post that NaNoWriMo is not exactly what you described : a time of year where a bunch of writers try to write a novel. Nothing more formal than that. So this whole thing is a surprise to me, but I don't see how this ultimately affects those who want to continue trying to write a novel November?
NaNoWriMo is an absolutely massive community forum... so it shutting down will affect people the same way that shutting down Tildes would affect the recurring events hosted here, like timasomo,...
I don't see how this ultimately affects those who want to continue trying to write a novel November?
NaNoWriMo is an absolutely massive community forum... so it shutting down will affect people the same way that shutting down Tildes would affect the recurring events hosted here, like timasomo, advent of code, and the book club. Sure, not everyone uses Tildes or NaNoWriMo, so it won't effect absolutely everyone who participates in similar sorts of events. And even those that do use Tildes or NaNoWriMo could probably migrate elsewhere, but what are the odds that all of the same user's actually would migrate to the same site as each other and continue participating in similar events together?
Most people think of it that way, and the few of us who knew different wished it was that way. And now it is! The only difference it makes is that now when I say I'm doing NaNoWriMo there's less...
Most people think of it that way, and the few of us who knew different wished it was that way. And now it is! The only difference it makes is that now when I say I'm doing NaNoWriMo there's less risk of some website's poor reputation haunting me.
You can't make NaNoWriMo the challenge go away any more than you can make Inktober the challenge go away. They grew beyond the people who came up with them a very long time ago and will stick...
You can't make NaNoWriMo the challenge go away any more than you can make Inktober the challenge go away. They grew beyond the people who came up with them a very long time ago and will stick around for however long people like participating in them, despite the falls and tribulations of the founders.
I feel like NaNoWriMo could be simply a blog with the rules and posts listing all the completed projects every year. People would send their books to an email address or Google Forms and a team of...
I feel like NaNoWriMo could be simply a blog with the rules and posts listing all the completed projects every year. People would send their books to an email address or Google Forms and a team of volunteers would verify them. The idea that NaNoWriMo was something that could be shut down is a little insane to me.
While the fastest novel I ever wrote was in 2 weeks, I've never participated in NaNoWriMo. I clicked the link and read some of the comments on YouTube (I know...) and I guess I'm confused. This is something that can "shut down?" Why? Did somebody try to extract money out of this? There are board members? And I see comments about a child predator? I can understand needing a little money to run a website, but it seems to me that this thing ballooned way out of proportion over the years. If you want to spend November writing a book, just do it. Find like minded people. Why do all these things devolve into grifters trying to scam and why do people go along with it?
It was a non-profit that did more than just run a once a year writing event. See the Community and Programs section on their Wikipedia article. And having a board of directors is actually a legal requirement for all/most non-profits, AFAIK. IIRC, even Tildes technically has one too.
I suppose it reads to me as a grift. I know the organization helped and inspired a lot people over the years but it can still be a scam at the same time. Reading Wikipedia, it seems like it started as a cool grassroots thing but devolved into something top heavy. It’s collapsing because they stopped being able to get money out of people and my interpretation from the YouTube comments is that this wasn’t unexpected.
Almost all nonprofit board members are volunteering, not paid. A staff of 12 trying to manage 800 volunteers on a budget of just over a million is a frugal, frugal situation. As someone who has managed the finances of a nonprofit, not a single thing about this looks like grift, just a bunch of people who were underresourced and thus unprepared for the realities of running the organization they had built.
I don't think it was a grift. I suspect it was, like most non-profits that collapse under their own weight, started by well meaning people wanting to do good in the world who just got in way over their heads, tried to do way more than they could reasonably handle, and made a bunch of poor decisions along the way.
This doesn't bode well as this is more or less the way I operate my day-to-day life.
Who do you think it was grifting? It didn’t cost any money to enter.
From what I've read in the Reddit thread, the vast majority of their funds, over 99%, went to salaries, not programs. There's other stuff that sticks out in their Wikipedia, YouTube, the Reddit thread, but honestly I'm just some nobody outsider who's looking at the whole thing skeptically.
It also appears the current director who announced the shut down has essentially blamed the community for not contributing enough money. And even though they have announced they are closing their doors, the donation page is still up.
I'm not trying to start something or make a stink. Just my personal view of the organization is something I would never contribute financially to. It seems sketchy. That's all.
The example in that reddit threads are two developers paid ~100k who live in the bay area. That's quite underpaid for the bay area, and the NaNoWriMo site and forum was one of the main things they hosted. It feels like complaining that Wikipedia spends it donation money on engineerings working on the site. What else do you expect them to do?
It feels like not just assuming the worst, but assuming the catastrophic worst in an unknown for no good reason. It'd be like if you found someone sitting on a bench on the street and went "WHY ARE YOU A HOMELESS UNEMPLOYED WASTE OF SOCIETY".
It's not a salaries/programs dichotomy. Most of the cost of running a program is the cost of the people to run it. Also, your'e misquoting that thread; 99% was public support, not the percentage of their costs which were salaries. Again, not graft, not unreasonable.
I get your skepticism, but what do you think an organization like this would spend much money on other than salaries? They ran an event for writers, an accompanying online forum, and iirc some outreach programs for young writers. These are all things where the vast majority of the cost is in human time, so it shouldn't be a shock that they spent more on salaries than on anything else. It would be far more suspicious if they were spending tons of money on something other than salaries. Spending on salaries would be spending on programs.
I stopped really doing NaNo well before they really went downhill anyway, and ofc people can still do the challenge of writing 50,000 words a month in November without the org. But I think criticizing them for paying salaries to their very few paid employees is the wrong way to go about it. The money they took in from fundraisers was always pretty modest anyway, and the non-financial reasons they deserve criticism are way more egregious.
For full context on why NaNoWriMo shat the bed in recent years, there is a Google Doc outlining the drama, directly accessible from nanoscandal.com. The TL;DR is:
What really bugs me is that there is no announcement nor official acknowledgement about this on the NaNoWriMo website. Their communication went out purely via email and via a YouTube video from one of the main people behind the org, not even on the org's official YouTube. Around April Fools nonetheless...
Heck, their donation pages still fucking work!
what is ML in this context?
Looks like a municipal liason?
ahh thanks!
NaNoWriMo was the inspiration for Timasomo. Sad to see it go.
I do know the organization had some pretty big controversies recently (something to do with AI?), but I don’t have a pulse on them or what actually happened. Does anyone know the details?
Apparently there were pretty serious grooming allegations against a moderator of their forums (who also allegedly ran an "adult baby" fetish site) a few years ago that forced them to temporarily shut down their forums too. :/
It's worse than that. Nanowrimo (the org) seriously dragged their feet when handling the allegations
Yeah, the article I linked to talks about that:
Pretty fucked up. :/
NaNoWriMo the organisation is shutting down, allowing NaNoWriMo to continue in it's original form, a yearly event where people write a short novel in a month. Now I can describe myself as doing "NaNoWriMo" without appearing to support a dysfunctional company.
As someone who isn't a writer, I was unaware until this post that NaNoWriMo is not exactly what you described : a time of year where a bunch of writers try to write a novel. Nothing more formal than that. So this whole thing is a surprise to me, but I don't see how this ultimately affects those who want to continue trying to write a novel November?
NaNoWriMo is an absolutely massive community forum... so it shutting down will affect people the same way that shutting down Tildes would affect the recurring events hosted here, like timasomo, advent of code, and the book club. Sure, not everyone uses Tildes or NaNoWriMo, so it won't effect absolutely everyone who participates in similar sorts of events. And even those that do use Tildes or NaNoWriMo could probably migrate elsewhere, but what are the odds that all of the same user's actually would migrate to the same site as each other and continue participating in similar events together?
Thanks for the additional clarification!
Most people think of it that way, and the few of us who knew different wished it was that way. And now it is! The only difference it makes is that now when I say I'm doing NaNoWriMo there's less risk of some website's poor reputation haunting me.
You can't make NaNoWriMo the challenge go away any more than you can make Inktober the challenge go away. They grew beyond the people who came up with them a very long time ago and will stick around for however long people like participating in them, despite the falls and tribulations of the founders.
I feel like NaNoWriMo could be simply a blog with the rules and posts listing all the completed projects every year. People would send their books to an email address or Google Forms and a team of volunteers would verify them. The idea that NaNoWriMo was something that could be shut down is a little insane to me.
I was hoping this was another April Fool… alas, it’s true. 😢
Video Announcement:
https://youtu.be/TR6NnjgeIIY