So, there’s a dumpster fire happening, and as a very long-time participant in Nanowrimo and someone who has promoted the forums in past years, I don’t feel right not speaking up about this. I’m about to talk about some heavy topics – namely child abuse, grooming, and the safety of minors online – so if those are tough topics for you to engage with, please don’t feel like you need to read or engage with this post.
I haven’t been keeping up with the Nanowrimo forums much this year, due to a combination of limited time and having a writing group separate from Nanowrimo which I lean on more these days. So for those who, like me, were not aware of what’s been going on, I’ll start by recapping the horrors before sharing my own opinion on how this situation is being handled.
Basically, a lot of extremely disturbing behavior on the part of various higher-ups at Nanowrimo has come to light over the past few weeks. The most recent incident, which has pushed a lot of people (myself included) over the edge, is the organization’s handling of participants in the Young Writers Program (YWP) coming forward to report grooming and abuse happening on the YWP forums. The kids involved also reported facing retaliation, including being banned from the forums, for calling this out. The staff received an initial complaint about this on May 3rd, 2023, and although staff agreed at the time that something needed to be done, the submitter of the complaint was told that staff “could not find evidence of wrongdoing” on the part of the moderator in question, who was then allowed to continue in their position for more than six weeks, even as complaints about their behavior continued to pile up.
I work with high school students in my day job, and occasionally younger kids too, and this situation has enraged me more than I can possibly say. I was even more horrified when I read the Board’s official recommendations, which they describe as “not a comprehensive list, but a list that we think is a good start” in improving the safety of the Nanowrimo community for minors. These new ideas include background checks for anyone “deemed to be in positions of power” (something they promise to explicitly define at some unspecified point in the future) and providing their staff with training on working with minors. They also throw in that they are “in favor” of using a background checking service “on par with” those used by schools: something one should not simply be “in favor of,” in this case, but that should be absolutely mandatory. If the goal of the background checks is to protect kids, then the system used to conduct those checks should, in fact, be the one designed to ensure kids are protected. And if the logistical or financial hurdles involved in making that happen are prohibitive, then they simply shouldn’t be running a program exclusively geared toward minors, full stop. (Luckily, it does sound as though they intend to make the background checks happen, regardless of cost.)
But more broadly – and I cannot possibly say this loudly enough – why were neither of these things already in place?! Are you really telling me that your organization hosted an online community for minors, conducted outreach programs specifically targeting minors, and actively engaged with minors for well over a decade, all without background checking ANYONE who was involved in overseeing online spaces dedicated exclusively to minors, and without providing training on working with minors to your staff? These should have been core elements of the YWP, baked in from the start. Why weren’t they? How the hell did this happen?!
I am literally quaking with anger as I type this. This was an unacceptable way to manage a program involving minors. And the fact that so many complaints were either ignored or actively silenced makes it even worse. When your job is to interact with kids, you have a moral responsibility to listen to them, to take their words seriously, and to act swiftly and decisively at the smallest sign of any potential problem. The signs here were not small – they were colossal. For children to speak out against an authority figure who is actively trying to silence them is not a small thing. Many people, including full grown adults, wouldn’t have been comfortable doing that unless they had already been pushed to the brink. And based on what participants in the YWP are saying, there has been a culture of enabling abuse and bullying and silencing those who complain for YEARS on those forums. And many users have pointed out that this is just one entry in a much broader pattern of moderators and staff silencing complaints over everything from technical issues to racism, in all corners of the forums.
Additionally, in my personal opinion, the actions the organization has taken (with the exception of closing down the forums, which was a good decision) have been vastly out of proportion with the severity of the complaints. The Board’s email statement, sent on November 17th, refers to “sensationalism” and emphasizes that the allegations have not been proven: a statement that, to me, seems designed to soothe and placate rather than validate the justifiable anger of the community, or reassure worried families and traumatized victims that their concerns are truly being heard. The latter is what was needed here to make this right; the former, by comparison, is an insult. And outside of official statements, everything seems to be business as usual, with a staggering number of participants (who would undoubtedly care very much if they were informed) still unaware that any of this is happening.
I also could not help but notice that some of the Board’s responses to replies on the forum threads about this feature a disturbingly defensive tone. (The one that really boiled my blood was a response containing the line “It’s not clear why you’re taking an angry tone with the board.” …It isn’t?! Really?! Hmm… I wonder…) Yes, people are angry, and yes, it is natural to feel defensive when anger resulting from someone else’s actions is directed at you. But when you are the Board of Directors of a major nonprofit whose moderators are accused of grooming children, and whose staff are accused of covering that up, defensiveness is not an appropriate reaction, and knowing that is part of the job. To put it plainly, when you are the highest authority in an organization that has caused harm, you do not get to be personally offended when people react to something shocking and horrifying with shock and horror.
So while I’m grateful to the Board for finally investigating these claims, and for locking the forums, I’m extremely disappointed in the way they’ve handled their reactions to and broader communications about the situation. They would need to move heaven and earth to regain my trust after all I have seen and heard in the past week. I cannot support the way Nanowrimo is being managed or the way the forums are moderated, and though I hold out hope that it will improve, there are some massive and fundamental changes that need to be made in order for that to happen. The way I see it, they don’t need to course-correct – they need to completely overhaul the culture of their entire organization, and that is a much harder task. I hope very much that they are up to it.
It is truly heartbreaking to see the community that helped me find my way in the writing world fall to pieces like this, but it really has. The parts of that community that remain intact for me – my region, a close-knit group who welcomed and looked out for me as a teenager, and my writing group, which I found on the forums and which has brought me amazing friendships and invaluable support – feel very separate to me from Nanowrimo as an organization. I’m still intent on finishing my novel this month, but I’m doing it with and because of those people, and the personal goals I have set for myself – not with or because of the organization that puts on the event. I’ll also be editing some past posts on this blog to reflect my current opinion. I’ve recommended Nanowrimo a lot in the past as a resource for new writers, and although I still see tremendous value in the challenge of writing a first draft in a month, I can’t in good conscience continue to recommend the actual organization that runs the official Nanowrimo event as a resource.
I highly encourage everyone reading this to peruse the responses on the following threads, which are full of incredibly well-spoken voices highlighting the issues at stake here and a plethora of suggestions for addressing them. (And I do want to say, the community’s response to all this, and the way folks have come together to hold the people responsible accountable and stand up for the young writers affected by this, has been a real bright spot in all this mess. There are some wonderful people out there in the world, and it’s been great to see so much solidarity and humanity coming out at a time when it is truly needed.) The third link is the Board of Directors’ email on November 17th.
- https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/board-response-overview-pausing-the-forums/579464
- https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/board-response-to-complaints-about-forum-safety-and-the-safety-of-minors/580358
- https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/board-response-to-complaints-about-censorship-and-staff-moderation/582083
- https://createsend.com/t/i-BDB0D80DE0D4A1FD2540EF23F30FEDED
I also encourage those continuing to follow this situation to engage with the writing community on social media, which has been instrumental in bringing this situation to light. With the exception of the email on the 17th, the Board’s responses have been almost entirely constrained to the Nanowrimo forums, meaning you have to go out of your way to find them as an average participant. Their various statements have also contained some language that made them inaccessible and confusing to non-US participants (the formatting of dates has been a huge issue, and they also referred to Thanksgiving and “the holiday” several times with regards to their timeline without clarifying exactly when that is; for the record, it’s Thursday, November 23rd, and many people take the following Friday off as well). Throughout all this, several Nanowrimo participants have been posting actively about the situation on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, helping to keep the community informed and hold the Board, staff, and moderators accountable. @rebeccathornewrites is a great account to follow; she has been posting actively and eloquently about the situation for the past week. I’ll also be covering future developments on my account, @itsmywriterbrain.
Finally, to the kids who’ve been impacted by this, I want you to know that this never should have happened. From the perspective of someone trained and qualified to work with youth, nothing even approaching this should have ever even been able to happen. I started doing Nanowrimo when I was 14 years old, and it breaks my heart that the community I found in it is no longer a safe space for you. I hope you know how much support you have from your fellow writers. We are all so proud of you for speaking up. Keep telling your story, and when someone tells you to be quiet, speak louder.