Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
I didnāt realize I was still signed up to emails from NanoWrimo (I tried to do the challenge a few years ago) and received this āweāre sorryā email from them today. I canāt really bring myself to read and sneer at the whole thing, but Iām pasting the full text below because Iām not sure if this is public anywhere else.
spoiler
Supporting and uplifting writers is at the heart of this organization. One priority this year has been a return to our mission, and deep thinking about what is in-scope for an organization of our size.
National Novel Writing Month To Our NaNoWriMo Community:
There is no way to begin this letter other than to apologize for the harm and confusion we caused last month with our comments about Artificial Intelligence (AI). We failed to contextualize our reasons for making this statement, we chose poor wording to explain some of our thinking, and we failed to acknowledge the harm done to some writers by bad actors in the generative AI space. Our goal at the time was not to broadcast a comprehensive statement that reflected our full sentiments about AI, and we didnāt anticipate that our post would be treated as such. Earlier posts about AI in our FAQs from more than a year ago spoke similarly to our neutrality and garnered little attention.
We donāt want to use this space to repeat the content of the full apology we posted in the wake of our original statements. But we do want to raise why this position is critical to the spiritāand to the futureāof NaNoWriMo.
Supporting and uplifting writers is at the heart of what we do. Our stated mission is āto provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worldsāon and off the pageā. Our comments last month were prompted by intense harassment and bullying we were seeing on our social media channels, which specifically involved AI. When our spaces become overwhelmed with issues that donāt relate to our core offering, and that are venomous in tone, our ability to cheer on writers is seriously derailed.
One priority this year has been a return to our mission, and deep thinking about what is in-scope for an organization of our size. A year ago, we were attempting to do too much, and we were doing some of it poorly. Though we admire the many writersā advocacy groups that function as guilds and that take on industry issues, that isnāt part of our mission. Reshaping our core programs in ways that are safe for all community members, that are operationally sound, that are legally compliant, and that are mission-aligned, is our focus.
So, what have we done this year to draw boundaries around our scope, promote community safety, and return to our core purpose?
We ended our practice of hosting unrestricted, all-ages spaces on NaNoWriMo.org and made major website changes. Such safety measures to protect young Wrimos were long overdue.
We stopped the practice of allowing anyone to self-identify as an educator on our YWP website and contracted an outside vendor to certify educators. We placed controls on social features for young writers and weāre on the brink of relaunch.
We redesigned our volunteer program and brought it into legal compliance. Previously, none of our ~800 global volunteers had undergone identity verification, background checks, or training that meets nonprofit standards and that complies with California law. We are gradually reinstating volunteers.
We admitted there are spaces that we canāt moderate. We ended our policy of endorsing Discord servers and local Facebook groups that our staff had no purview over. We paused the NaNoWriMo forums pending serious overhaul. We redesigned our training to better-prepare returning moderators to support our community standards.
We revised our Codes of Conduct to clarify our guidelines and to improve our culture. This was in direct response to a November 2023 board investigation of moderation complaints.
We proactively made staffing changes. We took seriously last yearās allegations of child endangerment and other complaints and inspected the conditions that allowed such breaches to occur. No employee who played a role in the staff misconduct the Board investigated remains with the organization.
Beyond this, weāre planning more broadly for NaNoWriMoās future. Since 2022, the Board has been in conversation about our 25th Anniversary (which we kick off this year) and what that should mean. The joy, magic, and community that NaNoWriMo has created over the years is nothing short of miraculous. And yet, we are not delivering the website experience and tools that most writers need and expect; weāve had much work to do around safety and compliance; and the organization has operated at a budget deficit for four of the past six years.
What we want you to know is that weāre fighting hard for the organization, and that providing a safer environment, with a better user interface, that delivers on our mission and lives up to our values is our goal. We also want you to know that we are a small, imperfect team that is doing our best to communicate well and proactively. Since last November, weāve issued twelve official communications and created 40+ FAQs. A visit to that page will underscore that we donāt harvest your data, that no member of our Board of Directors said we did, and that there are plenty of ways to participate, even if your region is still without an ML.
With all that said, weāre one month away! Thousands of Wrimos have already officially registered and you can, too! Our team is heads-down, updating resources for this yearās challenge and getting a lot of exciting programming staged and ready. If youāre writing this season, weāre here for you and are dedicated, as ever, to helping you meet your creative goals!
In community,
The NaNoWriMo Team
I was not prepared for how many words the spoiler unlocked
I was not prepared for how many words would land in my inbox š
God thatās exhausting. Wasnāt Nanowrimo supposed to be a fun thing at some point? Is there anyone in the world who thinks this sort of scummy PR language is attractive?
@maol Bloody hell, they really dropped the ball.
I wasnāt aware of any of this as I havenāt been involved for over 10 years.
Itās a shame that they lost sight of the basics.
I donāt have the broader context to comment on the changes they discussed regarding child endangerment and community standards apart from āWaitā¦ oh my God you werenāt already doing that???ā
But itās such a huge pull back to go from āhating AI is ableist and basically Hilterā to āuhhhh guys weāve had our plates full cleaning up the mess and the most weāll say about AI is to stop being assholes about it on our forums.ā Clearly thereās still a lot of cleaning up to do at some level.
all the context one could need https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae33g5/writing_discords_forums_and_a_decades_worth_of/
@YourNetworkIsHaunted
āWaitā¦ oh my God you werenāt already doing that???ā
Iām not at all surprised given it wasnāt exactly started in the present form by people with money to hire consultants who would know to do those things.
For the first mumble years there probably wasnāt much involvement by kids at all so it would never have occurred to them. Or there were some kids but not the forums or other potential settings for adult misconduct.