NaNoWriMo, a twenty-five-year-old on-line writing community-turned-nonprofit, introduced on Monday night that it’s shutting down.
NaNoWriMo — an abbreviation of Nationwide Novel Writing Month — is an annual problem for writers to finish a tough draft of a novel in the course of the month of November. After beginning as a Yahoo! mailing record in 1999, the mission grew right into a self-described “internet-famous” writing problem with lots of of 1000’s of individuals over greater than 20 years.
The group says it has had longstanding monetary points which have made it tough to function, however its different issues grew to become extra public final 12 months.
NaNoWriMo misplaced vital neighborhood help when it took a stand in favor of using synthetic intelligence in inventive writing.
New York Instances bestselling authors Maureen Johnson and Daniel José Older resigned from the nonprofit’s board in response, reflecting a rising concern amongst writers about how their work is being stolen to coach the very AI fashions that threaten their livelihoods.
Across the similar time, the nonprofit was additionally lambasted for inconsistent moderation on its all-ages boards, which created an unsafe surroundings for teenage writers, neighborhood members claimed.
Based on NaNoWriMo, these controversies over content material moderation and AI didn’t instantly result in the group’s demise. However they actually didn’t assist.
“Accountable NaNoWriMo’s demise on the occasions of the final 12 months does a disservice to all struggling nonprofits,” a NaNoWriMo spokesperson, Kilby, stated in a YouTube video. “Too many members of a really massive, very engaged neighborhood let themselves consider the service to be offered was free.”