Honestly this also seems like a symptom of the way that the AI fad has like... meaningfully damaged the way we talk about technology. Most of what they're talking about in the statement sounds to me like automated or algorithmic editing tools, which if you don't have them hooked up to a machine learning model should be uncontroversial.
But they're not willing to clarify and it ends up making them sound like they don't know the difference between spellcheck and chatGPD, which is. Not the position an organization based around creative writing should be in.
It should be easy to say "genrative AI goes against the spirit of a long-form writing challenge" especially when NaNoWriMo is pretty much on the honor system to begin with.
Disappointing but sadly not surprising with the direction and tone they've taken since shit hit the fan with them. At least now I know what I won't be doing this November. Not on their site.
is it sad that my first thought is "well, at least it's just foot in mouth stupidity about the newest tech fad buzzword and not actual child endangerment this time"
I'm behind the use of AI as a tool for independent visual artists with handicaps for the reasons NaNo put here as long as the tool is developed and trained ethically on content with full consent (most aren't but a few are), but they don't specify that caveat
they also don't bring up any of the drawbacks of using even consent-trained AI tools in editing (never mind conceptualizing/drafting), such as the loss of the author's personal "voice" and, ironically, white classist interpretations of grammar and tone since even (heck probably even especially) consent-trained tools have training biases
Yeah and like. Your NaNo progress is self-reported and the reward is bragging rights. They could have just done some mealy-mouthed "we cannot and have no interest in evaluating your manuscript for AI or anything else" and it would have been a better answer than this.
Why is NaNo, an organization based around churning out writing over the course of a month and editing it later, using the excuse of "it helps disabled people edit their work tho"???? Like. Editing works that exist is outside the scope of what the entire point of you is, actually
(Entirely aside from the many, many objections that could be made to that argument on ethical and factual grounds, like "AI hurts way more disabled creators than it helps actually")
berri scari
: Belated, but I am glad that exactly one good thing came out of this shitshow: someone gets to go to Japan in November. Please go hunt those red leaves, and have the best time ever.
Generative AI is unmistakably bad for anything NaNo is about, but since they're getting big funding from an AI company they're never gonna say "AI is hot dogshit for creators actually"
I wrote a whole tumblr post about this earlier but even if their points about people needing help with editing are valid... AI isn't a good solution for editing
it can't give good suggestions because it doesn't actually understand anything you wrote, it just knows how to make vaguely concrit sounding phrases out of training data
context: I've been doing NaNoWriMo for 10+ years and the things they have done to something I used to love and look forward to every year have me upset. Very, very upset.
Yeah, that makes me especially angry. NaNo used to be about building a community that could help guide you through the process of writing. Replacing that with AI is missing the point of what made NaNo so special.
Like, just for an example: in the old fanfic forum section, every October, we'd do a "Fandom Role Call!" topic. And everyone writing fanfic would post in announcing the fandom(s) they were going to write for or considered writing for. And there'd be lots of "wait I write for this too!" and excitement loops and it was fun.
and we'd do parodies of The Hotel California but we'd rewrite as The Fanfic NaNoWriMo. Where there's plenty of fic at the fanfic NaNoWriMo. 50k for size, don't write orbs for eyes~!
You see why I didn't participate July NaNoWriMo this year. I can't bear to participate this year's NaNo after all of the shit coming out like a waterfall.
I can't imagine being an ML and getting this agreement bullshit that boils down to "it's your responsibility" and then not even bother setting up tools to help with that. no actual support. just you're on your own chucklefucks. that's not the solution to what happened!
Seconding 'I got someone to agree to beta my longfic', I have a fic that's 22k and counting and my brother agreed to beta read it for me because, gasp, he's excited for the concept and enjoys reading!
My brother catches typos that spellcheck misses, and once has told me when a sentence was unclear and seemed to be saying something other than what I meant.
But I consider the existence of that disclaimer meme evidence of how not impossible it is to get a volunteer beta, since it implies that a majority of fanfic does get at least a look over from a friend before publishing!
I mean, it's what I assumed from the fact that I see people mark a fic as not beta'd more often than I see people specifically mention they did get it beta read?
I do think betaing has declined a bit compared to my experience in FFN and seeing fewer notes of "thank you my beta". like you have a decent amount from a nonbeta culture, then a subgroup that does have affinity with beta culture split into actual beta users and non beta users
I mean I use it for my old stuff that I'm not gonna edit and post as-is as a tongue in cheek warning, but I never get any of my stuff beta'd and never otherwise mark them as such
And if you're part of a community of writers, it's not hard to find someone who'd be willing to beta your work in exchange for you returning the favor for theirs!
see also the thriving podcast community where there are plenty of multi-actor dramas where the primary creator runs a patreon but then the full cast is a network of actors where the primary creator in turn guest stars in their dramas of whom they are the primary creators, and no money changes hands there
Yeah. I'm suspicious that AI techbros might be paying them off to actively push participants toward using algorithmic assistance, and probably also to hand submissions over to them for easy feeding into their datasets.
Definitely worried they'll take any 50k word submissions and scrape those with the notion of "tee-hee you're a part of the website so we can do that, fuck you"
They've done self report only verification since their unpopular site overhaul a few years back, but yeah, it would be hella suspicious for them to suddenly bring it back after that AI verbiage.
i am doubly impressed and also aghast that they haven't walked back any of this AI sentiment in any capacity except to make their dogshit answer even more dogshit, it's like they want the entire thing to tank
they thought they were the only one people could go to for writing a huge amount in a specific month, which is incredibly stupid when i put that down in writing
if the ai bros are smart (and some of them are!) they should know that telling people they're elitist and classist for not supporting ai is a dumb idea
Honestly though, how were they going "but how will people edit and beta their work" when the point of NaNo has always been to crank out the words and do the editing LATER?
Pretty much every communication that comes from Kilby is ridiculously defensive and doubles down whenever challenged on it. How anyone decided, "Yes, this is the person to steer this sinking ship," is beyond me.
A community is built on trust, and even if nano is suddenly like "lolz just kidding ai is dumb just forget that happened" why would anyone trust the people running it now
this is why i called them getting too big for their britches, it's very bold of them to provide NOTHING and have a hot take they had to know would piss at least some people off
the fact that they do nothing for the community they may have started is what makes me scratch my head and wonder what they were trying to accomplish here
and if they were doing that it would also help them to root for people to polish their works during the month instead of after so they have a higher-quality crop to harvest at the end! someone write this conspiracy theory novel so I don't have t-- oh wait I can just generate it c:
oh tripling down and attempting to paint those with legit concerns as bullies! fantastic job guys, this will absolutely bring back that good will you lost!
The exact same tone they've taken throughout their many scandals since everything hit the fan last year. I've rarely seen an organization so hell bent on tanking and destroying every ounce of goodwill they once had from past momentum. smh
"What we don’t believe is that NaNoWriMo belongs at the forefront of that conversation" probably shouldn't have declared your intention to die on that hill then huh
Yeah this reads very much like "we aren't willing to admit that we expressed an intensely unpopular and pretty clearly stupid position, but since we're in deep shit here, we want to declare that we weren't really talking about AI, we were talking about ethics in games journalism bullying"
at least they were smart enough to say "oh no it's our fault for not being clearer" rather than "it's your fault for being bad at reading" to a community of writers
What boggles me is that they don't seem to understand that the only value they actually offer is name recognition and community space, and they've already proven they can't be trusted to safeguard community space.
plus a generous dollop of "we don't want to encourage people questioning or discussing management decisions" and "if we made a decision it was surely for a good reason"
so basically their discussion of how they would regain people's trust was "actually you should just trust us right now and not expect any demonstration of earning it on our end"
For an organization that is only as good as community engagement makes it, seems awfully counterproductive to shut down as many avenues of community engagement as possible and try to guilt trip people for their very understandable frustration.
i've been telling people about this at work and someone even asked me if you had to be signed up to do it and i was just like 'no, it's more like a self challenge thing'
Hooded Figure
: Super delayed but like, NaNoWriMo has also been about networking with other humans, so even when you do get to the edit/beta work later, that's how you do it. At least that's what I always felt was encouraged
the org has been around for over a decade and did great work for a lot of those years, but this decline has been really sad to watch as an old nanoer jeeze
Same. I remember doing NaNo when I was in high school, back in the earlier years... My English teacher was impressed with it that he gave me credit for completing it
As though procedurally generated sets of words were just some genre that's a matter of taste, not an environment-destroying threat to the entire concept of writing...
They can't avoid condescension even when they're supposedly doing their best to avoid it. The whole, "NaNo has been around for 25 years, and some of us have been around a long time..." Not a direct quote. Definitely a, "We have more experience, so sit down, shut up, and trust us, bro."
EDIT: cw: grooming, racism. This is a summary of Everything. Before AND This.
Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing.oh. oh my god lmfao.
did one of them miss the deadline one year and get madethics in games journalismbullying"Was it this?