Sunday, March 17, 2024

Register

 

Goatswood


To attend the Social Club, one must register by performing a few tasks. A first edition for the library, one gold coin for the coffers, and a finger. At first, he assumed it would be his fingerprint. No, an actual finger and not his own. Well, that could pose a challenge. They nodded. He tried. He did. But who would've thought people were so attached to their fingers... He ended up hiring a squirmish hitman who refused to do the chopping. Then, he hired a butcher with morals. And here he was, at the Social Club, but not that one.
100 Word Stories

Sunday, March 10, 2024

You'll Never Believe...

 

Goatswood

You'll never believe what the crow said. "Crows don't speak," someone shouted from the back of the room. He continued to explain. Some listened in silence. Many mocked him. "It's coming. We need to prepare." But who was coming? And why? "I don't know." A group fled to the mountains. The rest just went home. The next day, a giant shadow covered the town. "Blind, we're all blind." This lasted a hundred years. Then, the shadow lifted. When the crow returned, they listened. They worked together. They were prepared. The crow smiled, whispering "No need for a shadow this time."
100 Word Stories

Thursday, March 7, 2024

NaNoWriMo Update

 

After the bombshell back in November of last year, that made everyone stop in their tracks, NaNoWriMo "closed shop" at the end of the month for some much needed re-organization.

A few days ago, Wrimos received the following email (transcribed in full below).


***


Dear NaNoWriMo Community,

I write to you today with a warm hello from HQ and no small measure of excitement to finally announce changes we’ve been planning for weeks. We listened to a lot of feedback in November—some of it was hard to hear, but taking action to improve the organization was necessary. Since then, we’ve paused some of our standard operations in order to think through how to move forward, holding our mission in mind and community safety as priority number one. 

NaNoWriMo’s charge is to “provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.” We will be better-positioned to deliver this with wiser policies and stronger practices in place. To name a few: 

We Will Stop Hosting Open, All-Ages Social Spaces
Site users aged 13-18 will be able to maintain accounts and use productivity and tracking features on our web app, but they will no longer be able to access our forums. Users under 18 will also be prevented from displaying their locations and writing session information, and from participating in regional spaces. Though younger members will be able to connect as Buddies with users they already know, our policy of hosting and moderating all-ages spaces will retire. 

Forums Will Reopen with a Small Group Focus
We simply don’t have the capacity to provide effective, global, 24/7, multilingual moderation on an all-community "mega-forum". This is something that we may consider for the future, but is unrealistic for 2024. However, will gradually reopen regional forums and follow by opening affinity group forums and other smaller spaces. This model will allow us to continue providing social spaces while ensuring a greater degree of manageability. 

·       Regional forums will be moderated by Municipal Liaisons (whose 2024 onboarding process includes moderator training). It makes sense to us that the folks who know people in their region, who speak the language of their region, and who are local to the time zone of their region should moderate these spaces. It also solves the problem of our moderator team being out-of-sync with certain regions and out of their depth to moderate them. 

·       Other limited forums will be volunteer-moderated by folks who hold affinity to those groups. Reopening affinity groups is a priority. Anyone who is part of a group they believe should be formed as an official affinity group (whether or not it has been in the past) is welcome to suggest it. 

·       All-community forums will still exist, but they will be used on a limited basis. Community members will not be able to initiate threads, but NaNoWriMo HQ will. We are open to suggestions for threads, but we will only open a limited number and the ones we do open will likely close after a certain number of days. Our focus at this point is community safety and ensuring we don't have more threads open than we can reasonably moderate. 

Our Volunteer Program Will Completely Change
So much of what we do is made possible by our hundreds of volunteers, who work diligently to support us from all over the globe. Yet, we have fallen short in supporting them and in safeguarding the integrity of their work. We have developed more rigorous training and staff-side support and will enforce identity verification and criminal background checks for all volunteers. Improvements in this area are long overdue. 

A Mechanism to Certify Educators Will Be Implemented on the YWP Website
Our classroom feature will no longer be available by virtue of self-designation. Folks wishing to utilize this feature will be asked to certify as educators. We are partnering with ID.me to provide this functionality. This is yet another measure designed to protect some of our most vulnerable community members. 

Let’s Talk About Timeline
We’ve done a great deal to move as swiftly as possible toward these changes. We’re at the tail-end of a selection process for background checking vendors. We’ve reworked our volunteer training and evaluated streamlined training platforms. We’ve worked with our tech team to roadmap back-end changes that are needed to support new measures. With the help of our legal counsel, five policies and four legal contracts have been revised. Nonetheless, there are enough moving parts and pieces that there won't be a central release date. Change will happen gradually in the coming weeks. To the extent that you may have further questions, we’ve set up these FAQs

Before I close, I want to acknowledge the sense of loss experienced by those who relied on programs we've temporarily suspended or permanently changed, and the abysmal November timing of it all. I also want to acknowledge our tremendous volunteers, whose overall track record of dedication and excellence was sullied by the actions of just a few. We are working very hard to ensure that we rise to the standard that our community deserves and rightfully expects. We are building a safer, stronger, more accountable NaNoWriMo. 

In community,

Kilby Blades
Interim Executive Director

***


Sunday, March 3, 2024

Across

 

Goatswood


She sat down in the cabine across the aisle from me. She didn't smile when I smiled. She looked down, her hands on her lap. It was pouring. I always worried about everything. In my mind, she worried too. So, I wanted to go over to her. A hug. Or perhaps I could hold her hand. As her husband-to-be, I heard someone say, closed the door, she took a quick glimpse at me and waved a shy wave. We never talked, but every year we would make the same trip. And I would wait a whole year for that wave.
100 Word Stories

Sunday, February 25, 2024

The Book, a Gift From a Stranger

Milk Wood

It's almost half past four. I pick up the book, a gift from a stranger in the park. "It's about France," he said with a smile. It hit me then that if I don't leave, she will destroy me. "Why do you hate me so much?" She asked. I don't. I never have. Wrong answer. And after that, she punished me for weeks with silence. I grab my small backpack, my whole life in it, and go. A gift, a smile, a gesture of generosity, and I am free. That's all it took. Amazing, isn't it? That's all it took.
100 Word Stories

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Car Crash

Santaurio

They survived the car crash. They survived the cruise ship sinking in the Mediterranean. They survived the train wreck in Sri Lanka. And the list went on and on. A tsunami, a volcanic eruption, a flood, a tornado, even a pandemic. Until that long-awaited trip to the North pole. "Take the icebreaker. It's safer," someone said." No, of course not. "Let's do something dangerous. Nothing ever happens to us." They rented a small plane. Did they know how to fly a plane? Not really. And that's where the list stopped. Simulation terminated. "Lousy game. Good thing it was dirt cheap."
100 Word Stories

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Benefits

 

Collins

Love is such an illusive word. It's not a word, she promptly said, it's a feeling. And there I sat, wondering what she meant. She had never loved anyone and here she was, full of herself, pontificating about love. I just sat there, chain-smoking, which she hated. She pretty much hated everything about me. I'm not sure why she married me. In the end, love is such an illusive word, isn't it? It just means that sometimes you do things for love. She wouldn't have to suffer with my wrong-doings. That hammer was indeed sturdy, as promised at the store.
100 Word Stories

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Position

 

Matanzas

The yacht was tired. The crew and the passengers were also tired. No radio signal.
The Captain looked at the First Officer. "Let's rest here."
Suddenly, something something "What's your position?".
"Captain, we need time to fix the hull."
"We'll stay here. Nice, tropical island. We'll be fine."
When the search party arrived, the locals snickered.
"Where are they? The yacht is right over there."
The locals snickered some more.
No one was found.
However, there were some suspiciously fresh bones, hanging above the doors of the houses.
That's when the search party decided to leave as quickly as possible!

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Crack

 

Japanchubu

It was an ancient building.The crack on the wall grew bigger. But he wasn't going to let it crumble on his watch. So, he filled the crack with cement. When the wall collapsed, he was in Aruba, sunbathing. Everyone was horrified. Cement? Apparently, bad cement, who would've thought. The horror! Who had done that? However, they did find a secret room with a long-lost treasure. So, he went back and bragged. Not a good idea. "But, what about the treasure? And a crumbling wall adds character!" He shouted while being dragged off to jail. To brag or not to brag.