NaNoWriMo Forum Moderator accused of alleged grooming

[Angie]

Link to Twitter/X Thread about this. Since I know many people here participate in NaNoWriMo, I felt it was a good idea to at least mention it here. Now, according to the Twitter thread, the greater NaNoWriMo organization (or at least the board of directors for the non profit) was unaware of any of this, and I would never want to discourage people from joining in on a really good thing, but this is a rather crazy thread all things considered. I don't do PROC often so please allow me some slack if I'm doing something too terrible.

For those who don't want to crawl through a Twitter thread or don't have an account and I don't blame you, according to this Twitter user, a group of users of the NaNoWriMo forums (this twitter user included) discovered evidence of possible grooming of minors. This was FIRST sent to the FBI, then reported to the other forum staff. From then on, forum staff were not only radio silent, but a fetish site that minors were allegedly being directed to was shut down. Meaning, someone tipped off the accused mod in question.

The mod was eventually de-modded over other CoC violations these users brought up, but was still allowed to maintain multiple other related accounts and was still listed as a mod. Eventually, after enough arm twisting, the users that originally reported the mod got a response from forum staff of "We didn't see anything to be concerned about".

Well from there, the floodgates broke wide open. In November, the User Feedback thread became a ground for many users to share their stories, with multiple mods being implicated in this behavior. The response from forum staff was to shut down, lock, ban, and completely silence any and all discussion of these alleged behaviors.

There is a happy...ish ending to this. For starters, you can't stop the signal, and users made their own website to share their stories about mod abuse, ignoring or downplaying concerns and a general disregard for the health and safety of underaged users. Additionally, on November 12th, the board of directors ordered the entire forum shut down and are said to be cooperating with authorities on a proper investigation. Since this would likely be the FBI, the wheels move slowly but they are moving. 

Some of these testimonials are pretty heart breaking and fairly disappointing, all things considered. Once again, I figured this was a story that needed to be told, thank you for reading this through.