National Novel Writing Month Event

[Demon God Caelan]

We have plenty of people who love to write, whether it be a role play or a story. I've seen many other sites similar to ChickenSmoothie that have events for National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. For those of you who don't know what National Novel Writing Month is, it is an annual internet-based creative writing competition where the goal for anyone who participates is to write a 50,000 word manuscript between Nov 1 and Nov 30. A lot of the other sites that have NaNoWriMo events offer prizes for people who participated. One site which had a sort of Harry Potter thing going on gave house points to people who participated. If a person from a house participated, they would earn 2 house points for every 1,000 words they wrote, equaling 100 points if they completed the 50,000 word goal. I think a lot of people on CS would enjoy a NaNoWriMo event, and I'm sure that the staff could think of some sort of incentive for participating, be it new pets, items, or even rewarding members with C$ based on how many words they wrote. Comment and vote in the poll on what you think about a NaNoWriMo event!

[gansey]

heck yes i'd participate!
it might even motivate me to get more into writing to start with,
i've been trying to join other competitions to get my creative juices flowing and i think this is a really great idea!!

[zing]

support, but if it were to be run i hope it'd be run by the staff and not just coding!
people could easily bypass the word limit of 1,000 + by typing random letters.
..but it would be such a hassle for the staff! arghh...

i love this idea though!

[katiel]

support, but if it were to be run i hope it'd be run by the staff and not just coding!
people could easily bypass the word limit of 1,000 + by typing random letters.
..but it would be such a hassle for the staff! arghh...

i love this idea though!

This. It could be a lot of fun but every submission would have to be checked by the staff. I worry that would take up their time and they wouldn't be able to do that in addition to everything they already have to take care of right now. Or if people posted it as a forum post so everyone could just report it if it broke the rules, what's to stop someone from stealing another's work to try and claim the prize?

Edit: words - apparently my phone has an opinion it wants to add in the middle of my sentences....

[Demon God Caelan]

support, but if it were to be run i hope it'd be run by the staff and not just coding!
people could easily bypass the word limit of 1,000 + by typing random letters.
..but it would be such a hassle for the staff! arghh...

i love this idea though!

This. It could be a lot of fun but every submission would have to be checked by the staff. I worry that would take up their time and they wouldn't be able to do that in addition to everything they already have to take care of right now. Or if people posted it as a forum post so everyone could just report it if it broke the rules, what's to stop someone from stealing another's work to try and claim the prize?

Edit: words - apparently my phone has an opinion it wants to add in the middle of my sentences....

I'm neutral on the challenge itself, but the idea of having tangible prizes is a little iffy to me, personally. Maybe instead of pets or items, there could just be a stamp for participation?

These are both good points, tangible prizes would be difficult, so a stamp might be better, but some sort of prize might encourage people to participate. And as for the part about the trouble on staff, most of the other sites that have NaNoWriMo events have a special section in their forums, under the writing section, and after NaNoWriMo is over, it's locked until the next one. They could add a sub-forum in Discuss & Share Your Writing for the event and only allow posts to be made during NaNoWriMo. As for staff's involvement on how many words a person has written, it's actually much easier than you might think. They can highlight the user's writing and paste it into a word counter. While that may take a while, it's certainly faster than reading the story and keeping track of how many words there are.

[Piefan]

It sounds like it would be really hard to moderate, though - we're talking potentially entire novels to read through. What if someone posted gore, sexual content, etc in their story? Some kid could accidentally read that before someone reported it.

[katiel]

It sounds like it would be really hard to moderate, though - we're talking potentially entire novels to read through. What if someone posted gore, sexual content, etc in their story? Some kid could accidentally read that before someone reported it.

Exactly this. Unfortunately we can't really expect the staff to sit and read each work that comes through prior to posting either. Don't get me wrong, I do think it would be a lot of fun. Realistically though the staff have lives outside of CS as well as moderating duties here (monitoring posts, diffusing fights, answering reports, assisting newcomers, etc). If they had to proof read all the stories before they were posted, it would either backlog all their other jobs and/or could take a long time for the posts to be approved.
On the other hand, if the stories were to be posted without moderating first, we run the risk of explicit or triggering content being posted. Something would need to be set in place to prevent this. Is it possible to code a program that looks for certain words and denies or flags a post if these words are found? And if so, what kind of time and space is needed to make this program?