Cheerleading and encouragement are a huge part of the NaNoWriMo experience. No one is more deserving of support than a young person who takes on a major writing goal. We wanted to maintain young peoples' ability to be in community with those to whom they are legitimately connected. Our new safety protocols block access to strangers while making it possible for young Wrimos to connect with people they know.
In designing this, we thought about teens who might want to be connected with schoolmates, siblings, camp friends, and any number of other young people in their lives. The Buddy feature that will go in place for young Wrimos requires the user to know the username of their friend in order to send a buddy request. This mirrors current common practices among teenagers who operate in other digital spaces. E.g., real-life friends might connect on a game like Fortnite or Roblox by telling one another their usernames when they see each other in person.
Additional community members stepped forward to point out legitimate connections that may exist between Wrimos of different ages. We heard from parents who do NaNoWriMo with their children, mixed-age family groups (e.g., cousins, aunts, uncles) who do NaNoWriMo together; we even heard from someone who runs a mixed-age NaNoWriMo group for kids and adults on their street. Again, our current system for young Wrimos makes it possible for them to connect with people who they know, and assumes that people who know each other offline have the ability to exchange usernames.