Writing buddy

A writing buddy is a friend on the NaNoWriMo website. The term can also refer to a writing buddy in the general sense.
Writing buddies are typically fellow Wrimos who offers friendly encouragement throughout the month of November. Some writing buddies may know each other outside of NaNoWriMo, or one may be responsible for the other joining NaNoWriMo. Others may meet through one of the NaNoWriMo forums. Writing buddies may send NaNoMail messages containing encouragement, run word wars together, or even strike up a friendly competition over word count (often seen among overachievers.)
Any Wrimo registered on the NaNoWriMo site can add another Wrimo as a writing buddy. The recipient must accept or decline the writing buddy request. If the writing buddy accepts the request, you can view their profile directly from your buddy list, as well as send them NaNoMail on the main NaNoWriMo website.Sending messages on the NaNoWriMo forums is a completely disconnected system and does not require any kind of buddy relationship.
To view your writing buddies on the NaNoWriMo website, click 'My NaNoWriMo' in the navigation menu and click 'Buddies'. You can also view someone else's writing buddies if they've allowed this by clicking the Buddies tab of their profile.
==Writing Buddies, 2005-August 2019==
From 2005 to September 2019, adding a writing buddy on the NaNoWriMo website was a one-way relationship; you could add someone as a buddy without obligating them to add you back. The writing buddy list functioned like a bookmark for the users you added; only information the buddy had chosen to provide is displayed. Wrimos received a NaNoMail whenever another participant adds them as a writing buddy but did not have to take any action or accept a request.
When the feature was added in 2005, due to a bug, only the first 11 writing buddies, in order of user number, were displayed. This bug was fixed in later Nanos and the number displayed increased to 50. The Ruby on Rails redesign in 2011 introduced a sortable and paginated writing buddy list, with ten writing buddies per page. This paginated list was sortable by word count, date joined, and other parameters.
==Writing Buddies, September 2019-Present==
When the new NaNoWriMo website launched in September 2019, adding a writing buddy became a two-way system. You can send a writing buddy request to any other Wrimo; however, the receiving Wrimo must accept or deny the buddy request before you appear on each other's buddy lists.
Due to this change, old writing buddies were not carried over from the Ruby on Rails website. They are still viewable for the forseeable future at archive.nanowrimo.org so you can re-add your buddies on the new site.
Wrimos may display their projects and their own buddy lists to only their buddies for increased privacy; this option is available in the NaNoWriMo settings. Wrimos may also make their profile private so only their buddies can view it. Doing this means that the Wrimo with the private profile will have to search for and add any prospective writing buddies themselves, as no one else will be able to view their profile.This privacy setting doesn't apply to profiles on the NaNoWriMo forums, although a separate Discoruse setting does exist to make a forum profile private.
Sorting your buddy list and viewing your buddies' word counts on the buddy list were also not carried over to the new site, but they may be added in the future.
==Notes==
Category:NaNoWriMo terms