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I'm partially sympathetic, but ultimately feel there needs to be a means to validate you've actually completed the challenge and not just submitted a page full of Lorem Ipsum or other nonsense, which does happen even during judged contests. That can't be done if your articles are private.   One solution I know a few people do is make a separate public world only for submitting event entries, so they don't have to expose their entire private world. Additionally, if you don't want to engage with the community at all you can also turn off the features that allow others to like/add to reading list/comment on your articles. Maybe a similar workaround could make participating more accessible to you?

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so very introvert vs extrovert. as someone with no desire to share beyond my small audience, i have to ask if World Anvil isn't motivated to offer badges primarily as an inducement for people to share. only public articles can be seen by potential customers.

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Considering how many users WorldAnvil has and how many people I see active on Discord, I think it's safe to say that the majority of users are probably using WorldAnvil for either themselves or a very small set of people. Participation badges are fun, but they don't exactly give anything beyond a small token of personal satisfaction and I don't think that contradicts the spirit of the challenges - besides if no one got a badge it might not matter, but losing out on one is demotivating. Aside from above points, I think opening participation badges to private works would motivate people to join more challenges and could be a great entry point for becoming more active in challenges and the community in general.

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I see no reason why someone can't earn a participation badge with private articles. The badge is just proof you accomplished your goal, and you don't need to publicly share the results for that. We're not talking limited prize money here, it's a digital badge that says "good job". Treat private submissions the same as having competitor mode off, and that resolves all concerns about leaderboards.   "What if the entries aren't legitimate?" Who cares? Someone else cheesing a participating badge with Lorem Ipsum doesn't devalue my own participation. I still met my goals, and the cheese only hurts them. I promise nobody is making sure every Spooktober entry is legitimate as it is.   "They're not participating in the community!" Community is not predicated on producing public content. It can be community posts, likes and comments, Discord chatter, or monetarily supporting the site. A guild membership is already required to make private articles.   Unrelated scandals aside, NaNoWriMo gave way more than a badge for an easy-to-cheat wordcount checker. They never required public sharing and still had a massive community around them. Letting people participate in WA challenges with private articles won't hurt anyone, and will instead encourage more people to challenge themselves.

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Are they asking for consideration in prizes? No.   Are they asking for badges for participating in challenges? Yes.   It is for this reason I don't completely see a problem with it. The whole "community" thing that some are claiming doesn't really exist outside about fifty regulars on discord and a further hundred or so that make regular community posts that are published globally. Compare to the million other users who have private worlds or just don't interact with the community at all.   The only way I see this being a problem is in how it can be abused, and oh man can it be abused! Private articles are obviously seen by no one. How do we know if said private article actually followed the requirements of the challenge and isn't 10,000 words of 'Lorem Ipsum' trash, copy-pasted garbage, or ChatGPT slop?   I'm sure the team can figure out a way to satisfy private worlds and also not affect the integrity of their competitions (in WorldEmber's case, limit private accounts to the 10,000 word badge and prevent their name from showing on the leaderboards), but until that happens, I wouldn't be in full support of this idea. It's hard to support when the negative far outweighs any possible positives.

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I think in the end this would benefit from following a conclusion based on statistic. Like, if it's proven that most creators who build and write a lot do it in private articles, then it would be beneficial for WA to observe that in whatever smart way that still respected the public contests. Like maybe doing something separate for private stuff or giving different badgers for "private" woldbuilders. Whatever keeps WA's user base engaged.

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I can't agree, World Anvil is very community oriented, the whole point of the contests and badges is to inspire people to world build and have those inspirations inspire others. What is the point of a light if you hide it under a bushel.

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I am sympathetic, but ultimately can't support this. Badges are publicly visible. It doesn't feel like fair play to show off rewards for work no one else can see. I would support a private badge visible only to the author viewing their own page.

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Man, this had me going back and forth. On one hand, I deeply sympathize with DragonFish's personal relationship to writing, and the wish to feel that sense of community. And it does make more sense for participation rather than competition badges. And it's funny because I was just self-analyzing my inability to be truly vulnerable this way with people: I want my writing to be a place of freedom of expression, and I have a compulsion to control how others perceive me, even while being 100% honest with them. However, you have to give serious weight to the fact that the creators of the events designed them a certain way with a certain goal in mind, and that deserves to be respected. And -- JUST judging from MY OWN interest in this suggestion -- I think the sense of community gained would be false, because you're not contributing to the community.

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While Michael Chandra has a point I still agree that private articles should count as well. Seriously, there are just a few articles that get any attention anyway, so there is not much of verification. I can fill an article with Latin junk, and no one would notice, I think. I can think a challenge fun, but I've paying customers too, who expect articles to be only for them. And a single article will be pulled out of its context too. I no longer participate because there are often the same people getting all the reads. It is not worth the trouble.

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While the goal is to challenge yourself, it also serves a community purpose where people can see others are also writing fun stuff. Allowing any badge to just be obtained for private, impossible-to-validate, work would deteriorate that sense of community.

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