Sup, MotivatedSloth here - the one that made you so infuriated that you went on a rant somewhere else. Here is the other side of the story, that was given to you on discord multiple times, yet for some strange reason, you failed to bring it up.
1st - basic info. I'm contracted author on Webnovel (twice soon to be thrice). You can check that by simply searching my penname on the site. And while I agree that there are some bad points about webnovel (trust me, you need to get deeper into the topic to know about them as its nothing that includes new authors) but in general, it's more about the way it operates rather than what if offers.
2nd. - About the discord affairs.
- Yes, I might have been rude.
- No, I don't get anything out of helping out.
- Yes, the information is provided and plentiful. All you need to do is TO ACTUALLY FCKING FOLLOW WHAT EVERY SINGLE HELPER IS SPAMMING EVERY SINGLE MINUTE. Read this channel, and read through pinned messages. I contributed to the both of them by creating guides, faq, Q/A, or just standalone explanatory posts about certain aspects that from those few questions appearing (and not answered already in two places I mentioned above) I could deduce that might be valuable to others.
Moonquil is a site created by people unsatisfied with the old webnovel contracts, aimed at making something like wn but better. Look at the stats, as much as I cheered for their success, they failed. That's the sad reality. The creator of the site has contracted novel that he (surprise surprise) still uploads and earns quite well from it. (way better than me to be honest).
"Like if you're trying to ask questions to get a better understanding before signing a contract" - and every single helper continuously repeated that we are not allowed to answer any contract related questions. Why? Because non-exclusive contract is new for us too. I provided a fair bit of WRONG information before we were asked to just direct those questions to the editors myself, so rather than allowing the misinformation to spread, we WILL ALWAYS REDIRECT IT towards editors. Because that's what they wanted.
Bad attitude? Thats how we call pissing on hours of hard work aimed at helping people like you, that you showed complete disregard for by repeatedly ignoring the instruction to go read about the stuff before asking questions that were already answered.
"also all the mods on that discord were so rude and defensive of the company. We asked about the copyrighting and they replied with "why would you care about something like that?" - Helpers are not mods. This part already shows how much attention you paid to the entire thing. But lets keep going - on the market, copyright to random novel is worth sht. It the case for my novels, for 99% novels on webnovel, 99.9% novels on wattpad (cuz more authors) and in general, only a small percentage of works can get their copyright to actually mean anything. This topic was explained OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, so bringing it up yet again without reading the already given information is going to irk everyone.
Finally found out how to quote - I'm an contracted (exclusive) author myself and I'm quite happy. Why? Because I actually bothered to think about it. But to do so, you need to first get a bit of humility to understand that for mulimilion company, your 100$ worth of novel is not worth bothering to waste money and human resources to sue. Even if you break the contract.
- Additionaly, most of the "questionable" clauses are aimed at protecting the company. And yes, so far, for the last 3 long years, there wasn't even a single instance of a single clause of the questionable ones being enforced. Why? Because webnovel knows that the moment it does so, 99% authors will yeet out.
Let me put it in a scenario for you. Imagine that you joined webnovel as literally nobody, (just like me). No previous experience in writing, shtty product. But somehow you managed to gain traction, and WN pushed your back by promoting you on their site. Banking on their help, you made yourself relatively big... And then you suddenly realise that with your current standing, your options are far greater than just webnovel alone. So why bother staying there?
- Thats the mindset that the contract aims to protect webnovel from. Because just like my content editor explained to me back when I still had those silly doubts - it's webnovel who takes the burden of making you popular on itself. It's their site on which you can gain traction, and its their features that put you in the spotlight. Don't you think allowing authors to just use WN like a wh*re and move somewhere else would be kinda unfair?