#otw board

[end-otw-racism]

End OTW Racism: A Call To Action

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.

#fandom #ao3 #otw #EndOTWRacism #End OTW Racism #racism in fandom #organization for transformative works #archive of our own #antiracism #otw board

[fiercynn]

yo so here are some things the ddos attack on ao3 should NOT provoke you to do:

decide that this is an excuse to be racist and islamophobic about who you think the attackers are (which is likely a front anyway)

assume that the people who care about fighting racism and the mistreatment of volunteers by otw are in alignment with this (if we were, why would we be doing all this work to try and make otw better)

use this as a reason to defend any lack of change on ao3 because it's too "at-risk" (fixing otw's dysfunction could only better serve the organization in emergencies)

think that the only way you can support the volunteers who are working hard to fix this is by donating to otw (the volunteers aren't going to be paid, and otw has $2.5 million in surplus that not only isn't being used for anything but has only earned $90 in interest in a year because it's not even invested well, it's just sitting there)

what it should provoke you to do – push the otw board to make changes, including:

addressing the racism that already makes ao3 and otw a hostile space for many fans of color, including volunteers

paying for workers and services with that budget surplus to help keep volunteers from burning out constantly

hold the board and the legal committee accountable to the volunteers who have already been mistreated and put at risk by their actions

probably more things! these are just off the top of my head idk!

tbh there's so much dysfunction in this org that it's really hard to know where to start. but the knee-jerk racist and "it's the antis out to bring ao3 down!!!" reactions are ridiculous, come on

#otw #otw board #ao3 #archive of our own #end otw racism

[mywitchcultblr]

A republican politician trying to get into AO3 board beware!! Don't let her get into the OTW board!

Yeah no thank you, conservatives have been stripping away women rights and LGBTQIA+ rights around the world and now this? Can't we have one nice thing in life? Also her takes with the racism is just 😑🤦‍♀️

This kind of a candidate will be like "well we are concerned about how media affect teens, oh noooo there's 'abusive' stories" next thing you know NSFW and queer fanfic/media will be banned

#ao3 #archive of our own #fanfic #fandom #lgbtqia+ #queer #writing #writer #EndOTWRacism #censorship #politics #homophobia #queerphobia #otw elections #otw board

[transformativeworks]

Resignation of OTW Directors

Antonius Melisse, Natalia Gruber and Alex Tischer have resigned from the Board of Directors. Because the number of Board vacancies is now the same as the number of candidates, this year's OTW Board election will be uncontested.  Read more at https://otw.news/67c6bb

#otw board #organization for transformative works #announcement

[pumpkinpaix]

Regarding #EndOTWRacism’s summaries of 2023 OTW Board election candidate positions

Before I begin, let me say now that while I am a volunteer with the OTW, my views are personal and should not be taken as any kind of official statement from the org, its leadership, or other volunteers, especially not the candidates in question. My focus here is on the Asian candidates for obvious reasons, but this post is not meant as endorsement or disavowal of any of the candidates, whose bios and platforms can all be read here.

Do not take this as an excuse harass the mods running EOTWR. I cannot make myself clearer.

--

I am making this post to express my extreme disappointment with End OTW Racism’s post purporting to summarize the platforms of the candidates for the upcoming Board elections. It is no longer rebloggable, but can be read here.

The way that the candidates with Asian names were spoken of is deeply insulting when compared with how candidates with English-language names were discussed. Asian candidates had their platforms misrepresented, their expertise downplayed, and their lived experiences reduced down to “bringing an international presence” to the board, which was then further caveated with, “diversity alone is not going to solve the issue of racist harassment currently allowed in the OTW’s policies and enforcement practice”. While it is true that diversity alone is not a solution, it’s pretty offensive to essentially have “remember! Just because they aren’t white doesn’t mean you should vote for them!” tacked on to one of the Asian candidates’ platforms. 

End OTW Racism seems more concerned with whether or not candidates used the buzzwords they wanted to hear rather than with how racism is discussed holistically within the statements. While I can appreciate that EOTWR has a specific agenda, to say things like, “[s]he does not mention racism, racist harassment, or hiring a DEI consultant in her platform, so outside the outreach and support she mentions, there is not enough for us to conclude that these would be priorities for her” regarding Zixin Z.’s position, directly following the statement, “[s]he also mentions the need for outreach towards non-English-speaking fans and has a desire to provide support to volunteers from minority groups” is fucking laughable, especially after the initial mistake of stating that Zixin Z. only wanted to do more outreach to Chinese-speaking fans. Again, I understand that people make mistakes and that this mistake has since been corrected, but I hope it prompts some reflection on the sort of biases that would lead to such a mistake in the first place. It may have been completely innocuous, but in charged discussions about racism, please understand that it gives an impression that is difficult to shake. I do thank you for not trying to hide that this happened. 

Why is Anh P.’s lack of discussion on TOS/PAC a point against her, while Zixin Z.’s years of experience on PAC, her role as a mod on Weibo, and her background in nonprofits don’t even warrant a mention? For that matter, why did none of the Asian candidates’ skills or experience warrant mention? Qiao C. and Zixin Z. have both been volunteers with the organization for several years now, and Anh P. has years of moderation and volunteer experience elsewhere prior to her work with the OTW.

It is so fucking frustrating that despite each one of these candidates specifically talking about the need for diverse voices, they had their platforms essentially passed over because they didn’t use the right words, and it is particularly fucking aggravating to see that EOTWR will use Chinese issues as props when trying to press OTW leadership on the racism that occurs within the org, but then completely fail to connect the dots on why these candidates are running because the wrong language was used. Zixin Z. is one of the Weibo mods, for fuck’s sake. 

The entire post feels like an exercise in virtue signalling, from every time it was brought up that a candidate did not provide pronouns in their platform statements, despite every one of them having pronouns provided in their bios (why mention this detail at all? You could have simply used the pronouns), to what felt like willful obliviousness to the anti-racism stances in the Asian candidates’ platforms. It feels like the concern starts and ends with racism in Anglophone terms, on Anglophone terms.

I can respect the driving ideas behind EOTWR, even if I disagree with the way that EOTWR pursues their goals. I do believe that we want the same things in the end, and therefore chose not to interact with the many posts I have seen about the protest. However, I saw the summary post and could not let it pass without speaking.

For a protest group supposedly dedicated to ending racism in the OTW, this felt incredibly hypocritical, conscious bias or not. In my most charitable frame of mind, I can see this as misjudging and overcorrecting to ensure that there was no favoritism shown to the obvious non-white candidates lest EOTWR be accused of tokenizing– again, it is true, that diversity in and of itself is not a solution to racism. 

In my least charitable and most bitter frame of mind, I feel inclined to wonder if EOTWR, much like the OTW itself, is uncomfortable with the lack of influence they could exude over an international candidate. It would be much, much easier to push their agenda forward with more culturally familiar candidates, particularly white ones. Guilt and public scrutiny are powerful weapons and easy to wield against those with perceived privilege in our current atmosphere, often to the detriment of the actual discussion at hand in my experience. I know that’s cynical. It’s hard not to be. (For clarity's sake: I do not know the other candidates' races. This is a hypothetical.)

This isn’t a demand for an apology. I think we fetishize the capital-A Apology to the point where I find them sort of meaningless unless they are given freely. I don’t need EOTWR to agree with me, and I don’t really want to keep talking about it. Rather, I would prefer that EOTWR take action to do better as they continue in their campaign. What that action is is their decision. If they truly mean to stand against racism in the OTW, then I’d like them to demonstrate it.

--

DO NOT HARASS EOTWR MODS. I AM FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT THIS.

#endotwracism #votetoendotwracism #organization for transformative works #otw #ao3 #archive of our own #fandom #otw board #otw elections #discourse #racism #end otw racism #i'm so so sorry everyone #but i'm upset i really am. #mine #mymeta #i guess. #i mean it i don't really want to talk more about it okay. i will probably mute this post #even if i reblog it a few times #long post #statistically average

[aroceu]

what's been happening at the otw?

so it seems that on twitter and possibly tumblr, people have been hearing things about the otw board/election stuff without really knowing what's going on. a lot of the different issues get conflated and confused with each other, and things that aren't related get connected while things that are related don't. i'm making this post to make things clear, since i've been following some of it (primarily the otw board stuff) from the outside so that people know exactly what is going on, and to reduce the spread of misinformation.

a lot of this information comes from this dreamwidth journal, which has been documenting many testimonies and receipts, for full context.

an earlier timeline of the csem and insensitive treatment of policy and abuse committee volunteers is documented at @221loislane, on this post.

the election season

every year — for anyone out of touch with how the organization of transformative works (otw) politics go, yes this occurs every year as seats can be held for 3 years maximum but resignations happen, leading to staggering — the org has an election season for the main board of directors. they oversee all of the otw's fan projects, including ao3 and fanlore. there are 7 seats, one of whom is the president (kari dayton).

if a chair resigns, then their seat may remain empty to the end of the term or to the next election season, depending on when they resign. if they resign early, a runner-up from the previous election may take their seat.

elections generally take place every summer, but the actual changing of hands occurs in in the fall. board directors are known by their real life name; this has always been the policy. prior to this year, when candidacies were announced, it was with their full name. however, due to the csem attack emails that were targeting volunteers last may, it seems that they added a layer of protection for the candidates this year, and initially announced them with their first name and last initial.

this election season, there were originally 4 chairs that were going to be vacant and needed to be filled. there were also originally 7 candidates, some of whom applied for candidacy last minute. one of the candidates withdrew early (mid june), so this came down to 6.

in order to vote in an election, you must donate a minimum $10usd prior to a certain date in june (this year being june 30) and tick the box that says you want to become a member.

the republican candidate

on july 24, people started spreading the fact that one of the otw board candidates, audrey richards, is a republican. this is true: she ran for a republican seat for the us house of reps in 2022 (and prior to that, as an independent in 2020.) this can be seen on her ballotpedia. we know that she is the same audrey richards, because her ballotpedia page also connects her with the otw.

let me be clear: this is still in line with org policy, in terms of her real name getting released. their full names were going to be released to the public at some point, and as far as i know the org did not state that they would hide their full names until after the election.

many people, especially americans on the ao3 (full disclosure: i am one of the americans on ao3) were very wary about this, because the republican party has been endorsing increasingly dangerous laws and policies along the lines of fascism and transphobia. audrey running as a republican does not necessarily mean that she agrees with these values; however, because she, as a white woman, felt comfortable enough to align herself with a party that does, many lgbt people and people of color had every right to have reservations about her. her statements about ukraine (disagreeing with biden sending arms) and her involvement with "children and screens" was also brought under scrutiny: see this post by discluded. (i am not endorsing discluded's post; it simply cites some concerns with audrey)

due to claims of harassment (i am also not saying whether or not they occurred), she resigned from candidacy and from the org as a whole on july 25, declaring "congrats on the witch hunt." (x)

the otw then released a statement dissuading people from harassing board candidates. this was not taken well, as they were completely silent last year regarding unsubstantiated rumors about tiffany g, a previous election candidate who's chinese, with views that many were not comfortable with, to the point of saying that she might be a spy for the chinese government. this was spread by chinese- and english-speaking users alike. the otw was silent about this. however, this year, many volunteers internally have said that the otw's silence towards harassment is damning, and in any case, even in audrey's, they should speak up against it, resulting in their public statement.

reprimanding a volunteer of color

also on july 24, coincidentally enough, a volunteer of color made a post about receiving a letter about constructive corrective action procedure (ccap) from the tag wrangling team, due to making volunteers uncomfortable by speaking up about racism in the org.

the tl;dr of why they received the letter boiled down to:

talking about the org's racism in a ~certain way~ in public channels where volunteers could not leave made some vols uncomfortable

sharing internal chatlogs and correspondences to the public. EXCEPT THE THINGS SHE SHARED WERE HER OWN MESSAGES. and before july 25, the only OTHER thing she had shared to the public was the otw's direction on how volunteers should approach getting csem, from the spam attack last year, on a comment in a news post - which is an email that ALL VOLUNTEERS GOT. because none of that was public! no one knew what the org's approach to the spam attack in order to protect the volunteers was! she disclosed it so randoms who are not volunteers would know!

"outing" a volunteer, except she DIDN'T, because the volunteer had outed THEMSELVES in the chat program previously and repeatedly, then changed their icon at some point to indicate they didn't want to link the identities anymore. but there had never been a formal announcement or request not to link the identities, and who was supposed to take an icon change as an indicator of that, so IN THE CHAT PROGRAM (not in public!) kutti made a reference to something that person (under their real name) said in public (under their fannish handle/icon) and got reprimanded for it

emyn a has since made a post about how kutti's general behavior in the chat has made him uncomfortable and was one of the reasons why he withdrew his candidacy, and that he supported the fact that she received the ccap. he stated that alex tischer's abrasiveness (see below) was probably because of where alex is from, in europe. he also said that kutti outed a withdrawn candidate (probably audrey) in the chat program, which was not public information prior to his post. the rest of his claims are presently not substantiated, and most of what i have read about his accusations boil down to tone policing.

EDIT: kutti clarified that emyn got her mixed up with another volunteer of color in one of these claims. she says that she has never talked about audrey either internally nor externally, and does not know what other handles she would link audrey to. she also specified that emyn's accusation of her using "provocative descriptors, such as 'disgusting'" was in context of her criticizing the org's handling of azarias — a volunteer who handled many csem tickets last year, then got their account suspended without warning, and then got implicated for distribution in an org-wide letter, which, yeah, is pretty fucking disgusting!

the alex problem

i mentioned the ccap above because kutti references it in her post about alex tischer here, and when i linked to it on twitter people were confused as to what ccap meant and why it was significant. and i don't think kutti's treatment should go ignored either, because i think it signifies a larger problem that the org has.

and one of these very glaring problems is alex tischer. alex tischer was on the board this year, being their last year of their current term. they were on the board previously too, from 2015-2018. tischer has been called a "missing stair" by multiple volunteers, and a huge problem in the org's function.

more specifically, and as confirmed by a former volunteer i talked to on an ao3 post (wherein they corrected me for conflating two incidents), some incidents that occurred with tischer were:

in 2020, when mainland chinese vols were encouraged to do more recruitment for volunteers on weibo (a mainland china site), the otw had added two new language tags on ao3: tai-gi (taiwanese) and cantonese. the vols were also encouraged to endorse this — not specifically by alex — on weibo. china and taiwan have VERY high geopolitical tensions, and the vols endorsing the addition of the taiwanese language on a mainland chinese site could potentially put them in danger. when they expressed this, alex had told them to "not appease a shitty government," or something along those lines — indicating alex did not care for their safety in a heavily censored country, over sticking it to the man or whatever. (alex is white/german and lives in the uk.)

in 2023, separate from this issue, the otw had decided to shut down the transformative works weibo page without consulting the chinese volunteers. the chinese vols were very pissed and protested, first in english. and then, when their concerns weren't being heard, they started in protesting in chinese. this prompted alex to reply to them, in german, "We can throw all sorts of things at each other, but if we don't agree on a lingua franca, we won't achieve much" (Wir können uns gegenseitig alle möglichen Dinge an den Kopf werfen aber wenn wir uns nicht auf eine Lingua Franca einigen erreichen wir nicht viel.) which, in my opinion, is pretty fucking irrelevant to chinese volunteers not getting their voices heard for something that they had every right to get their voice heard on, and basically told them to "speak english" when they had been speaking english previously and getting ignored!!!

a discussion from the otw slack in 2020 was leaked, wherein a black volunteer asked a question and expressed interest in knowing the diversity of the board of directors. not the diversity of all volunteers. they immediately got dogpiled on by multiple volunteers, alex included, saying that asking for such a thing could endanger the safety of volunteers (which is pretty fucking ironic considering alex's treatment of the chinese vols), the black volunteer should've backread a day's worth of chatlogs, saying that asking about diversity was chilling, etc. i cannot summarize in full how furious this chatlog makes me, so if you are capable i do recommend you to read it to see how utterly defensive everyone got at a simple question about diversity.

these things are relevant because on july 25, kutti made a post about alex — because other volunteers had been asking in the otw slack about kutti's situation, and a volunteer compared how kutti was treated, for speaking up about racism, to how alex was treated, who was consistently xenophobic and as far as anyone knew, did not receive a reprimand for it. alex then doubled down on their previous comments.

this prompted kutti's post, both to publicize this incident and to call for alex's immediate suspension.

board directors resign

there were, at the time, five chairs on board, due to the fact that two had resigned previously (heather in may 2023, jess in nov 2022; neither were replaced). after this incident, volunteers were furious and backed kutti up and also called for alex to resign, or for the other chairs to kick alex out.

two chairs in particular, antonius and natalia, were already on hiatus. they were also pressured to kick alex out, due to the fact that they were only standing chairs, not active, so volunteers wanted them to either come off hiatus and start the process to get alex out, or if they could not do their chair duties, resign. i believe the board needs a 2/3rds vote to kick someone off as a chair, which is why they were brought into the conversation — 2/5 chairs would not be enough.

on july 26, natalia did reprimand alex's behavior in the chat according to some sources. an anonymous source said that both natalia and antonius had started their resignation process prior to the alex-kutti incident; they made this public and official after/during this conversation.

on july 27, alex also said that they had resigned "yesterday." it is unclear if they only resigned from the board, or the org as a whole, considering they were still the webs chair, a tag wrangler, and on the translation and support committees.

all three board resignations were made public in an official announcement on july 27; natalia and antonius's were made first, with alex's as an add-on shortly afterward. however, as alex and antonius's spots were already outgoing, this has only opened up ONE slot for the election: a fifth one. and there are five candidates.

what happens next?

with five vacant seats and five candidates, this means that the election is uncontested. however, two of the five candidates will serve partial terms (the ones who get less votes; 2 years each), while three of the five candidates will serve full terms (3 years each.) if you've donated at least $10 to the otw in the past year, you're eligible to vote. a comprehensive schedule can be found here.

all candidate platforms/q&as can be found here in individual posts, and here as a spreadsheet.

by the way, this is not the first time most of, if not a full board has resigned almost all at once. this occurred previously in 2015, due to some of the following incidents (these may not be all of the reasons for the mass resignation, but definitely for many of them):

insanely incompetent financial handling wherein they had donations up to six figures held in paypal accounts

the removal of sanders, a candidate during that election season, because she had resigned from her role as treasurer recently, thus supposedly making her ineligible to run (candidates must have served as a volunteer in any position for 2 years), even though she was still on the dev committee. she did not resign from the candidacy herself. the election committee had objected to this but was overridden by the board. sanders is black.

a board chair had gone under a sockpuppet account during multiple candidate chats asking questions "as a concerned member," even though she was board chair, indicating a conflict of interest.

during the open board meeting in november (after the election), without warning the board decided to appoint andrea, the candidate who got the least number of votes that election year, to a spot that was vacated a whole year before. it was hard for me to find context around this situation but from what i've gathered, andrea was already friends with the present board and the newly appointed board had not yet settled in. when this was met with appropriate backlash and accusations of power grabbing, this is when the entire board at the time — minus the new elects — resigned.

i bring this up to show that the otw has never been a perfect organization — rather, it has always had its problems. i did not pay much attention to these incidents previously, but considering how the current election season has become more and more prominent on my social media, i feel that it's important for me to be in the know now, and to spread this information to others.

i am not a volunteer (although i used to be a tag wrangler for a brief time.) i am not speaking on behalf of anyone mentioned or linked in this post except for myself. i strongly believe in making an organization's policies public and for as much information to be accessible as possible, for a site that i'm an active member on and love to use. i believe in ensuring the safety, comfort, and consideration of volunteers of color. i am making this post because i believe the otw deserves to be transparent like any other organization. please feel free to share and discuss as you see fit; and if any of this information is incorrect, please let me know asap!

edit: follow-up incidents

this post by @fandomantiracism writes a detailed timeline of the mishandling of chinese volunteers (including the below incidents), and explains exactly why the environment in which otw volunteers in china must be handled with a modicum of more care than they do currently. please read it to fully understand the cvols' situation! (disclaimer: i am not affiliated with this blog.)

during the candidate chats, a chinese candidate got an extremely inappropriate question from a present chair/former or present board member, breaching on org privacy (even though kutti got a ccap for less), a clear attempt to attack the candidate by making them appear unsafe and immature, and with a lie that put their ACTUAL SAFETY at risk. see this post, and this thread on twitter

an aforementioned former volunteer detailed another incident where the treatment of chinese volunteers was severely mishandled; see here

#otw #organization of transformative works #ao3 #otw board #otw elections #an aroceu original

[wander-wren]

every once in a while i like to poke my head into "anti [x]" tags just to see what the other side thinks. recently i was looking through "anti ao3" and found a really funny post claiming that ao3 is not anticapitalist, but actually the Definition Of Capitalism, bc it relies on volunteer labor while supposedly having the money to pay a staff.

oh, honey.

but i am not going to make unsubstantiated claims on the internet, no, and this gives me an excuse to look at ao3's whole budget myself, which i've been meaning to do for a while. these numbers are taken from the 2022 budget post and budget spreadsheet.

ao3's total income for 2022, from the two donation drives, regular donations, donation matching programs, interest, and royalties was $1,012,543.42. less than $300 of that was from interest and royalties, so it's almost all donations. and that's a lot, right? surely an organization making a million dollars a year can afford to pay some staff, right?

well, let's look at expenses. first of all, they lose almost $37,000 to transaction fees right away. ao3 and fanlore (~$341k and ~$18k, respectively) take up the biggest chunks of the budget by far. that money pays for, to quote the 2022 budget post, "server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance—website performance monitoring tools, and various systems-related licenses."

in some years, otw also pays external contractors to perform audits for security issues, and for more servers to handle the growing userbase. servers are expensive as hell, guys. in 2022, new server costs alone were $203k.

each of their other programs only cost around $3,000 or less, and otw paid around $78k for fundraising and development. wait, how do you lose so much money on your fundraising?? from the 2022 budget post: "Our fundraising and development expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation, thank-you gift purchases and shipping, and the tools used to host the OTW’s membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors."

then the otw paid an additional $74k in administration expenses, which covers "hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, and annual financial statement audits, as well as communication, management, and accounting tools."

in case you weren't following all of that math, the total expenses for 2022 come out to $518,978.48. woah! that's a lot! but it's still only a little over half of their net revenue. weird. i wonder what they do with that extra $494k?

well, $400k of it goes to the reserves, which i'll get to in a second. the last $93k, near as i can tell, gets rolled over to the next year. i'll admit this part i'm a little unsure about, as it's not clear on the spreadsheet, but that's the only thing that makes sense.

the reserves, though are clear. the most recent post i could find on the otw site about it were in the board meeting minutes from april 2, 2022: "We’re holding about $1million in operating cash that is about twice the amount of our annual operating costs. There is another $1million in reserves due to highly successful fundraisers in the past. The current plan for the reserves is to hold the money for paid staff in the future. It’s been talked about before in the past and we’re still working out the details, but it’s a rather expensive undertaking that will result in large annual expenses in addition to the initial cost of implementation."

woah....they're PLANNING to have paid staff eventually! wild!

so let's assume, for easy numbers, that the otw currently has $1.5 million in reserves. before we even get to how to use that money, let's look at the issues with implementing paid staff:

deciding which positions are going to be paid, because it can't be all of them

deciding how much to pay them, bc minimum wage sure as hell isn't enough, and cost of living is different everywhere, and volunteers come from all over the world

hiring staff and implementing new systems/tools to handle things like payroll and accounting

making sure you continue to earn enough money both to pay all of the staff and have some in reserves for emergencies or leaner donation drives

probably even more stuff than that! i don't run a nonprofit, that's just what i can think of off the top of my head.

okay, okay, okay. for the sake of argument, let's assume there is a best-case scenario where the otw starts paying some staff tomorrow. how much should they be paid? i'm picking $15 an hour, since that's what we fought for the minimum wage to be. by now, it should be closer to $20 or $25, but i'm trying to give "ao3 is capitalism" the fairest shot it can get here, okay?

ideally, if someone is being paid to help run ao3, they shouldn't need a second job. every job should pay enough to live off of. and running a nonprofit is hard work that leads to a lot of burnout--two board members JUST resigned before their terms were up. what i'm saying is, i'm going to assume a paid otw staff is getting paid for 40 hours of work a week, minimum. that's $31,200.

at $400,000 per year, the otw can afford to pay 12 people. that's WITHOUT taking into account the new systems, tools, software, etc they would have to pay for, any kind of fees, etc, etc.

oh, and btw, if you're an american you're still making barely enough to survive in most places, AND you don't have universal healthcare, vision, or dental. want otw to give people insurance, too? the number of people they can pay goes down.

it's. not. possible.

a million dollars is a lot of money on the face of it, but once you realize how MUCH goes into running something like the otw, it goes away fast.

just for reference, wikipedia also has donation drives every year. wikipedia, as of 2021, has $86.8 million in cash reserves and $137.4 million in investments. sure, wikipedia and ao3 are very different entities, but that disparity is massive. and i should note that if you give $10 to wikipedia they don't give you voting rights, i'm just saying.

by the way, you may have noticed that i didn't mention legal costs at all here. isn't one of otw's big Things about how they do legal advocacy?

yes, it is. they have a whole page about that work. and i can't for the life of me find a source on otw's website (and i'm running out of time to write this post, i'll look harder later), but i am 90% sure i learned before that most, if not all, of otw's legal work/advice/etc is done pro bono. i've also seen an anti-ao3 person claim their legal budget is only $5k or so, but they didn't have a source. but keep in mind that if they don't have a legal budget, all the numbers above stay the same, and if they do, there is even less money available for paid staff.

you can criticize ao3 and the otw all you want! there are many valid reasons to criticize them, and i do not think they're perfect either. but if you're going to do so, you should at least make sure you can back up your claims, bc otherwise you just look silly.

#ao3 #otw #anti ao3 #bc i want them to see this #otw board #ao3 discourse #ao3 donations #wren wrambles #that post was so unserious i died #if it was more recent (its from mid-july) i wouldve replied directly maybe #but i didnt want to drag the body of a 6-note post into the light OR attack the op directly so #also! if i misunderstood something pls let me know im doing my best

[zeldahime]

Uh, holy mother of god. I am not voting for you. "Don't call me another Tiffany G." girl you are worse. You are literally a Republican, and a stupidly naive one at that.

This is the Audrey R. that is running for the board of the OTW. Full unrolled thread (formatting cleaned up for readability) under the cut:

A 🧵To clear up misinformation spreading about me online: 1) I ran for office once as an Independent candidate, and once as a Republican.

2) I am not and never have been pro-censorship. I have been more vocal in my support for freedom of speech in schools than any candidate who has run in my elections. Public schools are the backbone of our society and I will support them until the end of time.

3) When I say in my Q&A responses that I do not understand a question, I spoke about it with fellow candidates, one of whom is a Fanlore member, and still did not understand the question.

4) Regarding EOTWR, I never said that they don’t have members who are also volunteers. I said they did not recruit people who are volunteers to run for the board. At the end of my statement I suggest that they do so and further engage with those people who are in positions to make change at this moment.

5) Regarding the criticism of my political choices, that is perfectly valid. There is not much you can say that has not been said to my face.

6) Accusing me of homophobia and transphobia is absurd. I worked within the party to push acceptance and a revision of the party platform to remove the language that marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman.

I stand in solidarity with queer Southwest Missourians and will continue to do so regardless of my party affiliation.

7) The harassment and vitriol and misinformation being spread about my workplace is untenable. You can insult me, call me names, whatever helps you sleep at night. At the end of the day, I work for a research institute that is one of the few places advocating for children to lead healthy lives in a digital world and working to protect their access to information in states like mine. Their work is important to me, and it should be important to all of you as well.

8) I am not withdrawing my candidacy. I will not concede to the loud voices who are insisting I am “pro-censorship,” “another Tiffany G,” or in any way homophobic / transphobic etc. If you care so much, volunteer.

If you care so much, run against me. Don’t vote for me if you don’t want to. I have no qualms about losing; I’ve done a lot of it. I know how to take an L, but I will not allow my workplace to take potshots on my behalf. Your beef is with me, not the Institute.

#otw board election #otw election #otw board #otw elections #otw #organization for transformative works #ao3 #archive of our own #audrey r #politics tag #like holy fucking shirtballs dude

[pretty-weird-ideas]

Codification of a Living Document as a solution to Harassment on OTW

A solution to the current AO3 Harassment TOS being seen as unfit for certain types of harassment (such as racism) would be to codify the already present TOS.

Harassment systems for AO3 shouldn’t follow the obscenity rules of “I know harassment when I see it”. I still believe that Abuse team should have full discretion and have the ability to overrule these codified TOS, but I feel as if explicit and transparent explanations on what is or isn’t harassment needs to be clearer and treated as a living document. People evolve and change their types of harassment to evade punishment all of the time, and so the document needs to evolve and change with them.

My questions:

What qualifies as doxxing?

What qualifies as sexual harassment?

What qualifies as inciting violence in comments?

What is inciting harassment and what are the following actions that will be made?

And all of these should be INSIDE of the TOS, a document that is much more official and is sure to be followed closely for transparency reasons. These codifications should run on precedent as well. And let me explain why this system would work far better.

1) Equal treatment would be expected out of all actions done by the Abuse team. Everyone is on the same page and the users will be as well. Forcing the abuse team to run on precedent would enhance the freedom of speech on the site by being a massive equalizer. This would hopefully quell accusations of unfair over/underpolicing of certain groups within fandom. 

2) This keeps AO3 readers/writers safe from any flagrant walk-backs of the rights of the reader/writer’s speech within AO3 by shifting what qualifies as harassment under the table. There’s huge examples of a platform’s TOS being vague and allowing for massive corruption on the side of the authorities, especially on the side of bigotry (see Twitter’s sudden downturn into hatespeech after Elon took over). 

AO3 having a short section for harassment is a problem no matter who you are, because what qualifies as harassment for one team may not be the same on another day. We’re all at risk of the rug being pulled from under us on the subject of harassment on AO3. OTW is an organization that has lasted YEARS and there are elections and changing of the guard for the Abuse Team. Without a more explicit TOS that outlines these things the definition of what is an offense can change. 

What is bullying?

What is hazing?

Are slurs or hate speech bullying?

What qualifies as repeated?

Does bullying have to be repeated to qualify?

All of these have common sense answers, but common sense isn’t all that common, and it’s fairly easy to see how a simple change in the TOS to include definitions of these terms would help everyone on the site protect themselves from our rights being stripped.

A sentence after they describe that bullying and hazing qualify as harassment on AO3... they immediately kneecap themselves and walk it back and saying that they technically have no idea what bullying is. 

THIS ^ under section “Harassment” after explaining that bullying isn’t allowed is TERRIFYING. “Not everyone agrees” can also mean that the AO3 Abuse team without proper codification can just flagrantly shift the goal post without need for explanation. With codification on what qualifies as unacceptable bullying on AO3 our rights are PERMANENT until a PUBLIC AND TRANSPARENT CHANGE. 

There needs to be definitions. Even if it takes a while... and an ACTUAL DIVERSITY CONSULTANT would help do so. 

The demands that End OTW Racism are making are universal and help all fans protect their own speech on the site. It explicitly makes sure that all speech is equalized on the site by asking for the above harassment clause to be more descriptive and protective of the subjects of said harassment and explicitly outline what is an offense. If you take issue with the fact that POC are being called out here, the question is, where is your protest? If you want another type of harassment to be qualified explicitly as such under the TOS, join us. If you want stalking to be punished on the site, fight with us and we will fight with you. If you take issue with other forms of harassment on AO3, fight with us and we will fight for you. 

#end otw racism #ao3 racism #otw board #ao3 harassment

[torturedpoetemotions]

The thing is, I think there is a real possibility that Audrey Richards is being completely honest when she says she herself isn't homophobic, transphobic, or pro-censorship.

And I think there are situations where working within the Republican party to bring it back from the edge of absolute insanity is a commendable, if gargantuan, effort. Republicans in state and local government have shown this past year that they are not always the screaming frothing hatemongers that dominate the national political stage.

I also think it's very adult and mature and necessary to admit when you don't know something.

However. That doesn't mean I would take the risk of voting for her. Nuance and good faith and giving grace are important when engaging with people, but I'm not comfortable giving the benefit of the doubt to someone with so many question marks around her when it comes to giving her influence over something I love.

Given her affiliation with not one but two entities that promote censorship;

Given her affiliation with a party that has made homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny its hills to die on;

Given her answer to the EOTWR question which points to her clear understanding that infiltration of an organization is the most effective way to get your way with it;

And given her lack of understanding of several questions every other candidate was able to answer...

I do not consider her the best candidate or even a viable candidate for the OTW board. And she may well be a dangerous one.

I do think this is a clear signal that we need to be extremely diligent about OTW elections, every single year. We need to make sure our memberships stay current. We need to read up on candidates and research not just their answers during their OTW campaign, but their prior activities and affiliations. We need to be well-informed and vote consistently to preserve the mission and purpose of the OTW and all its projects. We need to get involved ourselves, where we can.

Off to volunteer.

#otw #otw elections #otw board #ao3 #audrey richards

[end-otw-racism]

OTW Board Meeting on Jan 28!

The OTW has announced the next public Board meeting will be held on January 28 at 2:00 AM UTC. For some of us that'll be January 27, though, so be sure to check what time that is for you.

The currently planned agenda:

Decisions made since the last public board meeting

Diversity update

2024 Board Roadmap

Any other business (Questions & Answers)

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last approximately an hour. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions.

Questions should be asked in the #open-chat channel where they will be collected by moderators and added to the ⁠#questions-voting channel. There, they will be upvoted by meeting attendees and then asked in order of descending emoji count. The Board requests that questions be reasonable and polite, under 50 words, and that each person only submits one. Questions that require Board members to read and respond to any linked posts will not be accepted.

Unanswered questions will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel, starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting. This means if your question isn't covered in the meeting, there's still a chance it'll be answered later.

The OTW Discord's Community Guidelines can be found in the #rules channel, and we recommend reading them to familiarize yourself with the details of how the meeting will be run.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you at the meeting!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team

#otw board meeting #otw board #organization for transformative works #otw #archive of our own #ao3 #fandom #end otw racism

[anarchycox]

Reminder to read all the board election q&a and chats for the otw election FOR YOURSELF NOT RELYING ON OTHER'S SUMMATIONS and vote when the time comes!

#otw board #otw elections #ao3

[fiercynn]

some of the shit thats being demanded of an archive run by volunteers is more than a little ridiculous. Putting the onus on, amongst other things, not having a timeline for when emails will be responded to- and not seeing that a quintupling of their usual attendance in a discord meeting would cause things to get a little crazy- does little more than reduce the feeling of seriousness for the rest of your cause. Cmon now

i mean, i do hear you on things like responding to emails. what was frustrating in that board meeting was that they didn't have a good process for taking questions and made it incredibly confusing to know how to do it, and then, when people would ask for a better process/clarification, board members would simply say, "then use our contact us form!" despite people knowing that they don't have time and energy to respond to those promptly - or, possibly, to even read them. so it felt like they were trying to just push us off either way.

i disagree with you on preparation for the meeting, though. there was just no way they couldn't have expected a much bigger meeting than usual, because the issues that have come up in the past couple months have covered such a range of issues - from racism to AI stuff to mistreatment of volunteers - that there was bound to be interest. the board had been receiving tons of messages via that contact us form. their own volunteers warned them that it would be a big meeting. @end-otw-racism was publicly encouraging people to attend and even shared what kinds of questions people could ask about racism! there was no reason not to be better prepared.

i also want to emphasize that there otw does not have to be a scrappy, incompetent organization. they have over a thousand volunteers and more than a $2.5 million budget surplus. meaning that money is not needed for their next six months of operating expenses, nor has it been dedicated to anything else (at least publicly). they have so little idea what to do with that money that in 2022 they only earned ~$90 in interest income, meaning that money has not even been invested prudently. it's ludicrous. and it's not unreasonable to expect that an organization use its resources properly. i know tons of nonprofits that would be thrilled to have $2.5 million (which is five years of otw's operating expenses - an absurd amount to have in reserve!) that are far smaller and scrappier.

back to this meeting - there were lots of very simple things they could have done differently. they could have appointed other otw volunteers to moderate the channels so that the board members could focus on actually answering questions. they could have frozen messages in the main channel earlier when it was already looking chaotic (they did not do so until halfway through the meeting), but simultaneously had a separate channel for questions so that those were not lost. they could have made a policy of only one question per attendee so that some folks were not hogging the conversation. all of these things could have been done in the moment when they realized how much of a shitshow the meeting was becoming.

when an organization that people are supporting and donating to cannot adequately respond to constructive questions and feedback, that is pretty unacceptable. and so many of us are coming in with a lot of distrust because otw has failed and delayed on so many of their commitments to fans of color in the past. i'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt - they have to earn people's trust back. this meeting was not a step in that direction.

#end otw racism #ao3 #otw #otw board #organization for transformative works #archive of our own #fandom racism

[voidpumpkin]

hey ao3 people, I know y'all care about freedom of speech and gay content, that's why you called a board member electee a 'ccp spy sent to destroy ao3 in the west' cause she was Chinese American an mentioned that ao3 had a cp problem, or how you assumed anonymous Sudan was run by gay hating Muslims the moment you saw Arabic, so I think it is important that you know that one the board member candidate, Audrey Richards, is a registered republican politician. Maybe speak up about that, get a little angry.

Or do you just reserve that anger for non-white people?

#ao3 #archive of our own #otw #otw board #otw elections #organization of transformative works #racism #Audrey r

[transformativeworks]

Result of the 2023 Board Election

The results are in and our Elections Committee is pleased to announce the new members of the OTW Board: Anh Pham, Jennifer Haynes, Kathryn Soderholm, Qiao Chu, Zixin Zhang. Read more at https://otw.news/5ffa6f

Afrikaans • dansk • Ελληνικά • English • italiano • Nederlands • 日本語 • Српски • 中文

#otw elections #otw board #otw #organization for transformative works #fandom

[marxism-leninism-meowism]

as always, the OTW board is a complete fucking joke

my original question, which i was told to edit for word count:

#otw #ao3 #otw board #ao3 board #organization for transformative works #archive of our own #palestine #palestinian genocide #censorship