November 2023 Newsletter, Volume 184

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Published:

2023-12-09 16:39:30 UTC

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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The new Board members are settling in nicely and have held the first public meeting of this term. They've begun answering non-live questions in their public Discord, and minutes for this meeting will be available soon on the OTW website.

In addition, our organizational culture firm has completed its initial survey and is interviewing volunteers. Relatedly, Strategic Planning has been working with Volunteers & Recruiting on a guide to inclusive recruiting practices to share with committees as part of the Recruitment strategic goal.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors completed imports of What Makes the Desert Beautiful, a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fanfiction archive focused on the Nick and Greg slash pairing, and The ARC, a fanfiction archive for the TV series Primeval.

Accessibility, Design, & Technology deployed their latest release, which focused on improvements to downloads, including how PDFs are generated. Relatedly, Systems resolved some issues with download errors and made fixes to their internal monitoring. Systems' work towards Debian Bookworm continues; some internal systems are already running it, and some parts of AO3 are expected to be running it soon. Systems also introduced some new tooling to the OTW's Infrastructure as Code setup – the Archive's Cloudflare configuration is now maintained using Terraform, which makes it safer to test and deploy new rules!

In October, Policy & Abuse received 1965 tickets, while Support had a total of 1994 tickets. Support's monthly totals continue to decline slightly, but they are still getting quite a bit more messages monthly than the usual average. They continue to work on digging out from the backlog of tickets and appreciate your patience!

Elsewhere, Tag Wrangling began testing the new procedures for updating canonical tags that are not associated with any specific fandom, which hopefully will begin to reduce the backlog of support requests related to such tags. They wrangled more than 470,000 tags in more than 61,000 fandoms, which works out to more than 1,100 per active wrangler!

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

This month, Fanlore has been updating their Tumblr layout and reviewing engagement for the last year, while Translation brought their side of the membership drive to a close with 28 participating teams. Communications is testing an OTW News by email service, which we hope to provide in different languages.

November was a very full month for Legal! This month, Legal dealt with a large number of overreaching and invalid DMCA takedown notices that had been sent to Bing. These notices resulted in a number of pages being delisted from Bing without legal justification, which made it harder for Bing users to find material on the AO3. Legal is working on longer term solutions to keep this sort of thing from happening. Legal also responded to a number of user queries regarding copyright and trademark issues surrounding fanworks.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Finance filed the 2022 tax return and are in the process of finalizing the 2022 audit. Filing and reports will be available on the website soon.

Also, Development and Membership was at Y/Con in Paris in November! One Fanlore volunteer was there talking about fanfiction and online communities. Check out our social media accounts for photos – or tag us if you were there! Next up: getting ready for the 2024 event season.

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 23 October to 24 November, Volunteers & Recruiting received 183 new requests, and completed 164, leaving us with 75 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 November 2023, the OTW has 897 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Anh Pham (President) and Zixin Zhang (Secretary)
New Committee Chairs: Alex Johnson (Strategic Planning), cosette (Webs), dazyndara (Board Assistants Team), Paula (Support), and therealmorticia (Board Assistants Team)
New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Fiona (Chair Trainee) and telescopicpoems (Chair Trainee)
New Communications Volunteers: Eskici (Recruitment, Training & Documentation Assistant)
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Membership Data Specialist
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
New Systems Volunteers: Brian Austin (Systems Volunteer) and C. Ryan Smith (Systems Volunteer)
New Translation Volunteers: AndreaK, Joohee Lee, Junij, Marte Bergundhaugen, Nachali, Reilly, Sil, Teelee, Zara Miller, and 6 other Translators
New TWC Volunteers: Khaliah Reed, and 2 Symposium Editors

Departing Committee Chairs: Ridicully (Webs)
Departing Communications Volunteers: Eskici (Chair Assistant role only)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 5 Social Media & Outreach Volunteers
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Technical Volunteers and 2 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Birdie, El, equestrianstatue, Fern, Fu, Sanctuaria, and 19 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Åse, Cel, Dan Ph, Monica Gomez, Sara N, and 6 other Translators

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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GodFearingBarbieGirl Sat 09 Dec 2023 07:40PM UTC

Not the way you made me take down a fanwork because I got into a fight with someone in the comments of it💀

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VulcansDarkest Sat 09 Dec 2023 08:48PM UTC

Thank you for the updates!

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QuinLova Sat 09 Dec 2023 08:52PM UTC

Thank you team, keep up the good work!

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thelisteners Sat 09 Dec 2023 10:37PM UTC

Thanks for your work.

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cloudygremlin Sun 10 Dec 2023 04:45AM UTC

This the discord where people where also silenced for talking about Palestine?

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1. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:01PM UTC
  
  Hi WanderingIsobel,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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Account Deleted Sun 10 Dec 2023 05:06AM UTC

Would you guys be willing to address the claims as to why you responded a pro-Palestinian volunteer’s support over Palestine as harassment? I think we are all due to an explanation over this.

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1. EveningMoth Sun 10 Dec 2023 05:28AM UTC
  
  What happened, exactly? Sorry, hello. I don’t have a discord.
  
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    2. 1. 444seraphim Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:45AM UTC
        
        Jewish people are not synonymous with Israel, and acting as such is antisemitic and promotes antisemitism due to the occupation and genocide committed by Israel toward the Palestinian people. Calling for freedom is not antisemitic. Calling for an end of illegal occupation and genocide is not antisemitic.
        
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      3. incestify Sun 10 Dec 2023 09:04AM UTC
        
        but we are talking about ONE *specific* case here, in which one of former volunteers expressed support *for palestinians*, which is unrelated to the anecdotal cases you’re talking about.
        
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    3. EveningMoth Sun 10 Dec 2023 12:35PM UTC
      
      Ah. Can’t say I’m surprised.
      Thank you for informing me.
      As they say, ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.’
      Behavior like this is normal for OTW.
      I love how they just delete and block instead of trying to talk to us. ‘For the fans’ doesn’t seem to be their priority anymore. It’s more like ‘The money mules are asking too many questions’.
      Have a great day. I can’t say I’m enjoying politics when trying to delve into fantasy worlds but it appears there’s no more escapism left in the world.
      
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3. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:01PM UTC
  
  Hi blueberrycheesecakes,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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UltimateSoraOtaku Sun 10 Dec 2023 07:17AM UTC

Are you ever going to address the Palestine censorship that occurred? Would have hoped by now it would have been addressed :/

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    2. 1. UltimateSoraOtaku Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:20AM UTC
        
        The volunteer said some of things said in the channel were that “no genocide was happening”, “attacking a hospital isn’t a war crime” and other critical comments about anything related to Palestine. The volunteer said they would post more of the discussions but I haven’t seen anything further yet. Why I feel this whole thing should be addressed.
        
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        UltimateSoraOtaku Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:51AM UTC
        
        Exactly why it needs to be addressed by OTW. From what the volunteer said and has shown, it looks like a censoring and rule enforcing ONLY to those speaking of Palestine. Haven’t heard anything about volunteers being removed for denying war crimes. OTW needs to talk about this instead of continuing to ignore it.
        
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3. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:00PM UTC
  
  Hi UltimateSoraOtaku,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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444seraphim Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:42AM UTC

Free Palestine!

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incestify Sun 10 Dec 2023 09:02AM UTC

why didn’t you address anything about one of the volunteers who got reprimanded for supporting palestine?

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1. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:00PM UTC
  
  Hi incestify,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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stormyseasons Sun 10 Dec 2023 10:22AM UTC

Thank you for the hard work.

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ThisPanLikesToRead Sun 10 Dec 2023 11:25AM UTC

How do you become a volunteer? I would love to wrangle tags one day!

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1. Eli0t Sun 10 Dec 2023 07:10PM UTC
  
  Every few months they post a news post calling for volunteers, but the main page for it is here: https://www.transformativeworks.org/volunteer/
  
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Account Deleted Sun 10 Dec 2023 11:38AM UTC

Can you guys please respond to repeated claims of taking action on volunteers and site users who exercise free speech, especially related to Palestine?

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1. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 07:59PM UTC
  
  Hi MissSpy,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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northerngothic Sun 10 Dec 2023 11:43AM UTC

thank you for putting in the work.. i gotta keep an eye out for next year’s volunteer recruitments x_x

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vespertilion Sun 10 Dec 2023 04:05PM UTC

You claim to be an archive for creative freedom and freedom of expression yet enforce censorship of your volunteers and on your site. Address why you chastised a volunteer over expressing support for Palestine on their personal account.

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1. GodFearingBarbieGirl Sun 10 Dec 2023 04:17PM UTC
  
  True lmao. Ao3 gets a lot of praise for being a platform that allows pretty much anything fandom related, no matter what. That’s why they got banned in China. And it’s sad to see a company(one I think is based in America) take down things that violate people’s freedom of speech.
  
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2. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 07:58PM UTC
  
  Hi vespertilion,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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dug Sun 10 Dec 2023 04:59PM UTC

It is pretty ironic that the first paragraph of the previous newsletter post was about "improving diversity, equity, and inclusion at the OTW" and yet you've committed an insanely disgusting act of discrimination towards a volunteer.

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1. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:05PM UTC
  
  Hi dug,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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iluv2eat Sun 10 Dec 2023 05:58PM UTC

thanks for your hard work!

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CrochetandLoki Sun 10 Dec 2023 07:27PM UTC

Free Palestine and shame on you for silencing a volunteer for speaking on Palestine.

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1. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 07:56PM UTC
  
  Hi CrochetandLoki,
  Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. The Board of Directors want to emphatically assure you that no volunteer ever has been or ever will be removed from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  We do reserve the right to ask our volunteers to not harass or intimidate fellow volunteers, regardless of how strong their convictions are. We’re fully aware of how challenging it is to strike the balance between being an inclusive organization – allowing the OTW to hear minority voices and viewpoints – and preserving the safety and well-being of our volunteers. In particular, the OTW reserves the right to determine that certain topics are not appropriate for our work environment.
  As the OTW is a multicultural, international collaboration of volunteers with the mission of serving fandom as a whole, it will never force its members, its volunteers or the general public to hold to any specific opinion or viewpoint. Likewise, the OTW will not endorse any political views nor censor any volunteer due to their political beliefs.
  Qiao Chu
  OTW Board
  
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Account Deleted Sun 10 Dec 2023 08:56PM UTC

Can you explain how supporting Palestine is intimidating or harassing other users? I am a former volunteer. Back several years ago, I can confirm that volunteers regularly bullied site users who commented on news posts that held any criticism of the OTW/AO3 in the slack channels. I find it very ironic that the OTW would be taking such strong action against a volunteer(s) for expressing their political opinion considering harassment of others is considered keeping the slack a place where volunteers can vent their frustrations. It’s also frustrating how vague that the OTW is being about this situation, though anyone who has been on this site for more than a few years knows this is very typical.

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1. OTW_Board (Official) Sun 10 Dec 2023 11:09PM UTC
  
  Hello MissSpy,
  We do not consider supporting Palestine to be intimidating or harassing other users. And to reiterate, we would never remove a volunteer from the Organization for Transformative Works for openly sharing their political beliefs. Nor would we ever censor any volunteer for expressing political opinions, including but not limited to the current Israel & Palestine conflict.
  However, we do not and will not comment on situations involving specific volunteers. Internal volunteer relations are a private matter that we will not disclose unless legally required to do so. We are sorry that frustrates you that we seem vague, but the safety and privacy of our volunteers is our first priority.
  Anh Pham
  OTW Board
  
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