Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Elections Committee would like to thank all of our candidates for their hard work in this year's election. With that, we are pleased to present the results of the 2024 Election.

The following candidates (in alphabetical order) have been officially elected to the Board of Directors:

• Erica Frank
• Rachel Linton

Board turnover will formally begin on October 1. We wish the new members of the Board well with their terms.

With that, the election season comes to a close. Thank you to everyone who got involved by spreading the word, asking the candidates questions, and, of course, voting! We look forward to seeing all of you again next year.

The election has opened!

Every OTW member who joined between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 should have a ballot by now. If you didn't get one, please check your spam folder first, then contact us via our contact form. Please note that your donation receipt will be dated in US Eastern Time, so if your donation is listed after 19:59 on June 30, 2024 on the receipt, you won't be eligible to vote. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership Committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?".

The election will run through August 19, 2024, 23:59 UTC; check this time zone converter to find out what time that will be for you.

Once you've voted, you can head over to Twitter/X and use the hashtag #OTWE2024 to meet and chat with other voters! We'd love to hear from you!

At this time, all members of the OTW who are eligible to vote should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2024. The subject line was "Voting Instructions for Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board Election". Please note that anyone who didn't receive this email is not on the voter rolls this year and will not receive a ballot.

The voting instructions email contains a link to a test version of the ballot. Please follow that link to make sure that the page displays correctly and the candidates are visible. If not, please ensure you are not blocking JavaScript from ajax.googleapis.com and/or bootstrapcdn.com.

If you are an OTW member and didn't receive this email, please do the following:

1. Check your spam folder.
   • If you use Gmail, check your Social tab.
   • If the email is marked as spam, unmark it. Otherwise, you will not receive your ballot, as it will end up in spam as well.
2. If no email is present, open your donation receipt and check the date.
   • To vote in this election, your receipt must be dated between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, inclusive of both dates.
   • If you paid by check, your membership is measured by the arrival date of the check. Please note that your donation receipt will be dated in US Eastern Time, so if your donation is listed after 19:59 on June 30, 2024 on the receipt, you won't be eligible to vote. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership Committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?" .
3. If your donation was made during the eligible time period, make sure you checked the box to become a member. Membership is voluntary for those who donate at least $10; only members can vote.
4. If you did become a member, make sure you neither marked any email from the OTW as spam nor opted out of OTW emails or last year's ballot. If you did so and would like to vote this year, you'll need to follow step 5 below.
5. If you donated at least $10 during the eligible period and you checked the box to become a member, please fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?". Make sure to include the email you used when donating.
   • Membership has no connection to being a user of Archive of Our Own – AO3 or Fanlore. Please don't give us your AO3 or Fanlore username – we have no way of knowing who that name belongs to, and we don't want to know.

Most importantly, if your voting instructions email bounces, gets marked as spam, or you opt out, you will not receive a ballot for this year's election, and you may not receive a ballot next year. Similarly, if any of those things happened to last year's election emails, you will not receive a ballot this year. Therefore, if you previously opted out of OTW emails or marked them as spam and would like to vote, fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?"

The Election season is in full swing! Live chat with candidates is coming up soon. You can find links to the candidates' answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.

Live Chat

There will be one live chat session with all four candidates lasting ninety minutes. Chat will take place in our public chatroom.
It is scheduled for:

• Sunday, July 21, from 17:00 UTC to 18:30 UTC – Live chat with all candidates (What time is it where I live?)

The chat will provide attendees the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted during the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to appropriately address them all.

Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat is scheduled to begin.

Read on to learn more about using Discord.

• On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name.
• Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance, among other options.
• There will be four rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, open_chat and questions.
  • General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
  • Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate among themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
  • Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion.
  • Questions is where the moderator will compile a list of all questions. Only moderators will be able to chat in this room.

Q&A

When we posted the Board candidates' bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We will be posting groups of questions as the candidates finish their responses.

To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:

• C. Ryan S.
• Erica F.
• Rachel L.
• Tish S.

The following is a list of the topics covered by the questions. Clicking on a topic will take you to the tag containing all the candidates' corresponding answers.

• Group 1 (July 12)
• Group 2 (July 19)

To read all the posts regarding Q&A, simply select the 2024 Q&A tag.

The Organization for Transformative Works is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2024 Election (in alphabetical order by given name):

• C. Ryan S.
• Erica F.
• Rachel L.
• Tish S.

Because we have 2 seats to be filled and 4 candidates, the 2024 election will be contested – that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats.

The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a series of live chats – dates and times for those are to be announced based on candidate availability. Information on the voting period and how to vote will also be posted shortly.

In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them!

Platforms and Bios

We asked each candidate to provide us with a Bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions:

• Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?
• What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?
• Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?
• What is your experience with the OTW's projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.
• How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work?

You can read both the candidates' answers to these questions and their bios by following the links below.

• C. Ryan S.
• Erica F.
• Rachel L.
• Tish S.

Question & Answer (Q&A)

To better accommodate the time constraints of the election and the workload for candidates, this year we are introducing two changes to the Q&A rules: One question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded. Limit of three questions per person.

Candidates will also answer questions from the public. Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 30 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions:

• Questions must be a maximum of 50 words long.
• Any submitted questions repeating what is already addressed on Platforms will be ignored. This is to allow candidates to dedicate more time to answering new questions.
• Similar questions will be grouped together to avoid candidates giving repetative answers. Elections volunteers will decide which questions are similar enough to group.
• If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention it is a follow-up so Elections volunteers know not to treat it as a repeat.
• One question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded.
• Maximum of three questions per person.

The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for voters to read all the answers.

It's almost election time! Being a member of the OTW means being able to vote for its Board of Directors. This helps affect how projects such as the Archive of Our Own – AO3, Fanlore, and Transformative Works and Cultures – TWC are run now and going forward. This year, our election for the Board of Directors will be held from August 16 to August 18. (Access the full Elections Timeline for 2024).

In order to vote, you need to be a member of the OTW by midnight UTC on June 30, 2024 (What time is that for me?). Please note that your donation receipt will be dated in your time zone, not UTC. If you donate on June 30, there should be a note on your receipt indicating which election you are eligible to vote in.
That means that you have to have made a donation of US$10 or more between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, AND have chosen to become a member when donating. In order to become a member, you need to select "Yes" in response to the question "Do you want to be an OTW member? ($10 minimum donation)" on the donation form. If you're unsure whether this applies to a donation you've made, please contact our Development & Membership team.

If you participate in this voter registration drive, you will receive a specially designed icon, only available during this drive. Thank you for your support of the OTW! Register to vote and donate today!

The OTW Elections committee is pleased to announce that the timeline for the 2024 election for new members of the Board of Directors has been posted!

This year's election will be held August 16-19. This means that the deadline for volunteers to declare their candidacy is June 21.

As usual, the election membership deadline is June 30. If you're interested in voting, please make sure your membership is active as of that date. Please note that your donation receipt will be dated in US Eastern Time, so if your donation is listed after 19:59 on June 30, 2024 on the receipt, you won't be eligible to vote. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership Committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?".

You can find out how to become a member on the Elections website, or if you're familiar with the process, you can donate here!

If you want to know more about the election process in general, you can check out the Elections Policies.

We're looking forward to an active election season with ample communication between candidates and voters, and we hope you'll be a part of it. Don't forget to follow the Elections committee on Twitter/X to keep up to date with the latest news!

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact Elections.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Dae, who volunteers as a member of the Fanlore Policy & Admin team and the Elections committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I have been… accumulating hats. In the Fanlore committee, I’m a Policy & Admin team member, so my work with Fanlore is mainly focused on handling user queries via our contact form and writing/updating Help pages and policy information as the wiki grows and evolves. I am currently also a team coordinator for Fanlore P&A, which means I’m responsible for monitoring incoming emails and other tasks, assigning them to team members, and following up to make sure things happen in a timely manner (for email responses), or maintain forward motion (for larger projects).

I am also on the Elections committee in a Candidate Liaison role, which means my focus in the “off-season” (Octoberish-Mayish) is on finding people who may be willing to run for the OTW Board in the next year, then helping them with answers to questions and resources to prepare for the election process. During the election season (Mayish-Septemberish), things get much busier; I interact directly with candidates to answer questions and support them as they jump through the hoops of being candidates, including platform posts and the public candidate chats on Discord.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

With Fanlore, I keep an eye on the email inbox, write and post meeting minutes if we’ve recently had a full committee meeting, and work on my longer-term projects like updating Help pages or page categories or drafting policy documents as I can. I also usually jump in when we do themed editing events (such as Stub September or Podtober) as a badge awarder for a day or two.

With Elections, it depends heavily on where we are in the year - in the “off season,” everything is on a pretty long timeline, so I’ll participate periodically in discussions about the next election and help update documentation where appropriate. In the election season, it’s very different; I monitor channels with candidates very closely and help coordinate posting candidate bios or Q&As and moderate the live chats, depending on where we are in the election schedule.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I’ve been an AO3 user since 2012, and I’m very invested in fandom culture as embodied by the OTW, so I had a general desire to help out if I could. Fanlore Policy & Admin very much played to my strengths and experience, so I was excited to apply when I saw that applications were open in early 2022.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

*pictures of various committees falling out of pockets* Not biting off more than I can proverbially chew, really. Fanlore was a very fitting entry point for me because as I said above, it was a match for my skillset and interests, and also was compatible with my general schedule when I applied. When the team coordinator position was created, I had just joined Elections (and the election season was about to start!), but the other Fanlore P&A people had too much else going on to pick it up. So I decided to volunteer after chewing on it a bit, and that has been going well. I am now also in training for the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee.

OTW work is the majority of my non-day-job time these days, and I’m very okay with that. I love working with my colleagues on various committees and sub-committees, but in order to be as effective a volunteer as I can be, I’m aware that I need to keep a lid on my tendency to just want to do more and more and more. I need to stick to my strengths so that I can put my all into those.

And, you know. Still have time to read/write fanfic and play video games.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I write fic and meta, I read fic (sometimes literally in the ~45 seconds walking from my apartment door to my car door), I beta read fic, I play a LOT of video games, I attend cons, I cosplay, and of course, I volunteer for the OTW. My main fandoms from the last several years are The Sandman (TV and comics), Hannibal (TV, though I’ve read the books), Baldur’s Gate (mostly 3 but I did play 1 and 2 back in the 90’s/00’s), and Pillars of Eternity.

I’m eternally in love with Tumblr’s general BS, so basically, Goncharov was the best thing on the internet that happened in 2022, as far as I’m concerned. I’m still active in that fandom, such as it is.

And I love, love, love, specifically the Yuletide annual fic exchange for small fandoms. I’ve gotten to write some very fun things for it, and gotten gift fics better than I’d ever have imagined.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

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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