Archive of Our Own ^beta

Now that the 2023 election is over, we’re happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2023 Election, we had 15274 total eligible voters. Of those, 4247 voters cast a ballot, which represents 27.80% of the potential voters.

Our voter turnout is lower than that of last year, which had a turnout of 39.3%.

We also saw a decrease in the number of ballots cast, from 4574 to 4247, which represents a 7.1% decrease.

Elections is committed to continuing to reach out to our eligible members to encourage them to vote in elections. Whoever is elected to the Board of Directors can have an important influence on the long-term health of the OTW’s projects, and we want our members to have a say in that.

For those who might be interested in the number of votes each candidate received, please note that our election process is designed to elect an equal cohort of Board members in order to allow them to work well together, so we do not release that information. As a general rule, we also won’t disclose the candidate rankings.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated at every stage of the election! We hope to see you at the virtual polls again next year.

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.

The Elections Committee would like to thank all of our candidates for their hard work in this year's election. We are now pleased to present the results of the 2023 Election.

The following candidates (in alphabetical order) have been officially elected to serve full terms (3 years) on the Board of Directors:

• Anh Pham
• Kathryn Soderholm
• Qiao Chu

As previously announced, Heather McGuire stepped down from her position on the Board prior to the 2023 election. Director Natalia Gruber also resigned, in July 2023. We are grateful for Heather and Natalia’s service and thank them for their work and dedication.
To fill these vacant seats, the remaining candidates, Jennifer Haynes and Zixin Zhang (in alphabetical order), have been elected to join the Board of Directors. They will serve the remaining two years of Heather’s and Natalia’s terms starting on October 1 2023, so that the Board will be fully staffed until the next election.
Board turnover will formally begin on October 1. We wish the new members of the Board well.
With that, the 2023 election season comes to a close. Thank you to everyone who participated by spreading the word, sending their questions to candidates, and, of course, voting! We hope to see all of you again next year.

15 August 2023: Edited to clarify that all Board Directors are named in alphabetical order.

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.

The election has opened!

Every OTW member who joined between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, 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, 2023 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 14, 2023, 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 or Tumblr and use the hashtag #OTWE23 to let us know! We'd love to hear from you!

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.

At this time, all members of the OTW who are eligible to vote should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2023. 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, 2022, and June 30, 2023, inclusive of both dates. Receipts are dated in EDT time zone but the cutoff is in UTC; your receipt may list June 30, 2023 but you won't be eligible if the donation was after midnight UTC on July 1.
   • If you paid by check, your membership is measured by the arrival date of the check.
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 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 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.

Effective July 25, Audrey R. has withdrawn her candidacy for the 2023 OTW Board election. The Elections Committee wishes Audrey all the best.

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.

The Elections Committee would like to condemn in the strongest terms the recent harassment campaign aimed at one of our candidates.

While all OTW Board election candidates are prepared to run, and if elected or appointed, serve under their legal name, the intense harassment of Audrey goes well beyond what is appropriate during the candidacy period. We do not condone the harassment of the candidate or their employer.

For the second year in a row, an OTW Board election candidate has been subject to a campaign of harassment and misinformation. We regret that we failed to step in last year when another candidate was harassed, and it is on us that both candidates were exposed to such harassment without an official response. Historically, we've tried to make minimal public statements to ensure that the committee as a whole stays neutral and impartial in public discussions about a candidate's suitability for the OTW Board of Directors.

The OTW is committed to holding elections that are fair and contested. This is necessary for empowering OTW members to vote for Board Directors that best represent their interests and help manage the OTW as a whole. As part of maintaining a fair and contested election process, the Elections Committee will support all eligible candidates who declare candidacy. Our candidate eligibility requirements are publicly available on our website, and we welcome candidates who hold varying perspectives and aims for the OTW's future.

If an OTW member has concerns about a candidate, then they can choose to not rank that candidate on their ballot. The Elections Committee employs an adapted IRV voting system in our elections, which allows members to rank candidates and requires elected candidates to have majority support from our membership to be elected. It is the Election Committee's position that only OTW members should determine who serves their interests on the Board of Directors.

If you are not an OTW member, you can still ask the candidates questions or campaign for/against a particular candidate or candidates on social media. We do not seek to discourage civil and appropriate discussions about our candidates' opinions. Instead we ask members of the public to be considerate of all candidates and to carefully consider the information being promoted on social media. We encourage members of the public to read candidate election materials, submit questions to candidates and be an active participant in the election process.

Per a recent announcement, the Elections Committee will be hosting chats with our candidates next weekend. Please consider attending if you are interested. This year's election will be held August 11-14. It will open at 12:01am UTC on August 11 and close at 11:59pm UTC on August 14 (What time is that for me?).

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.

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

Chats

There will be four public chats, each lasting ninety minutes. All four chats will have three candidates in attendance. Chats will take place in our public chatroom.
They are scheduled for:

• Saturday, July 29, from 01:00 UTC to 02:30 UTC – Anh P., Kathryn S. and Zixin Z. (What time is Chat 1 where I live?)
• Saturday, July 29, from 15:00 UTC to 16:30 UTC – Jennifer H, Qiao C. and Zixin Z. (What time is Chat 2 where I live?)
• Saturday, July 29, from 22:00 UTC to 23:30 UTC – Anh P., Audrey R. and Jennifer H. (What time is Chat 3 where I live?)
• Sunday, July 30, from 01:00 UTC to 02:30 UTC – Audrey R., Kathryn S. and Qiao C. (What time is Chat 4 where I live?)

These chats 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.

We hope you can join us for one or all of these chats!

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 chats 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 have been posting groups of questions as the candidates finish their responses, and one has already been posted. For the categories that have not yet been posted, the dates they will be posted are listed in parentheses.

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

• Anh P.
• Audrey R.
• Jennifer H.
• Kathryn S.
• Qiao C.
• Zixin Z.

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.

• Board Work
• Features and Content Policy (July 13)
• Recent Discussions (July 20)
• Board Work II (July 27)

To read all the posts regarding Q&A, simply select the 2023 Q&A tag.

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.

Effective June 23, Emyn a. has withdrawn their candidacy for the 2023 Board election.

The Elections Committee wishes Emyn all the best.

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.