Archive of Our Own ^beta

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 Marion McGowan, who volunteers as a Co-Chair and Team Coordinator for our Elections Committee.

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

I’m a Co-Chair and Team Coordinator for the Elections Committee. We run the annual election to decide who sits on the OTW’s Board of Directors. Elections’ main goal is to hold a contested election every year, giving our membership an opportunity to elect candidates who will serve their interests on the Board. We’ve held contested elections every year since 2015, but this is not something the Elections Committee takes for granted.

Every year, we communicate internally to OTW volunteers about the election process. Once candidates are announced, we organize Q&As and candidate chats so the public have an opportunity to engage with the election process and ask the questions they want answered. And finally we run the election itself, sending ballots to members and monitoring the election throughout the weekend before finally announcing the results.

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

Depends what time of year it is. Elections work can be very seasonal.

From March to August, we’re focused on tasks directly related to that year’s election. After the election, we collect feedback from other committees and from the candidates to help us make our roadmap. From October to May, we’re working on our roadmap tasks, addressing any feedback we received and also reviewing and updating our policies, procedures and internal documentation. This year we’ve also adopted some new tools during the off-season which are going to be very helpful going forward.

As one of four Chairs on the Elections Committee, I work very closely with my Co-Chairs. A Chair’s job is to support the rest of our team, do administrative work, liaise with Board and other Committee Chairs as needed and help recruit new Elections Volunteers. I’m definitely very happy to be on a Chair Team because I couldn’t do it on my own. My Co-Chairs are amazing!

And as a Team Coordinator, I work with colleagues to write documentation and procedures and keep track of our internal timelines to ensure we’re on track to meet our deadlines.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I wanted to contribute to the OTW because I agreed with their mission and was using their projects, and I wanted to give back. I was already a Fanlore editor and had been keeping an eye out for recruitment opportunities that might suit my skills.

Before joining Elections, I actually applied to join the Tag Wrangling Committee, but I was unsuccessful. The rejection letter I received really did leave me with a positive impression of the organization and encouraged me to consider applying again. Funnily enough, the Tag Wrangling Chair who sent that rejection letter was also an Elections Chair and she ended up training me to be an Elections Chair.

Don’t let the rejections get you down; it’s just a very competitive process.

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

Probably our deadlines. It can be challenging to get our off-season tasks completed before it's time to start preparing for the next election season. Then, during the election season, we have to constantly be aware of our internal schedule to ensure we’re fully prepared for upcoming events.

In my experience, something always happens during each election cycle to upset our internal schedule. This might not be obvious to the public but behind the scenes, unexpected events do happen. A volunteer might be unavailable because of their personal circumstances; we might need to create an additional announcement post at short notice; or we may receive more Q&A questions or email queries than we expected. We have policies and procedures in place, but unexpected events can still result in additional pressures on our volunteers and candidates.

Most of our work in the off-season is about preparing for these busy periods, ensuring that we have the tools, trained volunteers and agreed procedures in place to meet those challenges.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I spend too much time on AO3, mostly reading fanfiction. I’m a terrible fanfic writer who has never been able to finish a multi-chapter work. I have a few unfinished WIPs on different archives, and I’m sorry to anyone who is still waiting for updates.

As well as new stories, I love rereading stories I’ve enjoyed in the past, and my cloud storage is full of fics that are no longer available on the internet. I originally copied and pasted them into documents, but they’re now ebooks for easier reading.

I’m also still a Fanlore Gardener and really enjoy reading and editing the wiki. I had no wiki editing experience when I joined, but editors and Fanlore Committee members were lovely and really helped me learn so that I could contribute my perspective to the wiki too!

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.

Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive, a collection of fanworks inspired by the manga Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac), is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive went offline in early 2019. Tracy was unable, despite multiple attempts, to contact Stayka and to preserve these works for fandom, so she began contacting individual creators and collecting permission to ensure permanent preservation. Stayka’s archive was an important early contributor to the Saint Seiya fandom, as it was one of the first sites on the internet to use English, unifying the uniquely global and diverse fan following.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Tracy to import the English-language fanworks on Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive, these fanworks will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive to the AO3 after June 2023. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive fanworks, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive!

- The Open Doors team and Tracy

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on June 9. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

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 Gloria L, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangling supervisor.

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

I’m one of the supervisors for the Tag Wrangling committee. We wrangle tags and tag wranglers, lol. Joke aside, we are responsible for inducting, advising and assisting/supporting our shiny Tag Wrangling volunteers and maintaining our guidelines and tutorials. It’s also our job to communicate with and help other OTW committees on matters related to tagging: for example, contacting tag wranglers and helping answer Support requests related to tag wrangling; doing tag mapping for Open Doors requests to help them import works from other archives/fan-sites with appropriate tags; helping AD&T on testing tag wrangling related features and so on. ;D

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

It depends on whether we’re recruiting.

When we’re not recruiting, I do lots of tasks on Friday and the weekend. As a supervisor I focus on administrative tasks, like handling hiatus/retirement requests from tag wranglers and doing check-ins for new wranglers to make sure they’re on the right track in training, or for returning wranglers to make sure everything is fine.

We usually do four rounds of recruiting in a year, but we have cut it to three now. When recruitment is coming, I do the tasks whenever I have free time to help the team to recruit and induct new wranglers.

I also help the Support committee with tickets related to tag wrangling when other tasks are not too urgent. Recently I’m learning to do the tag mapping for Open Doors requests. :D

What made you decide to volunteer?

I have done some volunteer work in fan communities, but I hadn’t thought about volunteering for OTW at first. In fact, I had no idea what the OTW was and what was the relationship between the OTW and AO3. Besides, English is not my mother tongue.

Back in 2019, I noticed that the Tag Wrangling committee was specifically recruiting Chinese-speaking volunteers, so I decided to give it a try. Luckily, Tag Wrangling said yes to me. As time goes on volunteering, I know more and more about AO3 and OTW, and I learned lots of things that I hadn’t learned from real life. I'm more than happy that I’m part of it. :-)

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

The communication. Our volunteer pool contains people from all over the world, and not everybody speaks English as their first language. Also, unlike English, my first language is a high-context language, and I lived many years in a high-context cultural environment, not to mention other cultural differences. Sometimes I’m worried that I step on others’ toes, and sometimes I’m not that straightforward, which makes people confused. I have to say, being an OTW volunteer and supervisor has honed my communication skills on and off work :D

What fannish things do you like to do?

Enjoying fanworks and reviewing the canon when I found something new in fanworks. I do write some fanfics, but most of them are short one-shots. Hope I can write a longer fic one day XD

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.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board of Directors regrets to announce that Heather McGuire has resigned from her role as a Director. Heather was elected to her seat in 2022 and her resignation is effective as of the 21st of May 2023. Her seat will be filled in the upcoming election.

We would like to thank Heather for her service as a member of the Board and for her years as an OTW volunteer. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

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.

Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive, a Stargate Atlantis fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive was a Stargate Atlantis fanfiction archive founded by Purpleyin and run with the help of 11nine73. Until 2014 the archive was hosted at the address www.mcweir.com, when the founder could not maintain it anymore and the site went down. In order to preserve the works archived in the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive and keep them available for the fandom, Purpleyin decided to move the archive to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Purpleyin to import the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fanfictions currently in the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive to the AO3 after June 2023. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive!

- The Open Doors team and Purpleyin

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on May 26th, 2023. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

Do you have skills in fundraising, customer service or graphic design? Would you like to help your fellow fans use the AO3? Are you fluent in Spanish or another language? Are you a fan studies scholar (senior PhD student or early career post-PhD)? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Development & Membership Graphic Designer - closing 24 May 2023 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Development & Membership Volunteer - closing 24 May 2023 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Support Volunteer - closing 24 May 2023 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Support Volunteer (Spanish) - closing 24 May 2023 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Translation News Translation Volunteer - closing 24 May 2023 at 23:59 UTC
• TWC Assistant Editor - closing 31 May 2023 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Development & Membership Graphic Designer

The Development & Membership committee (DevMem) coordinates the OTW's fundraising and membership-building activities. Our primary responsibility is coordinating our biannual fund drives, although we are also responsible for communicating with donors, exploring new fundraising opportunities, and organizing convention outreach. If you have skills or interests in creating promotional OTW graphics for our fundraisers, membership gifts, and donor communications, consider applying to join our committee!

Applications are due 24 May 2023 or after 30 applications

Development & Membership Volunteer

The Development & Membership committee (DevMem) coordinates the OTW's fundraising and membership-building activities. Our primary responsibility is coordinating our biannual fund drives, although we are also responsible for communicating with donors, exploring new fundraising opportunities, and organizing convention outreach. If you have skills or interests in fundraising, membership database management, creating promotional OTW graphics, eCommerce, or customer service, consider applying to join our committee!

Applications are due 24 May 2023 or after 30 applications

Support Volunteer

The Support team is responsible for handling the feedback and requests for assistance we receive from users of the Archive. We answer users’ questions, help to resolve problems they’re experiencing, and pass on information to and from coders, testers, tag wranglers and other teams involved with the Archive. If you enjoy helping others to learn how to use the Archive and figuring out solutions to problems, you might enjoy being a Support volunteer!

Applications are due 24 May 2023 or after 30 applications

Support Volunteer (Spanish)

The Support team is responsible for handling the feedback and requests for assistance we receive from users of the Archive. We answer users’ questions, help to resolve problems they’re experiencing, and pass on information to and from coders, testers, tag wranglers and other teams involved with the Archive. We’re currently recruiting for applicants who are fluent in both English and Spanish (we welcome all dialects!). If you are a fluent Spanish speaker who enjoys helping others to learn how to use the Archive and figuring out solutions to problems, you might enjoy being a Support volunteer!

Applications are due 24 May 2023 or after 30 applications

Translation News Translator Volunteer

Would you like to help translate OTW/AO3 news posts? We are looking for volunteers of native or near-native fluency in their target languages, who can translate or beta news posts within five-day deadlines. If you enjoy working collaboratively, if you're fluent in a language other than English, if you're passionate about the OTW and its projects, and want to help us reach more fans all around the world, working with Translation might be for you!

We particularly need people for Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Filipino, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh — but help with other languages would be much appreciated.

(Please note that our Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Italian, Malay, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese teams are not accepting new members at this time.)

Applicants may be asked to translate and correct short text samples and will be invited to a chatroom interview as part of the selection process. More information about us can be found on the Translation committee page.

Applications are due 24 May 2023

TWC Assistant Editor Transformative Works and Cultures seeks 1 or 2 assistant editors as part of building a leadership pipeline for the journal and in the field more broadly. Duties Under the supervision of the editors, the assistant editors will assist with editorial review of new submissions, managing the peer review process, and communicating with authors. Estimated time commitment is approximately 1 hour per week. Qualifications

• Applicants should be senior PhD students (ABD) or early career scholars (fewer than 5 years post-PhD).
• Applicants should have a record of peer-reviewed publications.
• Applicants need not be native speakers of English but must be competent in academic prose in English.
• Previous editorial experience is appreciated but not required.

As part of our goal to support the ongoing diversification of fan studies, scholars of color and non-Western scholars are particularly encouraged to apply.

Applications are due 31 May 2023

Apply at the volunteering page!

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.

With the proliferation of AI tools in recent months, many fans have voiced concerns regarding data scraping and AI-generated works, and how these developments can affect AO3. We share your concerns. We'd like to share what we've been doing to combat data scraping and what our current policies on the subject of AI are.

Data scraping and AO3 fanworks

We've put in place certain technical measures to hinder large-scale data scraping on AO3, such as rate limiting, and we're constantly monitoring our traffic for signs of abusive data collection. We do not make exceptions for researchers or those wishing to create datasets. However, we don't have a policy against responsible data collection — such as those done by academic researchers, fans backing up works to Wayback Machine or Google's search indexing. Putting systems in place that attempt to block all scraping would be difficult or impossible without also blocking legitimate uses of the site.

With that said, it is an unfortunate reality that anything that is publicly available online can be used for reasons other than its initial intended purposes. In many cases, AI data collection traffic relies on the same techniques as the legitimate use cases above.

Once we became aware that data from AO3 was being included in the Common Crawl dataset — which is used to train AI such as ChatGPT — we put code in place in December 2022 requesting Common Crawl not scrape the Archive again.

We cannot go back in time to stop data collection that already occurred, or remove AO3's content from existing datasets, as much as we may dislike that it happened. All we can do is attempt to reduce such collection in the future. The Archive's development team will continue to be on the lookout for individual scrapers collecting AO3 data, and to take action as needed.

Likewise, our Legal committee has and will continue to serve the OTW mission of protecting fanworks from legal challenge and commercial exploitation. This includes their position that users should be allowed to opt out from having their works incorporated into AI training sets, a position that they have presented to the U.S. Copyright Office. They, too, will continue to keep pace with this developing field.

What can I do to avoid data scraping?

You may want to restrict your work to Archive users only. While this will not block every potential scraper, it should provide some protection against large-scale scraping.

AI-generated works and AO3 policies

At the moment, there is nothing in our Terms of Service that prohibits fanworks that are fully or partly generated with AI tools from being posted to the AO3, if they otherwise qualify as fanworks.

Our goals as an organization include maximum inclusivity of fanworks. This means not only the best fanworks, or the most popular fanworks, but all the fanworks that we can preserve. If fans are using AI to generate fanworks, then our current position is that this is also a type of work that is within our mandate to preserve.

Depending on the circumstances, AI-generated works could violate our anti-spam policies (e.g. if a creator posts a significant number in a short time). If you're uncertain whether a work violates our Terms of Service, you may always report it to our Policy & Abuse team using the link at the bottom of any page, and they can investigate.

This statement reflects AO3’s policy at the time of writing, as we wanted to be transparent with our users about what our current stance is and what can be done – and is being done – to mitigate scraping for AI datasets. However, these policies are also under discussion internally among AO3 volunteers. If we agree on changes to these in the future, those will be announced publicly; additionally, if there are any proposed changes to the AO3 Terms of Service, they will be made available for public comment as is required of any and all changes to our Terms of Service.

We hope that this helps to make things more clear – this is a complicated situation, and we’re doing our very best to address it in a way that doesn’t compromise AO3’s principles of maximum fanwork inclusivity or legitimate uses of the site. As discussions and approaches evolve, we will keep our users updated.

I. FANLORE NEWS

Fanlore has been working on making page outlines more accessible and making guidelines and practices more visible to new editors. Accordingly, there is a new Help page, Help:Non-English Language Content, now available on Fanlore. Fans are also welcome to get assistance via the Fanlore Discord server. Fanlore held an editing chat there focused on link archiving on April 29.

II. AT THE AO3

In April, the OTW celebrated the 11 millionth fanwork being posted to AO3! Communications’ social media-only announcement of this milestone spread speedily after it dropped. Thank you to everyone who’s shown AO3 and the OTW your support this month!

Open Doors announced the import of The ARC, an archive of Primeval fanfiction, while Policy & Abuse received a little less than 2,000 tickets and Support received about 1,600 tickets in April. Meanwhile, in March, Tag Wrangling wrangled more than 440,000 tags across more than 57,000 fandoms, more than a thousand tags per active wrangler!

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Finance posted the 2023 budget ahead of the April Drive. The Drive was coordinated by Development & Membership with support from Communications and Translation, who translated all Drive posts, including the budget, and related graphics into 32 languages. Thanks to the generosity of 7852 people from 71 countries, 6450 of whom chose to begin or renew an OTW membership, the OTW raised a total of US$252,343.98!

Elections was busy in April preparing for the 2023 Board of Directors election. The Election Timelineis now available on Elections’ website. Stay posted for more information in the coming months!

In April, Legal Chair Betsy Rosenblatt participated in the first of the U.S. Copyright Office listening sessions on artificial intelligence and copyright law. This listening session was a great opportunity to provide information, help frame U.S. lawmakers’ questions about future policy decisions, and learn about technology and practice so that the OTW can make its own policy decisions about how to approach questions about AI. Legal will be doing more in this area in the coming months.

The Board of Directors published the minutes for its latest meeting on March 27. They can be accessed on the Minutes page on the OTW website.

IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 25 March to 24 April, Volunteers & Recruiting received 109 new requests, and completed 103, leaving us with 57 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 April 2023, the OTW has 882 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Kate G, Miki Mizuami, Mo & 2 other Editors
New Communications Volunteers: Szabo Dorottya (Fanhackers Lead) & 3 Fanhackers Volunteers
New Open Doors Volunteers: Charlie167, Phia, Teo and 6 other Import Assistants
New Translation Volunteers: Irina Gostraya (News Translator)
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Amy2 (Projects Volunteer)

Departing Communications Volunteers: Szabo Dorottya (Fanhackers Volunteer role only)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Administrative Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Rosa V, Sarah Fox, Satie, Sunshijne, Fynn, EJ Bell, nolightss, and 23 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ana Gomes, Cinna_moon, Demeter, Harold Liu & 6 other Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Copyeditor, 1 Symposium Editor
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Amy2 (Volunteer role only), Georgia (Volunteer)

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.