This is a roundup of the many exposes on the issues with AO3/OTW starting from May 2023 from discussions on key forums. I do not claim ownership of anything reposted here. This journal is kept for the purposes of documentation and to prevent linkrot, and to assemble commentary from multiple sources, particularly ones that are hard to navigate, into one readable space.

A general writeup has been compiled on Tumblr here. This journal is unaffiliated with them.

Yes, this is a collection of things akin to jaywalking, arson, and murder. I'm aware of this; I am just trying to gather all the data about the OTW's internal flaws regardless of the degree of the flaw.

Some key sources in namespace include

denise/

synecdochic, who has tried repeatedly to reach out to the OTW to assist them with their PAC expertise;

azarias, a former Policy & Abuse Committee member during the CSEM attacks; and

dhobikikutti, who has documented many messages and comments -- primarily their own -- in correspondence with the OTW Board/Legal. A good majority of discussions cited are from

fail_fandomanon, from anonymous volunteers.

Comments from

chestnut_pod's post here are also sourced.

Previous issues with the OTW, for documentation purposes:

Further Reading:

Alternative Resources:

Download your own fic from AO3, a script by nianeyna
SquidgeWorld, a multifandom archive cloned from AO3 (in case anything happens to the webhost, it will NOT be affiliated with OTW; see here)

I cannot share this journal in namespace for a variety of reasons, so I appreciate those helping me get the word out.

Below is information about the 2023 elections for the OTW Board of Directors. The election uses Instant Runoff Voting to determine results; this is explained here.

Please give a shout out in the latest AO3/OTW FFA thread if any of this information is wrong, needs to be updated, or if additional details may be relevant.

Candidates

Candidate Bios + Q&A Responses:

Audrey R withdrew from the election on 25 July 2023:

elf's spreadsheet of candidate answers: here

Candidates will respond to Q&As (posting date TBD.) Questions can be submitted here.
The deadline to submit questions is 25 June at 11:59 UTC. (See the OTW announcement for details.)

Known dates

June 16 Candidacy deadline at 11:59pm UTC. Candidates are also required to become members of the OTW by this time. Deadline for candidate Bio and Platforms to be submitted to the Elections Committee at 11:59pm UTC.

June 18 Candidates are publicly announced and Bios and Platforms are published. Q&A questions can be submitted as soon as the post goes live.

June 25 Deadline to submit questions for the Q&A process. Questions must be submitted by 11:59pm UTC.

June 30 Deadline to become a member in order to vote in the upcoming election. Anyone who becomes a member between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, inclusive of both dates UTC, will be eligible to vote in this election. 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. Donations must be minimum $10USD.

You can check your voter eligibility by sending a query via the contact form on OTW here.

July 2 @ 20:00 UTC Quarterly board meeting | on Discord here: https://discord.com/invite/VXPf7kB7bD | Chatlog documented here

July 22 Voter instructions sent by email to eligible voters.

July 7-July 27 Candidate Q&A responses get rolled out through 4 separate posts (July 7, 13, 20, and 27). Each candidate's bio and responses have been compiled on this journal for easier navigation; see above.

Public Candidate Chats

These will take place in the OTW Elections Discord server (different from the board meeting server) | on Discord here: https://discord.com/invite/GQAdmdd

July 29, from 01:00 UTC to 02:30 UTC – Anh P., Kathryn S. and Zixin Z. | Raw Transcript
July 29, from 15:00 UTC to 16:30 UTC – Jennifer H, Qiao C. and Zixin Z. | Raw Transcript
July 29, from 22:00 UTC to 23:30 UTC – Anh P. and Jennifer H. | Raw Transcript
July 30, from 01:00 UTC to 02:30 UTC – Kathryn S. and Qiao C. | Raw Transcript

August 1 Deadline to contact the Elections Committee with a proxy request if you will be away from email for the entire election period.

August 11-14 Election is held from 12:01am UTC on Friday to 11:59pm UTC on Monday.

August 15 Election results are announced.

August 22 Deadline for recount request.

October 1 Board turnover.

Additional Information

~~Four (4)~~ Five (5) spots out of seven (7) are up for election this year. Without resignation, one can be on the Board of Directors for 3 years.

EDIT: Due to the resignation of three (3) candidates on 27 July 2023, there are 5 open slots and 5 candidates, meaning that the election is uncontested. The two candidates with the least/lower priority of votes will serve the remainder of the terms for the Board members who withdrew early.

The four spots available are:

Heather, who resigned on 21 May 2023, and was elected in 2022 (announcement post); a candidate with less votes will serve for the remainder of her term.
Jess, who resigned on 5 November 2022 (announcement post)
Antonius, who resigned early on 27 July 2023 (announcement post), and served the remainder of Kati's term (2 years) starting in 17 August 2021, after Kati resigned (announcement post). Kati was elected in 2020 (see below)
Alex, who resigned early on 27 July 2023 (announcement post), and was elected in 2020, along with Jess and Kati (announcement post)
Natalia, who resigned early on 27 July 2023 (announcement post); a candidate with less votes will serve the remainder of her term.

As of approximately two weeks ago (link), Alex Tischer is no longer the Webs chair. Information about the chairs and their respective committees can be found here.

I am aware of the current controversy surrounding AO3. Initially, I had planned to make a write-up, but as the whistleblower is in the middle of compiling full documentation of the incident, I will wait for that to be released before reporting it here.

This blog is against the colonization of Palestine. I will not elaborate further on this. If you take issue with any assumptions you make of me because of this, I will leave you to examine that for yourself rather than making it my problem.

This has been cloned for documentation purposes. Please share and support

dhobikikutti on their post over here.

( Read more... )

Recount request deadline: August 22

(source)

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 candidates who placed fourth and fifth in this election, Jennifer Haynes and Zixin Zhang, 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.

For trackers and subscribers: someone has made a post politically contextualizing and outlining the sequence of events specifically surrounding the mismanagement of Chinese volunteers on Tumblr here.

ETA 31/07/2023 3:40AM UTC:

fandomantiracism has a post politically contextualizing and outlining the sequence of events specifically surrounding the mismanagement of Chinese volunteers. I am not affiliated with this blog.

For context, see also:

Any additional testimonies or commentary about the mistreatment of Chinese volunteers will be added into this post, and the timestamp will be updated accordingly.

azarias, 2023-07-29 18:22: (link)

This is Azarias. I'm signing so that this story can be fact-checked.

What happened with Zixin this week is the SECOND time I know of a volunteer trying or threatening to get mainland Chinese volunteers arrested and the Org responding with "Meh."

Several years ago, there was a PAC volunteer who lived outside of China. They spoke Chinese as a first language themself, but did not like mainlanders. Being on PAC, they had access to AO3 user records in addition to all the info on volunteers anyone with Slack access can get. By design, the OTW doesn't collect much information on users or volunteers, but there's still more information than you want an authoritarian government to have.

Another volunteer who spoke Chinese looked at their Twitter and saw that they were complaining about mainlanders in the OTW and "joking" about how they should let the CCP know about what those folks were doing. They also used ethnic slurs to describe mainlanders. The volunteer who saw this let another East Asian volunteer know (sorry I'm being vague here but I don't want to drag people into this without permission) and reported the tweets to OTW leadership. They were told someone would look into it but the process is really long and difficult so be patient.

Weeks later this was still going on. The two volunteers who had reported this happened to mention it to me. I was alarmed, so I DMed some Org leaders on Slack and made my own report, reiterating what the original reporters had said.

Within 24 hours of a complaint from me, a white woman, this person was fired from the OTW. After weeks of the East Asian volunteers' identical complaints not being addressed. I don't even read Chinese, y'all. I had to use Google translate to get the gist and ask a literate person what the idioms meant. The first complaint was made by someone who could read exactly what was happening, but the Org didn't consider it important when they said it.

/azarias

This is the raw transcript organized for readability.

These answers have been crossposted on the candidates' individual bio/platform posts:

( Read more... )

This is the raw transcript organized for readability.

These answers have been crossposted on the candidates' individual bio/platform posts:

( Read more... )

This is the raw transcript organized for readability.

These answers have been crossposted on the candidates' individual bio/platform posts:

( Read more... )

About 48 hours prior to the candidate chat on 28 July 2023, on 26 July 2023 there was an anonymous leak about a "malevolent question" targeted to Zixin.

Note: While most of the questions asked during the candidate Q&A are by anyone active in the chat, questions for specific candidates that they received during the general Q&A period (18 June - 25 June) get asked first, as they are unable to answer them in their official Q&A responses.

( Read more... )

The redacted question

Zixin has changed her mind and decided to publicize the redacted part of the question and her response to it, in the internal OTW chat, and has given permission for it to be shared.

dhobikikutti has shared it on her entry here. (Italics are

dhobikikutti; bold is the redacted anonymous question; unformatted are Zixin's words).
( Read more... )

Note: As of 29 July 2023 9:29AM UTC, I have elected to attempt to block outside search engines from indexing my journal.

This is the raw transcript organized for readability.

These answers have been crossposted on the candidates' individual bio/platform posts:

( Read more... )

Board Work II

( Read more... )

Candidate Q&A Chat

( Read more... )

Discussion on FFA here. It is unclear whether this was a resignation from the Board, or the org as a whole, as Tischer is also the standing Webs chair, a staff member on the Translation and Support committees, and a Tag Wrangler.

The message that prompted this knowledge, according to FFA, was: (posted 27 July 2023) (link)

Alex T has just said on Chat Platform: Guys, I am not even home at the moment but I resigned yesterday [26 July 2023]? So can you maybe stop freaking everyone out.

Because Antonius and Natalia had already begun the resignation process, their resignations were announced first.

ETA: The announcement has been made official on the OTW site and on the AO3 site. (Twitter)

ETA 2: Per a comment on FFA:

Natalia and Antonius had both been on hiatus for over a month due to both being overwhelmed with RL issues. Per Michelle, they had both already begun the process of resigning prior to the incident with Alex yesterday (but hadn't made an official announcement because they were still getting all their ducks in a row).

Then the stuff with Alex happened, and as the nonny above me said, volunteers were telling them to either come off hiatus and begin the process of expelling Alex from the Board, or, if they were unable to fulfill their duties, resign. They both decided to make their resignations official at that point - which apparently was after Alex had also already decided to resign, but it's not clear if either of them knew that.

(Natalia did condemn Alex's behavior in Kutti's post and in the internal OTW chat, but given her previous inaction in other circumstances when Alex was being racist and/or an asshole, I wouldn't give her too much credit.)

ETA: Per a comment by

azarias in

dhobikikutti's journal as of 2023-07-28 19:28 UTC:

Alex is still a committee chair at the moment, so still quite powerful within the OTW.

Antonius Melisse and Natalia Gruber have stepped down from the OTW Board of Directors. Antonius's term was ending this year, so this has only opened one slot for the election, not two. However, as there are five open seats, and five candidates, the election is currently uncontested.

The official OTW channels have not made an announcement. This information comes from

fail_fandomanon.

Elaboration (link):

To elaborate: they are the two Board members who had been on hiatus, which meant, among other things, that the Board wouldn't be able to hold a vote to kick Alex out, since you need a 2/3 majority.

This now means that Kari and Michelle could vote on their own to kick Alex out, if Alex doesn't resign on their own (though it would take at least two weeks, per the bylaws).

It does also mean that the election is uncontested - there are five open slots for the next term, and five remaining candidates. Some of those slots are partial slots, so the election will still be held, and the order of the winning candidates used to determine who gets a partial term and who gets a full term.

To clarify: they resigned from the Board, not from the OTW as an org. Both resignations were prompted by them being unable to dedicate the time needed to fulfill their responsibilities due to RL stuff.

A number of volunteers were telling them to get off hiatus to vote Alex out, or resign.

They resigned.

ETA: The announcement has been made official on the OTW site and on the AO3 site. (Twitter)

ETA 2: Per a comment on FFA:

Natalia and Antonius had both been on hiatus for over a month due to both being overwhelmed with RL issues. Per Michelle, they had both already begun the process of resigning prior to the incident with Alex yesterday (but hadn't made an official announcement because they were still getting all their ducks in a row).

Then the stuff with Alex happened, and as the nonny above me said, volunteers were telling them to either come off hiatus and begin the process of expelling Alex from the Board, or, if they were unable to fulfill their duties, resign. They both decided to make their resignations official at that point - which apparently was after Alex had also already decided to resign, but it's not clear if either of them knew that.

(Natalia did condemn Alex's behavior in Kutti's post and in the internal OTW chat, but given her previous inaction in other circumstances when Alex was being racist and/or an asshole, I wouldn't give her too much credit.)

The context of this post: Alex Tischer has been discussed in passing, in previous discussions about the OTW's cultural issues, for being a missing stair and for their racist comments as a Board member. A recent incident has prompted this post as a compilation of commentary on Tischer's behavior in the org.

Tischer was on the board from 2016-2018, and again from 2020-2022. This can be found here. Prior to being a board member, Tischer has been a volunteer for the OTW since April 2008. The OTW was founded in May 2007.

Alex Tischer is white and German, residing in the UK. Their Slack profile lists their pronouns as "IDGAF", and their bio says "Not nice."

dhobikikutti has called for Alex's suspension due to them recently doubling down on their racist behavior. This incident, as well as

dhobikikutti's call to action, is documented on this post and can also be found here.

dhobikikutti has since stated that the vaguer claims on this post are "broadly accurate, albeit confused in some minor details".

I am allowing comments on this post if any previous or current volunteers would like to provide further commentary on Alex Tischer. This is to minimize the need to link back and forth, while providing a space safe for anonymity. Any attempt at wank will be frozen or screened.

( Previous Incidents )

( Recent Incidents )

( ETA: 27/07/2023 Transcript of a 2020 Slack conversation with a black volunteer )

( ETA 2: 27/07/2023 OTW Reprimand )

( Alex's Resgination )

This has been cloned for documentation purposes. Please share and support

dhobikikutti on their post over here.

ETA 26 July 2023: Further discussion and context on

dhobikikutti supposedly outing a volunteer has been added.

synecdochic's commentary on

dhobikikutti's post has also been added.

ETA 29 July 2023: Emyn, the first candidate who dropped out this election season, made a post on 28 July criticizing dhobikikutti and supporting her CCAP letter.

( Read more... )

Profile

synonymous

November 2023

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Syndicate

Page Summary

That AO3 Callout Post
OTW Elections 2023
November Updates
Resignation of dhobikikutti
OTW 2023 Election Results
(no subject)
The OTW's mistreatment of Chinese volunteers
Candidate Chat 4 with Kathryn and Qiao.
Candidate Chat 3 with Anh and Jennifer.
Candidate Chat 2 with Jennifer, Qiao, and Zixin.
Controversy surrounding a targeted question during a candidate Q&A
Candidate Chat 1 with Anh, Kathryn, and Zixin.
Emyn's response to dhobikikutti, and dhobkikutti's response to Emyn
Zixin Z.'s bio + Q&A (last updated 29 July 2023)
Qiao C's bio + Q&A (last updated 29 July 2023)
Kathryn S's bio + Q&A (last updated 29 July 2023)
Jennifer H's bio + Q&A (last updated 29 July 2023)
Anh P.'s bio + Q&A (last updated 29 July 2023)
Alex Tischer has officially resigned.
Official resignation of 2 Board members
Alex Tischer's pervasive racism, and a call by volunteers for Tischer's suspension
Letter to dhobikikutti from the OTW chairs re: CCAP + responses

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