• Bio
• Board Work I
• Features & Content Policy
• Recent Discussions
• Board Work II
• Candidate Q&A Chat

Bio

Anh P. started drawing fanart of the manga Crest of the Royal Family when they were in primary school, although it would take them several years to stumble into their first time reading a doujinshi or a fanfic. Anh is a Vietnamese fan who often has their interests piqued by their favourite characters in DC, their beloved and niche video games, or Asian media such as Japanese manga and Chinese web-novels.

English is Anh’s second language. They also learnt some Cantonese Chinese from their family over the years, enough to start reading Chinese fanfic years before they started using AO3 in 2013. Prior to joining the OTW in 2022 as a volunteer for the Fanlore Social & Media Outreach team, they also considered positions in Team Vietnamese of the Translation Committee or Chinese language track of the Tag Wrangling Committee. Now besides their current role in the Fanlore Committee, they are also an Open Doors Import Assistant.

Outside of the OTW, they studied Digital and Visual Art, and they are a freelance artist. In addition, they work as a part-time chef at a local restaurant.


1. Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?

AO3 is not the first fannish space that I considered home, but after a decade of using the Archive, it will always hold a special place in my heart. I thought about standing as a candidate in this year’s election, after the initial wave of criticism regarding the Organization’s stance on AI and AI generated content. I have had second and third thoughts on my decision to run for election to the Board, after countless voices of involved parties sparked multiple discussions amongst various fannish spaces in the month of May alone. Although some voices in these discussions are critical of the OTW, as a volunteer, the Organization still treats me better than half of my old jobs. It doesn’t mean the OTW is above criticism, but I still want to offer my help, however little, to improve the Organization.

I do not think the first Board of Directors of OTW would have ever predicted the sheer size of the Organization after 15 years of growing. I understand that I am quite new to the Organization compared to several previous candidates, but I think it’s time to bring new perspectives to the Board of Directors, especially from Asian fans.

2. What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?

I personally work in one of the fields that is significantly affected by the technology behind AI generated content, I can offer advice and context to the Board, as well as fellow OTW volunteers and wider fandom in general. The technology behind AI generated content has a diverse effect on several fields of creativity, although AO3 is primarily text and not images, I think it’s important for fan artists to be aware that the OTW cares about us, and it’s essential to discuss the issue in an open and honest way. Speaking as someone whose job is directly affected by AI technology, I believe that I can offer unique perspectives to the discussion.

I volunteered as moderator for a Vietnamese forum focused on Anime & Manga for years until its overnight shutdown in 2014. Since then, I have been an internet archivist working on various projects to preserve fannish resources, be it fanfic and original fiction from the forum for backup, or fanfic and fanart lost due to censorship. I am aware that my experiences and stories are not unique, but the skills I acquired and developed along the way, such as teamwork, critical thinking during crises and time management during emergency situations, will be invaluable tools for my Board work.

3. 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?

One of the issues I consider most essential to the Organization’s success is making it more approachable to interested bystanders, especially to English as an Additional Language fans or potential volunteers. It’s been 15 years since the OTW was founded; the demographic of AO3 users in particular is very different to what it used to be. While AO3 is still predominantly used by Anglophone fans, the number of fanworks written in languages other than English is increasing every year. However, instead of treating this as a profound advantage to connect and unite fans from different cultures around the world, we are letting the language barriers, minimal outreach, and the lack of transparency–conscious or not–hinder our collective effort to build a true Archive of Our Own.

The approach I’m most passionate about as a necessary next step for the OTW is moving beyond translation of individual posts into different languages, to adapting the various projects into different linguistic and cultural contexts. One great place to start would be Fanlore, which recently has a new help page for non-English fans on how to contribute to Fanlore. My ultimate vision for Fanlore is as a fannish wiki, not just for the Anglosphere, but with articles and language teams to record fannish history all over the world–as Wikipedia exists beyond the English language.

Because both Fanlore and TWC projects are not blocked behind China’s Great Firewall, another good start would be working with Translation to expand the reach of TWC-related projects. Working with Open Doors to expand their outreach into non-English archives, a few of which they’re working to rescue already, is another area where I would like to expand on existing work.

I would like to work with many committees, especially ones like Translation and AD&T, to understand how we can make AO3 welcoming to other languages and cultures.

4. 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.

Before I started as a volunteer for Fanlore, I had this misconception that the Translation committee was the only place where I could help and contribute to the Organization. After nearly a year of working with my fellow volunteers in the Fanlore committee, I see much wider opportunities! However, I’ve also learned that the misconception, that the Translation committee is the only way EAL fans could join and help the Organization, is quite a common issue. Over time, I’ve realised that the lack of communication and transparency is a direct symptom of the fact that the current structure of OTW human resource management is not yet equipped to handle a group of more than 900 volunteers coming from various backgrounds, such as different countries with their respective cultures and geopolitical situations.

I understand that I do not have as much experience of being a volunteer for the Organization as previous Board members or other election candidates. I’m still learning about OTW culture and policies from my work in both the Fanlore committee and Open Doors committee. However, I also think that it could be considered an advantage, as I can offer the Board supplemental input with an open mind and a willingness to learn. Furthermore, I realise that I am less worn out by the frustration at the OTW> that is piling up over the years, and I rarely make assumptions about how things need to be done in a certain way.

5. 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?

At the moment, my workload in Fanlore and Open Doors is quite manageable. I wouldn’t be running for the election if I didn’t think that I could balance Board work with my weekly responsibilities. However, I am aware that the first three months of Board training are the most demanding time, so I’m not ruling out the option to take a short hiatus from one or both of my volunteer roles to accommodate my training and duty to the Board.

Board Work I

What committees have you worked with, and for how long? What have you especially enjoyed about them?


I started volunteering for Fanlore in 2022. I love my work in the Fanlore committee, especially during our themed months where we work together to create social media posts and graphics to promote different aspects of Fanlore. Fanlore also organises several editing challenges and editing chats per year. During these periods, volunteers from different teams of our committee work together to help new and returning Fanlore editors contribute to the wiki. I enjoy seeing the wiki flourish with new editors joining and more fannish history being recorded. I’m glad to learn lots of different parts of our fannish history, from researching and editing on Fanlore.

I started volunteering for Open Doors in early 2023. I care about how to archive and rescue fans’ resources on fannish communities. It brings me satisfaction to be part of Open Doors’ effort of preserving fanworks that are at risk of disappearance and to witness the project’s meaningful impact on our fannish history and culture. However, my passion is exploring how to collaborate and work with other OTW committees – and broader fannish communities – to widen our preservation as much as possible: I believe we can go one step further by reviewing on how we can preserve not only fanwork archives but also fan communities.

In February 2023, I was one of the OTW volunteers that helped organise and celebrate the annual OTW event for International Fanworks Day on Discord. It was a great occasion for OTW outreach and to work with other OTW volunteers, especially ones from the Communications committee. I loved seeing fans bouncing around ideas in the IFD Discord chat and participating in our IFD games. Furthermore, it was a great reminder thatOTW volunteers first and foremost are also fans who joyfully participate in the fannish sandbox.

Where did you get most of the knowledge and preparation in order to know running for board is a good fit for you? Did you feel prepared enough by Board/elections? Do you personally believe that people with no concrete professional experience (such as college students) are apt to serve on the Board of Directors of a US non-profit?

I’m very lucky that my Fanlore chair is one of our former Board directors. I’m talking with her to better understand Board work, plus time commitments for candidates and elected directors. I’ve been receiving lots of help from other OTW volunteers, both within my committees and other committees that I don’t serve in. The invaluable knowledge gathered along the way helps me understand the OTW history, policies, and culture better. From these experiences, I’m more comfortable reaching out to volunteers from different committees – and already proactively doing this for both social and election reasons. Outside of the OTW, I’ve been talking with my fannish friends to get a clearer picture of how the userbase is perceiving the Organisation, and see different points of view from current and former OTW volunteers.

Nevertheless, after weeks of preparation and research, I don’t think I’ll ever be certain that I’m 100% ready for the election and the challenges of Board work. What I can do is equip myself with all the available resources: knowledge, history, proactive communication, even the reassurance from fellow volunteers about how I can bring positive changes to the Organisation.

Personally, as a volunteer, I’m very excited about my fellow candidates, since several of them have professional experience working in nonprofit organisations; I believe that we’re lucky to have them with us this year. That being said, a variety of experiences and platforms that candidates bring to elections are undeniable advantages. In the upcoming weeks, we’re to observe, listen and converse with various candidates and explore who each of us resonates with, so the variety of candidates brings a variety of energies into the election and Board. I believe that people without concrete professional experience can still contribute good work to the OTW as Board members, such as their knowledge from being OTW volunteers.

What techniques do you use to manage pressure on yourself? How would you handle stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable position? Tell me about a time you had to manage a particularly heavy workload. How did you handle it?

I’ve spent years accumulating and developing necessary knowledge and skills to manage pressure on myself, especially in the past where my workload might be easily stockpiled over a short period of time, due to time-sensitive deadlines and last minute revisions from clients. The core of my problem-solving package is to understand my threshold for stress and pressure, accompanied with a healthy coping mechanism in the event of a crisis. I’ve realised that the more I can predict and recognise my pressure triggers, the more I can adapt my attitudes and practise my best to get control of the situation.

At the moment, I’m doing research and building my understanding of potential situations and issues that stepping up into a more visible and personally accountable role may result in my personal life. I understand that being one of the Board members of the OTW is a serious commitment. Board is the only entity that concretely represents “the OTW” as a whole, and is nominally at the top of the Organisation. I think the more extensively I can build my problem-solving package for pressure from Board work, the better I can prepare myself even for the worst-case scenarios.

There was one occasion in college that I needed to handle a sudden increase of workload in a short period of time. I’m aware of my pressure triggers so to better cope with the frustration and stress from the deadline, I started asking for consultation from my professor as well as support from my fellow students. I also looked for personal incentives from the heavy workload, such as the subject of research and the experience and knowledge gathered. Additionally, I reviewed any potential advantages from completing the heavy workload and let those advantages encourage myself to complete the workload sooner.

The Board is the nominal head of the OTW, which means that there is no Chair or other supervisor telling you what work to take on or what your priorities should be. Explain your comfort level with that kind of work and how you think you would handle that scenario. As a board member, how would you handle situations where you encounter an unfamiliar area, such as legal issues?

It’s true that the Board is the nominal head of the OTW, however they are also fellow volunteers with responsibilities to their respective committees. At the moment, the OTW itself is lacking several necessary HR functions, including conflict management between volunteers, between volunteers and their supervisors, and between nominal heads of the OTW and OTW volunteers, to name a few.

In addition, the OTW’s leadership isn’t currently equipped to properly monitor their volunteers’ workload and help them manage it, nor detect or prevent issues such as burnout and boreout. Discussing this with former Board members has helped me better understand the nature of Board work and assigning Board work between Board members – it’s a phenomenon quite similar to group projects – and respectfully speaking, I am aware of the challenges in this type of scenario.

As a Board member, if I encounter an unfamiliar situation, such as legal issues, I’d seek to discuss the matter with my fellow Board members and look for their expertise in related fields. Moreover, I’d consider seeking outside consultation from an appropriate professional if there are no experts to take counsel from within the OTW, including the Legal committee. That being said, I also want the OTW to further develop procedures regarding crisis management, with a robust confidentiality clause, so that the Organisation can do our best to protect and support our volunteers even in the event of emergencies.

Explain in your own words what “fiduciary duty” means for a US non-profit. Are you comfortable with that level of legal commitment? Does being on the Board of Directors of a US nonprofit pose any risk to you or your family in your country? Have you discussed this risk with your loved ones?

From what I understand for a US nonprofit, fiduciary duty refers to the relationship between a fiduciary and the principal or beneficiary on whose behalf the fiduciary acts. Fiduciary duty also includes the duty of care – that is defined as the duty by which a corporate director or officer is required to perform their functions in good faith. Speaking as a Board candidate, it’s a serious commitment and loyalty to the best interest, including but not limited to the financial best interest, of the OTW.

After countless hours of discussing with former Board members amongst several others, and of researching about the fiduciary duties that Board members are expected and required to commit to the Organisation, I’m comfortable with that level of legal commitment. At the moment, being on the Board of Directors of a US nonprofit doesn’t pose any risk to myself or my family in Vietnam. However, I’ve discussed the issue with my loved ones, to keep them informed in case my volunteer work interferes with my personal life.

How might the OTW better support fanworks and fan culture which is hosted in places other than AO3? Do you believe the organization has a responsibility to do so?

The OTW and its projects includes the AO3, but is not limited to it: Fanlore and Open Doors have been working for years to record fannish history, the impact of various events on fandom culture, the culture of fannish spaces, and of course at-risk fanworks. See my Bio & Platform post, for how I’d like to work with Fanlore and TWC to expand our support for fannish culture in non-Anglophone spaces. I personally don’t consider making AO3 the “main” or sole fanwork archive is a good thing. I believe that decentralisation of fanwork archives would foster a healthy environment for fans to choose their own preferable place of fanworks consumption, and better curate their experiences. Thus, it’d facilitate growth of fannish space as well as fandom culture.

One of the first things that comes to mind for me, is to look for professional roles for HR – whom as well as conflict resolution are needed – before we can hire software developers and site reliability engineers, to update and develop a version of the AO3 software that makes it easier to contribute to the Archive development, and easier for fans to host their own fanfic archives based on individual installations. Currently, I’m only aware of two fanfic archives that are taking advantage of AO3’s open-source archive software, and I think that speaks for itself regarding how challenging it is.

I’d like to work with Open Doors and other committees, such as Translation and Finance/DevMem, to explore reaching out to non-Anglophone at-risk archives and, aside from importing their fanworks to AO3, explore ways we can offer support to ongoing fan communities, such as outreach to AO3 userbases.

As a Fanlore and Open Doors volunteer, I consider supporting fanworks and fan culture a fundamental part of our mission.

Many of you mentioned large, exciting projects such as paid HR, DEI consultants, and new mandatory tags. If you encountered roadblocks for these plans, how would you ensure that you can still fill your campaign promises, and how would those new strategies be communicated to OTW members?

From my discussions with former Board members, Board is supposedly an administrative role with limited power over other OTW committees. The Organisation is decentralised with individual committee chairs having the ultimate say over the parts of the OTW that they manage, therefore a lot depends on what chairs are willing or able to do.

Furthermore, Board candidates don’t make “campaign promises”; we only choose some areas that we want to work on to improve or change, because the Board’s power doesn’t include widespread executive control. The potential challenge that I perceive is how little power I have as a single Board member to push for change within the Organisation.

Contracting an HR firm to overhaul the current management of the OTW volunteers is considered essential for the Organisation’s long-term sustainability. I want to support VolCom in any capacity to ensure we successfully lead the HR outsourcing project to completion. Moreover, once a company is hired, I’ll make sure the Board facilitates their work and provides them with all the tools they need to implement necessary changes.
I’m discussing the issues with AD&T volunteers to understand the roadblocks in making multilingual interfaces of AO3 a future feature, what the prerequisite steps are to reach stages of our strategic plan, and how Board members can support said project. In Fanlore, we’re working on promoting the current wiki to EAL fans and editors. The content might still be in English as a first step, but there are many pages & potential new pages that we need non-Western-fandom contributions to.

OTW does have a committee for formation and implementation of the strategic plan for the Organisation. I’d like us to take a step further and have an easily accessible strategic planning infographic with better outreach to communicate with OTW users, members and volunteers, for them to reference and contribute to our progress.
What are your thoughts on PAC and how to improve things there in response to the current controversy?

From various discussions that I follow as well as participate in, I think the Policy & Abuse Committee is understaffed and overworked, and they need additional resources, such as Trust & Safety consultation to help ensure that PAC is implementing best practices to reduce the risk of burnout.

It’s a vicious cycle that got PAC backed up into an unpleasant corner: there aren’t enough people to do their jobs sufficiently – it’s been more than a year since the last external recruitment of PAC – but recruiting for new people now, when PAC is already overworked, can easily lead to burnout of new and current volunteers. Currently, PAC is working with AD&T to develop tools to improve PAC experience; I want to work with them closely to make sure they’ll get the necessary support for improvement of their situation.

One of the projects that I think would help PAC do their job more efficiently is to prioritise discussions surrounding updates of AO3’s Terms of Service. The sooner AO3 has that updated ToS, the better PAC can enforce it and in turn protect AO3 users.

There are areas that PAC would like to change so they could go after harassment more aggressively. For instance, the ToS is focused on fanwork preservation without regard to the contents of the fanworks. Some people have abused this intent by creating harassing works that technically fall within the scope of “fanworks”. We need to strike a different balance, in order to act on any necessary improvements to make AO3 safer & better for our users, while also preserving people’s freedom of posting fanworks. Furthermore, I don’t support removing offensive works that are not targeted harassment; instead, I hope to support better curation tools so that fans can avoid the works they don’t wish to see.

What further steps would you do to foster a welcoming and safe environment for users and fans? Many people find the current process for volunteering with the OTW to be unclear or difficult; how would you like to change the current recruitment process to bring in more – and more diverse – volunteers? What would you propose the Archive to do to protect/support volunteers?

As my Platform says, I want to adapt various OTW projects into different linguistic and cultural contexts, with the endgoal being internationalisation & localisation. Making OTW projects more welcoming toward our userbases, specifically our EAL fans, is a lifetime commitment. I’ve been discussing the challenges of localising AO3 with volunteers from AD&T, and I understand it’d be a long journey. Additionally, if we want to increase the speed of development for AO3 features, paid employees are necessary, with HR functions a prerequisite for transition and workload balancing. I also want to reaffirm the importance of updating the AO3’s ToS in order to better protect fans and users of the Archive from harassment, and to equip PAC with necessary means to act in terms of Trust & Safety initiatives.

Prior to joining the OTW, I used to find the current process for volunteering with the Organisation quite unclear. While keeping volunteering for OTW committees permanently open poses practical issues, the current process has problems and we could research other options. Namely, creating a newsletter for OTW volunteering that people can subscribe to, they’d receive emails when there is an open call for volunteers. Echoing several discussions of how interested fans, and potential volunteers outside of the OTW are underinformed regarding the internal working of different OTW committees, I believe that transparency in communication, and better methods of internal as well as external communication, will help fans get a clearer understanding of how they can contribute to the Organisation.

Additionally, to better protect and support volunteers of OTW, not just AO3, I believe that we need to establish procedures for crisis management and confidentiality, with a better system of conflict management between volunteers, to assure us that we can trust the OTW to protect every one of its volunteers, and that mistakes made once are not repeated.

Features & Content Policy

Would you be in favor to expand further features of the Archive to improve user experience? If so, what features do you think Ao3 needs to add or improve? What AO3 features would you prioritize to help people avoid what they don’t want to see?

One of the features I’d love to see on the Archive is the ability to filter all the ship fanfic with certain characters. For example, I’d love to search and filter all the fanfic shipping my favourite DC character with others, without browsing through the thousand results of tag searching index of said character. Furthermore, I’d like to use tag searching index with additional filters, such as exclusion. I also think that if we could save or bookmark previously-used searches and filters, it would improve user experience further.

To help people better curate their experience using AO3, I think a permanent tag filter feature should be prioritised, as it’d give people the ability to block tags throughout the Archive. If its implementation takes longer than expected, we could further promote other means of doing so, for example, using CSS and AO3 site skins to permanently block tags on the Archive, or accessing several unofficial browser tools to improve users experience on the Archive.

On AO3, there are several existing search and filtering features that can help users avoid seeing content they don’t wish to see. I believe our hidden search operator cheatsheet should be made more accessible, such as adding visualisation for ease of access. Additionally, I’d like AO3 to have a more intuitive way of browsing and promoting our FAQ and its translations toward fans – including our English as an Additional Language (EAL) users – for example, creating infographics to visualise it better.

I’m not a member of the Accessibility Design & Technology (AD&T) committee or the Communications committee, so I only have limited knowledge of how much work it’ll take to develop these features or create the related infographics, but I would work with them closely to support them in achieving these goals.

Do you support adding additional mandatory archive warnings (for example, warnings for incest and slavery), and do you think this is feasible?

After hours of researching and reading related documents, I think we need to be extra cautious about adding new mandatory archive warnings to the Archive as of 2023.

In addition, even if we could all agree to add new warning labels – such as slavery – after countless hours of discussions and debates on how to define said label, some fans would still be unhappy. There’s no consensus about what the definition for the new archive warning would be, nor which fanfics would need it, thus making it an impossible task for the Archive administrators to enforce it.

Furthermore, there are practicality concerns after we deploy a new major archive warning, for example, every single fanwork on the archive might need a little notification flag at the top that says “This fic was posted before [date] when the [label] major warning was implemented.” And the orphaned fanworks would keep that flag forever.

For the above reasons, and from all the internal discussions regarding additional archive warnings that I’ve followed, I believe that adding mandatory archive warnings seems impractical for AO3 at the moment. I understand that this may be disappointing to many frustrated users who have been asking for additional major archive warnings on AO3 for some time. Right now, I don’t think new mandatory warning labels on the archive are feasible, but I’m not opposed to the idea of one if a true consensus were to ever be reached. In conclusion, I would not actively advocate for new archive warnings as a Board member, but I am not strictly opposed to them in concept.

What is your stance on AI scraping/learning from the Archive and AI produced works on OTW platforms?

I’m against Common Crawl (CC), or any other Large Language Model (LLM) libraries, scraping and learning from AO3. I understand that in the January 2023 releases of AO3, we deployed updates to the Archive robots.txt file to disallow CC from scraping the Archive. However, CC is not the only LLM library scraping the content on the Internet; I hope we can do additional research to implement further updates that might limit other LLM libraries from scraping content on AO3. Furthermore, I want to explore the legal options to remove any data scraped from AO3 in the CC database or other LLM libraries.

From a personal standpoint, as someone who is financially affected by AI technology, I don’t want to read AI-generated fanworks on AO3. I want to help users avoid what they don’t want to see more than I want to limit their freedom of posting fanworks. That being said, the OTW and its projects includes the AO3, but is not limited to it. As an EAL volunteer who uses typing assistance, such as Grammarly and other similar tools, for writing as well as grammar and spell checking of Fanlore articles, I think we need to treat AI-generated content and any future policies related to it very carefully.

Specifically for AO3, with the current scale of at least 32 billions words for approximately 5 millions fanworks archived, I don’t think it’s feasible for us to accurately ban AI-generated content from the Archive. For Fanlore – a collaborative fannish wiki without specific author credit – I think that AI-generated content is quite low on our list of concerns. In certain cases, if it becomes problematic – with people inserting AI-generated fictitious information – the Fanlore team would warn the individuals who do that.

In your opinion, what would a sensible policy regarding ai-generated content on AO3 look like? How would you enforce this policy such that NO human fic writers are harmed in overzealous attempts to reign in ai-generated content, as seen on art platforms which attempted an ai ban? Do you think AI is something that PAC can accurately detect and regulate/restrict?

What I want is to help users curate their experience on AO3 better, which includes helping them avoid seeing AI-generated fanworks, such as canonising the freeform tag and publicising its use. I understand that several people would prefer to never see any AI-generated fanworks on AO3, but I don’t think it’s a sensible policy to prohibit AI-generated fanworks from the Archive.

I don’t trust the current “AI detectors” to be reliable or accurate, and I’m opposed to using unreliable software that is likely to mislabel fanworks, especially if it’s likely to lead to harassment. I believe that a policy to ban LLM-generated content without sufficient tools to detect and enforce it wouldn’t be a good policy. Furthermore, I’m worried about using AI detectors for text, as they are especially unreliable when the real human author is not a native English speaker.

AI technology is an evolving field, with related copyright laws still in development. For AO3 users, the concern that human fic writers might be harassed in an overzealous attempt to rein in AI-generated content is very valid, for I’ve seen fanartists facing similar issues. I hope that in the upcoming months, we can serve as a source of information – regarding AI copyright laws – that are likely to impact fandom, and educate ourselves better about the AI-generated content related laws. The more AO3 users and fans are informed about AI technologies, the better we can prepare ourselves and adapt for changes.

I talked with several Policy & Abuse committee volunteers, and I’m aware that they previously discussed the potential updated policy regarding AI-generated content for AO3. However, they have similar concerns about the unreliableness and biases of AI detectors, specifically toward EAL writers. Until technology allows us to 100% reliably identify LLM-assisted works, I don’t think PAC can accurately detect nor regulate AI-generated content.

How do you feel about AO3’s principle of maximum inclusivity of fanworks? Are you willing to uphold AO3’s commitment to protecting content that many consider controversial or problematic? Where do you personally think the line should be drawn with respect to AI, racism, etc? What are the candidates thoughts on content currently being hosted on the site, including the Archive level Minor warning, and how it relates to the sites availability in various countries?

I believe that maximum inclusiveness of content or fanworks is the core of the AO3 mission. See my Board Work I answers for how I want to achieve a balance of making AO3 safer & better for our users while preserving their freedom of posting fanworks. I want to reaffirm again that, even in the near future where we’ll finish updating the AO3’s Terms of Services, I don’t support removing offensive works that are not targeted harassment. Instead, I hope to help people to avoid content that they consider controversial or problematic, such as the previously-mentioned use of site skins to permanently block tags on AO3.

To clarify my previous answers, I think the line regarding AI, racism, etc. should be drawn at targeted harassment. For example, if a fanwork written to be racist is gifted to another user as a way of harassing them, I think it’s a very valid issue to report to PAC and have it resolved as soon as possible. That being said, I’m not a PAC volunteer; as they’re our foremost authority in dealing with harassment and enforcing AO3 policies, I’d listen to their suggestions if any other concerns are raised.

It saddens me that AO3 is blocked in several countries, but I don’t want to put the burden on one fanfic archive to be the ultimate centre of fandom culture. Furthermore, I don’t think that OTW can sufficiently serve fandom as a whole if AO3 has a monopoly on fanwork archives. I would like to define my job as promoting and supporting the decentralisation of fanwork archives to foster the growth of fandom cultures. Moreover, I’d like to help other fans better curate their experience, and find a suitable fannish space for their specific choice of content, whether on AO3 or other archives.

What measures will you take to better protect creators from harassment on Ao3? Would you implement methods to protect creators from harassment in Bookmarks? Eg. Creators can set “disallow/hide comments or tags on public bookmarks or when a user changes their private bookmarks with notes to public”. Or options to delete or respond to bookmarks?

As I mentioned previously in my Board Work I Q&A, I think the sooner we have an updated Terms of Services for AO3, the better PAC can enforce it, and in turn better protect AO3 users from harassment. Furthermore, I want to work closely with PAC to support them and improve the infrastructure of PAC, in order to empower them and provide PAC with necessary tools to do their jobs more efficiently.

I think bookmarks started as a function for readers and by readers. However, as someone who enjoys reading bookmark notes of my fanworks on AO3, I understand that we need to aim for balance. I don’t think that giving the creators the ability to disable the comments and/or tags of users’ bookmarks would be beneficial in the long term. Instead, I’d propose better ways of moderating bookmark comments and tags to decrease the risk of wank and harassment, similar to moderating comments on fanworks. I’m aware that creators don’t see public bookmarks from muted users, and I recognise the risks of harassment in public bookmarks from muted users to the creators. I want to find better solutions to counter these risks.

AO3 Bookmarks are not designed for social interaction, so I don’t believe we would develop features that would allow people to respond to bookmarks. In addition, I don’t believe that we should give the creator the option to delete others’ bookmarks of their fanwork, as it’s against the original design of bookmarks – for readers and by readers. That being said, I believe this proposal is a result of harassment concerns, and a very valid issue. In light of transparency in communication, I’d urge anyone who sees bookmarks with harassing notes and comments to report them to PAC.

Preserving fan culture is a OTW mission, but when preserving & recording history, how do you think say Fanlore can acknowledge, warn or prevent replicating of harassment & hate speech? In your volunteer experience, what resources are available for volunteers & users on what to do when encountering such cases?

I want to emphasise that Fanlore – being a fannish wiki – is a collaborative space; everyone with an account can contribute and edit the content. Any Fanlore user can write or edit articles preserving and recording fannish history on the wiki, as long as they follow our policies and Terms of Service, including our Ethical Standards. Fanlore is committed to upholding standards that include accuracy and the least amount of harm toward fans, fanworks and fan communities.

Fanlore also follows a policy of Plural Point of View, as history of fandom is collective personal experiences and interpretations. We strive to create a diverse garden of knowledge where fans can share their history from their own perspectives. This policy asks fans to recognise their own POV, and invites those with differing POVs to share information about the same events, concepts, and people. Fanlore pages might be flagged by the PPOV flag to encourage editors to add more diverse POVs, and enable them to indicate that more perspectives are needed to complete the picture.

In certain cases, where content on Fanlore might contain actual harassment, experienced editors, Gardeners, and Policy & Admin volunteers actively browse and monitor the wiki; they are available to remove harassing content and flag or react to vandalism. Furthermore, we’re discussing the feasibility of implementing ways for fans to be made aware of triggering content, such as warning labels.

Fanlore has several notices available to alert users of something, such as PPOV, or AttentionGardeners – which allow Fanlore Gardeners to find pages that may need help. We also prefer to discuss issues – including warning labels for triggering content and disputes between editors – on the talk pages of Fanlore articles. In general, Fanlore works best when more editors contribute, since it’s a collaborative project rather than one where the “experts” create & maintain pages.

How important do you think it is to focus on making sure the AO3 software continues to be developed and improved so other people can set up their own archives with their own content and conduct policies?

As I mentioned in my previous answers, and from several discussions with other AD&T volunteers, I understand that we want to hire software developers and site reliability engineers, to make sure that the AO3 software (otw-archive) continues to be developed and improved so other people can set up their own archives with their own content and conduct policies.

Since making the AO3 software more accessible for fans is one of my goals, I reached out to the owners of Squidgeworld and Ad Astra – the only two fanfic archives using the AO3 software that I’m aware of – to discuss the challenges of deploying otw-archive for their sites. We had a very productive conversation, and both Walter from Squidgeworld and SLWalker from Ad Astra were very patient as they explained the hours of work and the many unexpected challenges in deploying the software on their own servers. For example, several things are hardcoded into the software (e.g. links to the internal OTW wiki) that should be adjustable.

Walter and SLWalker are currently working on an accessible/easy-to-follow document on how to set up a fanfic archive using the AO3 software, based on their experiences. I also contacted some of my translator friends – fans who might be interested in translating said document to languages other than English. I hope that as a Board member, I can help the OTW make this knowledge widely accessible for fans, to further my wish of decentralisation in fanwork archives. I’m very happy to see that our productivity may result in a future where many more fanfic archives use the AO3 software to curate their fanwork experience in the way they want to.

Additionally, I want to increase outreach to people who can develop and contribute their code to the AO3 software – it’s open-source, after all.

Comment bots at AO3 are a growing problem. While some of the fixes for that are “better spamblockers,” would you be willing to promote something like OpenID to allow comments from people without AO3 accounts?

After several discussions with AD&T chairs and volunteers, I believe that we’re very hesitant to promote something like OpenID again in the near future. I’m aware that, to counter spambots on AO3, several authors have chosen to disallow comments from guests and people without AO3 accounts. It’s a legitimate concern to better support the ability of people without an AO3 account to leave comments, which is not a trivial issue to solve.

At the moment, volunteers from the AD&T committee are not strictly opposed to ever supporting a protocol with similar features to OpenID to offer more accessibility functions for people who have no AO3 accounts, and I agree with this stance. However, AD&T is generally wary of including third-party functions that we later have to maintain. Right now, we do not have the necessary tools nor resources for that, but further research on different ways to require verification of people without asking for an AO3 account might be feasible.

Fandom cultures can vary significantly. How would you best reflect the specific fandom’s expectations in tag canonization and synning? May I please know if you support speeding up the conversion of large and small non-canonical tags into Canonical ones? Canonical tags make it easier to include or exclude works from search.

Since I’m not a tag wrangler, I’ve been doing lots of research for answers. Some aspects of Tag Wrangling (TW), such as No Fandom tags, have been unwrangled for years, with Additional Tag canonisation being closed down for a similarly long time. I understand that most tag wranglers only work in fandoms that they choose to, so different fandoms with different expectations in tag canonisation and synning may depend on how many tag wranglers are actively working in said fandom.

I fully support speeding up the conversion of large & small non-canonical tags into canonical ones. The TW committee is planning on a trial run of canonising the No Fandom tags in the near future, such as AI-related content tags. However, I’m not a tag wrangler; with my limited knowledge and resources, there are very few things that I – as a Board member – can do to help speed up the canonisation of AO3 tags, as the TW committee, like other OTW committees, is very self-governing in doing their job.

I believe that increasing recruitment and diversifying our recruitment practices could help increase the number and variety of wranglers to work on these issues. Additionally, a major strategic goal for the Organisation over the next three years is to improve our documentation – which several TW volunteers mentioned as a significant need for their committee. For example, the TW guidelines and training documents can be updated to better reflect various fandoms’ expectations and standardise the tags wrangling process. Standardised guidelines and detailed training documents could help to smooth the induction process for new TW volunteers, which has the potential to increase the speed of conversion and canonisation of tags on AO3.

As a Board member, I’d help monitor and support the implementation of our goal toward improvement of internal documentation, alongside the Strategic Planning committee.

Recent Discussions

What’s the biggest problem currently facing the OTW? What is the priority for the Archive to do in general, and how would you see this happening?



It’s very challenging to determine the biggest problem that the OTW is currently facing. I’ve stated several significant issues in the OTW that I as a volunteer observe and have concerns about in my previous candidates Q&A posts; for example:

• Lack of necessary HR functions including conflict management


• Lack of transparency in both internal and external communications


• Widespread burnout among the volunteers – particularly in the Policy & Abuse committee (PAC).

These issues are not mutually exclusive, and I think the fact that all of them snowballed together has made it quite difficult to determine which one is the biggest and how we – the OTW as a whole and Board members specifically – can work to improve the situation and resolve it. From my observations and discussions with fellow volunteers, I think concerns regarding the future of the OTW and the worrying cultural inertia of the Organisation are not trivial issues to solve.

One of my current priorities for the Archive is to improve internal documentation, including training documents for various committees related to AO3 – Tag Wrangling, PAC, AD&T etc. I also want to reaffirm the importance of updating the Terms of Service of AO3. Additionally, I want to work with various committees to improve the infrastructure of OTW committees, especially for PAC, to best equip them with necessary tools to work productively and to protect and support AO3 users more efficiently.

The process would be time-consuming, with significant effort from various committees to overhaul different aspects of our documentation. However, I’ve seen several volunteers expressing their willingness to help edit and update documents, such as the wiki of the otw-archive. Since any potential updates or improvements of our internal documentations would happen behind-the-scenes, most users of AO3 and other OTW projects wouldn’t see the immediate effects from it.

Would you be in favor of creating a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee? Why or why not?

As an EAL volunteer, I’m in favour of a DEI committee in theory. The OTW has 900+ volunteers from different backgrounds with diverse geopolitical situations; normally it’d be a great starting point for a DEI committee. However, the OTW also values the privacy of our volunteers. We have no direct knowledge of the ethnicity of our volunteers, and limited information about diversity within the Organisation. People could come forward on an optional basis, but it’d be strictly opt-in; nobody would be required to share personal details.

The former Internationalisation & Outreach committee had similar functions – an in-house group of diversity consultants and activists. The committee predated my time within the Organisation by several years. From my discussions with fellow volunteers, including former-member Kathryn, and my research about its subsequent dissolution, I think the ideas behind the committee were great. However, their purview was vague – having lots of enthusiasm yet mostly focused on research without a solid end goal. Their passion for diversity in OTW was admirable, but without the necessary professional experience and training, the committee was eventually dissolved.

I believe that an external diversity consultant, if we can find a suitable individual or organisation, would be best placed to think around this issue and handle the OTW’s particular circumstances. This would go hand-in-hand with the HR work that I have referenced, which I believe would lay the foundation for these improvements by improving the OTW’s internal systems; and a culture audit, which I discuss in more detail in question 4.

I agree with the goal of formally incorporating DEI work within the OTW, but a DEI committee seems impractical for us right now. Nonetheless, I’m happy to say that we’re in the process of hiring a DEI consultant. I’ll do my best as a Board member to facilitate upcoming institutional changes per the consultant’s advice.

The cost of becoming a member/voting in elections is prohibitive for many users, particularly disabled, international and POC ones. Do you have any ideas about how this could be improved to make the otw more inclusive and less privileged?

I understand that the cost of becoming a member to vote in OTW elections is an entry-barrier for many users. The Donations and Membership FAQ has some relevant information and reasons. To summarise, since the OTW is legally registered as a nonprofit, the Organisation uses a membership fee as a straightforward and easy-to-check requirement to ensure that each voting member is a distinct, legally recognised individual. Otherwise, one person could create hundreds or thousands of membership accounts to swing elections.

Regarding the effort cost of engaging with elections, for example, navigating through a lot of text in English or attending live chats held in English: the Translation committee is doing their best to translate candidates’ posts to various languages as quickly as possible, to better help EAL users and members follow the election process. I understand that the Elections committee is discussing better ways to support less privileged fans to engage with the election process.

As I mentioned in my Board Work I answers, making OTW projects more welcoming toward our userbases, including BIPOC, international users, and users with disabilities, is a lifetime commitment. However, I don’t believe that reducing the cost of membership is the only way for the OTW to become more inclusive and less privileged. There are several means besides election for fans to contribute and advocate for changes to OTW, to make it more inclusive toward users and members of the marginalised communities.

I acknowledge that our current membership cost is a barrier to many fans, but I don’t have enough information or context to confidently suggest any solutions due to the complexity of the issue, both socially and legally. There’re things fans can do that the OTW – as a corporate entity – cannot, and we encourage and support fans in making their fandom spaces more accessible, diverse, and comfortable for other fans.

What challenges do you see presented to the OTW by its growing international userbase and volunteer pool, and how do you plan to address them? English dominance within OTW has been a longstanding topic of discussion. What actions have you taken, or do you plan to take in the future, to make OTW a more welcoming and accessible space for volunteers and users who do not speak English as their primary language?

As an EAL volunteer, I’m very glad to see the OTW’s outreach as well as engagement toward our international userbase and volunteers has grown. I think the Organisation needs to establish several new HR functions, as well as DEI training and practices, to foster a healthy and welcoming environment for our volunteers, especially EAL volunteers.

As I mentioned in my previous answers, I want to support VolCom in any capacity to ensure we successfully lead the HR outsourcing project to completion. Moreover, I want to research the feasibility of performing a culture audit for the Organisation, to better understand the internal issues of the OTW that have piled up over the years. I want to support the Diversity Consultant Research Officer to the best of my ability, so we can contract a DEI consultant soon. I’ll make sure the Board facilitates their work and provides them with the tools they need to implement institutional changes within the OTW.

I’ve mentioned before that I consider the internationalisation & localisation of various OTW projects one of my major goals for future Board work. I think increased outreach toward our EAL fans and users would better diversify our pool of volunteers, especially toward fans from non-Anglophone countries.

Personally as an EAL fan, I’m adapting the userscript translating the AO3 work posting page created by one of our Chinese volunteers to Vietnamese, as I want to support my fellow Viet fans to have a better experience using the AO3. Additionally, I’m discussing the possible means of improving the internal communication within the OTW with other volunteers, such as the feasibility of internal Q&A with various committees to improve cross-committee understanding. As a Board member, I hope to make the OTW achieve better transparency in decision-making and communication, especially regarding issues concerning EAL volunteers with different geopolitical backgrounds.

Recently, we’ve seen disagreements about how the Legal team handled various problems. How will you clarify to everyone what Legal’s role is, and make sure their actions are within that scope and are documented so their decisions can be reviewed?

I’ve been talking with various volunteers, including the Legal chair, PAC chairs and my Fanlore chair (also a former Board member), to better understand the role of our Legal team.

Legal Advocacy is a committee of lawyers that advocates for transformative works and for legal exemptions and outcomes that will benefit fandom; they also educate fandom about developments in relevant laws. For example, the Legal committee called for fans’ action to support fan-friendly laws in various parts of the world, such as New Zealand and Hong Kong, and to fight copyright laws that pose legal risks toward fandom, such as the German copyright laws.

Most of the Legal committee members are professors of law and/or information science, their expertise includes copyright, technology ethics, privacy and data protection law, and more. As legal experts, they advise on AO3 and Fanlore’s TOS, and can weigh in on legal questions that other committees have. For example, Fanlore has encountered legal challenges in the past and received advice from the Legal committee.

As it impacts PAC, Legal’s role is to help keep AO3’s content policy within legal limits. They also advise PAC on complex cases and potential updates on policy. PAC always has the final say on changing and enforcing the policy, with the Legal committee being an important tool to clarify the limits of PAC authority and discretion, and in ensuring PAC stays within those limits.

As a Board member, I want us to have more transparency in communication, for people to better understand the roles of our Legal team: unless they identify an immediate legal risk, Legal only provides advice rather than taking action itself. I’ll work to understand and clarify what situations might cause Legal to take direct action.

Do you believe there should be any restrictions on people with a history of harassment running for Board? Do you believe there should be any restrictions on people with a history of harassment becoming committee chairs?

I want to emphasise that harassment in the workplace is not a trivial issue to make light of, and is considered a crime in several countries. In OTW, people who are guilty, or strongly suspected, of crimes are to be removed from their committees and possibly reported to the authorities.

However, I think the question is a result of concerns about volunteers with a history of misconduct running for Board or becoming chairs, and that’s a valid issue. Ideally, volunteers with a history of misconduct should either be removed from the OTW, or put on a performance improvement plan per our Constructive Corrective Action Procedure, and held to the terms of that plan. From my understanding, the Elections committee had previously discussed with the Board about either disclosing the history of candidates’ CCAP to voters, or putting other kinds of restrictions on people with a history of misconduct on running for Board. I acknowledge these concerns, and want to find a better way to resolve the issues.

I believe in people’s ability to change after going through the CCAP process, and I think it’s unfair to restrict volunteers from becoming committee chairs because of a past history of poor behaviour – that has since been corrected. However, I think we can further develop procedures and training materials related to becoming a committee chair, to make it more available and accessible for interested volunteers to aim and prepare themselves for that role.

I hope that after successfully contracting a HR firm, we will have more tools to better resolve these issues.

A long-standing issue in the OTW is that chairs often prefer to avoid conflict and never discipline their volunteers. Do you have any ideas for how to solve this issue?

First and foremost, some of my friends – who are also fellow volunteers in OTW – shared their stories with me about how chairs disciplined their volunteers, so I disagree with the statement that chairs “often prefer to avoid conflict and never discipline their volunteers.”

From my perspective as a volunteer, if I had an issue and/or conflict, and the other volunteer was not disciplined, I’d be displeased to know that. However, working to dispute conflicts on Fanlore has equipped me with patience. I understand that volunteers can be disciplined privately, and it’s not my place to demand an observation of said process.

As a Board member, I want VolCom or Board to be more available to the OTW volunteers. I want either or both VolCom and Board to be an easily accessible resource to volunteers – who might have concerns that they’re hesitant to express to their chairs. Accordingly, if there is a case where a committee chair isn’t noticing another volunteer who is causing problems, someone could reach out to either VolCom or Board to express their worries, and we would discuss the issue with the chair.

Following my discussions with the VolCom chair, the committee has an existing process in place for situations like this, and they’re aware of potential changes to said process with any outside HR implementations. Furthermore, I want to reaffirm the importance of conflict management within the Organisation, or the lack thereof. As I mentioned previously in my Board Work I, it’s one of the necessary HR functions that I hope the OTW can be equipped with, the sooner the better, to avoid situations like this and better protect our volunteers, as well as foster a healthy and respectful environment for all of us.

What specific actions would you have the Board take to 1) fulfill its commitments made in 2020 to reduce racism on AO3 and across the OTW and 2) continue to expand anti-racist efforts in the OTW? How will you support Black fans, Indigenous fans, and fans of color in feeling welcome on the Archive of Our Own and in avoiding harassment? How do you feel about #EndRacismInTheOTW?

Racism comes in several facets with overlapping problems. I’ve seen fans discuss racism related to the OTW and AO3 as three major points:

• Racism experienced by OTW volunteers in the course of their volunteer work


• Racist harassment on a user-to-user basis that takes place via AO3’s tools


• Racist content in fanworks on the AO3 that users find unpleasant to encounter

For each of these problems, the Board and OTW as a whole need to develop a different strategy to adapt and resolve it. To fulfil our commitments made in 2020 to help fans protect themselves from unwanted behaviour, we have implemented the mute and block functions. As I mentioned in my Features & Content Policy, I hope we can either expand existing features, or develop new ones, to better help AO3 users curate their experiences and avoid seeing content that they wish to avoid.

I previously mentioned several ways to better support fans in feeling welcome on the AO3 and in avoiding harassment, including, but not limited to, prioritising AO3 TOS updates and supporting PAC to productively go after harassment and efficiently protect AO3 users. Diversity alone is not enough, but for OTW to increase outreach to EAL and BIPOC fans and potential volunteers, and for more of us – fellow EAL and BIPOC volunteers to join – I think it’d help the OTW to hear marginalised voices better.

I assume you meant EOTWR – EndOTWRacism. In May, when they first started the campaign, I admired their determination and willingness to follow a very challenging and broad issue. AO3 is not a perfect utopian sandbox of fannish culture, and it exists within a world riddled with racism and racialisation issues. I don’t want perfect to be the enemy of good in our fight to address racism within fandom.

In my experience, problems in institutions can often be traced back to pockets of stagnation, where people who are uninterested in general change have become calcified in a given organization. How would you approach trying to address that kind of organizational stagnation?

One of the advantages of being a relatively new volunteer in the OTW is that there hasn’t been enough time for me to be entrenched by years of frustration toward the stagnation of the Organisation. The more I learn about the OTW as a whole, the better I understand the context surrounding our culture of inertia.

As a Board member, I hope to better counter the risks of organisational stagnation by developing a healthier workplace environment. This will include efforts toward dealing with unconscious biases from the lack of DEI practices and inclusivity training that hopefully the future DEI consultants would help with. I want to reaffirm that I’ll support VolCom to my best ability to lead the HR outsourcing project to completion. I hope that professional help from outsiders with a neutral perspective will support us in resolving these issues.

Moreover, I believe that improving transparency in communication would help our volunteers as well as our users to gain a clearer understanding of our organisational purpose. I want both the volunteers within the OTW and the users and fans outside of the Organisation to follow and contribute to our development and advocate for meaningful changes in the OTW. I understand that organisational stagnation is counterproductive for long-term growth of the OTW, and I want to do my best to reduce the culture of inertia within the OTW.

In conclusion, I believe that the better OTW is equipped to manage its volunteers and with sufficient HR resources, the better we can address the organisational stagnation.

Board Work II

What’s the main type of Board work you want to do, concretely?



To answer this question, I read through several articles about the Board on the OTW internal wiki, as well as publicly available documents, such as the OTW bylaws and what the Board does on Elections website. I also discussed and consulted with former and current Board members. Concretely, interacting with as many committees as possible would be the type of Board work that I’d enjoy the most. However, that tends to be situational and circumstantial depending on how much a given committee needs to talk or interact with the Board, which will depend on what’s happening with them at any given time.

For example, I hope to assist committees with any projects that require the Board’s help or involvement, and be proactive in working on anything that the Board might be able to help with. Furthermore, I can also help with maintaining and updating documents, especially articles related to the Board on the internal wiki. Since I’m an active Fanlore editor, I’d enjoy writing and cleaning up articles on the internal wiki. I believe that keeping Board pages on the internal wiki up-to-date would aid in my desire for more transparency about Board work and Board process for volunteers who have access to our internal wiki.

I’ve also learnt that there’s always lots of communication to go around, even if it’s situationally dependent. However, the Board gets a fair amount of emails and inquiries, both mundane as well as more sensitive issues. I can also lend a hand in beta-reading different forms of communication. Last but not least, I want to offer my assistance in communications with the Diversity Consultant Research Officer and external HR firms. I hope that my continuing support to these projects would be helpful toward reaching their completion.

Is the current Board’s collective capacity sufficient? Their multi-year delay to update on a priority issue indicates otherwise. Would you support adding seats or administrative staff to the board? What would allow individual directors contribute more (and more effectively) to the organization?

I want to clarify that the current structure and workflow of the Board are not professionally managed. I agree that the current Board’s collective capacity is insufficient to satisfy the demands of Board work, specifically in cases where there are Board members on hiatus. Until we improve the distribution of Board work between Board members, I don’t think adding more bodies to the Board would facilitate changes faster or decrease delays in prioritised issues.

That being said, I think adding appointed seats for administrative assistants – similar to chair assistants in various committees – would help to lighten the workload of Board members, and increase the speed of processing piled-up work. At the moment, the OTW has a Treasurer appointed by the Board. As a Board officer volunteer, they typically help tackle the Board work related to finance and financial planning.

I also want to clarify that administrative assistants are not Board-track or Board officers, as I want to recruit their help but not to subject them to sharing their legal names like Board officers and the risks thereof. To start with, I believe that they could help sorting through and combining questions to the Board, and analyse the feasibility of a triage system that prioritises time-sensitive concerns.

Additionally, I support hiring a permanent executive director with full-time paid commitment toward the day-to-day management of the Organisation volunteers. Board members are fellow volunteers with commitments elsewhere – both in their personal as well as volunteering lives. I believe that someone whose sole responsibility and focus is the administration of the OTW would be beneficial in the long term.

A productive and effective workflow would allow Board members to manage their volunteering time between Board duty and duties to their respective committees, as Board members are fellow volunteers in various committees.

The OTW has a history of distrusting its Board of Directors (most notably demonstrated in the 2015 elections). What steps do you think the Board could take to regain trust, not just with internal volunteers, but also with the broader community of fandom?

Since the 2015 mass resignation predated my time in the Organisation by years, I reached out to several senior volunteers who were active at the time, and one of the 2016 Board election candidates, to discuss the details behind the event.

As James said in his platform in 2016, and I agree with him, the OTW should have procedures in place to ensure that if one or more members of the Board are committing misconduct – including, but not limited to – violations of fiduciary duties to the Organisation, volunteers or the OTW membership should have the ability to hold a vote of no confidence in said Board members. Lack of conflict management systems within the Organisation and procedures to hold the nominal head of the Organisation accountable – for their actions and repeated offences – has fuelled some egregious misuses of power in the OTW.

After trust is lost, it’s a long and challenging process to regain it from volunteers and users. From my discussions with senior volunteers, I think the best approach is to start small. Namely, Board members should sign their names in communications, to show the individuals behind the nominal head, and to remind the public of the individuals that they voted on in previous elections. I also think that, as I mentioned in my Board Work I answers, an updated purview for the Board would be beneficial for internal volunteers, and external fans and members, to better understand how much power the Board has or doesn’t have. We need to clarify their duties, authority, and limitations, both for volunteers within the Organisation and for fans who enjoy our projects.

I want to improve communication and transparency, so that volunteers and users see our effort in improving ourselves, and can trust that mistakes made by the previous Board members aren’t forgotten and won’t be repeated.

As a Board member, would you support contracting external subject matter experts to perform an institutional audit, including potentially developing a revamped org chart, with the goal of strengthening internal efficiency and organizational resilience? If not, how would you pursue those goals?

I fully support performing a culture audit of the OTW, but there need to be more HR functions in place first. The OTW needs to be functional enough to successfully overhaul the Organisation based on assessment, analysis, and recommendations from a culture audit. As prerequisites for a successful and useful culture audit, the Organisation first needs usesable HR structures including:

• Conflict management


• Paid staff transition


• HR training and procedures in various committees.

I also think that a uniformly professional establishment of hierarchy, or an org chart as you said, would be beneficial for the long-term growth of the OTW, not necessarily just for the culture audit.

Furthermore, I want to reaffirm that the OTW takes the protection of our volunteers’ demographic data very seriously, and we’re not gathering demographic data about our users or volunteers. A business audit often starts with “review of documentation and standard practices.” As has been noted, our documentation is weak and does not represent how a lot of work actually gets done. So a review of the documentation will not serve to show strengths or weaknesses of the Organisation itself, unless we successfully update our internal documents per the Strategic Planning goal.

Serving on the Board of Directors means you will have to work with all committee chairs. How do you plan to handle situations where your priorities do not align with the priorities of committee chairs?

As I mentioned previously, working with various committees is the type of Board work that I most want to pursue if elected. In situations where my priorities don’t align with the priorities of committee chairs, I’d listen to their expertise. I’m only a single volunteer who may not have the key experience and understanding of their committee’s inner workings. We might be making different assumptions that lead to different priorities, so I would work to align our starting point.

I’d also listen to my fellow board members: If we want to convince committee chairs of the reasoning behind our priorities, I’d want to work with chairs to understand why they consider their priorities more time-sensitive and find ways to address their concerns.

In my previous Q&A, I proposed working with a committee to improve their infrastructure, if they want it, as exemplified by my answers related to the Policy & Abuse committee. Additionally, I want to reaffirm that, as a Board member, I’d advocate for respecting chairs’ expertise and listening to their suggestions, not overstepping or overreaching, hence making the issue worse.

That being said, it’s been brought to my attention that committee chairs and Board members are volunteers who occasionally have flawed assumptions and judgments. They might make decisions that they believe are in the best interest of the OTW and/or other volunteers based on their experiences and assumptions, without sufficient consultation from fellow volunteers to back up their claims. I understand that we’re more connected now than we were in 2015. However, internal communication can still improve, so that the voices of concerned volunteers can be easily heard by the Organisation, especially by chairs and the Board.

How would you handle conflict – with volunteers, users, other board members, the OTW’s aims? Are you good at conflict resolution? Especially understanding people’s viewpoints in a text discussion, and explaining and standing up for your own without making stuff blow up. What strategies do you use in those situations?

Based on my understanding of this question, I’m concerned that the asker could be unintentionally or intentionally prompting from me a more detailed discussion of events subject to the Organisation confidentiality policy in my answer, specifically internal conflicts related to OTW volunteers and OTW internal processes. However, if I’m wrong, I respectfully submit that this paragraph shall serve as my disclaimer against any accusations of deliberate breach of confidentiality.

Hypothetically speaking, depending on whom I’m having conflict with, my strategy would differ accordingly. For example, if a Board member who holds a superior position is having conflict with other volunteers, I’d try my best to be a calming influence and accommodating to the volunteer. I don’t want my position as a Board member to fill the working environment with apprehension and fuel distrust.

When I have conflicts with other editors on Fanlore, I take time to analyse the cause of the conflict, and try my best to see the conflict from the other editors’ point of view. I prefer to dispute conflicts on Fanlore via discussions on talkpage, as it’s a collaborative wiki project and other editors may chime in with their thoughts and ideas for me and the editors that I’m disagreeing with.

To manage conflict in most cases, I employ these techniques:

• Be aware of conflict, listen and pay attention to potential conflict


• Investigate and/or analyse the conflict and the people involved, including myself


• Initiate conversation and be ready to ask for help


• Proactively communicate to build a bigger picture of everyone involved in the conflict and their point of view


• Choose a course of action: Compromise? Agree to disagree? Collaborative effort for a win-win situation?

Considering the evidence that has been brought to light of past board misconduct, if elected, what would you do to make sure such egregious misuse of power cannot be repeated?

This is not the fault of the question asker, but since I cannot ask follow up questions for clarification about past Board misconduct, I won’t have enough information and context to understand the specific past misconduct being referenced.

Over the years, the OTW has had various types of misconduct, but the most notable might be the reasons that caused the mass resignation of the 2015 Board directors. As I mentioned before, I want OTW to have a clearer procedure to hold Board members accountable for their actions and misuse of power. I also want to establish procedures to suspend Board members and/or to remove them from the Organisation entirely, in case of repeated misconduct with no improvement after years of making themselves comfortable in the system that unconsciously supports and perpetuates their behaviours.

Furthermore, I’ve witnessed how the OTW lacks effective enforcement procedures for the Codes of Conduct (CoC) when the person violating it is a Board member. I want to facilitate, with consultation from Legal and VolCom, ways to give volunteers and OTW members more power to demand accountability and the upholding of fiduciary duties from the Organisation leadership.

I’m relieved to see chairs and volunteers united to offer support and demand accountability from Board members after their misconduct was brought to light. I hope we can maintain this solidarity and improve our organisational culture to better resolve these issues.

What would you do to improve transparency of the Board’s actions and processes so that fans outside the org know what the OTW is doing? Board meetings are an hour long, held just four times a year, and frequently end without sufficient time to answer questions. Would you be in favor of holding meetings more frequently, making them longer, or holding special Town Hall type sessions where the focus is on answering questions?

I contacted Kari Dayton for insight into Board work: The OTW has 18 committees with diverse goals and projects; volunteers can receive monthly newsletters to keep up with OTW committee projects. I want to research the implementation of something similar for fans – a mailing list to help them follow and inquire about what the OTW is doing.

I discussed the topic of OTW Board transparency with my fannish friends outside the Organisation. Every year, Board directors are selected by public election. However, after the results are published, elected Board members effectively vanish from public view. I don’t want that if I’m elected – I don’t want quarterly public Board meetings to be the only opportunity for members and fans to see my actions. At the very least, I want to converse with fans outside of the OTW as a fellow fan, not just as an OTW Board member.

I want to clarify that the current public Board meetings are an opportunity to give the wider OTW insight into what the Board has been working on, and to answer questions from attendees on the meeting agenda. They shouldn’t be the forum to discuss other topics, especially current controversies that’d require significant research and effort.

Instead, I’m in favour of holding “Town Hall” sessions to address public interests, which would mostly be limited to “the Board listens and takes notes and will later inform people of the results.” Mailing lists could be used to release regular announcements as follow-ups – including results and progress of the sessions.

However, I want to acknowledge the skills and effort that maintaining mailing lists would require of the OTW, as they’d need people to moderate those means of communication. I’d listen to our volunteers’ feedback and work with them to improve the transparency and productivity of both internal and external communication.

How to you plan to improve internal org communications so that every volunteer has a chance to be heard, rather than just the loudest voices? For example, do you have plans to do surveys or focus groups of among volunteers?

To improve internal communication, I want to consider the feasibility of maintaining internal Q&A sessions across various committees, starting with Legal, Strategic Planning, and AD&T. It’d help people understand other committees’ internal workings. Furthermore, I want OTW to research a better way of hosting internal communication than our current tools. I’ve been discussing this with various volunteers, and several people have expressed their concerns about the significant effort required to keep track of information and internal discussions.

I discussed with System volunteers to have an understanding of how many resources would be needed for OTW to self-host our own internal communication software. I hope that we can research more tools to improve and secure our communication.

The Organisation has a CoC to ensure volunteers’ conduct in internal spaces. However, I’ve seen various cases of violations of it, especially during stressful situations, which makes other volunteers hesitant to speak up for fear of being seen as nuisances or facing retaliation. I want the OTW to have a clear process for reviewing CoC violations, so context can be cited and clarifications can be made.

I consider surveys or focus groups essential for performing a culture audit of the OTW. In most cases, a cultural audit mainly consists of three parts:

• Assessment: Review of policies, procedures, and documents (may include reviewing internal communications like email or meeting minutes).


• Analysis: Once auditors have the data, they can analyse it for trends and evaluate if the Organisation’s culture is supportive of its long-term goals.


• Recommendation: Once they identify the problems, they recommend solutions.

However, for OTW to have a culture audit, we need some HR functions in place first. We should start sorting out our internal issues, to improve functionality before thinking about evaluating our workspace culture.

Name another candidate you are looking forward to working with and describe how you believe your skills or experiences will complement each other.

I’m very excited about several of my fellow candidates in this year’s election. However, amongst them, Zixin is my favourite. As one of the candidates who has concrete professional experience working in an NGO, Zixin’s insight and knowledge are invaluable, and can be seen from various answers that have been published.

Additionally, Zixin has worked in more than three OTW committees; specifically her understanding of PAC internal processes, as well as her proactive communication during stressful and emergency cases, would complement my strength and understanding of Fanlore and Open Doors projects.

There are also several overlaps between my and Zixin’s platforms and Q&A posts. I’ve been open and comfortable sharing my thoughts and ideas about our mutual goals, such as developing the internationalisation and localisation for AO3 and other OTW projects. Additionally, the fact that I’m well informed about AI-generated content and related software & laws balances her views on issues related to the AI-generated or LLM-assisted content on the AO3.

Last but not least, my goal regarding the decentralisation of fanwork archives would complement her view towards making AO3 a great fanfic archive. I love AO3 as an Archive, but decentralisation is also a good way to tackle some of the problems in the fannish space and within the OTW. I think it’d be beneficial for us and for the fannish culture as a whole, if we can have more and more stable and independent archives. I believe that normalisation of having many fanfic archives and sites for specific things is good for the long-term growth of fannish space and fandom culture.

Candidate Q&A Chat

For Anh, how do you expect to enforce an AI ban considering PAC is already overloaded? Would you be willing to consider a mandatory AI content warning instead of a full ban on AI, to ease the burden on the Abuse team and spare innocent users from false reports?

I don't favour an AI ban, so that's all moot. But in a situation where I thought the archive should be enforcing restrictions on content that don't currently exist, like new warnings or restrictions on embedded media content, I would first want to review the PAC procedures, with consultation from PAC chairs and additional research on instructions regarding how to address the new rules; I would also consider the feasibility of recruiting more volunteers for PAC before the new policies go into effect.

Furthermore, I want to reaffirm that all Major Archive Warnings are enforceable by PAC, so a mandatory AI content warning would be counterproductive to PAC being overloaded. Please read my Q&A: Content Policy for additional details and reasons.

https://elections.transformativeworks.org/anh-ps-2023-qa-features-content-policy/

Now this question is for all candidates: what's something you've done in the org that you're proud of?

Anh: Since I'm quite new to OTW, there are not many great things that I've accomplished yet. However, I'm quite proud of the effort and research, as well as the knowledge that I've got, from all the hours and conversations that I've been doing in the several weeks since this year election started.

It makes me very happy to see my hardwork and preparation for all the Q&A acknowledged. The other day even one of my Viet friends outside of the Organisation sent me recommendation post about me and my candidacy. I'm also very happy that my proactive communication on the OTW internal chat tool has started several new friendships with my fellow volunteers.

On the other hand, I'm very happy to see results from my decision to contact SLWalker and Squidgie when I was researching about otw-archive (AO3 software), and how feasible/accessible it is to make the process of deploying the otw-archive for other Fanfic archives. I've said this several times in my previous Q&A, but I want to reaffirm that decentralisation in fandom is good and we should promote that. I'm very glad to see more discussions in fannish space about how we can achieve it.

Thank you for your answers! The next question is also for all candidates: crisis communication seems to be a major pain point right now, with transparency being on many of your ballots. Do you feel adequately prepared for this style of communication?

Anh: I'd say that I'm adequately prepared for this style of communication. This is the major topic in several discussions that I've been having with my fellow volunteers. I also mentioned some aspects of how to achieve that in my Board Work II: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/anh-ps-2023-qa-board-work-ii/

I would be more comfortable if the OTW can achieve more transparency in communication, both internally and externally. I believe that the OTW started switching to our current internal chat tool around 2015, and I think that after 8 years -- with various updates in technology and changes in workplace culture -- we can start researching newer ways of improving internal communication.

I hope that we can further improve our choice(s) of internal communication, at least to put less burden on volunteers to connect with each other -- as the fact that OTW is completely remote is normalised after the pandemic.

I also hope that the fans outside of OTW can learn more about us as an Organisation, and learn about different ways they can contribute to the project outside of donation and volunteering.

Question for Anh P: You're a volunteer for Fanlore and Open Doors, which are projects that are less well known to some OTW members. What kind of outlook do you bring to the table as a result of your experience?

Anh: Since I'm actively working to promote Fanlore on social media as a volunteer of our Social & Media Outreach team, I think that speaks for itself regarding how much I love Fanlore. I've seen other volunteers jokjoke about Fanlore committee being true neutral in OTW, especially during controversies. I believe that it shows Fanlore's mission of fannish history preservation.

Open Doors is another project focusing on fannish preservation, especially fanworks. I think as a Fanlore/Open Doors Board member, I can bring back the focus that OTW is an Organisation to serve fandom as a whole, not just this one Archive and this one wiki. For example, amongst this year candidates, I was the first one speaking about decentralisation in fandom and fanfic archives.

I hope that by being on the Board of Directors, I can promote for this aspect to fellow OTW volunteers and to fans outside of the Organisation.

The next question is for all candidates:
How would you improve disciplinary practices to ensure they are working to prevent discrimination not reinforce it?

Anh: I also mentioned something similar in my Board Work II Q&A, and to quote it again:

I want the OTW to have a clear process for reviewing Codes of Conduct violations, so context can be cited and clarifications can be made.

I think disciplinary practices in the OTW is still lacking right now, as it's also related to the lack of conflict management within the Organisation. I want the Organisation to have a standardised process of disciplinary practices in various committee, with cited context and clarification for both the volunteers and the superiors that uphold the disciplinary practices.

It's also another issue that overlaps with the lack of transparency in our internal communication, and the lack of our current documentations. I want both the process and the procedures related to disciplinary practices to be widely available and accessible for volunteers.

I want volunteers to know that the Organisation takes their wellbeing seriously, and I want a neutral party, such as VolCom, to be available and accessible resource for volunteers to express additional concerns about disciplinary practices, especially during the cases of discrimination.

Thank you for your answers!
We again have a question for all of you here:
There is a perennial problem with volunteer burnout, retention, and recruitment across many committees of the OTW. What steps, if any, do you think board can take to aid committees with ensuring that volunteers are supported appropriately?

Anh: I also mentioned this several times in my previous Q&A, but I'm happy to elaborate more:

I talked with various PAC volunteers, as their committee is one of the most affected by burnout and lack of recruitment right now. As a Board member, I hope Board can start proactively communicating with committees' chairs and listen to their concerns. I hope that Board can facilitate purchases of off-the-shelf solutions, such as software and services, to support our volunteers more, especially in cases of emergency as the OTW doesn't have enough personnel resource to immediately react.

I also think that improving internal communication and making Board a more available resource to all the volunteers will be beneficial in the long-term.

That being said, Board members are also fellow volunteers who may suffer from burnout, I want OTW to have better HR management and workflow distribution in every committees, and for Board of Directors too. I hope that the HR outsourcing project will offer us insight and recommendations, as well as necessary tools to facilitate this.

This is also one of the major goals in our Strategic Planning for 2023-2026, and we welcome volunteers as well as users to contact us about the progress: https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26569

The next question is for all candidates:
Right now, there's no time or task tracking in most committees, and because of that, it's hard to figure out how much work it takes to run the OTW. How would you approach getting useful info about hours spent on various projects/committees?

Anh: First I want to clarify: in Fanlore committee, specifically for Social & Media Outreach volunteers and our Graphic Designers, we do have in-house process for task tracking, and I'm aware that several other committees, such as AD&T, Tag Wrangling, Communication and Translation, etc. also have tools for task tracking, so I disagree with the statement that there are currently no task tracking in most committees.

Actually this question is one of my concerns, and I've discussed it previously with the project leader of our HR outsourcing project, and I am happy to share what I've learnt from our conversations. I believe that for OTW -- as we are completely remote since 2008 -- we should look at these issues in terms of human resources.

For example, how many people it takes one committee to finish one task, and if said people are junior or senior volunteers, those are more interesting metrics to HR professionals. I also want to share that it is already very challenging for onsite companies to track the time their employees are working, and it's not practical for a remote, volunteer-based Organisation like us.

Our first question of the chat is for both of you! There has been a consistent and unfortunate pattern of Board members resigning before their term is complete. What are your thoughts about this? How would you approach or balance the obligation to serve the needs of the OTW as a Board member and your personal capacity to do so?

Anh: I mentioned this in my Board work II answers: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/anh-ps-2023-qa-board-work-ii/, but I can elaborate further:

I don’t think the current workflow distribution for Board members is productive. I’ve talked about this with Kari Dayton, and one major stressor for Board members is that people often forget that Board members are also fellow volunteers with commitments elsewhere, and it’s illogical and stressful to ask Board members to contribute more of their volunteering hours to tackle both Board work and their work in other OTW committees.

I proposed the Board assistants, or as some other volunteers prefer to call it Board Assistants Team (BAT), with the hope that we can lighten some of the workload for Board members. During several weeks of Elections, I’ve spent at least 10 to 15 hours researching and fact checking, sometimes significantly more – for example this week, as I have 2 candidate chats and 1 Q&A. It’s fortunate for me that my day job permits me to do so, but I’m aware that several of our current or former Board members do not have that time.

I also mentioned in my Board Work I Q&A about how I plan to take hiatus from Fanlore and Open Doors to accommodate my Board training and Board work. I hope that, similar to how I receive support from fellow volunteers during the election process, I will receive support from them again in the upcoming months for Board training.

Thank you both! Next we have individual questions for each candidate.
For Anh, we have a question that Jennifer answered earlier in Chat 2: It's become apparent that there are missing checks and balances within the OTW to hold those in leadership positions accountable for misconduct. Once elected, what first steps would you take to cover these gaps?

Anh: I also mentioned this in my Board Work II answers, specifically the part related to Code of Conduct violations. I want to reach out to VolCom, as they are often the neutral party in CCAP and Codes of Conduct violations, to develop procedures to help volunteers and chairs provide context and citations in the case of Codes of Conduct violations. I also want to reach out to volunteers and let them know that the Organisation is developing those procedures and policies to hold those in leadership positions accountable for misconduct.

One of the issues that I’ve observed within the Organisation about reporting misconduct and Code of Conduct violations is that volunteers are often unaware of the process, and how to report, as well as who to reach to express their concerns. I’ve discussed this with one of the VolCom chairs, and they expressed their willingness to be a neutral party to help volunteers when there are concerns about misconduct related to their chairs.

I acknowledge that our current conflict management is still lacking, and I want to start by helping volunteers to be aware of our current resources, such as VolCom, and to address their concerns about holding leadership positions accountable for misconduct.

Thanks for your thoughtful answers! Our next question is: What would you consider to be a successful first year as Board member? I.e. at the end of the year, how would the OTW have changed in ways you considered to be positive?

Anh: In short, I want to complete my training in the appropriate time frame. I also mentioned several projects as well as the major types of Board work that interest me in my previous Q&A (specifically Board Work I & II). I hope that by the end of my first year, OTW will improve our transparency in communication, both externally and internally. I also hope that the HR outsourcing project will reach completion by the deadline and OTW will receive the several necessary HR functions to deal with our issues.

Furthermore, since I also expressed my concerns about elected Board members vanishing from the public after the election, I hope that by the end of my first year, OTW will develop better ways of communicating and PR. I want fans outside of the Organisation to follow and contribute to the improvement of the OTW, and that we reach key stages in our Strategic Plan for 2023-2026: https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26569, specifically regarding Paid Staff and Documentation.

Here's our next question: "First, I want to thank all candidates for choosing to run during this tumultuous time. As many of you stated that the decision wasn't easy, do you have any any suggestions on how to encourage people to run or to improve the experience of running?"
The audience member said that they want to make it clear they think it's fine if the answer is broad or if you only answer one half of their question. They're just curious about the perspective from someone who is in the middle of the process.

Anh: I want the OTW to have procedures in place to better protect its volunteers, and not just the election candidates. Elections has done a wonderful job supporting and preparing me for my candidacy which has been very helpful and encouraging to me.

That being said, I’ve seen several worrying examples of the Organisation choosing to release statements and announcements that, in the process of protecting the Organisation’s best interests, also accidentally throw its volunteers under the bus. In discussions with fellow volunteers about how the OTW can better protect our volunteers and candidates, several volunteers have proposed pursuing an informal research project about how the OTW can improve our democratic process.

For example, is it feasible for the Organisation to transition to another vehicle of non-profit governance aside from the current corporation model, such as a Trust? I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve spoken to fellow volunteers who are lawyers or law students and are excited to tackle this. I also contacted the Legal committee about this proposal, and I hope that we can research a better way to practise democracy in the OTW, while decreasing the risk of doxxing and harassment toward candidates.

That being said, Governance Research and Governance Development are also amongst our key goals of the 2023-2026 Strategic Planning. As a Board member, I’d help monitor and support the implementation of them, alongside the Strategic Planning committee.

Thanks! Now on a lighter note, what’s your favorite tag on AO3?

Anh: It's a very challenging question, as I don't think it's possible for me to pick one single favourite tag on AO3.

So I'm going with my top three here -- in alphabetical order, but no fic recs as my bookmarks stay between me and Cthulhu:

- BAMF![insert my current fandom obsession/blorbo]
- Crossover and Fandom fusion
- Time travel ruin-it/Time travel break-it

You're right, that was a tough question! 😄

Thank you both
Here's our next question: from recent events we see that there is a delicate but critical balance between a reasonable confidentiality policy while upholding accountability and transparency. As board members, what do you think are the most important factors to consider when finding that balance?

Anh: The most important factors to consider when finding that balance are how we can protect our volunteers from harassment due to the lack of transparency and accountability, and to respect our volunteers’ wishes for privacy.

I’ve seen volunteers discuss that in a typical case knowledge and information should stay on a need-to-know basis. I’ve seen examples of Board members or people in leadership positions releasing hasty announcements to explain themselves, and in the process they accidentally release information that should stay confidential.

I want the Organisation to improve our procedures to counter these risks. I want volunteers to feel reassured about our commitment to privacy, but at the same time allow us the right level of transparency and communication to ensure accountability.

This also echoes my wish to improve our existing procedures related to Code of Conduct violations to allow for clarification, citation and context. I also want more detailed policies, and perhaps informal best practices, regarding Confidentiality clauses for the Organisation.

Thanks! Our next question is about race and racism in the OTW:
it can be uncomfortable when white and non-white volunteers work to tackle racism, since there’s inevitable emotional tension between them. have you found yourself in an uncomfortable situation like that to address racism within or out of OTW? did you manage to work around tension and achieve positive outcome? what have you learned from that?

Anh: Okay first I have something to confess, I’ve been uncomfortable with a number of white people and their actions/reasoning when discussions related to racism happened on the OTW internal chat tool. Fortunately for me, I have several white friends in the Organisation who have been kind enough to offer to be my trusted white people to talk on my behalf – a volunteer of colour – to those uncomfortable white people.

I also discussed these issues with one volunteer of colour who is vocal and outspoken about racism inside the Organisation, and they actually reassured me that not everyone could be “rabblerousers” in the fight to address racism within the Organisation, as we would need diplomats too. I was very relieved to hear that.

The fight to address racism within the OTW is ongoing, and I’d imagine that it’ll continue for years to come. However, since I’m not alone in this fight, and we volunteers of colour actually receive support from several of our white volunteers, I believe we can maintain solidarity and cooperate across our differences to address these issues.

Thank you for your thoughtful answers. Here's our next question, and our last question for this chat:
Besides AD&T, are there any other existing committees, as opposed to HR and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), that you think could benefit from paid help?

Anh: A committee besides AD&T that would benefit greatly from paid help is Finance. I believe that the committee has been recruiting for volunteers to help with investment of the OTW surplus fund for at least two years without results. I think it’s time to look at the issue from another perspective and ask professional paid help about it.

From my discussions with Strategic Planning volunteers, and from my understanding of our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, I’m aware that research about fundraising is one of our key goals. However, if it took us two years to find no volunteers to assist with our investment, I don’t want to spend another three years waiting to appoint someone as a Fundraising Research Officer to tackle these issues. I hope that after we reach the key stage of Paid staff transition in our Strategic Plan, we can start the process of hiring paid help for investment.

Of course, additional research about fundraising models should happen simultaneously while we’re looking to hire someone, as I believe such knowledge is important.