dhobikikutti

dhobikikutti

dhobikikutti

Previous Incidents

azarias

...Alex Tischer is a bully who's driven multiple volunteers out of the org with petty cruelty, for no better reason than to amuse himself...

...1. George Floyd was murdered and the Board rejected calls to say anything about it, or BLM, or racism in general. IIRC, the reasons given internally were "That's a US problem and it wouldn't be fair to our international volunteers and users to prioritize it," "It's outside the scope and mission of our organization," and Board member Alex going off on a black volunteer with accusations of trolling when she asked about it in the Board channel...

...Alex has been Board for six years now, has been chair of Webs for longer, and has publicly (open channels) and semi publicly (large locked channels) driven many people, current/former/future chairs included and some of which are the most even tempered people I know, to extremes. Nobody would call Paula even tempered, and death threats are inexcusable, but Alex doesn't shy away from (and I think they actually revel in) riling people up past the bounds of civility...

FWIW, Alex has also been going hard in favor of shutting down the Weibo, and has been a dick to Chinese volunteers over it. The idea that she's worked to make the OTW more diverse and inclusive is laughable.

Alex Tischer, in response to, presumably: "What would you do to ensure that volunteers feel supported within the OTW, especially volunteers of color and other marginalized groups who may feel that their voices go unheard??"

...Being an international organisation we must also be aware that different marginalised groups experience harassment very differently, depending on location and their own personal background, and be mindful of those differences. By taking a US-based approach, or relying on US-sourced materials, we risk only addressing an US-based concept of racism, potentially missing large groups of affected volunteers. This is counterproductive to making the OTW more diverse and inclusive, and something I believe essential to how we approach the issue at hand...

Dismissal of Chinese volunteers regarding their concerns of an additional language tag during Weibo recruitment

Alex Tischer, when she was board-elect but not yet on board, publicly and with apparent authority, dismissed the concerns of Mainland Chinese volunteers when they expressed upset that the OTW’s actions* might be endangering them. It was more important to her to ~not appease a shitty government, so worried vols could just quit.

*the addition of an ill-considered Tai-gi (Taiwanese) language tag. At a time when Chinese volunteers were asked to recruit their fellows on Weibo.

I remember talking to people about this one at the time. It was messy. It was like, if volunteering for the OTW makes you worried about your personal safety, don't volunteer for the OTW, because it's certainly not worth going to jail for. Which is obviously just common sense. But of course putting it like that leads to hurt feelings. She should've been way, way more tactful.

There're some broader context surrounding this that should be taken into consideration.

First off, adding a new languages to AO3 typically means a user sends a request to support, support consults Translation team, then gets the approval from the board, and a new language request gets to the coders to add it to the list.
This is a sensible process under normal circumstances.



This happened in late August 2020, about 6 months after AO3 was blocked while the drama was finally starting to die down but it was still unclear if further actions may be taken against AO3 or the OTW (blocking projects other than the AO3).
Both Taigi and Cantonese were to be added around the same time and it was proposed to the weibo mods that they promote the news.

It was also about 2 months into the HK National Security Law taken effect, which states it has jurisdiction over people living overseas who are involved in working with a foreign organization (which OTW probably would fall into) to incite hatred from HK residents against the Beijing government (a public post that might get over 1M views and potentially heated discussion that a post might stir up could be interpreted as such).

The sentiment of "if you are uncomfortable with the risk, don't volunteer" is valid if it's the risk is only for volunteers living in China accessing AO3 or other sites while conducting work for the OTW using a VPN (because using a VPN is illegal and you can get called to the police station and have a chat with them and made to write a promise that you'll stop), that's a risk the mainland China based volunteers have already known and agreed to take on as they choose to continue to volunteer at that point.

The org adding languages that have complicated geopolitical implications and pushing to publicly make an announcement that would be seen as pro HK independence without properly consulting or notifying the volunteers who might face the legal consequences is quite different.

The point here is most volunteers based in mainland China did not know this was coming and was given an out before it was already a fait accompli.



At the time, both Taigi and Cantonese were to be added. Most Chinese speaking volunteers agrees and welcomes the decision but have disagreements about how to name the languages and set up a system that will allow more distinctive dialects of Chinese to be included in AO3 in the future, should fans decides to write them, or if volunteers themselves write them down the road.
There were also discussions about how to name the languages to avoid confusion (many people actually thought Taigi was referring to Traditional Chinese initially, after it's been added) and if more works written in a dialect that is close but not entirely in Taigi or Cantonese were to be posted, if some sort of a guideline document can be created to help users choose the language option when they post/search works.

As far as I know only a few volunteers in the translation team were asked if Taigi can be considered as a separate language, when, at the time, there were about 3-4 dozen other native Chinese speaking volunteers in the OTW, who can help connecting the OTW to either the userbases who might use the languages or scholars who have studied on the subject. Translation team objects to the language name and suggests a broader term, then never hears back about this. Presumably the user requested the language rejected to proposal from Translation and there were no further discussions until the language has been approved and the weibo mods are asked to promote it about a week before the language option was added.


It's been almost three years, there were no Weibo posts blasting this but there were backlashes as people noticed the addition as well as discussions amongst Chinese fans about the dominance of Mandarin over other dialects that has been declining over the decades and why those dialects should be protected on the platform.

Luckily no one got into actual trouble, as it seems. However, I don't think you can say with hindsight "hey, no one got hurt, so it's all fine and dandy."
The point is the OTW had and probably still has a system that allows the org as a whole to make a formal decision that could expose volunteers to more risks than they anticipated when they signed up to volunteer initially without informing them of the risk proactively.

It's kind of like you're at work, you probably don't want to be told out of the blue: "Hey, we got some potentially serious biohazard materials delivered in the room 3 hours ago. You're probably breezing in this stuff now. You might want to exit the premise if you don't like being exposed to it, we have no extra protective gear for you."

So it's not "they added Taiwanese and Cantonese as languages at a time when they were asking mainland Chinese volunteers to promote AO3 on social media," but rather "they added Taiwanese and Cantonese as languages and asked mainland volunteers to publicize this specific action on social media"? That's very, very different from what was first said, and an extremely stupid move.

Both are true to a degree. They happened somewhat concurrently.
I should mention that a lot happened at the time and it's been a while since the story has been told so events might not have happened in the exact orders.

To be fair to Alex, she wasn't the person asking the mods to make a post on weibo. That comment was true but came up later in the saga.
The suggested post was something along the lines of "if you have work in Taigi, but tagged under another label, you can retag now" - if it's not too much wank. It would of course, be too much wank, but the request in itself was not unreasonable, except Weibo was far from the best platform to make such an annoucement.

TW was recruiting specifically for Chinese speaking volunteers through Weibo at the same time, and this was already delayed from March 2020 for obvious reasons.

That particular comment and some other objectionable comments came up later when the security concerns were brought up specifically by the weibo mods, requesting further decisions (some more language option request had came in by then) and public announcement or explanations through support or PAC on the subject to be handled more delicately because of the rising geopolitical tensions at the time and as the new requests came through, as well as the potential added political risks due to the OTW being perceived to break a politically neutral stance without any clear communication or reasoning that suggest otherwise by adopting languages suggestions and how their displayed naming on the archive.

The reasoning part, while not required, would be helpful to users encountering the recent change to chose the appropriate new language option, particularly after the confusion of whether Taigi meant "traditional Chinese" had already resulted in users mis-tagging some works not too long after the change went online.
There was eventually an explanation on the reasoning and how authors should tag the languages - after a few more options in addition to Taigi and Cantonese were added.

Granted people were probably not behaving at their best after what had been leading up to that point in 2020. However, considering this was also just a few weeks after the then board made the promise on combatting internal racism issues and aims to be more inclusive, it was a little ironic how this played out.

Further racism against Chinese-speaking volunteers

With regards to 2, the context is that Chinese volunteers were expressing their frustration with not being listened to by posting comments in Chinese rather than English. Alex responded by posting the following comment in German, basically scolding them:

Wir können uns gegenseitig alle möglichen Dinge an den Kopf werfen aber wenn wir uns nicht auf eine Lingua Franca einigen erreichen wir nicht viel.

[Translation: We can throw all sorts of things at each other, but if we don't agree on a lingua franca, we won't achieve much.]

Another board member later posted a comment on behalf of the rest of the board (posting first in Chinese and then translating to English) apologizing for Alex's behavior:

We also want to apologize for the dismissive and inappropriate behavior of Board director Alex, who replied in German to your comments with the intention of making herself harder to understand. The Board absolutely does not condone this behavior in any way, and we are ashamed that this has taken place.

But Alex herself has no shame, so she's just doubling down on it!

Eh, the context seems to be that the Chinese volunteers were speaking Chinese in protest. I think that's important to note because it's not really a natural consequence of working in a multilingual org or whatever, they were specifically being treated poorly and protested their treatment, and Tischer decided to scold them in an openly racist manner rather than actually engage with that.

Why were they upset?

... IIRC they were told to shut down the Weibo account without any input from any of the actual volunteers running the Weibo account.

Before that, they were also pressured to announce a specific new language that's politically sensitive for mainland Chinese volunteers, without any warning that this announcement was coming. So a bunch of volunteers living in a heavily surveiled environment were not given any notice that the risk of their volunteer activities was changing. (And IIRC, Alex specifically made shitty comments about 'not caving to China' despite, obviously, living in fucking England and not being endangered by this political action at all.)

Adding onto this - from what I’ve been told (by engaging with Chinese vols in various channels) regarding the new language incident: they are also upset about the lack of trust and support from Tischer and all. Translation, both when adding the new language and splitting the original Chinese team into Simplified and Traditional Chinese, did not consult the original Chinese translation team at all or any Chinese speaking vols for that matter. It’s as if they assume Chinese volunteers would a automatically be opposed to diversity and support the CCP (or whatever) just because they’re Chinese/from China.

And in case people aren't aware, Weibo is a social media platform in Mainland China. It's not a Taiwanese or Hong Kong platform.

Alex's 'if volunteering for the org endangers their personal safety out in the real world they should put that first and take whatever actions to preserve their safety including leaving the org' is a very nice way of saying 'no one consulted you, we left you with a clusterfuck of confusion, we now demand you make this announcement and we have no other suggestion beyond you either making this announcement and putting yourself at risk or receive CCAP/leave the org, we don't ask other language socmed platforms to make such announcements but mysteriously we want you to do this'.

And it's worth noting that the Board officially apologized for Alex responding in German but _not_ actually for suggesting that it was the mainland Chinese volunteers' fault for being stuck with a(n utterly stupid) decision they had no say in that would put their personal safety at risk in a way that was no way foreseeable when they initially volunteered.

My personal take on AO3's growing popularity in China has been "boy I hope this doesn't get anyone in trouble" for years now, but I really thought the issue would be technological. The disregard for the literal safety of the most vulnerable group of volunteers is fucking sickening.

As with the CSAM stuff, it really seems like it's not real to them, that they don't truly believe their actions could endanger volunteers. Unlike the CSAM stuff, though, I think this might be even more unforgivable, because concern about outing people's fannish participation has been baked into the org since day 1. An inability to adapt that understanding to mainland Chinese volunteers' specific context is just flat-out unapologetic racism.

dhobikikutti

Kutti — Today at 4:26 PM
o/ Ten days ago [23 June 2023] the Board posted a statement addressed to the Chinese and Chinese-diaspora volunteers which placed the entire blame for the Weibo situation on the retired Comms chairs, disavowed any responsibility for setting policy for Comms, and which ignored the questions that the Weibo mods had asked in order to once again offer only a feedback form to collect suggestions.
There was no measure of accountability in the statement, or of concrete change.
And even though multiple voluteers explicitely used the words racism to describe the OTW's treatment, the statement conspiculously avoided any reference to racism or xenophobia.
The statement also had only this to say in regards to the two documented incidents of Alex Tischer making hostile statements that contributed to a culture of racialised harassment:
"We also want to apologize for the dismissive and inappropriate behavior of Board director Alex, who replied in German to your comments with the intention of making herself harder to understand. The Board absolutely does not condone this behavior in any way, and we are ashamed that this has taken place."
But shame cannot be the only official response for the all-white leadership of an organisation.
So how can I or any other volunteer of colour possibly trust a Board that refuses to hold their fellow Board Member accountable, or have any confidence in your capability to select a Diversity Consultant who will actually be empowered enough to advocate against the pervasive culture of racism that permeates this organisation?

Alex said some blatantly racist shit in 2020, as well, and was +1ed by current and former Board members and chairs. She's a missing stair that org leadership actively covers for.

I'm guessing she's still on the board after this, then??

Oh, yeah, they're not gonna eject her or disqualify her from running again in the future. Though her term's ending, and at least the bylaws don't allow consecutive terms. And there's not a way for the membership in general to learn about her behavior, so most people who vote are never gonna know what she's like.

azarias

The Tai-gi debacle happened in 2020, and Alex was indeed rancidly racist about it.

The protest in which Chinese volunteers communicated in Chinese as a protest against the Org not listening to them happened this year [2023], only a month or so ago. That protest was about the Org's unilateral decision to close down the Weibo account, claiming that the Weibo mods were overburdened. The Weibo mods were not consulted on this and did NOT want to shut the Weibo account down, and when they expressed that to the Org in English, they were ignored. As a result, they began protesting in Chinese. The use of the language itself was part of the protest, a considered choice on their end. They weren't ignorant of the utility of a lingua franca, and Alex wasn't ignorant of what they were doing and why. Alex was just racist and couldn't resist taking a swipe at them.

Recent Incidents

dhobikikutti

Demand for Suspension of OTW Board Member

While I have yet to receive a formal response from the OTW Board regarding my rebuttal of the CCAP letter that my tag-wrangling chairs sent to me, a Board Member did respond, today, to a comment made by another volunteer regarding my situation. Because I feel it is in the larger public interest for the community of OTW members and users to know the specifics as an example of how racism is perpetuated within the organisation, I am reproducing the full comment made by Board Member Alex Tischer below.

I have received permission from the volunteer who made the comment being responded to, to quote them in full, along with their handle. I have NOT asked for, nor received permission from Alex Tischer to quote them.

25th July 2023
Posted to the Board Public Channel by Spacegandalf:
Also, while I know we can't know who else has received a CCAP, we can observe behaviour that breaches otw policy that continues over multiple years without any changes, and many, many people have pointed out Alex Tischer's racist behaviour (which has spanned years!) and the way Alex has made working with them unpleasant in the way they interacted with people. I just think it's Interesting that Alex is still welcome as a volunteer, but kutti is being told her actions will make her unwelcome if they continue.


26th July 2023
Posted to the Board Public Channel by Board Member Alex Tischer, in reply to Spacegandalf:
Or, the alleged ‘racist behaviour’ that people have pointed out consists of
a) telling people that if volunteering for the org endangers their personal safety out in the real world they should put that first and take whatever actions to preserve their safety including leaving the org (and at this point I would make the same statement for mental health too, some people have been really affected and to them too I’d say Volubteering [sic] for the Org is not worth more than your personal well-being.)
and
b) Pointing out that we require a common language in the org to be able to achieve anything.
Both statements which I am more than happy to repeat and neither of which go against the code of conduct we all agree to abide by when starting to volunteer. Whereas not abiding to your committees’ confidentiality policy, which you also agree to abide by when starting to volunteer, is very much against the code of conduct.


With this comment the Board Member has established that their pattern of making racialised hostile remarks, from a position of power, is not considered by the org leadership to be against the OTW code of conduct. The Board Member has also reiterated the racist judgement made against me that my actions to hold the organisation leadership accountable are against the code of conduct.

Further, both the previous remarks that the Board Member says they would be happy to repeat, were made to and about Chinese volunteers - the first in a conversation where they were advocating for their own physical safety, and the second when they were advocating for their right to provide communication to users in their own language, as well as their right to be treated with respect and equity.

In both situations, the inappropriateness of the statements was apologised for by other people in positions of power - the former by a Chair, and the latter by other Board members. However, at no time did anyone in authority acknowledge that the statements were racist.

The organisation's leadership continues to deny that they are responsible for entrenched, systemic racism within the organisation that manifests both in structural injustice as well as individualised harassment.

As a current volunteer of colour, and a voting member of the OTW, I call upon the membership, and the larger user base, to demand the immediate suspension of Board Member Alex Tischer, as well as a complete external audit of the current Board's failure in their fiduciary duty towards the well-being of the organisation.

Edited at 10:44pm (India Time) to Add:
I have offered, in the OTW internal channels, to host here, any statements that fellow volunteers wish to make, either anonymously or with a pseud. I will continue to edit this post to add them, as I receive any.


From Entropy:
I think it is the right move on Kutti's part to post what she did publicly, and call for Alex Tischer's resignation. The use of the CCAP and the Code of Conduct to attempt to force privacy above all else makes it impossible to adequately address issues such as this. The voting members of the OTW have the right to know what the people they have elected are saying, especially when it comes to racist, offensive remarks that are not just not walked back, but repeated time and time again. If one suffers no repercussions for their actions, they will continue. The first step in reformative justice is to remove those who do harm from the position which empowers them to do that harm from.
I cannot abide by Alex Tischer being a sitting board member, nor do I think we must simply wait them out until their term ends this year. We should not have to "put up with" such disgraceful actions and words because the person will be out of their official seat of power soon. We should not have to wait them out and suffer longer. Alex Tischer must step down, and acknowledge the harm they have caused to volunteers by relinquishing the power they have. If they do not step down, I call for them to be suspended. No one should have to put up with abuse in the hopes that it ends soon. Allowing this to pass without counter-action taken gives an implicit pass for actions that occur in the future. This can only be stopped when we put a stop to letting it happen without consequence.
I say this as a volunteer tag wrangler of three years, the behavior I have witnessed from this board member is frankly disgusting. The amount of disrespect toward our Chinese volunteers shown is detestable. Alex Tischer's casual presence in other spaces makes those spaces unwelcoming to those they have repeatedly disregarded without true consequence for their actions and words.
Furthermore, I second Kutti's call for an external audit of the board. These issues run deep, but they cannot properly be addressed until we see the ways they are rooted into the organization. The OTW must embrace change, and it must be willing to admit and look into all its faults of the past and present in order to take steps forward in the future.


From Jennifer H [current board candidate]:
The fact that Alex feels comfortable enough to publicly denounce the people pointing out their racist and unacceptable behavior is indicative of how systemic and deep-rooted it is in this organization. To the current and former board members: you have created and perpetuated a culture of racism without accountability, and you have actively caused pain to the volunteers of color who work to keep this organization going. This is why there needs to be more ways to remove board members from their duties - based on their blatant disregard for volunteers of color, Alex never should've been elected in the first place and they sure as hell should not remain a board member or volunteer in the OTW.

Commentary

azarias

I was an OTW volunteer from 2017-2022. I can attest that I saw Alex Tischer make blatantly racist comments and engage in racist bullying for pretty much that entire span. Her behavior in 2020, where she and others dogpiled volunteers of color who voiced concerns about racism, stands out in my memory as particularly vile. 2020 is also when she told volunteers in mainland China who protested the OTW endangering their safety that if they didn't like it, they should quit.

In addition, Alex is just a general bully, whether she's being racist at the same time or not. As a new volunteer, the first time I spoke to Alex in a public channel, a veteran volunteer took me aside in DM and warned me about her. She's a missing stair in the organization that everyone else is expected to dodge around.

For a long time, Alex's pronouns in her Slack profile were "IDGAF" and her bio was "Not nice." I fully empathize with not caring about one's personal pronouns/experiencing gender as a burden you didn't ask for. I mean, same. But combined with her overall behavior, it's clear that she meant "IDGAF about your pronouns, either." It's a relatively minor thing beside the rest of what she's done, but it shows the kind of immature edgelord she is.

Since the OTW obviously prefers to believe white women over anyone else, there's my testimony.

...

It's important to recognize that, when the membership elected Alex to the Board of Directors in 2020, they had no way of knowing about Alex's behavior. Members who are not volunteers can only go off of Alex's public statements, which haven't been great but don't necessarily throw up red flags if you don't have context.

The only way for members to decide that Alex's behavior is unacceptable and refuse to elect her again is for volunteers to tell them, which necessarily involves public discussion of internal OTW communications. Demanding a complete blackout, that no information whatsoever be shared publicly, allows abusers to gain and hold power in the OTW with members none the wiser. Instead of taking a look at its own systemic problems, the OTW uses its vague and over-reaching expectation of privacy to bludgeon whisteblowers and refuse to answer questions.

Her pronouns and bio are still "IDGAF" and "Not nice" which is why I wasn't sure what pronouns to use for her in what I shared with Kutti. It doesn't give us a comfortable, communicative environment to work in when a sitting board member holds this attitude toward the volunteers she works with, and the question of respect at large for others.

- Entropy

spacegandalf

While obviously I approved of my words being quoted here which is inherently am endorsement of this being posted publicly, I just want to reiterate that I'm really glad you continue to speak up, Kutti. I can confirm that Alex is absolutely a missing stair and there have been times when I have wanted to ask the wrangler of another fandom a question but decided not to upon discovering the relevant wrangler is Alex, because it wasn't worth the inevitable hostility I would face during the exchange. As a white volunteer, I'm sorry that I didn't speak up against Alex sooner, especially as I was well aware of Alex's 2020 comments. As many cvols in particular have painstakingly pointed out, this is so much bigger than just one person - Alex is merely a symptom of the wider problem - but I hope that Alex facing meaningful consequences can be one step of better support for volunteers of colour.

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

This is a transcript of what happened when a Black volunteer (they willingly self-identified as such, their ethnicity was known to the org) asked a question in the Board Slack chat room in June 2020. AFAIK, the volunteer left the org after this. Alex is Alex, Nat is Natalia Gruber, Lex, Aline, and Priscilla have all been on Board before.

[Black volunteer] 16:03
Does the public get to ask board candidates questions at any point?
And how do I find a list of current board. Fanlore?

CJ Record 16:04
https://www.transformativeworks.org/board-directors/

Nat 16:04
Also https://wiki.transformativeworks.org/mediawiki/Category:Board_of_Directors

CJ Record 16:05
and yea, fanlore: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Organization_for_Transformative_Works/Board_of_Directors

Nat 16:05
And yup, there's a Questions & Answers period in the election process, as well as live chats where peeps can also ask questions

Apollonie 16:06
(You have our pronouns and countries on our wiki page too if you're trying to reach someone for an emergency and well... ~timezones https://wiki.transformativeworks.org/mediawiki/Category:Board_of_Directors )

Alex 16:07
https://elections.transformativeworks.org/timeline/
Here's the timeline what happens when

[Black volunteer] 16:14
Thanks!

doughtier 16:16
you're running for board? :o

[Black volunteer] 16:16
Probably next year.
Decided not to this year. Too much stuff to do irl. I'm curious about the board diversity

Lex de Leon 16:24
That phrasing is chilling. Would you mind clarifying what you mean so it doesn't make me think of extremely bad things?

[Black volunteer] 16:24
What phrase?

Lex de Leon 16:26
"curious about board diversity". I keep running into variations of that from racists and TERFs and I'm on a live wire over it, but I know that's not you so I would really love to know what you actually mean. Is it literal? Or do you have a specific question?

[Black volunteer] 16:27
Countries, ethnicities, race etc.?
Does that clarify?

Lex de Leon 16:28
To what end?

doughtier 16:17
:nods:

[Black volunteer] 16:17
Do we have a survey of people in the org? Age? Race? Ethnicity? Etc
Even an informal one

Alex 16:17
We intentionally do not ask those questions

Aline 16:18
It can be literally dangerous for people in some countries
And even a informal one would heavily lean in the direction of countries where there is no restriction on political engagement

Alex 16:18
And on who is active on slack which is a different subset

Lex de Leon 16:19
No. There is not. What we do not know, we cannot report to governments.

Aline 16:19
Very much
We can’t be subpoenaed for info we dont have

Alex 16:19
We have a name people want to be called by and an email address. That's the information we have of our volunteers.
For donors we have some financial information but we do not connect those with any other information.

doughtier 16:20
Also that they've said that they're over a certain age

Alex 16:20
Yeah, they ticked a box confirming they will follow the CoC and they are above a certain age.

Priscilla 16:21
Even while there are many countries where volunteering itself is no obvious sign of trouble, there are a lot of countries where some of the content that you access as a PAC staffer, for example, is illegal. We need to protect our volunteers who do not live in places subjected to US law.

Aline 16:22
Our wish for some data is not bigger than our volunteers safety

doughtier 16:23
(australia comes to mind, p)

CJ Record 16:24
(Aside, because I just looked up at the topic: when's the next public board meeting?)

Alex 16:25
If I had to guess after the election?

Claire 16:25
At this point, probably just after the election, yes.

Aline 16:26
I understand that people want other to disclose their personal information so they can access diversity
But seriously, think about this for a second

Zoë 16:28
I think rather than asking potentially invasive and complicated questions about minorities, we could instead focus on boosting volunteering opportunities in communities we want to see more people from? I think choosing people we want to be on board based on their ethnicity or background is unnecessary pressure on those who might not want the position on top of everything else

Alex 16:29
We had times where we had literally no Board members in the continental USA

Aline 16:30
You want to “guarantee diversity” by forcing people in countries where this is dangerous to disclose their location, making it much less likely those people will volunteer

Memé 16:30
I don't think they said they wanted that. They just asked a question, and now they know why we don't do this.

Apollonie 16:31
(For the purposes of this discussion, I need to remind people that by US census standards Arabic people are considered to be White, and well. There are many countries (including mine) where that would be an absolutely bonkers stance to take. So like, even if we evaded all other questions, any census we'd make would need to be heavily separated from the American concepts of race to be respectful to everyone)

Priscilla 16:31
(Boosting volunteering opportunities how? Most committees are either overwhelmed by too many applicants as it is, or struggle to find people to fill in the spots they need with the background they require to be able to do the job.)

Zoë 16:38
I mostly meant individuals signal boosting in their own communities, subreddits etc, rather than an official org policy which would be ... difficult

Priscilla 16:39
Ah, I see! Yeah, that’s always super helpful. Particularly because that’s way more trustworthy when it comes from a personal place
(Rather than a one-line description + link)

Priscilla 16:32
(Or both at the same time, if you’re Translation and try opening recruitment for like, German and Welsh in the same week :smile: )

ioana 16:33
(have mercy)

Alex 16:33
We're NOT OPENING RECRUITMENT anytime soon again. NOPE

Serkestic 16:35
What happened? :eyes:

Alex 16:36
We had 80 or so applicants for each of the big player languages and got to assess them all :D

Ori 16:33
(German, Spanish, Indonesian and Dutch)
(clearly we were mad)

Nat 16:33
Some of these German people could learn a third language, just saying

Ori 16:33
(so many apps)

Alex 16:33
~nope

[Custom Slackbot response]

Aline 16:34
If we do a census I would heavily insist it is completaly anonymous and optional
And also we are very careful where we host it

[Black volunteer] 16:35
No one suggested it not be any of this or anyone be forced. I asked if the info was available not suggested force be used

Alex 16:35
It's really not worth it. The additional information is not worth the risks and dangers.

azarias 16:37
So what I just saw was a volunteer asking a question in terms of "Do we do this?" and, in addition to getting their question answered, also being met with suspicion and hostility about their motives and what we imagined their follow-up questions to be. That's one of the things I mean when I say that I feel internal communications are poor and tend to shut down discussion more than share knowledge.

Alex 16:39
Given all the recent conversations, backreading a channel, at least a little bit, to see if a question has been recently asked would usually be considered common sense.
Plus, there were a lot of questions answered without any criticism beforehand.
It's more that we've had these conversations, multiple times, in multiple rooms and there seems to be a trajectory for these questions.

[Black volunteer] 16:41
I'm pretty sure you're aware most people don't back read an entire channel to search for what they are wanting to know.

Zoë 16:45
So in normal situations this might not necessarily be the thing to do, but this is a high emotions topic in a context where it’s been implied information is hidden, so a slack search would not be amiss. We didn’t mean to come off like we were trying to shut anything down, but it can be irritating to feel like it’s back at square one every time a new person joins the channel.

[Black volunteer] 17:01
Not meaning to irritate you. Simply asking a question. Maybe they can be pinned to the side of the channel as a series of FAQs or there can be a slack trigger that automatically answers the question. Telling one person to back read doesn't solve anything

Aline 16:41
I’m sorry, I’m tired and snappish, and could have answered this nicely, you are right

[Black volunteer] 16:42
I asked a simple question. And everyone assumed. I'll keep this in mind in the Future

Rebecca 16:42
Okay, I think the question just came at a bad
moment because there's been a lot of Stuff around this very topic bubbling under the surface lately. No-one should have jumped down anyone's throats, and no-one meant to

Aline 16:42
But it has been answered several times before this last few days why we don’t collect data on volunteer

Rebecca 16:42
The question was answered, let's all take a breath

Alex 16:43
No, I don't expect anyone to backread a whole channel. I expect people to backread a day maybe or do a quick search. But I'm used to being disappointed with these expectations.

azarias 16:43
Okay, granted that it's frustrating to be asked the same questions again and again. But isn't this a sign that we need to do better about making the answers to these questions known? Lots of conversations happen in lots of slack channels and don't get recorded into an easily-referenced format.

Apollonie 16:47
(considering how many questions I've answered in the course of my work with the OTW that are literally answered on the org wiki or in FAQs, documentation is not the be all end all of things. I mean, being in PAC I'm sure you see a lot of peeps who don't RTFM everyday)

azarias 16:48
That's fair, if those questions are actually answered where someone would think to look. As an interim solution, could we start referencing the wiki or the FAQs, with links, when questions that have already been answered come up? That'll get people looking in the right place.
And if we find out there's a hole in the documentation, we can fill it.

Apollonie 16:49
For sure! (Though I would think Slack is somewhere people should think to look since the search feature is very powerful.)

[Black volunteer] 16:44
Once again I don't tell people to back-read if they have a question. A simple link to what the previous discussion or answer was enough or even answering the question. Sigh.

ETA 2: 27/07/2023 OTW Reprimand

FWIW, a bunch of chairs and chair-adjacent people officially condemned Alex last night in a joint statement (11 listed committees at time of writing) and said they'll be pursuing options for disciplinary action.

Someone said Natalia popped into Slack yesterday to condemn Alex and suggest that the Board president should initiate an investigation and removal vote. If Alex is on Translation, and Natalia is a translation chair, couldn't she do a CCAP on Alex?

Does she have the ability to, as either Board member or Translation chair? Yes. Will she? Well, Natalia, Priscilla, and Aline are some of the people who most often excuse Alex's racist or bullying behavior, so you can draw your own conclusions from that or from what she said when she "popped in" yesterday.

Alex Tischer, Antonius Melisse and Natalia Gruber are all chair or member of the Translation Committee, meaning that Translation volunteers represent 3/5 of current board. It is not possible for the remaining board members who are not part of Translation to effect any meaningful disciplinary action against Alex in her capacity as either board member or chair without the support of either Nat or Antonius.

Natalia:
I'm still on hiatus and will not be taking part in this discussion.

Resignation

azarias

dhobikikutti

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