Bio

Kathryn has spent the last 20 years in fandom, mostly reading and daydreaming elaborate fanfic plots that only occasionally made it onto the page. She has been a volunteer with the Organization for Transformative Works since 2014. Outside of the OTW, she works as a nonprofit administrator, and she is a progressive community activist in her free time.



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

I have been debating about running for the last few years, and been encouraged to run by other volunteers who knew about my nonprofit experience. However, I always talked myself out of it, telling myself that next year I would be in a better position. The recent controversies have convinced me that if I chose not to run this year, I would regret not having offered my skills and experience to the OTW community. I love the OTW and I love the work that I do as a volunteer, so I want to do everything that I can to make sure that it remains an organization I can love and respect. Even if I am not elected, I will still do all that I can to support the elected board and my fellow volunteers in working towards the changes we want to see.

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

I have been working as a nonprofit administrator for the past 5 years, and have an advanced certification in nonprofit leadership and management. I have experience instituting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, creating new policies and procedures, and managing documentation. I also have a lot of experience in Human Resources (HR), as I was my org’s unofficial HR Manager for over a year while we struggled to hire a new person.

Through my progressive activism, I have a lot of experience with managing volunteers, building consensus, and making sure things get done on a tight deadline.

I also have 9 years of experience as an OTW volunteer. My committee has improved and refined our policies and procedures a lot over the years, and I have seen first-hand the positive effects that new leadership with good ideas that encourage collaboration can have. I want to bring that collaborative atmosphere to the Board and the OTW as a whole.

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?

The first thing that I would prioritize is hiring a DEI consultant and a Human Resources professional. The work of finding and hiring for these positions is already in progress, but if it were not completed by the time I am on Board, I would dedicate my time to making sure they were hired and able to start their work as soon as possible. I would also do anything necessary to support their work.

These positions have been needed for years, as the current controversies reflect. The OTW has grown to a point where paid expertise is necessary. First, an outside expert can say things without the same fear of repercussions that people inside an organization may have. Second, a paid expert will be contractually required to dedicate their time to this work, without the same risk that volunteers have of being pulled away due to real life issues or distracted by an urgent problem in their purview.

I think that we will likely find that we need more paid positions once these experts are in place, but this is where we need to start.

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.

In the course of my OTW work, I actually communicate with most of the committees on a routine basis!

My first step would be to ensure that the committees and projects have what they say that they need from the Board, as they know best what would help them. However, I am aware that they may not feel comfortable asking for what they need. I will therefore work to rebuild trust in the Board by ensuring that we are responsive and respectful, and do as much as we can to help.

Aside from that, while it is a lot easier to communicate and build relationships across communities with our current messaging and collaboration tools than it used to be, these are largely informal processes. I would like to create more formal org-wide opportunities to learn what other committees do and what their processes are. It is still far too easy to have no idea what other committees do or why they do things a certain way. This contributes to siloing, lack of communication, lack of trust, and missed opportunities.

Several of the positive changes that my committee made over the last few years were practices we learned from other committees! We have also created new practices that other committees might benefit from. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to learn from each other except directly asking or having a member on multiple committees. We can and should be a lot more proactive about sharing good practices so that they can be replicated. We can also be more proactive about sharing our mistakes so that they are not repeated unnecessarily.

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?

I am going to work hard before the election to wrap up as many of my committee projects as I can, so that I can more easily take a step back if elected. There are some ongoing tasks that I enjoy and do not want to let go of, but I will avoid taking on any new ones in order to devote more time to Board work.

Board Work I

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



I have been an administrative volunteer with the Open Doors committee for my entire time volunteering with the OTW, just over nine years. The only other committee I formally served on is the short-lived Internationalization & Outreach Committee (2015-2016).

However, one of the things I enjoy most about Open Doors is that we work with so many of the other committees as part of our own work!

• Support and PAC — We notify them about upcoming imports and occasionally exchange tickets or ask questions.


• Tag Wrangling — They map the tags of the archives we’re importing to AO3 canonical tags so that the archive moderator(s) can choose which versions to use and the wranglers can easily synch non-canonical tags.


• Communications and Translation — We work with them to post new import announcements and the annual round-up; Translation also has translated the FAQs on the Open Doors website.


• Fanlore — We update and create new Fanlore pages when we research archives suggested as import projects and invite creators from imported archives to contribute as well.


• Legal — We sometimes have questions about whether certain works or archives can be imported, or about the bounds of a wholly new project (such as the Fanzine Scan Hosting Project).

Working with Open Doors, I get to learn a lot about fandom history while working to preserve it. I have seen many archives and websites disappear over my time in fandom, and so it means a lot to be able to keep fanworks from disappearing like they used to. Sometimes we can even resurrect archives that disappeared years ago!

 

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’ve been working in the nonprofit sector in my professional life since 2016. I have a certification in Nonprofit Management and Leadership and some formal Human Resources (HR) training. I also grew up overseas, and as my stint in the Internationalization & Outreach Committee indicates, I have been wanting to use that experience to help improve the OTW for as long as I’ve been a volunteer. I’ve seriously considered running for Board the last few years, but it never seemed like the right time. Running this year instead of next year was a slightly last-minute decision, so I was not as prepared as I could have been. However, the Elections Committee and my fellow candidates have been very supportive!

I think that the specific focus and needs of the nonprofit will indicate what kinds of potential board members would be helpful, and that the US nonprofit sector has been far too rigid for far too long about what kinds of board members they seek out. Maximizing diversity — including diversity of skills and background — among board members is essential to being able to effectively solve problems. If a nonprofit chooses to have a board that actually directs the overall vision of the organization (rather than, for example, a minimum legally viable board), then the board needs to reflect the people that the organization serves as much as the practical needs of the organization. I don’t see any reason why a college student or person without traditional professional experience would not be a capable board member. I’ve even heard of nonprofits that included people under 18 as non-voting board members because the organization was focused on middle- and high-school students.

 

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 have a history of anxiety and depression, so I have a therapist I see regularly and take daily medication. I also plan my schedule to include the amount of sleep and physical activity that I know I need. I am very good at giving myself task deadlines and prioritizing the most important tasks, even if it means that not everything gets done as quickly as I’d like it to.

It is true that the prospect of being on Board makes me anxious, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like it was more important to run than to listen to that anxiety. Even though the actual decision was made last-minute, it wasn’t a decision between running for Board and not running. Rather, it was a decision between running this year, with all of the controversies and also pressures in my non-OTW life, or running next year when things would theoretically be calmer. Given that I seemed to have the qualifications that were specifically being looked for among prospective candidates, I felt like I would be doing the OTW and its members a disservice if I didn’t offer my skills to the organization.

I am currently in a professional position where I sometimes receive external criticism, fair and unfair, and I think I do a pretty good job of discerning the two, ignoring the unfair criticism, and incorporating the fair criticism. As an OTW Board member, I hope that I will have a greater ability to take direct action with regard to fair criticism of the organization as a whole than I do in my professional position.

With regard to managing a heavy workload, I was a stereotypical overachiever in high school and college and have spent much of my adulthood learning how to have more balance.

 

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?

I currently work fairly independently both professionally and in the OTW. Although the Board doesn’t have a particular person in charge, part of any long-term project is assigning or volunteering for tasks and having at least a rough timeline for when they need to be completed by. If that is not something that the Board currently does, then perhaps it is time to start.

The three things I always do are:

• Look for an expert who is willing to answer questions


• Ask for resources to learn more background


• Do the reading and come back with more questions if needed to make a decision

 

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?

Fiduciary duty means that I am responsible for the organization’s financial management and legal exposure, and that I am generally required to use my skills, knowledge, and experience to ensure to the best of my ability that the organization is running well, fulfilling its mission, and serving its staff and constituents. I am comfortable with that level of responsibility.

Generally speaking, being on the Board of Directors of a US nonprofit does not pose any risk to me or my family. However, being on the Board of the OTW means that I am facing the same risk of being called out or piled on as any other reasonably prominent person on the Internet. I have discussed those risks with my bosses at work and with my friends and family.

 

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?

When the OTW was founded, no one had any idea that the Internet would become as centralized as it has. There were hundreds of active archives of all sizes and focuses! The two things that were going to make the AO3 different were (1) that we would accept any fanwork, rather than having limitations by content, fandom, etc., and (2) that we would be permanent and protected by owning the servers and having lawyers to evaluate and respond to Cease & Desist notices.

However, the landscape has radically transformed since then. The Internet as a whole is dominated by a few large companies and small, independent fansites are far less common, far less visible, and have far less support. Given these changes and the fact that the OTW has taken a disproportionate amount of fandom time, money, and attention, I think that if we are serious about not wanting to be the single home of fandom, then we have to start actively supporting other homes.

From my perspective as an Open Doors volunteer, I have seen this shift happen primarily through fanworks archives closing. My ideas on that front greatly exceed the allowed word count for these answers, so instead I’m going to write about an idea that I think would help solve many of these problems, although it would be a big project: I think that either as an arm of the OTW or a separate organization, we should start an OTW Foundation.

The purpose of the OTW Foundation would not be to fund the OTW. Rather, it would be to provide funding for non-OTW fandom-focused projects. This could be a way to fund fandom scholarship, financially support other archives, and maybe even resurrect eFiction and/or Automated Archive software or provide technical support to other archives and fandom projects.

 

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?

Roadblocks are inevitable in any large project, but if the goals are important then you find a way to get there, even if it takes a long time and a much more winding path than you hoped.

Any of these projects would hopefully be the goal of multiple board members, including future board members, so even if they could not be fulfilled during one person’s term, they would have made progress and other people would be able to carry on the work.

I would hope that we would be communicating our progress regularly, and that if it came to the point where we were only able to achieve a particular goal through a means other than the one initially planned, that we would be able to explain our reasoning. Most of the goals that have been proposed (e.g. paid HR) aren’t goals in and of themselves as much as they are the best way to achieve more important goals (e.g. paid support for ADT and Systems), which are themselves a way to achieve an even more important final goal (e.g. relieve the pressure of dealing with long term projects along with day-to-day management). Achieving the final goal matters a lot more than the specific means taken to achieve it.

 

What are your thoughts on PAC and how to improve things there in response to the current controversy?

I plan to listen to PAC and work towards what they say what they need, but also offer an outside perspective on problems. Some ideas I have heard from PAC volunteers that I wholeheartedly support are:

• Prioritize the TOS update, which will increase PAC’s ability to handle harassment now and in the future


• Recruitment and training support to increase the size of the committee


• Increase the number of admin roles on the committee to improve the ability to manage higher level projects


• Research and implement industry standard Trust & Safety practices


• Improve current tools for handling tickets and/or introduce new tools for volunteers


• Include PAC in inter-committee decisions about the AO3 and external communications that discusses our content policy and other PAC work

In the longer-term, I want to increase cross-committee communication throughout the organization so that it’s easier to discuss and solve problems. One of the problems with the organization being so siloed is that committees can get stuck in a loop of having a problem that they can’t solve because all of the obvious solutions are blocked by other problems they can’t solve. Being able to discuss problems org-wide can get other perspectives, or at least just enough people brainstorming that someone comes up with a new good idea.

I also want to cultivate more of a culture of looking outside of the OTW for solutions, rather than treating the OTW as a wholly unique entity. While all of the OTW’s characteristics (e.g. international, online-based, fandom-focused) together may make it unique, none of the individual characteristics are. We need to be more willing to look for solutions that solve some of the problems and combine them, rather than coming up with solutions entirely on our own.

 

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?

I feel very strongly that maximum inclusivity of content should be maintained; however, if we are going to do that, then we need to do more to ensure that users and fans can protect themselves from content that they don’t want to see and that interactive spaces are not hostile.

One thing we clearly need is an organization-wide moderation policy for news posts and similar spaces. The current process is fractured and ad-hoc. Often, bad behavior is not dealt with unless it gets to the point of harassment and threats, where PAC is able to step in. This risks making the comments section a space that is hostile for most users, when it should be a place where most users feel comfortable engaging with the OTW and its various committees.

The best thing that I think we can do to bring in more and more diverse volunteers is to increase the number of non-English-based platforms that we communicate at and non-English languages that we communicate in. The OTW uses English as its working language, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who is fluent enough in English to volunteer is receiving their news through English-based platforms. I know that our official Weibo account has been instrumental in increasing the number of Chinese-speaking volunteers, and many committees are looking for volunteers who speak languages other than English so that they can directly serve users who don’t speak English without having to go through the Translation committee.

At the moment, my main focus for protecting and supporting volunteers is to get paid DEI and HR consultants in as soon as possible. That will put us in a much better position to evaluate what needs to be done and to act on recommendations.

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?



Some features that have been suggested and that I think would be useful to help users avoid things they don’t want to see are the ability to block a tag throughout the archive and the ability to turn off being able to see bookmarks of their own works (if browsing by bookmarks rather than by works). Personally, I would love to be able to use filters on my History and Marked for Later, but I understand that it would be a big project in order to avoid overloading the servers.

Our ADT volunteers are best positioned to know how much work it will take to develop any of these features, and so the best thing that I could do as a board member to make them happen is to help set priorities and work to expand and support the committee, including paid staff and new tools if those would be useful.

 

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

I’m not opposed, but it’s an extremely complicated prospect, and the coding is the least of it. Considerations include but are not limited to:

• How do you choose which warnings to add?


• How do you define the warnings in such a way that PAC can enforce them? Remember, with optional tags the creator gets to decide whether it applies, but for mandatory warnings, PAC has to have a definition that they can consistently and fairly enforce.
  
  
  
  • Consider, for example, incest. How closely related? Does relation by marriage count? What about step-families? Adopted families? Given the kinds of family trees that can show up in fiction, how can we expect PAC to be able to cleanly and consistently determine whether a warning like this applies?
  
  
  
  


• What do you do about works that were posted before the new warnings? Put them all behind a warning that they were posted before certain mandatory warnings were in place? Add Creator Chose Not To Warn to everything posted before a certain date, thereby making it functionally useless as a warning? We hope that the AO3 will exist and grow for decades to come, but that is still millions of works that would be modified without the creator’s approval.

Additionally, as time marches on, more mandatory warnings will be requested. Do we expect to do another round of additional warnings every couple of decades, thereby adding layers of blanket warnings to older works? The best decision in the long view may be to only have mandatory warnings that have some sort of legal basis for existing (namely, the Underage warning), and find other ways to help users protect themselves from other kinds of content.

However, I think that the first priority is to expand the capacities of PAC and ADT so that they can give this proposal the time and consideration it needs without having to be as concerned about being overwhelmed.

 

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

Regarding AI Scraping, ADT is doing what they can to prevent scraping while keeping the AO3 accessible. There is more information in their post here.

I am inclined to consider AI-produced works as fanworks, because they would not exist without the fan’s prompt, even if they did no further work. A fannish playlist, for example, would be considered a fanwork, even though the fan did not produce any of the music, only curated the list.

Fortunately for those who wish to avoid them, I am not aware of any evidence that AI produced works are a significant problem on the AO3. They are also frequently tagged as AI-generated, and per the most recent public Board meeting a canonical tag is in the works, which would make it easier to exclude them with filters. There is no monetary incentive for posting on the AO3, unlike platforms that show ads and share revenue. Either people will enjoy the work and it will get attention, or they won’t enjoy it and it won’t get attention. Posting excessively would potentially be considered spam, and could be investigated by PAC under our current policies.

There are also numerous accessibility and equity issues with trying to determine whether a work was written by an AI. AI-detection tools that are currently available are more likely to incorrectly identify works by less experienced writers, people with neurodivergence, and people who speak English as a foreign language as AI-generated.

Furthermore, where do you draw the line on whether a work should be considered AI-generated? Only works that are written entirely by AI and posted without editing? What about works that are moderately edited? Substantially edited or rewritten? What about using AI to help create a chapter outline? A work outline? What about using software like Grammarly?

 

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?

Given both the OTW’s commitment to maximum inclusivity and the impossibility of effectively enforcing any sort of ban, it is best to permit AI works, so that people tag or otherwise declare them as such rather than hiding them and people who wish to avoid them can do so.

If we had any level of ban, accusing people of posting AI-produced works or reporting them as such would instantly become a new avenue of harassment. Additionally, as I stated above, writing by neurodivergent people, less experienced writers, and people who speak English as a foreign language are more likely to be marked as AI-generated by the AI-detection tools that are currently available. Quite frankly, I doubt that AI-detection tools will ever be reliable enough that our PAC volunteers would feel comfortable using them for enforcement purposes. Finally, having a policy that cannot or will not be enforced is a bad idea on every level, and can even open up an organization to legal liability.

 

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 feel very strongly that we should keep the AO3’s principle of maximum inclusivity. Whatever fandom, pairing, or trope it is that you most love, I guarantee that there is someone who wants to banish it from existence.

One of the reasons that the AO3 has such a comprehensive tagging system is that we wanted to be able to be maximally inclusive while helping users find the works they wanted to see and avoid the ones they didn’t. Many people disagreed with this when the AO3 was being designed. They argued that tags were equivalent to spoilers and that tagging would make users too comfortable and unwilling to broaden their minds, especially when one of the purposes of art is to make people uncomfortable.

Furthermore, as soon as anyone starts drawing lines about what can and can’t be included, the most vulnerable, marginalized people are the most affected. (Consider that we are currently blocked in China and Russia specifically because we allow LGBTQ+ content.) Many people write about their negative or traumatic experiences in order to process them. Others write about societal ills, such as bigotry, in order to confront others with the reality and impacts of these problems. These people are most likely to tag their works with the dark or controversial topics they are writing about, and therefore would be the first to be banned. People who write these topics for shock value or out of ignorance are the least likely to tag them, and it would therefore be their work that remains.

Regarding the Archive-level Adult Content warning, it is true that the current definition is US-centric. However, this is because the OTW is incorporated in the US, and must consider itself a US-based organization in financial and legal matters.

 

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?

In addition to the OTW-wide comment moderation policy I proposed in the previous Q&A, I would regard PAC as the experts in this space. A review of our Terms of Service is currently underway, in part to increase their ability to deal with works, comments, etc. which do not fulfill the definition of harassment but which are clearly intended to make the AO3 a hostile space for others.

Bookmarks belong to the person who created the bookmark, not the person who created the work. Creators are not even notified if someone bookmarks their work! If the language in the bookmarks reaches the level of harassment, that can already be reported to PAC. Bookmarks created by users that you have muted are also automatically hidden. Other features for hiding or limiting bookmarks have been proposed, but it is unlikely that we will change the core principle that bookmarks belong to the user who created them, not the user who created the work being bookmarked.

Unfortunately, giving creators the ability to disallow bookmarks, or comments or tags on public bookmarks, would defeat the purpose of bookmarks, which is to allow users to share their thoughts on works in a public space other than the work’s comments, which are the creator’s space. It would be similar to if Goodreads allowed authors to disallow reviews entirely or delete (non-harassing) negative reviews.

 

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?

Fanlore already has a policy on Ethical Standards for Community Content (link). In essence, this states their goals of accuracy and objectivity, as well as upholding ethical standards, including harmlessness, to protect fans, fanworks, fan communities, etc. Fanlore additionally has a Plural Point of View policy, which means that they want to present multiple perspectives and interpretations as much as possible.

Fanlore is a wiki, not an archive, and as such is a collaborative space. The talkpages for each article and the Fanlore Discord are spaces where editors can discuss how to best present difficult topics. There are also common practices on Fanlore that can be implemented, such as linking to external sources rather than including text or images directly in the article, so editors don’t have to come up with new strategies on their own. The idea of content warnings in article headers, where appropriate, has also been proposed, and Fanlore volunteers should be empowered to implement these if they agree it would be useful.

If harassing or defamatory remarks are purposely added to an article, they can be deleted by another editor. If someone repeatedly makes harmful edits, they can be blocked. Controversial articles can also be protected to limit editing fights.

 

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?

In the previous set of questions, I wrote a lot about what I think the OTW can do to ensure that it supports numerous fannish projects and fandom homes.

The AO3’s code is, and always has been, publicly available on GitHub. We consistently get code contributions from non-volunteers, which is wonderful! There are two archives that are currently using the AO3’s code: SquidgeWorld (multifandom) and Ad Astra (Star Trek).

It seems that the biggest issue with others using the AO3 code is that the AO3 is orders of magnitude larger than most fanworks archives, and so is extremely overpowered and technically complex for someone trying to start a smaller archive. Creating (and maintaining) a small-archive version of the AO3 code would be a separate project, which means that we would have to substantially expand and support ADT so that they could do this work.

There are also other ways to achieve the same ends, such as funding continued support of eFiction software or creating tutorials for how to use currently available resources to create a fanworks archive. For example, it is very easy to create a DreamWidth community with whatever content restrictions you choose (within the Terms of Service) where people could post their fanworks. If you are worried about losing fanworks if people delete or lock their accounts, you could require that all works be directly posted to the community instead of linked from personal pages.

 

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?

This doesn’t quite answer the question, but one thing we could do in the short term and without any technical work is to spread the word about the benefits of having an AO3 account, as well as addressing common concerns and questions. Benefits include being able to view works that are restricted to logged-in users, subscribe to updates on works and series, and mark works for later. To address three concerns I am aware of:

• Doesn’t it take a long time to get an invitation? – The invitation queue is usually 7-10 days; however, if you have a friend with an account, they may have invites attached to their account that they could send you without having to worry about the waiting period!


• Aren’t accounts just for people who post fanworks? – Nope! There is absolutely no requirement to post works in order to have an account, and there are numerous benefits for users who are not creators (see above).


• What about my data? – The AO3 limits the amount of data we collect as much as possible in order to protect our users. Creating an account only requires an active email address, username, and password.

Regarding the specific questions, the AO3 actually supported OpenID in the past! However, it saw very little use in comparison to the amount of work that was required to keep it up, and there hasn’t been much demand to reinstate it since it was disabled. Ultimately, ADT is best positioned to solve spam issues, and the best thing I could do as a board member is to work to increase their capacity as a team.

 

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.

Tag wranglers have policies and standards for canonical tags, since each tag has to be unique and reasonably standardized across the entire archive. However, they do have some flexibility to reflect the specific fandom’s conventions and expectations. Additionally, creators have always been able to tag how they want to tag and have those tags synned to canonical tags if appropriate.

Increasing the speed of canonization and synning is primarily an issue of getting enough volunteers. We traditionally recruit at specific times so that Chairs can handle the interviews and training process in batches, but the OTW and AO3 may have outgrown our ability to make committees large enough to handle the workload while using this method. We should explore the possibility of having open recruitment at all times for at least some committees. Perhaps each committee could have a designated training team so that training can be run continuously rather than in batches.

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?



The biggest issue facing the OTW is top-level organizational design that is being asked to serve a much larger organization than it has the capacity for. This is the root cause of the overwhelm, overwork, burn-out issues, communications issues, stagnation, and overall difficulty in solving problems that we currently have. I think our priority is to get some paid experts in here to help us re-organize in a way that makes sense for an organization with nearly 1000 volunteers, millions of users, and a top 100 website.

 

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

I’m not opposed, but it would only be one part of the solution. One of the reasons for the dissolution of the Internationalization & Outreach Committee is that the Board didn’t want to silo DEI efforts and wanted all volunteers to feel some responsibility for them. There wasn’t nearly enough follow-through on that, but I think that the original reasoning still holds. It makes sense to have a group that is responsible for working on recommendations from the DEI consultant, gathering information from volunteers, and ensuring that DEI responsibilities are being followed up on; I just don’t know that a committee – which in OTW terms, is a distinct group with its own chair, documentation, etc. – is the best way to go about it.

 

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?

The cost was originally set at $10 because that was felt to be the minimum cost that would prevent people from abusing the system, for example buying multiple memberships under pseudonyms so that they could have multiple votes. During election season and membership drives, many people offer to pay for memberships for others, which I think is wonderful!

It is possible that the OTW could have some sort of scholarship or sponsorship program, but this would take a lot of consideration. For example, we would still have to have some way to verify that any individuals getting support in this way are unique individuals, ensure that there is not undue influence on those members, and make sure we stay in line with the laws governing nonprofits with voting members.

We also have no information about the scope of this issue, which will significantly determine what responses would make sense. This means that a first step would be to gather information, likely surveying AO3 users, which would have its own set of considerations.

 

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?

I think the biggest challenge is communication, both in terms of serving different languages and in terms of cultural communication.

Using English as the OTW’s working language makes sense, but we could make more room for other languages in non-working contexts. There is currently an unstated expectation that non-work/social chats be English-only unless labeled otherwise, and we could instead have a formal policy that all languages are welcome in social chats unless stated otherwise (e.g. for language-specific chats).

Additionally, I would like to:

• Increase use of social media used primarily by non-English speakers, similar to how we currently use Weibo to communicate with Chinese-speaking users


• Increase use of multi-language social media in other languages, for example having Twitter posts translated into other languages or starting non-English accounts


• Increase recruitment of people who speak languages other than English for all committees. The increased interest in the AO3 and OTW projects from non-English speakers means that volunteers who can communicate directly without going through Translation are extremely valuable.

 

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 am not a lawyer, so I do not have the knowledge to appropriately evaluate the Legal Committee’s legal analysis and decisions regarding the fallout from the CSEM attack last year. I also do not have access to the information that would be needed to appropriately evaluate the Legal Committee’s decisions, nor should I as someone who is not a current Board member. An appropriate evaluation would be an audit conducted by an outside law firm. I am not at all opposed to taking this action, as I think it is an important step in rebuilding trust in the Legal Committee and the Board.

It also needs to be kept in mind that lawyers have specialties, and it may make sense for the Legal Committee to manage the OTW’s legal activism (relating primarily to Intellectual Property law), while a different entity, whether internal or external, manages nonprofit law, employment law, etc. The main purpose of the Legal Committee is to advocate for transformative works and protect fans from Cease & Desist Orders and other unlawful restrictions on fannish activity – and in my opinion, they have consistently done a stellar job in this space.

 

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?

Obviously I wouldn’t want someone with a history of harassment or other misconduct to be on the Board, but I don’t think restricting who can for Board is the best way to prevent that. The only way that this history of misconduct would be documented in a way that could be shared would be through the Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP) process, which is supposed to either lead to a behavior change sufficient for people to remain in the Org or cause them to be removed from the Org.

The CCAP process is equivalent to a Performance Improvement Plan at work. It can be utilized for a range of issues, from lack of communication to actively harassing a fellow volunteer. CCAP documentation can include sensitive information such as mental health diagnoses, personal identifying information, etc. Considering the next question, it seems likely that the CCAP process is underutilized and that using it for relatively minor issues is going to increase.

There have been discussions about disclosing candidate history of CCAPs during the elections process in order to be transparent with voters. However, we would have to share either that someone had been through at least one CCAP, which is extremely prejudicial, or more detailed information, which risks violating the confidentiality of the Board candidate and anyone else who was involved in the situation.

There is less of an issue regarding chairs, since they are not voted on and do not have to share their legal names publicly. Before making someone a chair, the board should evaluate their fitness to lead, including a history of CCAPs. However, barring people with a history of CCAPs from becoming chairs could also prevent people from becoming chairs due to having disagreed with Chairs or Board members.

 

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?

I think that we should work with our HR consultant to find good management training for chairs. No one wants to be a bad manager or work under a bad manager, and yet the fact that management requires a specific set of skills, and that people need to be taught these skills in order to have them, is often overlooked.

However, before that, we should work to reduce chairs’ workload. Open Doors has added a role for Chair Assistants, which has been extremely successful. We should spread this practice to other committees. Something like a Committee Administrator role – someone to manage documentation and administration – could also be a valuable addition. We should also work to increase recruitment and change recruitment and training practices so that volunteers are less overworked and the prospect of having to remove an experienced volunteer is less fraught.

Additionally, I think that we should either revise the CCAP process or retrain leadership on it. We are all volunteers, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t have standards for behavior, task completion, etc. The CCAP process may be considered too serious a step for minor issues or too onerous for Chairs, meaning that we need a way to deal with these issues that is documented for purposes of individual volunteer history and statistical evaluation for fairness.

 

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?

In brief:

• Hire DEI Consultant


• Complete TOS review


• Perform organizational audit


• Get committees to appropriate capacity, prioritizing PAC and ADT


• Recruit in multiple languages and in more spaces


• Consider outreach letting people know that harassment can be reported to PAC and the kinds of things that are considered harassment in OTW spaces

The broader #EndRacismInTheOTW movement is largely responsible for the renewed push for the OTW to take action on the promises made in 2020, which is huge! However, I have been disappointed by the limited understanding of systemic injustice demonstrated by many members of the movement. Many members don’t seem to fully understand the complexity of grappling with racism on an international scale. Additionally, they appear to be unaware of the specific ways that systemic injustice is perpetrated in the nonprofit sector – namely, by emphasizing formal education over lived experience and evaluating the qualifications of candidates of color more strictly than the qualifications of white candidates.

There are a lot of volunteers who are working to make the OTW more diverse, inclusive, equitable, accessible, just, and a place of belonging. Support and pressure from users who are not current volunteers are also essential to making these changes happen, and I don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. This is an enormous and enormously complex topic. I have been consciously studying ethics and social justice for about 20 years, and I still learn something new every day. I hope that every participant in the #EndRacismInTheOTW movement is committed to doing the same.

 

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?

Stagnation/resistance is in many cases a result of bad experiences with past projects or being currently overwhelmed. If we address that organizational trauma and the workload issues, and work to regain the trust of the OTW community while doing so, there is likely to be less resistance.

Board Work II

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



Based on the recently released Strategic Plan, I think my experience is best suited to working with the Paid Staff Transition Officer (PSTO) to find and hire the HR consultant(s) and/or with the Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO) to find and hire the DEI consultant(s). Once these consultants are hired, I would be interested in continuing to be a key point of contact and support for them as we work towards medium- and long-term structural change.

Additionally, while I don’t know as much about organizational structure and governance as I would like under the circumstances, I think that restructuring the organization is an important project and it is one that I would be interested in working on. (This is also in the Strategic Plan under Governance Development.)

I think that my HR background would be valuable to these projects as they are likely to involve the additional hiring of professional consultants and paid staff. I also have some research experience which might be useful for designing surveys and analyzing data as necessary.

I am also interested in helping to revise our Working Group procedures and organizing an organization-wide review of documentation and administrative procedures.

If enough of this work can be done in three years, then I would like to seriously investigate a way for the OTW to provide grants to fund other fandom-oriented projects, such as maintaining eFiction.

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 to contribute more (and more effectively) to the organization?

The current Board’s collective capacity is potentially sufficient when everyone is available, but that is not always the case. Expanding the Board would seem to be the logical solution; however, it is already very difficult to find enough people to run a contested election.

Therefore, rather than expanding the number of voting members on the Board, I would like to focus on revising our organizational structure so that the role of the Board is clear and manageable. I would also like to create additional roles such as Board Assistant (similar to current position of Chair Assistants), Board-Track Volunteers (similar to current chair-track volunteers), and potentially a paid Board Administrator. This would increase the number of people available to manage tasks, give volunteers who can’t or don’t want to run for Board a way to contribute to Board work, and allow us to handle major projects more easily.

I would also support establishing a Board Advisory Group, likely consisting of Chairs as well as other volunteers with particular expertise/skills. To be clear, this would not be a secret backchannel. If established, the members of the group, why they are part of the group, and likely some sort of endpoint to their appointment, would be made known internally and potentially externally. Something like, “Kathryn S. has been appointed to the Board Advisory Group as a subject matter expert in Human Resources, and her appointment will end after an external HR consultant is hired and onboarded.” Additionally, there would be an open application process. This would help the Board access volunteer expertise needed for various projects without relying on personal knowledge and connections, as well as being another way for volunteers to contribute to leadership and org-wide projects without becoming Board members.

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?

We need to have better communication and transparency. We also need to be quicker to respond in emergency situations and in non-emergency situations that nevertheless require a quick response. This will require some crisis planning, and potentially the assistance of a communications consultant.

Volunteers have suggested several ways to make answers to questions asked of the Board during public meetings and also via email more publicly accessible, as well as to make it easier to ask questions and receive timely responses, including:

• Soliciting questions in advance of public Board meetings so that they can be collated, organized, and potentially prioritized, and answers can be written in advance


• Publicly posting questions and answers from public Board meetings, including ones that couldn’t be responded to or posted during the meeting, on the OTW website


• Publicly posting questions and answers received via email/contact form, if appropriate, to the OTW website

I also think it could be valuable to have a series of OTW 101 posts explaining our core principles and expanding on frequently asked questions so that it is easier to find that information directly from the OTW. Possible topics include the OTW’s commitment to keeping the AO3 online and accessible, our maximum inclusivity policy, and why the AO3 doesn’t have an algorithm.

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?

Absolutely! In fact, one of the reasons that I am prioritizing HR and DEI consultants is that I believe they will be able to help us with finding appropriate consultants for this work.

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?

I would endeavor to ensure that working on our priorities was not overly burdensome and that we also took their priorities seriously and put time and resources into supporting them. I think that part of the role of the Board is to help align priorities throughout the organization. If we need to help Chairs work on their priorities before they have the capacity to support ours, then we should do that.

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?

I admittedly struggle with this – not because I get angry, but because I get more focused on being understood than on understanding others. I’m pretty good at backing off when I recognize that I’m getting frustrated and not angry-posting, but it can be difficult to figure out exactly where the disagreement lies.

I will work to prioritize understanding rather than being understood, and ask for help in understanding miscommunications or misunderstandings.

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?

With the caveat that the current method for disciplining volunteers, the Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP), may be poisoned beyond saving and need to be replaced entirely:

1. Board members need to be subject to CCAP or whatever disciplinary measure replaces it.


2. CCAP or its replacement probably needs to be housed with the Volunteer and Recruitment Committee rather than Chairs. This would solve the problem of determining who is responsible for the CCAP process for Board members, Chairs, or volunteers who are part of multiple committees and help standardize the process. It will also solve the issue of the person responsible for the CCAP process for a volunteer being their direct supervisor, which has potential for abuse.

We also need to make changes to our organizational structure, governance, and policies and procedures so that the workload and experience of running for and being a part of the OTW Board is less overwhelming and more people are willing to run.

Finally, I’d like to reference James’s answer to a question in 2016 about how to remove Board members in an emergency; unfortunately, many of his points still apply.

• There needs to be a way for members to directly trigger a vote of no confidence in either an individual member or the entire Board


• Elections needs to be able to run an election without the consent of the Board. Since the voting platform costs money, they need to have funds permanently allotted for emergency elections, so they can run them without Board having to approve funds at the time.

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 don’t think that live question and answer sessions are the answer, since it can be very difficult to give sufficiently thoughtful answers off the cuff. However, if we start utilizing some of the ideas I listed when discussing ways to increase communication and trust in the Board, I think that the question and answer sessions would be more manageable.

In addition, candidate Jennifer H. collected a great list of suggestions from volunteers, members, and users based on the most recent board meeting that would help make public meetings run more smoothly and get to the Q&A session more quickly, including:

• Posting the agenda at the same time as the question gathering link so that users know what the expected topics will be ahead of time.


• Posting rules of engagement and expectations posted several hours prior to the meeting, so posting them doesn’t take time during the meeting


• Pre-write and share Board notes in a timely fashion. Ideally, resharing the agenda and moving through the various topics should take no more than 15 minutes.


• Post responses to the collated Q&A questions to start off the participatory section of the meeting.


• Allow users time to read those and follow-up with additional questions or ask new ones in a separate channel. Potentially ask users to thread topics if they want to reply to one another and have conversations on the questions.

If we still had too many questions to get through, I would support making board meetings more frequent or longer, or holding special town hall-type sessions just for responding to questions. However, live meetings can be difficult to schedule due to time zones, so asynchronous regular public answers may be the best solution.

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?

Improving internal communications so that every volunteer is heard is a crucial part of DEI work and should be part of our routine going forward. This includes having multiple avenues and opportunities to communicate issues – public and private, named and anonymous. I hope that the DEI and HR consultants will be able to help us refine and implement some or all of the following ideas.

We should have an Org-wide process for regular 1-on-1 check-ins with new volunteers, as well as exit interviews with resigning volunteers. New volunteers are uniquely suited to noticing issues that existing volunteers are used to, and exit interviews can provide useful information on barriers to volunteering and issues that cause burnout.

Additionally, we should do regular volunteer experience surveys and better communicate avenues for giving feedback throughout the year. If it isn’t too burdensome, regular 1-on-1 check-ins with all volunteers should be instituted as well. These can help bring up issues before they lead to people leaving.

Finally, focus groups should be done regularly for Org-wide projects in addition to our current processes for soliciting feedback, as they allow conversation among participants in a way that can be very useful.

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

I sincerely respect and admire each of the candidates and look forward to working with them!

Anh brings a valuable and unique perspective to the Board as an artist, rather than a writer, and a relatively new volunteer. They also have experience in forum moderation. I was really impressed by the amount of thought and research they put into their Candidate Q&A responses. Anh also was the impetus for a project to create and translate a guide for creating new archives based on the AO3’s software!

Jennifer also brings a valuable perspective as a relatively new volunteer, as well as significant work experience in management and research. They also did a great deal of research into the board position and their Candidate Q&A responses. I really like her idea for Board-track volunteers! I also appreciate their focus on structural change.

Qiao is trilingual and has significant experience in cross-cultural communication. She also has significant research training as well as leadership and management experience. I appreciate her focus on improving communication and increasing language diversity and internationalization.

Zixin has significant experience volunteering with multiple OTW committees, particularly PAC and Communications. I really admire and want to replicate for other languages the kind of work she has done as a Weibo moderator. She also works for a nonprofit that shares key features with the OTW – namely, size and being made up of primarily volunteers with a few key staff. I appreciate how many of her Candidate Q&A responses included ways that individual users can take action while more comprehensive/structural solutions are put in place!

Candidate Q&A Chat

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

Kathryn: Some of you may recall the Yahoo Groups shut-down in 2019. Open Doors worked with several other fannish and/or archiving groups to preserve as much content as possible, and Open Doors has imported or is in the process of importing fanworks from several Yahoo Groups (with moderator participation and permission of course).

One of my main roles in this effort was writing the news posts about the topic. I was really proud of my writing, and how we were able to effectively organize fans and share information about the importance of Internet preservation.

Yahoo Groups Closure - What You Can Do - https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/14117
Yahoo Groups Closure - What You Can Do 2 - https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/14123
Open Letter to Verizon - https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/14638
Yahoo Groups In Memoriam - https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/18030

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?

Kathryn: In general, I think that responding quickly is more important than responding perfectly. While it may take 24-36 hours to have everyone relevant give input and approve a response, the Internet can move a lot faster than that. However, there are ways to prepare for this.

In the immediate term (within the next couple of weeks), we need to agree whether we’re waking folks up or posting without their input. In the short term (within the next 3 months), we need to start preparing in advance when there is a reasonably foreseeable chance of something happening. In the medium term (within the next 6 months), we need org-wide crisis communications standards and templates. In the long term (within the next year), we should have researched crisis communications consultants and, if it’s decided we need them, have started the hiring process.

Question for Kathryn S: You've been at the OTW for nearly a decade now, volunteering through many events that some of us only learned about from Fanlore pages. How does this shape your perspective?

Kathryn: I’ve also been in fandom for nearly 25 years, so I’m very much a Fandom Old by Tumblr standards!

I think that it means that I have seen a lot happen, so I am both calmer in crises and better able to see one brewing. It also means that I know a lot of Org history and fandom history, so I can help answer questions about why things are the way they are.

One of the reasons that I’m excited about Anh and Jennifer joining the board as newer volunteers is that they can see things that I have gotten used to, and question why something is still the way it is. While it may have started that way for a good reason, if the way it is causes problems, then we should look into changing it in a way that fulfills the original intent while responding to new needs.

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

Kathryn: I spoke about this a bit in the Q&A on Recent Discussions, but can elaborate more: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/kathryn-ss-2023-qa-recent-discussions

I hope that the DEI and HR consultants will be able to provide input into best practices in this regard. Based on my own knowledge and experience, CCAP will need to be substantially reworked, or possibly wholly replaced.

Chairs are not well-trained on the CCAP process, and there are no org-wide standards for when it should be implemented. Additionally, it is time-consuming for Chairs to engage in. These factors have led to the current state where it is only used in extremely serious situations and is seen as a significant black mark.

Disciplining volunteers for misconduct or for not fulfilling their duties should be routine, and should be seen as a way to improve. It should also be used fairly and equitably. In order to do this, we need:

Org-wide standards that are clear and easy to understand
Management training for Chairs
Better avenues of communication and more ways to raise issues about specific volunteers
To explore the possibility of moving the CCAP process to Volunteers & Recruitment Committee
Regular audits of completed CCAPs to ensure that they are being used correctly and catch bias/inconsistencies
To explore the possibility of collecting volunteer demographic data so that we can audit the disciplinary process on those terms as well, though it should be fairly clear regardless whether the volunteer being disciplined is “out” about being a POC or other minority
A way for volunteers to appeal the CCAP

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?

Kathryn: I think that the best way to address volunteer burnout and retention is to ensure that all volunteers feel like they can speak up when they need help, that their voices will be heard, and that their needs will be responded to. I addressed this partially in my Q&A on improving internal communication: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/kathryn-ss-2023-qa-board-work-ii/

Org-wide, I think that we need to implement standard 1-on-1 check-ins with new volunteers at a couple of key points and exit interviews with resigning volunteers. In the long term, I would like there to be 1-on-1 check-ins with all volunteers 2-4 times throughout the year. Open Doors implemented these some time ago, inspired by another committee (I believe it was Translation, but can’t remember for sure), and it has been extremely helpful!

In the long run, I think we also need to explore ways that training can be managed more efficiently and/or effectively as well as year-round open recruitment for at least some committees. Currently, we have a cyclical problem where the solution to volunteer overwork and burnout is more recruitment, but recruiting and training new volunteers takes time and energy, which adds to the burden of current volunteers and especially volunteer leadership.

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?

Kathryn: I am hopeful that the HR consultant will be able to assist with this endeavor. However, there are work-arounds to get estimates without having to ask all volunteers to fill out time-sheets!

We could probably get information from our internal messaging software about how much active time there is in work channels.
We can gather information from Org position descriptions, which typically include an estimate for the amount of time volunteers are expected to spend on tasks.
We could ask volunteer leadership to estimate their backlog and how many more volunteers they would need to get through it, assuming that new volunteers have the same average task-completion as current volunteers once trained.
We can also look at now much time is spent on working meetings (for example, Open Doors Administrative Volunteers have 4 hours of working meetings/week)
We could also survey current volunteers, or ask a sample of current volunteers to fill out time sheets for 2-4 weeks.

Let's get started with our first question(s) - one for each candidate:
question for Kathryn, since this has been asked of Qiao earlier. 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?

Kathryn: I answered this partially in the Board Work II Q&A: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/kathryn-ss-2023-qa-board-work-ii/

As mentioned there, we need to ensure that Board members are subject to CCAP (or whatever replaces it), substantially revising or replacing the CCAP process, and potentially changing it from a Chair responsibility to a responsibility of the Volunteers and Recruitment Committee. In addition, I think that in the long term we need to reduce the responsibilities of leadership positions so that more people are able to take on those leadership roles and we don’t have to rely on the same few people.

In the short term, it’s a much harder question to answer because so many structural and organizational changes are required. I think that the best thing we can do is make it clear that we new board members are dedicated to change and ready to listen to anyone who has a problem or a solution to share. The more we know and the more proposed solutions we have, the faster we can start working and the more effective that work will be.

There have recently been some concerns raised about certain committees having more control/influence than others, especially in regards to Legal and PAC, & whether this is appropriate. What do you make of these criticisms, & what solutions do you see to these tensions between different parts of the org?

Kathryn: I understand that siloing and lack of cross-committee communication and collaboration are significant issues for the Org. Unless people are active on our internal messaging system and interact with volunteers from other committees there, it is difficult to know what is really going on with other committees. There is available documentation, but it can be difficult to find, especially if someone isn’t actively looking for it.

I think that most of the concerns about some committees having more control/influence than others comes from this lack of understanding. Without clear communication and transparency, it is easy for people to take isolated information/incidents and extrapolate without full awareness of the situation. Therefore, more transparency and communication is the appropriate solution.

I would like to encourage more cross-committee collaboration and communication so that committees can more easily learn about and from each other – in fact, so that picking up improvements and practices from other committees becomes routine! My first thought for how to do this is a monthly chat with representatives from all committees, but I am open to further suggestions.

Thank you both for the thoughtful answers.

Here's one for each of you:

For Kathryn: you’ve been with the OTW for a while. What is the biggest / longest-running roadblock you’ve see that keeps the org from becoming the best version of itself? What do you think can be done to remove it?

Kathryn: At the highest level, I think that the issue is that the organizational structure was designed for a much smaller organization serving far fewer users. We’ve largely been scaling up and iterating on an existing structure that was simply never meant to handle this kind of load. I am hopeful that we will be able to reorganize the Org in a way that makes sense for its current size and scale and will be better able to handle growth.

At the volunteer level, I think the biggest challenge is the cycle of overwork, leading to recruitment, but recruiting and training volunteers takes a lot of effort and resources, so they may not be trained or supported well enough or the people doing the training may be overburdened, so either the new volunteers leave fairly quickly (which means we lose the investment in recruitment and training) or the more experienced volunteers are at higher risk of burnout. I think that the best thing we can do to get out of this cycle is to focus resources on better supporting existing volunteers and on the recruitment and training process. It is better to recruit fewer people and train them properly without overwhelming existing volunteers and then ramp up as the committee has more capacity.

In the meantime, we can look to internal recruitment to support the committees with the greatest need. Internal volunteers are familiar with many of our tools and processes, so they require less time and training to get up to speed.

Thank you both!

Here's the next question, for both of you: What ideas do you have on better promoting collaboration across committees in a systemic, robust way that do not solely rely on interpersonal friendships among volunteers, especially for committees that are not typically active on social tools, like Legal?

Kathryn: Open Doors has adopted several practices from other committees, like having Chair Assistants and regular 1-on-1 chats between Chairs and volunteers. I recently updated Open Doors’ policy for which pronouns to use when responding to comments on news posts and shared it with volunteers from other committees who were interested. These exchanges happened because of volunteers who served in multiple committees or were already active in social spaces, and I would very much like to encourage this kind of exchange in an official capacity!

As stated in a previous question, I think that a monthly chat, open to all volunteers and with official representatives from all committees, would be useful. We could have standard questions like, “What is a problem that has come up in the last month and how have you solved it?”, “Have you updated any documentation recently, and if so, why?”, “Have you created any new policies or procedures that you think would be useful to other committees?”

I would also ask that committees that are not currently active on social tools consider revising their stances, because it’s an incredibly important way to build community and engage in informal learning. If they are not willing to be there all the time, perhaps they would be willing to join for regular chats focused on their work (in addition to the monthly all-committee meetings).

For the next question: Are there any ideas that other candidates have proposed, or issues that they have raised during the elections cycle that you are particularly interested in? Or, what have you found most interesting while talking with other candidates during the elections cycle?

Kathryn: I partly answered this in the last question of the Board Work II Q&A: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/kathryn-ss-2023-qa-board-work-ii/

I actually adopted the idea of Board-Track Volunteers and/or Board Assistants from Jennifer H. I am extremely excited that Anh is also interested in fandom preservation and in working to support fannish projects and archives outside of the OTW and AO3. Zixin’s experience in PAC and Comms means that she has a lot of great ideas for better communicating with AO3 users and OTW members, especially people who don’t speak English or who speak English as an additional/foreign language.

As for my co-candidate in this chat: I really appreciate Qiao’s focus on increasing language diversity of the OTW and prioritizing internationalization of the AO3 interface. For example, I didn’t know that the search was difficult to use for languages that don’t separate words with spaces, or that the payment processor used for OTW membership doesn’t offer payment options suitable for many people outside of the US.

Our next (and possibly final? We're running close to time) 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?

Kathryn: TOS revision should be complete and the new TOS should be in place. This will help PAC better address harassment as well as solving other issues that have cropped up over the years.

DEI consultants and HR consultants should have been hired and started working; ideally, they will have been working for several months and already have some early results from their work

We should have figured out all of the issues and preliminaries with hiring paid staff and started searching for our first paid staff; ideally, we would have our first paid staff hired by the end of the year

Through the controversies and discussions of the last couple of months, I have learned that the OTW is missing documentation, plans, and procedures that I would consider necessary for any reasonably well-run organization. Examples include clear Org-wide standards for when to use the CCAP, an Org-wide crisis communication plan, and Org-wide standards for moderating comments on news posts. These can all be created in a year and need to be.

The Board Assistant Team should be up and running! They would be helping with Board administrative work and helping respond to emails to the Board.

Improved process for public Board meetings, based on the suggestions Jennifer H gathered (referenced in my most recent Q&A: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/kathryn-ss-2023-qa-board-work-ii/)

Improved internal communications and cross-committee communication, collaboration, and learning (monthly meetings!)

It may be a bit of a stretch since we will need the DEI and HR consultants to do it, but I’d really like to have the CCAP revision/replacement done within a year.