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#otw elections
largishcat · 8 months
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Audrey R., who’s running for the OTW board, is apparently also currently running for office. As a Republican
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so uhhhhhh keep that in mind when you’re voting
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Yeah, no, heads up, we've got a Republican Christian Karen type, Audrey Richards, running for the AO3/OTW board. I love how the US has devolved to the point where we risk Christofascists in our fucking GAY FANFICTION WEBSITES. I think a Republican party candidate whose main platform is literally "think of the children" is the absolute antithesis of everything AO3 stands for, but that's just me.
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thereluctantrose · 8 months
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OTW elections are coming up and if you've donated $10 in the last year, you'll be receiving a ballot in August. Audrey Richards is a member of the GOP, which has time and time again found ways of destroying queer spaces. Audrey herself might argue that she is an outlier in her party in terms of queer acceptance, but today's GOP is a toxic, pulsating mass of hate, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism and sexism. If you're willing to stand next to those people, don't be surprised when you're painted with the same brush.
Just saying. Probably best NOT to cast a vote her way.
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duchessonfire · 2 years
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I have been reading a bit on the OTW elections and the whole Tiffany G thing, but most of all, I've been reading comments from people supporting Tiffany saying that she just wants to clear AO3 from all the CSAM (child sexual abuse material) content and I don't know who needs to hear this but:
If someone comes to a predominantly QUEER space (like AO3) and tells you that censorship is necessary to eradicate CSAM... it's not actually CSAM they want to eradicate...
I've seen this type of discourse about Pride and about queer literature and queer movies and queer communities. It's a tried and true technique of the right and conservative movements.
First, they say there is a DANGER to the community through CSAM and they conflate the actual threat of CSAM in the community (we all know someone who thinks that writing a love story between two characters who are 16 is CSAM...), and make you believe that censorship is the only way to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. And since most people are (rightly) mind-bogled at having to explain that of course they don't support CSAM content, they bow down and accept the censorship for the greater good, without anyone actually trying to have a conversation about what qualifies as CSAM (which needs to, you know, actually involve real children and not fictional characters who are 17 and losing their virginity with their crush in a Mature-rated story about high school football and first love based on the author's own experience of losing their virginity at 17 to their crush in high school).
Then, they tell you that there are other forms of DISTURBING CONTENT, and what they really mean is porn that THEY find disturbing, for ex, (and I kid you not, I have seen comments like that) porn featuring disabled characters, which they consider to encourage the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, or BDSM porn (which supposedly encourages violence and lack of consent), or rough porn, or any kind of porn that isn't two (preferably white and skinny) able-bodied people doing it missionary style while lovingly gazing in each other's eyes. SO TO PROTECT VIEWERS, that needs to be banned as well.
And then, they tell you that even that sanitized version of porn is still porn and that people under 18 or under 21 or under whatever age they consider too young to view anything sexual regardless of the fact that not all countries have the same law about the age of maturity, should be free to surf the site without having to *gasp* filter out properly tagged works. So TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN, every explicit content is censored.
And then finally, when all that is left is a sanitized, white-washed, ableist, puritan type of content featuring General-Audience approved gay works of two nice men or two nice women holding hands and chastely kissing each other on the lips... Well guess what? :) CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE EXPOSED TO QUEER CONTENT SO WE NEED TO BAN THAT AS WELL, and since we've basically done purge after purge before and there are still a handful of people on the website, well surely they won't mind/care anymore, will they?
It's not just a slippery slope, it's something that has been done time and again, and that is why censorship on AO3 will never, never have a positive outcome.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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A pro censorship candidate is running for OTW (owner of AO3) board, please vote to protect the archive of our own.
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moki-dokie · 2 years
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AO3 donators, it’s voting time. And one particular candidate not only doesn’t understand AO3 on a fundamental level (somehow, despite being a tenured user and an unfortunate volunteer) but actively wants to push censorship. They are the exact kind of person we don’t need involved with OTW or AO3 for that matter. The same kind of person we have to actively fight against like, all the time. I frankly don’t know how the hell they even became a volunteer but, anyway. Got vote for people who won’t actively work to destroy it.
Tons more info in the reddit thread here https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/wlxk3m/otw_board_election/
There’s already several posts around here on tumblr of people with the same worries, but not enough imo.
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Guys, do NOT vote for this canidate if you value Ao3 being anti-censorship and a friendly space for LGBTQ+ creators.
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We don't want another wattpad. Or fanfiction.net. Ao3 is great because it does not censor creations or allow harassment of creators.
I'm sure you can imagine how someone like this gaining a position of power in a queer-friendly space is going to go.
Tell me, what is the number one false flag that republicans hide behind when pushing agendas that are designed to target and oppress LGBTQ+ people and minorities? tHiNk oF tHe cHiLdReN!
The above is their policy lead, which screams pro-censorship and anti-kink.
She answered the OTW Q and A's like any republican who is hiding pro-censorship and evangelical agendas would.
And how many republican candidates have you seen do a complete 180 and go back on their promises to NOT target and oppress minorities and the most vulnerable groups?
Pretty much fucking ALL of them.
Guys, we cannot let her get into our safe space. The archive is one of the last frontiers we have where we are not monetized by corporations, and we can be safely queer and create without judgement.
If Audrey gets in, we can kiss it all goodbye.
Be damn sure to vote this year.
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7riskye-amazhang · 2 years
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Please don’t attack normal Chinese AO3 users.
Chinese readers like myself are also desperately calling for the vote now on our own social media(weibo and qzone), what Tiffany G says doesn’t stand for Chinese Fangirls.
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We are actually more concerned and scared than ever for if she won she might giveaway Chinese AO3 writers’ personal data to certain people and lead to horrible things in the real life. 
SHE IS WORKING IN A GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION.
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Please vote for the future of AO3 and the freedom and safety of Chinese writers. And please don’t take Tiffany as a average Chinese fangirl, don’t attack us in a dark time like this.
我们都是一样的人,我们不想成为孤岛。
We are just like you. We don’t want to be lonely islands.
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mywitchcultblr · 8 months
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A republican politician trying to get into AO3 board beware!! Don't let her get into the OTW board!
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Yeah no thank you, conservatives have been stripping away women rights and LGBTQIA+ rights around the world and now this? Can't we have one nice thing in life? Also her takes with the racism is just 😑🤦‍♀️
This kind of a candidate will be like "well we are concerned about how media affect teens, oh noooo there's 'abusive' stories" next thing you know NSFW and queer fanfic/media will be banned
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[Link] Thank you, thank you, thank you, to all who voted to help keep our archive safe. 💖
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transformativeworks · 8 months
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Result of the 2023 Board Election
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The results are in and our Elections Committee is pleased to announce the new members of the OTW Board: Anh Pham, Jennifer Haynes, Kathryn Soderholm, Qiao Chu, Zixin Zhang. Read more at https://otw.news/5ffa6f
Afrikaans • dansk • Ελληνικά • English • italiano • Nederlands • 日本語 • Српски • 中文
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pumpkinpaix · 9 months
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Regarding #EndOTWRacism’s summaries of 2023 OTW Board election candidate positions
Before I begin, let me say now that while I am a volunteer with the OTW, my views are personal and should not be taken as any kind of official statement from the org, its leadership, or other volunteers, especially not the candidates in question. My focus here is on the Asian candidates for obvious reasons, but this post is not meant as endorsement or disavowal of any of the candidates, whose bios and platforms can all be read here.
Do not take this as an excuse harass the mods running EOTWR. I cannot make myself clearer.
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I am making this post to express my extreme disappointment with End OTW Racism’s post purporting to summarize the platforms of the candidates for the upcoming Board elections. It is no longer rebloggable, but can be read here.
The way that the candidates with Asian names were spoken of is deeply insulting when compared with how candidates with English-language names were discussed. Asian candidates had their platforms misrepresented, their expertise downplayed, and their lived experiences reduced down to “bringing an international presence” to the board, which was then further caveated with, “diversity alone is not going to solve the issue of racist harassment currently allowed in the OTW’s policies and enforcement practice”. While it is true that diversity alone is not a solution, it’s pretty offensive to essentially have “remember! Just because they aren’t white doesn’t mean you should vote for them!” tacked on to one of the Asian candidates’ platforms. 
End OTW Racism seems more concerned with whether or not candidates used the buzzwords they wanted to hear rather than with how racism is discussed holistically within the statements. While I can appreciate that EOTWR has a specific agenda, to say things like, “[s]he does not mention racism, racist harassment, or hiring a DEI consultant in her platform, so outside the outreach and support she mentions, there is not enough for us to conclude that these would be priorities for her” regarding Zixin Z.’s position, directly following the statement, “[s]he also mentions the need for outreach towards non-English-speaking fans and has a desire to provide support to volunteers from minority groups” is fucking laughable, especially after the initial mistake of stating that Zixin Z. only wanted to do more outreach to Chinese-speaking fans. Again, I understand that people make mistakes and that this mistake has since been corrected, but I hope it prompts some reflection on the sort of biases that would lead to such a mistake in the first place. It may have been completely innocuous, but in charged discussions about racism, please understand that it gives an impression that is difficult to shake. I do thank you for not trying to hide that this happened. 
Why is Anh P.’s lack of discussion on TOS/PAC a point against her, while Zixin Z.’s years of experience on PAC, her role as a mod on Weibo, and her background in nonprofits don’t even warrant a mention? For that matter, why did none of the Asian candidates’ skills or experience warrant mention? Qiao C. and Zixin Z. have both been volunteers with the organization for several years now, and Anh P. has years of moderation and volunteer experience elsewhere prior to her work with the OTW.
It is so fucking frustrating that despite each one of these candidates specifically talking about the need for diverse voices, they had their platforms essentially passed over because they didn’t use the right words, and it is particularly fucking aggravating to see that EOTWR will use Chinese issues as props when trying to press OTW leadership on the racism that occurs within the org, but then completely fail to connect the dots on why these candidates are running because the wrong language was used. Zixin Z. is one of the Weibo mods, for fuck’s sake. 
The entire post feels like an exercise in virtue signalling, from every time it was brought up that a candidate did not provide pronouns in their platform statements, despite every one of them having pronouns provided in their bios (why mention this detail at all? You could have simply used the pronouns), to what felt like willful obliviousness to the anti-racism stances in the Asian candidates’ platforms. It feels like the concern starts and ends with racism in Anglophone terms, on Anglophone terms.
I can respect the driving ideas behind EOTWR, even if I disagree with the way that EOTWR pursues their goals. I do believe that we want the same things in the end, and therefore chose not to interact with the many posts I have seen about the protest. However, I saw the summary post and could not let it pass without speaking.
For a protest group supposedly dedicated to ending racism in the OTW, this felt incredibly hypocritical, conscious bias or not. In my most charitable frame of mind, I can see this as misjudging and overcorrecting to ensure that there was no favoritism shown to the obvious non-white candidates lest EOTWR be accused of tokenizing– again, it is true, that diversity in and of itself is not a solution to racism. 
In my least charitable and most bitter frame of mind, I feel inclined to wonder if EOTWR, much like the OTW itself, is uncomfortable with the lack of influence they could exude over an international candidate. It would be much, much easier to push their agenda forward with more culturally familiar candidates, particularly white ones. Guilt and public scrutiny are powerful weapons and easy to wield against those with perceived privilege in our current atmosphere, often to the detriment of the actual discussion at hand in my experience. I know that’s cynical. It’s hard not to be. (For clarity's sake: I do not know the other candidates' races. This is a hypothetical.)
This isn’t a demand for an apology. I think we fetishize the capital-A Apology to the point where I find them sort of meaningless unless they are given freely. I don’t need EOTWR to agree with me, and I don’t really want to keep talking about it. Rather, I would prefer that EOTWR take action to do better as they continue in their campaign. What that action is is their decision. If they truly mean to stand against racism in the OTW, then I’d like them to demonstrate it.
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DO NOT HARASS EOTWR MODS. I AM FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT THIS.
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princesscas · 2 years
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“The gays aren’t gonna get banned!”
That is a real comment I just read on a post about the Tiffany G situation regarding this years OTW election.
It astonishes me to this very day that there are people who aren’t aware of the history of fandom purges. Like hello?? It’s happened with FF.net twice, once in 2002 and again in 2012. All NC-17 works were removed without warning because they were deemed as “too mature.”
The reactions to Tiffany G’s comments are not unjustified. People who have lived through purges know what it’s like to loose thousands of fanworks within a blink of an eye. That’s entirely why AO3 was created, to give authors a place to post without the fear of removal. Fandom was kickstarted by adult women, that is a fact.
Censorship is not cut and dry. It has many oversights, like determining what is considered “bad.” Who’s to say works containing underage wouldn’t also fall under age difference? Oh, you don’t like non-con? Well, it was nice knowing A/B/O…
Tagging is a godsend, and AO3’s system works as intended. Exclude tags with things you find uncomfortable, but most of all, don’t read things you don’t like.
I’m gonna end this mini rant on one major point: fictional, written characters are not the same as real life children being harmed.
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usatyimysh · 2 years
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I would never have thought that people from China and Russia (that's me) would have to explain to people who live with freedom of speech that censorship is bad.
My head is literally exploding…
Guys, let's forget your childish ideas about the world for a second, please. Let's forget that this bitch is a "non-white woman" and focus on exactly what she says.
(A place where you can call me a racist. Did you? Okay, let's move on.)
I get goosebumps when she talks about CP and "child protection". This is how it all started in Russia. Once upon a time, two kissing girls could be shown on TV, and the Internet was a completely free fairy tale. Then the government didn't like too much freedom on the internet. They started blocking content under the guise of "child protection". It all started with a search for "child pornography". Then it turned out that children should be protected from knowledge about the existence of LGBT people.
And now they are preparing a law that will make ANY MENTION OF LGBT people illegal. Even among adults
this is your future. big disasters always start with small steps.
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aroceu · 8 months
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what's been happening at the otw?
so it seems that on twitter and possibly tumblr, people have been hearing things about the otw board/election stuff without really knowing what's going on. a lot of the different issues get conflated and confused with each other, and things that aren't related get connected while things that are related don't. i'm making this post to make things clear, since i've been following some of it (primarily the otw board stuff) from the outside so that people know exactly what is going on, and to reduce the spread of misinformation.
a lot of this information comes from this dreamwidth journal, which has been documenting many testimonies and receipts, for full context.
an earlier timeline of the csem and insensitive treatment of policy and abuse committee volunteers is documented at @221loislane, on this post.
the election season
every year — for anyone out of touch with how the organization of transformative works (otw) politics go, yes this occurs every year as seats can be held for 3 years maximum but resignations happen, leading to staggering — the org has an election season for the main board of directors. they oversee all of the otw's fan projects, including ao3 and fanlore. there are 7 seats, one of whom is the president (kari dayton).
if a chair resigns, then their seat may remain empty to the end of the term or to the next election season, depending on when they resign. if they resign early, a runner-up from the previous election may take their seat.
elections generally take place every summer, but the actual changing of hands occurs in in the fall. board directors are known by their real life name; this has always been the policy. prior to this year, when candidacies were announced, it was with their full name. however, due to the csem attack emails that were targeting volunteers last may, it seems that they added a layer of protection for the candidates this year, and initially announced them with their first name and last initial.
this election season, there were originally 4 chairs that were going to be vacant and needed to be filled. there were also originally 7 candidates, some of whom applied for candidacy last minute. one of the candidates withdrew early (mid june), so this came down to 6.
in order to vote in an election, you must donate a minimum $10usd prior to a certain date in june (this year being june 30) and tick the box that says you want to become a member.
the republican candidate
on july 24, people started spreading the fact that one of the otw board candidates, audrey richards, is a republican. this is true: she ran for a republican seat for the us house of reps in 2022 (and prior to that, as an independent in 2020.) this can be seen on her ballotpedia. we know that she is the same audrey richards, because her ballotpedia page also connects her with the otw.
let me be clear: this is still in line with org policy, in terms of her real name getting released. their full names were going to be released to the public at some point, and as far as i know the org did not state that they would hide their full names until after the election.
many people, especially americans on the ao3 (full disclosure: i am one of the americans on ao3) were very wary about this, because the republican party has been endorsing increasingly dangerous laws and policies along the lines of fascism and transphobia. audrey running as a republican does not necessarily mean that she agrees with these values; however, because she, as a white woman, felt comfortable enough to align herself with a party that does, many lgbt people and people of color had every right to have reservations about her. her statements about ukraine (disagreeing with biden sending arms) and her involvement with "children and screens" was also brought under scrutiny: see this post by discluded. (i am not endorsing discluded's post; it simply cites some concerns with audrey)
due to claims of harassment (i am also not saying whether or not they occurred), she resigned from candidacy and from the org as a whole on july 25, declaring "congrats on the witch hunt." (x)
the otw then released a statement dissuading people from harassing board candidates. this was not taken well, as they were completely silent last year regarding unsubstantiated rumors about tiffany g, a previous election candidate who's chinese, with views that many were not comfortable with, to the point of saying that she might be a spy for the chinese government. this was spread by chinese- and english-speaking users alike. the otw was silent about this. however, this year, many volunteers internally have said that the otw's silence towards harassment is damning, and in any case, even in audrey's, they should speak up against it, resulting in their public statement.
reprimanding a volunteer of color
also on july 24, coincidentally enough, a volunteer of color made a post about receiving a letter about constructive corrective action procedure (ccap) from the tag wrangling team, due to making volunteers uncomfortable by speaking up about racism in the org.
the tl;dr of why they received the letter boiled down to:
talking about the org's racism in a ~certain way~ in public channels where volunteers could not leave made some vols uncomfortable
sharing internal chatlogs and correspondences to the public. EXCEPT THE THINGS SHE SHARED WERE HER OWN MESSAGES. and before july 25, the only OTHER thing she had shared to the public was the otw's direction on how volunteers should approach getting csem, from the spam attack last year, on a comment in a news post - which is an email that ALL VOLUNTEERS GOT. because none of that was public! no one knew what the org's approach to the spam attack in order to protect the volunteers was! she disclosed it so randoms who are not volunteers would know!
"outing" a volunteer, except she DIDN'T, because the volunteer had outed THEMSELVES in the chat program previously and repeatedly, then changed their icon at some point to indicate they didn't want to link the identities anymore. but there had never been a formal announcement or request not to link the identities, and who was supposed to take an icon change as an indicator of that, so IN THE CHAT PROGRAM (not in public!) kutti made a reference to something that person (under their real name) said in public (under their fannish handle/icon) and got reprimanded for it
emyn a has since made a post about how kutti's general behavior in the chat has made him uncomfortable and was one of the reasons why he withdrew his candidacy, and that he supported the fact that she received the ccap. he stated that alex tischer's abrasiveness (see below) was probably because of where alex is from, in europe. he also said that kutti outed a withdrawn candidate (probably audrey) in the chat program, which was not public information prior to his post. the rest of his claims are presently not substantiated, and most of what i have read about his accusations boil down to tone policing.
EDIT: kutti clarified that emyn got her mixed up with another volunteer of color in one of these claims. she says that she has never talked about audrey either internally nor externally, and does not know what other handles she would link audrey to. she also specified that emyn's accusation of her using "provocative descriptors, such as 'disgusting'" was in context of her criticizing the org's handling of azarias — a volunteer who handled many csem tickets last year, then got their account suspended without warning, and then got implicated for distribution in an org-wide letter, which, yeah, is pretty fucking disgusting!
the alex problem
i mentioned the ccap above because kutti references it in her post about alex tischer here, and when i linked to it on twitter people were confused as to what ccap meant and why it was significant. and i don't think kutti's treatment should go ignored either, because i think it signifies a larger problem that the org has.
and one of these very glaring problems is alex tischer. alex tischer was on the board this year, being their last year of their current term. they were on the board previously too, from 2015-2018. tischer has been called a "missing stair" by multiple volunteers, and a huge problem in the org's function.
more specifically, and as confirmed by a former volunteer i talked to on an ao3 post (wherein they corrected me for conflating two incidents), some incidents that occurred with tischer were:
in 2020, when mainland chinese vols were encouraged to do more recruitment for volunteers on weibo (a mainland china site), the otw had added two new language tags on ao3: tai-gi (taiwanese) and cantonese. the vols were also encouraged to endorse this — not specifically by alex — on weibo. china and taiwan have VERY high geopolitical tensions, and the vols endorsing the addition of the taiwanese language on a mainland chinese site could potentially put them in danger. when they expressed this, alex had told them to "not appease a shitty government," or something along those lines — indicating alex did not care for their safety in a heavily censored country, over sticking it to the man or whatever. (alex is white/german and lives in the uk.)
in 2023, separate from this issue, the otw had decided to shut down the transformative works weibo page without consulting the chinese volunteers. the chinese vols were very pissed and protested, first in english. and then, when their concerns weren't being heard, they started in protesting in chinese. this prompted alex to reply to them, in german, "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" (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.) which, in my opinion, is pretty fucking irrelevant to chinese volunteers not getting their voices heard for something that they had every right to get their voice heard on, and basically told them to "speak english" when they had been speaking english previously and getting ignored!!!
a discussion from the otw slack in 2020 was leaked, wherein a black volunteer asked a question and expressed interest in knowing the diversity of the board of directors. not the diversity of all volunteers. they immediately got dogpiled on by multiple volunteers, alex included, saying that asking for such a thing could endanger the safety of volunteers (which is pretty fucking ironic considering alex's treatment of the chinese vols), the black volunteer should've backread a day's worth of chatlogs, saying that asking about diversity was chilling, etc. i cannot summarize in full how furious this chatlog makes me, so if you are capable i do recommend you to read it to see how utterly defensive everyone got at a simple question about diversity.
these things are relevant because on july 25, kutti made a post about alex — because other volunteers had been asking in the otw slack about kutti's situation, and a volunteer compared how kutti was treated, for speaking up about racism, to how alex was treated, who was consistently xenophobic and as far as anyone knew, did not receive a reprimand for it. alex then doubled down on their previous comments.
this prompted kutti's post, both to publicize this incident and to call for alex's immediate suspension.
board directors resign
there were, at the time, five chairs on board, due to the fact that two had resigned previously (heather in may 2023, jess in nov 2022; neither were replaced). after this incident, volunteers were furious and backed kutti up and also called for alex to resign, or for the other chairs to kick alex out.
two chairs in particular, antonius and natalia, were already on hiatus. they were also pressured to kick alex out, due to the fact that they were only standing chairs, not active, so volunteers wanted them to either come off hiatus and start the process to get alex out, or if they could not do their chair duties, resign. i believe the board needs a 2/3rds vote to kick someone off as a chair, which is why they were brought into the conversation — 2/5 chairs would not be enough.
on july 26, natalia did reprimand alex's behavior in the chat according to some sources. an anonymous source said that both natalia and antonius had started their resignation process prior to the alex-kutti incident; they made this public and official after/during this conversation.
on july 27, alex also said that they had resigned "yesterday." it is unclear if they only resigned from the board, or the org as a whole, considering they were still the webs chair, a tag wrangler, and on the translation and support committees.
all three board resignations were made public in an official announcement on july 27; natalia and antonius's were made first, with alex's as an add-on shortly afterward. however, as alex and antonius's spots were already outgoing, this has only opened up ONE slot for the election: a fifth one. and there are five candidates.
what happens next?
with five vacant seats and five candidates, this means that the election is uncontested. however, two of the five candidates will serve partial terms (the ones who get less votes; 2 years each), while three of the five candidates will serve full terms (3 years each.) if you've donated at least $10 to the otw in the past year, you're eligible to vote. a comprehensive schedule can be found here.
all candidate platforms/q&as can be found here in individual posts, and here as a spreadsheet.
by the way, this is not the first time most of, if not a full board has resigned almost all at once. this occurred previously in 2015, due to some of the following incidents (these may not be all of the reasons for the mass resignation, but definitely for many of them):
insanely incompetent financial handling wherein they had donations up to six figures held in paypal accounts
the removal of sanders, a candidate during that election season, because she had resigned from her role as treasurer recently, thus supposedly making her ineligible to run (candidates must have served as a volunteer in any position for 2 years), even though she was still on the dev committee. she did not resign from the candidacy herself. the election committee had objected to this but was overridden by the board. sanders is black.
a board chair had gone under a sockpuppet account during multiple candidate chats asking questions "as a concerned member," even though she was board chair, indicating a conflict of interest.
during the open board meeting in november (after the election), without warning the board decided to appoint andrea, the candidate who got the least number of votes that election year, to a spot that was vacated a whole year before. it was hard for me to find context around this situation but from what i've gathered, andrea was already friends with the present board and the newly appointed board had not yet settled in. when this was met with appropriate backlash and accusations of power grabbing, this is when the entire board at the time — minus the new elects — resigned.
i bring this up to show that the otw has never been a perfect organization — rather, it has always had its problems. i did not pay much attention to these incidents previously, but considering how the current election season has become more and more prominent on my social media, i feel that it's important for me to be in the know now, and to spread this information to others.
i am not a volunteer (although i used to be a tag wrangler for a brief time.) i am not speaking on behalf of anyone mentioned or linked in this post except for myself. i strongly believe in making an organization's policies public and for as much information to be accessible as possible, for a site that i'm an active member on and love to use. i believe in ensuring the safety, comfort, and consideration of volunteers of color. i am making this post because i believe the otw deserves to be transparent like any other organization. please feel free to share and discuss as you see fit; and if any of this information is incorrect, please let me know asap!
edit: follow-up incidents
this post by @fandomantiracism writes a detailed timeline of the mishandling of chinese volunteers (including the below incidents), and explains exactly why the environment in which otw volunteers in china must be handled with a modicum of more care than they do currently. please read it to fully understand the cvols' situation! (disclaimer: i am not affiliated with this blog.)
during the candidate chats, a chinese candidate got an extremely inappropriate question from a present chair/former or present board member, breaching on org privacy (even though kutti got a ccap for less), a clear attempt to attack the candidate by making them appear unsafe and immature, and with a lie that put their ACTUAL SAFETY at risk. see this post, and this thread on twitter
an aforementioned former volunteer detailed another incident where the treatment of chinese volunteers was severely mishandled; see here
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griseldagimpel · 8 months
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OTW Candidate Audrey Richards
Alright, it looks like the shit's about to hit the fan. The full names for OTW Board Candidates have been released, and it looks like Audrey Richards recently ran for political office as a Republican. Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Audrey_Richards
Based on what happened last year with Tiffany G, I want to make something clear: This is not a plot by the Republican party to destroy AO3.
Audrey Richards is an OTW volunteer in good standing. She wouldn't be able to run if she wasn't.
Also, if the Republican Party wanted to destroy AO3, they'd have Tucker Carlson or whoever put the site on blast and whip up the Conservative hate machine against the site. That hasn't happened because I don't believe that the drivers of the Republican Party are aware that the site exists.
What's happening here is that in the Republican Party, Audrey is small fry enough that affiliation with AO3 hasn't become a career liability for her. But, seriously, given how fascist the Republican Party is these days, I would not advise anyone who loves the site to be affiliated with the U.S.'s Republican Party. That's peak Voting for the Leopards Eating Faces Party behavior!
Okay, with all that said, even before this came out, Audrey Richards wasn't impressing me as a candidate. You can read her Q&As here: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/category/2023-en/2023-candidates/2023-audrey-r/
She answers variations of I Don't Know to a LOT of questions (which none of the other candidates do) and has some definite clunkers of answers. I won't be voting for her, but that was already the case based upon her answers.
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