Archive of Our Own ^beta

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with petricores, who works as a Support volunteer.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I volunteer with the AO3 Support Committee, which is the team responsible for handling feedback and requests for technical assistance from AO3 users. In a nutshell, we answer a lot of questions and requests sent by users from all over the world.

Support work is highly collaborative work; we don’t have all the answers all the time, so we regularly rely on the expertise and information supplied by our coders, sysadmins, tag wranglers, and translators, to name a few.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Out of an abundance of superstitious caution, I will refrain from characterizing a “typical” week – you just never know! Our queue of Support inquiries can go from perfectly ordinary with your run-of-the-mill “I can’t log in” tickets, to a hundred reports of the same error flooding in at once (like the DDoS attack from July). Waking up and checking our volunteering tools to find such incidents is like running towards the tree on Christmas morning to check your presents, but a bit less joyous.

Special occasions aside, I typically spend a few hours per week, usually on evenings or weekends, claiming Support requests and drafting replies to them. I also beta and provide feedback on email replies drafted by other Support volunteers, and help the Accessibility, Design & Technology Committee (AD&T) with testing fixes or improvements to the Archive’s features.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I applied for the role and had my interview in spring 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic had shut everything down overnight. I was very lucky that the pandemic lockdown led to me having a lot of leisurely time on my hands, and as a result I was spending more time on reading/writing fics. When I saw the volunteer position posting, I figured why not apply and try it out? It’s funny, even though I created my AO3 account in 2013, I did not learn what the Statistics page is until I started training as a Support volunteer.

As luck would have it, I absolutely love what I do in Support. It has been a very rewarding experience. I could not have anticipated the increased amount of traffic and popularity that the Archive experienced from 2020 onwards, particularly among users from non-Anglophone countries. Even after 3 years I still think it’s so exciting and cool that I can help both English-speaking users and users who share my mother tongue to gain more out of their experience using the Archive as a bilingual person.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Due to the nature of the Archive and OTW’s operations, most of our activities must take place via text-based communications. I find the constraints of text-based communication to be the biggest challenge both when troubleshooting issues with AO3 users and when collaborating with other OTW volunteers.

I lean on my fellow Support volunteers heavily for beta reading and/or giving me suggestions on making my drafted reply easier to read and follow (especially if I need to give instructions to the user on what troubleshooting steps to try), especially since they are likely confused or frustrated already.

In a similar vein, learning people’s different communication styles within the OTW is also a key part of learning how to do this job well. As I said earlier, there is a lot of collaboration that goes into what Support does; as a volunteer, I’ve definitely had to train myself to get better at observing other volunteers’ communication style and adapting my own communication, and I do my best to communicate effectively to the specific audience via text.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read, I write, I browse, I kudos, I squee, I comment, I re-read. I re-read stuff a lot.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In the past few weeks, the Archive of Our Own's Support Committee has been receiving a number of requests for assistance with an app that creates a paywall block after more than one hour of daily reading. We have no control over this (or any) mobile app, and do not approve of any paywalling of AO3 content. This is not the first time users have had problems with unofficial apps. For various reasons, the Archive is not developing a mobile app, so any app you may find available is unofficial and might even pose a security risk to use.

The AO3 site is always free to use through a web browser on any and all devices, including mobile devices. One of our core tenets is protecting fans and fanworks from commercial exploitation, so we don’t have ads or charge anyone to use the AO3, and we don’t approve of other people charging you money for AO3 content.

Because we haven't developed a mobile app ourselves, we are okay with individuals creating unofficial apps, provided that these apps clearly state they are unofficial, refrain from using our logos, and do not charge users for their usage. Forcing people to pay to use those apps is a violation of the AO3 Terms of Service section 1.D.5.

Please let other fans know that we are not connected to any apps they may find, and we are unable to assist them should they have issues with them. Remember AO3 is always available for free on your browser!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Common People Warehouse, an archive for Marvel Comics fanfiction of The Common People genre, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3). In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on The Common People Warehouse
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The Common People (TCP) was a genre of Marvel Comics fanfiction created by Kielle and Phil Foster and focusing on the ordinary people of the Marvel universe. In order to preserve and keep TCP stories available for old and new fans, the TCP Warehouse is being transferred to AO3. The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with sevenall to import the TCP Warehouse into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. We will begin importing works from the TCP Warehouse to the AO3 after December. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on The Common People Warehouse?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work. All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. Please contact Open Doors with your TCP Warehouse pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your TCP Warehouse account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the archive mod to confirm your claims.) Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection The Common People Warehouse

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of The Common People Warehouse on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve The Common People Warehouse!

- The Open Doors team and sevenall

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on 26 December. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

I. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The new Board members are settling in nicely and have held the first public meeting of this term. They've begun answering non-live questions in their public Discord, and minutes for this meeting will be available soon on the OTW website.

In addition, our organizational culture firm has completed its initial survey and is interviewing volunteers. Relatedly, Strategic Planning has been working with Volunteers & Recruiting on a guide to inclusive recruiting practices to share with committees as part of the Recruitment strategic goal.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors completed imports of What Makes the Desert Beautiful, a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fanfiction archive focused on the Nick and Greg slash pairing, and The ARC, a fanfiction archive for the TV series Primeval.

Accessibility, Design, & Technology deployed their latest release, which focused on improvements to downloads, including how PDFs are generated. Relatedly, Systems resolved some issues with download errors and made fixes to their internal monitoring. Systems' work towards Debian Bookworm continues; some internal systems are already running it, and some parts of AO3 are expected to be running it soon. Systems also introduced some new tooling to the OTW's Infrastructure as Code setup – the Archive's Cloudflare configuration is now maintained using Terraform, which makes it safer to test and deploy new rules!

In October, Policy & Abuse received 1965 tickets, while Support had a total of 1994 tickets. Support's monthly totals continue to decline slightly, but they are still getting quite a bit more messages monthly than the usual average. They continue to work on digging out from the backlog of tickets and appreciate your patience!

Elsewhere, Tag Wrangling began testing the new procedures for updating canonical tags that are not associated with any specific fandom, which hopefully will begin to reduce the backlog of support requests related to such tags. They wrangled more than 470,000 tags in more than 61,000 fandoms, which works out to more than 1,100 per active wrangler!

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

This month, Fanlore has been updating their Tumblr layout and reviewing engagement for the last year, while Translation brought their side of the membership drive to a close with 28 participating teams. Communications is testing an OTW News by email service, which we hope to provide in different languages.

November was a very full month for Legal! This month, Legal dealt with a large number of overreaching and invalid DMCA takedown notices that had been sent to Bing. These notices resulted in a number of pages being delisted from Bing without legal justification, which made it harder for Bing users to find material on the AO3. Legal is working on longer term solutions to keep this sort of thing from happening. Legal also responded to a number of user queries regarding copyright and trademark issues surrounding fanworks.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Finance filed the 2022 tax return and are in the process of finalizing the 2022 audit. Filing and reports will be available on the website soon.

Also, Development and Membership was at Y/Con in Paris in November! One Fanlore volunteer was there talking about fanfiction and online communities. Check out our social media accounts for photos – or tag us if you were there! Next up: getting ready for the 2024 event season.

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 23 October to 24 November, Volunteers & Recruiting received 183 new requests, and completed 164, leaving us with 75 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 November 2023, the OTW has 897 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Anh Pham (President) and Zixin Zhang (Secretary)
New Committee Chairs: Alex Johnson (Strategic Planning), cosette (Webs), dazyndara (Board Assistants Team), Paula (Support), and therealmorticia (Board Assistants Team)
New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Fiona (Chair Trainee) and telescopicpoems (Chair Trainee)
New Communications Volunteers: Eskici (Recruitment, Training & Documentation Assistant)
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Membership Data Specialist
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
New Systems Volunteers: Brian Austin (Systems Volunteer) and C. Ryan Smith (Systems Volunteer)
New Translation Volunteers: AndreaK, Joohee Lee, Junij, Marte Bergundhaugen, Nachali, Reilly, Sil, Teelee, Zara Miller, and 6 other Translators
New TWC Volunteers: Khaliah Reed, and 2 Symposium Editors

Departing Committee Chairs: Ridicully (Webs)
Departing Communications Volunteers: Eskici (Chair Assistant role only)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 5 Social Media & Outreach Volunteers
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Technical Volunteers and 2 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Birdie, El, equestrianstatue, Fern, Fu, Sanctuaria, and 19 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Åse, Cel, Dan Ph, Monica Gomez, Sara N, and 6 other Translators

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

As some readers know, 2023 had some unexpected events and the OTW needed to keep fans in the loop as to what was happening with our site stability and what steps we were taking to come back online. When this occurred, many fans did not realize that there were social media accounts they could follow to get more information.

During that time, some bad actors decided to take advantage of fans by pretending to represent us while soliciting donations during the time when our actual donation form was not accessible.

The best way to check whether a social media account is official is to visit the ‘Where to Find Us’ page at the OTW website. This lists our live accounts across all platforms. If you're subscribed to an account purporting to be us that does not appear on this page, you are not following an official account.

Official vs. Unofficial Accounts

Many people choose to subscribe to OTW news either through their social media accounts or through feed readers. It is important to check, however, if those accounts are actually ours.

On occasion, fans will set up unofficial social media accounts, either on the same platforms we use or in spaces where we have no accounts. Unofficial accounts sometimes make that status clear and sometimes they don't.

Similarly, fans on various platforms have set up RSS feeds of our news posts. These feeds are automated accounts and there is no one running them. The information may also only be available temporarily, and while they include official news, you can't reach us there.

Contacting Us

Official accounts are run by the Communications Committee. While we receive comments and questions on those platforms, these accounts are not always moderated and the platforms themselves may restrict our responses in different ways. To ensure that we receive your question or comment, it is therefore always best to get in touch with us through our contact form. Questions or comments regarding the Archive of Our Own should be sent to the Support team.

If you're not sure who to direct your question to, try Communications, and if we don't have the answer we will forward your message to the OTW team who can help you.

The OTW can be contacted in 46 languages, something which is also facilitated by using our contact forms.

Coming Soon

The Communications Committee is currently doing internal testing for a free service where you can receive our news posts directly in your email inbox. We hope to make an announcement early next year, offering details about how the service will work.

Spread the Word!

It is tremendously helpful to the OTW when fans help us to share information, either about our organization and projects or particular news releases. So please, help us reduce misinformation and boost relevant content by pointing people to our official accounts.

You can also let other fans know what sorts of information they can find at our website, and that they can reach us through our contact forms. And if you come across unofficial accounts which are not listed as such, do let us know.

Thanks for your help!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Mel Stanfill, who volunteers as a journal editor for our journal Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC).

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

If we think of the part of the OTW's mission about preserving the "fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity," then what Transformative Works and Cultures does as an academic journal is foster gaining greater understanding of that economy, values, expression, community, history, and identity (and more) by studying it in a scholarly way.

Back when the journal was founded, there was no venue that really specialized in publishing about fan culture or transformative works--people could write about it in various other media studies or internet studies types of journals, etc. but that was dicey because there was much less recognition that this was a valuable field and object of study. So by publishing 37 issues over the years, particularly the peer reviewed articles (though there are also other genres like Symposium essays and Book Reviews that we publish), we've both contributed to making that knowledge available (particularly, providing access, which is of course another aspect of the OTW) and also helping form a foundation for people to get published elsewhere too by helping broader academia recognize this area of study.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

It's not very glamorous, I'm afraid. I do the initial editorial review of new articles that come in to see if they are ready to go to peer review. When we have something ready to go out, I assign anonymous academic peer reviewers (meaning that the reviewers don't know the identity of the author whose work they review, and the author doesn't know the identity of the people who reviewed them) based on the subject matter of the essay.

If some reviews have come back I collate them into an email to the author and emphasize key points for their revision. And then once articles have been revised to the point that the peer reviewers say they are ready to accept, I send them to the production staff who handles things like copyediting, layout, etc. And then there's a lot of email: from people curious about the journal, reminders for peer reviewers, communicating with guest editors, troubleshooting problems that come up, etc. And I share all of that work with my co-editor Poe Johnson.

You first got involved in the OTW by guest editing issue 15 of Transformative Works and Cultures in 2014. Years later, how did you make the leap to becoming coeditor?

I guess it depends how you count getting involved. I did publish with TWC before that back in 2011. But in terms of moving into a volunteer type role, the special issue was it. And then, how did I get the job? Well I applied when there was a solicitation. But why did I apply? The flippant answer is that former editor Kristina Busse, who is a colleague of mine, had joked a couple of times over the years that she was going to make me take over after her. But when the role actually came open, I applied because I've been invested in the field of fan studies for more than 15 years at this point, going back to starting graduate school in 2006 (before, even, with applying to grad school).

So I've been publishing in it and supporting new scholars and helping the field grow, and trying to push the boundaries to consider topics that weren't really studied when I first took them up, like whiteness and labor. Applying to edit the journal was putting my money where my mouth is, in a way, taking on the labor of building the field at a bigger scale. And when I was considering that, I thought about who was somebody who both had a different perspective and interests than me but shared that value of wanting to help the field be the best it could be, and I thought of Poe. And he was interested and we applied and we were picked.

What has been your biggest challenge since becoming TWC coeditor?

In terms of hours spent, the Chinese Fandom special issue that we have coming up in December 2023 has hands down been the hardest thing, because of the challenges of finding peer reviewers who are knowledgeable. Part of the reason to do the issue in the first place was because there's kind of a bifurcation where the existing work in that area mostly isn't happening in fan studies or in US-based journals at all, so it's great that we're doing it. But we don't have a ready group of people qualified to review it, so there has been a lot of cold emailing to try to make that happen.

Honorable mention goes to the ways fans sometimes try to drag the journal into fandom fights. That has been particularly contentious about the question of fandom antis, with people trying to use our publications to score points in fandom fights or showing up in our inbox to demand we justify why we published something or explain peer review. We like to be read by fans, but it's hard sometimes when there's such a disjuncture between how scholarly publishing works and the everyday stuff fans are doing.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I'm a fan fiction writer and reader when I have the time. And I hang around on Tumblr. As a professor I work pretty long hours so I don't get to do it as much as I used to, but I do like to when I can.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATES

The new Board of Directors members have been hard at work! They’ve finalized a contract with an organizational culture firm who will be beginning work soon. This is the first major step to improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the OTW. Board has also selected the first chairs for the Board Assistants Team committee, a new group who will assist Board with administrative and scheduling tasks.

In addition, Board held a closed meeting to vote on officers for this term, so please welcome Anh Pham as President and Zixin Zhang as Secretary! Our Treasurer, Yuechiang Luo, will be continuing in her role. Finally, the next public meeting will be held Sunday, November 12th at 1:00-2:00 AM UTC (what time is that for me?). Board will be modifying the usual structure and rules to make this one go more smoothly; more info on that can be found in the Board Discord server.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors announced the new import of fanworks from print zines as part of the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP), in partnership with fan-run preservation project Zinedom. The FSHP is still finding its feet in many ways, but is making good progress, and it’s wonderful to see readers welcoming these older fanworks! Open Doors also completed the import of Echoes from the West, a digital archive for Saiyuki fanfiction. October has been a particularly busy month for Open Doors, which hopes to bring you news of more completed imports soon.

It was an exciting October for Tag Wrangling, which is completing preparations for the first few rounds of testing for No Fandom wrangling procedures. Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) provided an extremely welcome bug fix involving the autocomplete when fandoms were renamed—and an even more welcome update to the Tag Search, so now wranglers can sort by use count. In September, wranglers handled more than 449,000 tags across over 60,400 fandoms – an average of more than 1,100 tags per active wrangler!

Support received a total of 2,007 tickets in September—down from the previous two months but still quite a bit above its usual average. Meanwhile, Policy & Abuse received 2,560 tickets in September and is excited to welcome its new recruits, and Systems continued to work with Support and AD&T on resolving some lingering issues with user sessions.

III. MEMBERSHIP AND OUTREACH

Development & Membership held its semiannual membership drive in conjunction with Communications and Translation, who translated the news posts into 28 languages. We’re very grateful to the 6,773 donors from 74 countries who donated a total of US$192,743! Before the drive, Finance also released an update on the OTW’s 2023 budget.

Elsewhere, Development & Membership’s table at World Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu, China, was a success! Photos were shared on OTW's social media – tag us on your own photos!. We hope you grabbed some cute stickers or exchanged amazing fanwork recommendations. Stay tuned for our next adventure - it may be nearby 👀

Finally, Communications released a report on the OTW’s 16th anniversary survey, which got 78,258 responses! Make sure to check out the survey report if you haven’t read it yet.

IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore celebrated an audio-themed month, Podtober, highlighting fannish podcasts, podcast fandoms, and podfic! It held a fun and friendly Podtober-themed editing chat in its Discord server and continued to feature audio-themed articles on social media for the rest of the month.

Legal also has great news: in October, the Copyright Office approved OTW Legal’s petition to the U.S. Copyright Office to renew the “vidders’ exemption” to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. This exemption allows creators to rip material from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and streams in order to make high-quality fair uses of that material in noncommercial videos such as vids and OVAs. The exemption renewal process happens every three years, so let’s hear it for three more years of wonderful vids and OVAs! Also in October, Legal met with allies regarding pending copyright policy issues.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 26 September to 22 October, Volunteers & Recruiting received 133 new requests, and completed 162, leaving us with 54 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 22 October 2023, the OTW has 922 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Zixin Zhang, Qiao Chu, Kathryn Soderholm, Jennifer Haynes, Anh Pham
New Fanlore Volunteers: Megs Fretty and Silarona (Graphic Designers)
New Open Doors Volunteers: ArcadianMaggie, Belea, Hesandi, AuroraT, Amanda Hartley, Xochitl Kuu, Kayla G, Kira Q, and 4 other Administrative Volunteers
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Chrome, PS, Aster, Dae, JanB, xenosimp, Intyalote, and 2 other Volunteers
New Strategic Planning Volunteers: Adriftthen, powerchords, and 1 other Volunteer
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: peaandsea (Senior Volunteer) and 1 other Senior Volunteer
New Webs Volunteers: 2 Volunteers

Departing Committee Chairs: Kate Sanders (Strategic Planning)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: petricores (Social Media & Outreach)
Departing Finance Volunteers: Nikki Bird (Financial Analyst)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: alandwithnoname and 2 other Volunteers
Departing Support Volunteers: JR and Maine
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Alora, alandwithnoname, and 2 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: makepeacelovejoy (Volunteer Manager) and 3 Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Webs Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Our October Membership Drive has ended, and we are glad to announce that we have added 6,113 members in the last few days! Contributions have been made from 74 countries for a total of US$192,743.11.

Although the membership drive has ended for now, you can still become a member at any time of year. And by joining before June 30, 2024 at 23:59 UTC you will be eligible to vote in our annual OTW Board of Directors elections in August next year.

As our Development & Membership team is already hard at work mailing out your thank-you gifts, we want to say how meaningful your support has been for the many years we’ve been here, whether financial, through volunteering, or by sending us encouragement. This year has brought unexpected difficulties, but we’re glad to have come through it together.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.