C. Ryan S.’s 2025 Q&A

[Note: There will be 1 Q&A post, covering all the topics brought up during the user-submitted Q&A period. Candidates were limited to 300 words per answer.]

How do you understand the role of the Board in the wider context of the OTW?

The Board’s primary role within the bounds of the organization are to serve as strategic leaders who keep the ship moving along the right path, proverbially speaking. Additionally, they are ones who bear fiduciary responsibility for the organization and as such, serve to help make sure that the chairs and committees are making wise decisions when requesting monetary disbursements for new tools and resources.

What is one thing you’d improve in the current Board processes and why?

I don’t know quite enough about the Board’s current processes to comment on it, outside of what everyone knows for meetings and such. That being said, there has been constant improvement in the way the Board operates in the past couple of years that isn’t necessarily tied to processes, rather in the way the Board communicates and works with the organization. I think as long as that general trend continues, then that would be more than acceptable.

If you could wave a magic wand and have something within the OTW change, what would it be, and what would it take to do it without magical aid?

I’d probably have to say double our current number of volunteers. We’re fairly constantly curtailed by how many people we have available to work on tasks. There’s a lot of projects where the timeline tends to get stretched out because we only have so many people available to work on it or there’s a limited number of people with the required skills. As far as realistic ways to accomplish something like this, I think the most important move would be to utilise some level of paid staff (whether full time or contractors). This would help allow volunteers to prioritize tasks that might be roadblocks for more recruitment or to assist with tasks that require a lot of time and effort which distract from their primary work.

What is the biggest concern for ao3, and how will you address it?

This is a bit of a vague question and pretty subjective. There’s a lot of different concerns for AO3 and they aren’t necessarily under the Board’s purview to do anything about (or at least not in the sense of taking direct action). The Board as a body is meant to guide the organization as a whole and not really get bogged down in the particulars of any single project. Many groups are continuing to work on improving the archive in various ways – the Board should be there to advise them as needed and to support their work whenever possible.

Are you committed to preserving the OTW’s and AO3’s protection of freedom of artistic expression for fan creators, and not adding any new restrictions to the works allowed on the AO3 unless required by legal changes?

Very much so, yes.

Given the current rise of censorship in literature and media in the US, where the OTW is based, how do you plan to ensure the safety and continuity of the Archive and all it stands for?

Well, there isn’t much that we can do to combat the censorship itself, outside of what our legal advocacy team already does. But we can make overall improvements to the infrastructure of our sites in general! I think it would be good for us to set up “disaster recovery” nodes in other countries (where the law is roughly on par with what is allowed in the US), so that if the law ever became unfavorable in the US for our continued operation, we’d be able to switch what set of servers we’re operating out of relatively quickly. Of course, this isn’t a simple exercise, but I think it’d be an awesome goal to work towards.

I’d love to ask each candidate what they believe makes them a better fit than the other candidates running!

I don’t particularly feel that way! My primary motivation for running is to ensure a contested election. As we don’t have ways to screen candidates until the announcement has been made, it’s vitally important that there are always options to allow a safety valve of sorts. Should one of the candidates be revealed to be unsuited for the position in whatever way, I would be happy to step up as a potential option, but at this time, I’m not necessarily looking to be elected.

OTW’s best-known project across the general population is Archive of Our Own, but OTW does other initiatives like Fanlore and its legal work. How do you think OTW could do more outreach to raise the profile of these other projects?

Not a clue really! First, I think it’s pretty important to ask: do these projects want to raise their profile? And if so, how much? As their profile rises, then so too does the necessary amount of resources to support it. Many times the associated committees are already operating at somewhat of a deficit in terms of people, which isn’t necessarily relieved by having more attention on a project. With that in mind, I’m not sure the best way to go about something like that – I simply don’t have the background necessary. I imagine we would want to form some sort of joint workgroup from the relevant committees and Communications at minimum, with others potentially as well.