Category: Other Questions 2015 Q&A

Aline Carrão 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 2

Jenny McDevitt

Can you say something positive about three of your fellow candidates?

Of course!

Alex is straightforward, efficient, hilarious, great at getting things done, and is really capable of managing a lot of things at the same time without letting anything slip through the cracks.

Atiya’’s ability to power through anything that needs to be done with unfailing competence and discipline is amazing. She is always available to answer questions and beta your work for you.

Matty has taken on committees in very bad shape and made them amazingly productive and functional, while gaining the trust and respect of everyone working under her lead. I’ve seen the changes she built both in terms of procedures and in atmosphere, and it’s brilliant.

I have also worked with Kati for a long time and there are a lot of things I could say about her, but sadly, the question only asked about three. 😀

A lot of the current problems seem to come back to a lack of scalability, especially with the massive growth of the Archive. A) What are your short-term plans to make this growth spurt work, B) What are your long term plans to avoid this problem in the future, when there’s another massive increase (of traffic, users, and/or fanworks etc.), a.k.a what structural changes would you strive for to make the OTW, and especially the Archive more sustainable.

In the short term, the most important thing is to collaborate closely with people who are getting the work done so that we can define and prioritize goals together. The board alone can’t know what will help each corner of the OTW scale better; it simply doesn’t have that kind of knowledge. Instead, it has to have a supporting and advisory role, defining a high-level goal and helping to ensure that different parts of the organization have what they need to move towards that direction. That may include, for example, creating venues for chairs of different parts of the OTW who have learned how to manage their teams better with regards to scaling and growth to make connections and help each other.

The OTW and the Archive have growth spurts from time to time, and that’s just part of how we roll at this point. There will always be big recruitment rounds (tag wranglers and translators, for example) and there will always be sudden user or work influxes for any number of reasons. We need to focus on being solid, on having well-established procedures, a good and healthy working environment, plenty of failsafes, better communication throughout the organization and a more integrated leadership.

Whenever internationalisation is brought up in relation to fandom, I often hear the argument that it’s not needed yet, since there isn’t an “insert country/language/non-English fandom” presence in the OTW/on the Archive. Personally I feel like this is a chicken/egg situation. Is the OTW/AO3 so American/English language focussed because there isn’t enough of a non-English fandom interest, or is there no interest because there’s not enough non-American/English accommodation?

A) Where do you fall on this? What should come first?

B) If the next growth spurt is of a non-English, different fandom culture nature, how will you accommodate that?

I have seen comments like this before, but I never heard this approach internally, at least not in any parts of OTW I have worked with. If something in this area hasn’t been done (and yes, there is a lot that still needs improving!) it’s due solely to the lack of resources — be it volunteers or various technical needs — and not because there is not enough demand or internal wish to get it done. We had, for example, Arabic translations of AO3 help pages before there was any Arabic fic in the AO3, and the full setup in place to answer tickets for AO3 Abuse and Support in languages we have yet to receive emails in. No one is waiting for a hypothetical future influx of non-English fandom to start addressing its needs; there are thousands of us already here, and we are already doing our best.

Of course we would certainly have more non-English speaking users if we had the translated interface available. But I disagree that the reason we don’t have it is a lack of interest. There have been multiple attempts to create it—I myself have tested a couple of attempts. It’s not easy for a lot of reasons; it’s a huge project that demands senior coders, and implementing it can’t take priority over critical maintenance that ensures the Archive stays up and running. When the translated interface happens, we will see how the OTW (and Translation in particular) changes to accommodate that.

Alex Tischer 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 2

Jenny McDevitt

Can you say something positive about three of your fellow candidates?

I can say lots of positive things about my fellow candidates. I’ve worked with Kati and Aline in Translation for over a year now, and with Lady Oscar just a little bit shorter in Support.

Kati is an amazingly prolific podficcer; how she juggles work on the Translation and Abuse committees with participating in podficcathons I don’t know, but she manages and manages brilliantly. She’s also Finnish, wonderfully laconic, and always happy to confirm any Scandinavia and the World stereotypes you throw at her. (Ask Kati about her puukko sometime.)

Aline will tell you she is culturally predisposed to procrastinate, but she always follows through on any job she says she’ll take on. She can keep a clear head in any situation and will not let frustration and anger cloud her judgment in any way. In addition to all that, she’s one of my favourite sources for badwrong!recs.

Lady Oscar is a fountain of knowledge about the Archive. There’s nothing too obscure she doesn’t know about. She answers such a massive amount of Support tickets while at the same time manning the testing team nearly on her own, it’s unbelievable. And she likes aardvarks!

I feel bad for leaving Matty out, because there are so many good things to be said about her, but this was only supposed to cover three, so there you have it.

A lot of the current problems seem to come back to a lack of scalability, especially with the massive growth of the Archive. A) What are your short-term plans to make this growth spurt work, B) What are your long term plans to avoid this problem in the future, when there’s another massive increase (of traffic, users, and/or fanworks etc.), a.k.a what structural changes would you strive for to make the OTW, and especially the Archive more sustainable.

I think to answer this question we have to draw a clear distinction between the Archive and the OTW first. I am not aware of any specific scalability problems concerning the OTW itself. The Archive is another matter, but dealing with those problems is not the Board’s job. That lies in the hands of AD&T, the committee that maintains and develops the Archive, as well as Support, Abuse and Tag Wrangling, each of which deal with the workload increase in its own way, like recruiting for more people, creating clearer guidelines, finding better tools, improving internal workflows and so on. From what I’ve seen in my role as liaison to AD&T, the problem of keeping up with a project of this scale from a coding perspective is something they are well aware of and working on. They have just recently received permission to hire a contractor to work on major improvements, which should help immensely with tackling a number of issues that have been waiting for someone with the time to handle for a while. Now that this proposal, which has been keeping the committee busy for a while, is dealt with, they will most likely focus on further steps to make the Archive more sustainable.

Whenever internationalisation is brought up in relation to fandom, I often hear the argument that it’s not needed yet, since there isn’t an “insert country/language/non-English fandom” presence in the OTW/on the Archive. Personally I feel like this is a chicken/egg situation. Is the OTW/AO3 so American/English language focussed because there isn’t enough of a non-English fandom interest, or is there no interest because there’s not enough non-American/English accommodation?

A) Where do you fall on this? What should come first?

B) If the next growth spurt is of a non-English, different fandom culture nature, how will you accommodate that?

I must be listening to different people, but I’ve never heard the argument that internationalisation isn’t needed, let alone that it isn’t needed because there’s no non-English fandom presence on the Archive. To begin with, there are fanworks in over 20 languages on the Archive, a good number of them in fandoms that do not have an English fandom presence. The FAQ have been translated in over 15 languages, and Support and Abuse answer tickets in roughly the same amount of languages, so international users are able to ask questions and get instructions a little more every day.

Having a more international org and making the Archive more useable for international users are things that we already strive for, and I’m certainly not proposing we stop any time soon. I can pretty much guarantee that the day the translatable interface is finally a possibility arrives, Translation will have it translated and double betaed in at least five languages within the first week.

With regards to the actual question, I don’t see how deciding what should come first will do any good. Fandom develops mostly without outside planning or control. The OTW is not Fandom’s guiding light, and it’s not meant to be the be-all end-all of fandom. We’re just a small part of it, and we’re doing our best; there are countless fans out there who’ve never heard of the OTW, and countless other archives that I hope will continue to thrive. Fandom being so plural is part of what makes it brilliant..

We don’t (and shouldn’t) try to direct fandom, we are here for when it wants to come our way. And while we do that, we will continue to work every day to make the org more international and the Archive more useable for international users.

Dan Lamson 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

Note: Dan has withdrawn from the race, but he completed his answers before withdrawing, so they will be posted to the site.

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

I think an important training for board members would be in communication skills, and how to deal with each other and the rest of the org. Kind of a group therapy thing where can learn together and bond over the experience. This kind of training would be team building as well as improve how we deal with each other and the org in general.

I’d also like to see some kind of apprenticeship with a sitting board member to go over the ropes and talk about how things are done. You could shadow them for a bit and see how it all works. I think this would a lot better than stumbling around, and probably would stop some mistakes from happening.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

I think the board could expand its membership again if it wanted to. I don’t see a problem with a 7 or 9 person board at all. I wouldn’t want to see it much bigger at the moment, because it is functioning more as an executive committee at the moment, and it’s not always easy to make executive decisions by committee on a good day. In the future, if the org has full time executive staff, I could see the board expanding quite a bit.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

An interesting dilemma. If there was a decision before board that was legally dubious to one or more board members, regardless if it was my idea or someone else’s, I would suggest we loop in the org’s top notch legal team and ask their opinion. Once we had that we could move forward.

Ethics are a little murkier, because what is ethical to one person may be unethical to another. I would want a full discussion of both sides, even if I was the one with the accused unethical decision. I would say my piece and they could say theirs, and I would try to be as objective as possible. I always try to listen to those around me, because I know that other people can often have amazing ideas. Basically, I would want a civil discourse on the issue and try to reach common ground or an understanding between the parties involved.

Matty Bowers 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

Board needs training in a variety of areas:

  • OTW Tools: All Board members should know how to use tools necessary for their work, and have at least some familiarity with the tools used in different parts of the organization.
  • OTW Committees: Board needs to know how each committee works and what they are responsible for.
  • Finances: All Board members should know how the organization’s finances work, where the money comes from, current standing, what major expenses are upcoming, etc.
  • Board Responsibilities: New Board members need to know what exactly Board in general does and what each member’s role is.
  • Good Governance: New Board members should learn about how a volunteer organization works, as well as what their ethical and legal responsibilities are.

These are just a few basic training sessions every new Board members should be given. However, it’s highly unlikely the current new Board members will receive any useful training. Should I be elected, this will change. When I first joined as Support chair there was no documentation or training; after spending the first year in panic mode, I vowed to never leave any succeeding chairs in the same mess I had endured. As soon as I figured out what I was doing, I started creating chair training documentation. It didn’t take long to realize it’s not all that difficult; someone just needs to sit down and make it happen.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

Historically Board has had a difficult time filling seats. There are many reasons for this, which I won’t go into here. I think 9 was an optimistic number, but fairly unrealistic. If we couldn’t fill 7 seats, how were we supposed to fill 9?

I think 7 is an attainable goal; one that we may finally be able to reach. I am not happy that there will only be 5 members this year, especially when we actually have enough candidates to fill the remaining spots. If our goal is to have a functional, productive Board, we should be doing everything in our power to encourage growth, not limit it.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

It is incredibly easy for insulated groups of people to talk themselves into making poor decisions. With no transparency, accountability, or discourse outside a select group of people, no one is able to intervene until too late. On a Board level, it’s important that we encourage transparency and give our fellow Board members, volunteers, and members a chance to hold us accountable for our actions.

It is absolutely my responsibility to ensure Board upholds the ethical and legal standards our volunteers and members deserve. As a Board member I will not condone anyone deciding they are above the rules or attempting to twist these rules to suit their needs.

One of the first things I tell all my new staffers is that I am not always right; they are encouraged and expected to question my decisions and actions. As a Board member, I will do everything in my power to encourage transparency so that people will be able to point out when I’m making poor or uninformed decisions.

Katarina Harju 2015 Q&A: Other Questions, Group 1

Elections Chair

What kind of training would you like to receive for the position of Board member, if you could get any?

I think all Board members should have some training, at least, because it would help new Board members be effective as soon as possible, instead of trying to figure things out as they go along. I believe that some sort of overview of the whole OTW should be offered, because of course all Directors are familiar with the organization, but depending on what committees Directors have served on, their view of the OTW might be partial. They are not likely to be acquainted with all projects and ongoing major discussions and efforts. There should also definitely be some training on finances; not every Board member needs to be an expert on the matter, but they do need to know the basics of how to read financial reports and have discussions about finances. Of course Board members should also receive training on what their roles and responsibilities are in their new position, which would be helped by having clear policies, in addition to the bylaws and the applicable laws, on what those responsibilities are.

The Board originally had 7 members. This number was raised to 9 when we realized 7 members weren’t enough to manage the OTW efficiently, then lowered again to 7 due to low participation. As it stands, this election would bring the Board to a total of 5 members. Considering the number of candidates in these elections and the growth of the org so far, what are your thoughts on the number of Board seats?

Considering the fact that I have witnessed Board members mention that there is a lot of work expected of them, and the undeniable truth that currently a lot of projects tend to get stalled when they go to Board for approval, I’m not entirely convinced that reducing the number of seats at this time was the best move. If there was reason to reduce the number of Directors to seven, then this was still not the best time to do it, as it now means that there will be one year with only five directors. Since the OTW seems to still be growing, I don’t think that having only five Board members in office is the best thing for the organization at this time.

What do you feel is your responsibility if the Board you are serving on is poised to make a decision that you believe to be ethically or legally questionable? Conversely, how would you respond if one of your fellow Directors raised similar concerns about a decision you supported?

It would of course be my duty to bring attention to the matter and argue for what I believe is right and best for the organization and its stakeholders. If the situation was reversed and such concerns were brought forth about something I supported, I would have to re-examine my own position on the matter and go through all relevant information until I could satisfactorily determine if the concerns were valid. I would not go through with the decision without having considered the issue, and if it turned out that the concerns were valid then I would have to recant my previous position.

Board should of course also consult the Legal committee on any issue like this. I think, generally speaking, having discussions as openly as possible, in view of the rest of the organization, should invite more viewpoints and hopefully help to prevent such situations from arising.