[Note: There will be 2 Q&A posts total, covering all the topics brought up during the user-submitted Q&A period. Candidates were limited to 300 words per answer.]
Some candidates mentioned internationalisation in their platforms. Where do you see the OTW at in this regard, in particular when it comes to current challenges and roadblocks?
Setting up strong internationalization policies will take a lot of work with both the Translation committee and volunteers and fans from many countries. One of our roadblocks is a lack of direct communication options with fans who are not volunteers; another is a lack of a specific internationalization strategy. We have language support strategies, which are related but not the same.
We need better ways to address feedback from fans. Right now, anyone can contact us with their concerns, and someone can open an email discussion with them — but there is no specific committee designated to address how much is “please fix my problem” vs “this is a systemic issue that requires larger adjustments.”
We may need partnership with an outside org to help us establish an international-support committee to address those topics, and this could be included in the organization’s ongoing cultural roadmap changes.
The OTW has come under fire recently for not doing enough to protect fans, especially nonwhite fans from racism. How would you address this issue and how would you balance not policing darkfic creators with not allowing thinly-veiled harassment, or singling out people of color/their allies unfairly?
I am unsure how being diligent in removing harassing content would affect darkfic creators. In the case of thinly veiled harassment in the guise of darkfic: harassment is against the TOS, regardless of the style of the text involved. It is removed as soon as it can be identified. We are not going to ban darkfic because some of it has been used for harassment, any more than we are going to remove the ability to make tags because some of those have been used for harassment.
I would like AO3 to both provide better personal curation tools and also to review and potentially adjust moderation criteria. That would mostly apply to discussion threads, especially in news post comments. I would like us to review the feasibility of restricted access — something smaller than an account suspension — that allows someone to read, including archive-locked fics, without being able to comment, kudos, or bookmark works.
I would also like our existing curation tools — blocking and muting — to be better understood and easier to use, and that may mean reviewing the software interface, our instructions, and our public outreach so fans can better use the current tools.
Our intake procedures for comments should be prepared to address complaints of racism in addition to/separately from TOS violations; setting up a method for that will take time and discussion across multiple committees.
What would you like to see the OTW do going forward to protect fans and volunteers from parts of the world under peril (e.g., Congo, Palestine, Sudan)?
The OTW has no direct ability to protect people who are living in peril; we are not a boots-on-the-ground org, and our purview does not include disaster or war relief. What we can do is raise awareness that some of our users and volunteers are living in dangerous conditions, and support their ability to connect with the OTW’s projects — whether that’s for the emotional relief of escapism, or as a creative outlet, or to make and maintain friendships in the various communities active in the OTW and its projects.
Some of the ways we can support access to OTW projects include:
- Be gentle with our volunteers, understanding that some of them are facing hardships that they are not willing or able to discuss
- Be careful with our review of incoming comments and complaints for the same reasons
- Review our mobile interface and look for areas that can be improved
- Encourage VPN use for those users who may have limited direct access
- Be diligent in tagging no-fandom political tags, so that people who want that content can find it and people trying to avoid it can filter it out.
With the looming risk of Project 2025, what are your proposals to protect writers’ freedom of expression?
This is a very US-centric question. While the OTW is a US corporation, and therefore US law is relevant to all candidates, Project 2025 is not focused directly on censorship, so it’s a bit of a stretch to figure out how their agenda relates to OTW’s support of creative expression.
For those who may not know, Project 2025 is a set of proposals from the far-right Heritage Foundation, which has been trying to shape US politics since the 70s. Its plans include removing or reducing a great deal of civil rights and basically turning the presidency into an evangelical Christian dictatorship. There’s more — a lot more — but that’s the general overview.
Many of Project 2025’s goals are things the OTW can and does already work against. We will continue to support sharing of fanworks, fan history, and fan culture. We will continue to celebrate the diversity of fannish creativity and the fannish communities. Our legal team watches the legal landscape and keeps track of cases that touch on our scope of interests.
As a nonprofit, the OTW is very limited in what political actions it can take. We can’t lobby for or against candidates or specific legislature. We can continue to support our own goals, and we can inform the public — our users and volunteers — of the likely impact of changes in the legal realm.
I would like us to regularly post updates about the aspects of the legal realm that can affect the OTW and especially AO3. I would like us to be more clear about which cases or situations our legal team has joined, or where we have submitted statements. And I’d like us to research what kinds of anti-censorship activism we can safely be involved in, and let our members, volunteers, and users know the results.
Censorship law is on the rise in the US. Do you have a strategy to mobilize the legal team to try and prevent it from impacting Ao3’s usability?
The legal team is very aware of the rise of censorship law and has been involved in several cases, filing amicus briefs in those that would or might impact AO3. I do not have a plan to make the legal team more active — I believe they are doing all that they can — but I would like to make their work more visible to OTW members and the general public.
One of the ways the OTW protects its members from censorship is by lack of data harvesting: We don’t collect personal info beyond an email address. We don’t have an algorithm to analyze story content; we just have tags and content searches. We have a user-history record but it just shows the most recent time you visited a fanwork, not how many times — and you can remove items from that list.
I believe our legal team is conscious of the threats of censorship and does what they can, whether that’s filing amicus briefs in relevant lawsuits or sending comments to the Library of Congress about proposed laws. I think our users are sometimes not aware of which legal changes do not apply to us as a nonprofit, or as a site lacking in algorithmic promotions — and this can be improved. We could make more announcements about our legal work and what impact we believe legal changes might have. And we can continue to support fans using VPNs, private browser windows, and other censorship-evading strategies.
what are your opinions on censorship, specifically limiting what kind of works creators can share (loli/shota, noncon, studentxteacher, incest, beastiality, etc)
AO3 does not and should not censor those works, nor any other works that comply with our Terms of Service.
One major purpose of fiction is to explore ideas that are not safe for real-life situations. Murder mysteries allow people to consider death, loss, and the complexities of justice at a safe, impersonal distance. Eldritch horror allows people insight into paranoia and terror — and then to close the book and walk away. Erotic romance allows indulgence in the fantasy of a perfect lover without the need to negotiate boundaries or preferences. And “dark” fiction on “taboo” topics allows people to process their past trauma, understand how some of these play out in real life, recognize warning signs — or just enjoy the illusion of a forbidden relationship, without any harm to actual people.
Aside from whatever education or therapeutic value “dark” topics might provide: We know from experience that censorship never stops with the “bad” works. That there is no way to write a rule for “let’s ban the depraved stories, but keep the ones that have artistic value.” Some of us remember when “gay sex” was considered one of the “taboo topics” that people argued should not be written, or should not be shared. And we know that many people still think that way.
Every single form of literary censorship eventually leans into banning works from marginalized people. This especially applies to works that deal with themes of oppression or life’s difficulties, because those works are often considered “inappropriate” for children.
Any library, any archive, has to decide what it considers permissible content. The OTW decided, when it began, where it would draw the line on those things. The line has not moved, and I have no intention of moving it.
What will you do to protect fanworks from being stolen by AI content farms for profit on YouTube, etc?
The short answer:
- Work with our systems team to better identify AI bots and block them.
- Encourage users who are concerned to restrict their works to logged-in users only.
The OTW’s central mission is providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture. That means we’re a prime target for many kinds of bots; we can’t stop being a target without changing our core purposes. However, we can look for ways to block some kinds of attacks.
Generative AI is a tech bubble, like the dotcom explosion of 2000 or so. Even aside from the unsustainable level of resources it costs to use — it doesn’t make anything. The creative world knows you can’t randomly generate good stories; it takes the business world longer to acknowledge that. When they finally realize that the “money” in AI is like the money in NFTs or cryptocurrency — a zero-sum game based on dragging in new wealthy players — it’ll collapse.
So the OTW’s goal should be to set up the best bot blockers we can, give users the ability to restrict access to their works… and wait for the storm to pass. There have always been bots trying to grab AO3’s content and put it somewhere else, and the OTW does what it can to shut down those sites. The AI bots may have different goals but are not different in approach from any other bots, so the OTW’s reaction will have to be much the same: Block what we can, watch the legal landscape carefully, and support users who decide to restrict their works.
otwarchive and AO3 have been in beta since 2008. The AO3 roadmap was last updated in 2013. Version 0.9.0 was released in 2012. What is your position on exiting beta in terms of organizational will, timeline, and operational improvements required to reach 1.0?
This is one of my personal agenda items. My document for “my board campaign platform” has “public roadmap” and “figure out what we need to get out of beta” on it.
The existing roadmap shows plans for translation features, private messaging, anonymous posting, better drafts & chapter management, and a number of internal features (ongoing bug fixes, more modular admin support).
I am no longer sure private messaging is a good feature for AO3, considering how spiteful some of the public comments are, and how we’ve had to restrict features like gifting. I’m not sure there’s any way to set up PMs without opening a floodgate to harassment. I’m not against it, but I don’t think we can support it right now.
However, I very much would like the interface to be available in many languages. I’d also like better drafts and chapter support, and I know a lot of people want anon posting without having to submit to a collection. And many, many people would love for AO3 to have API hooks so developers can make widgets to further customize people’s use of the archive.
One of my plans is to find out where we are on each of the bullet points in the 2013 roadmap, and to publish updates with that information, along with plans for getting to 1.0. I can’t promise that’d be quick — it’s possible the steps for API access will involve something like “update the entire codebase to be compliant with new browser requirements” — but we can, at least, tell the public what we need to do, and how long we estimate it will take.
Any candidate here who will try to implement a statistical breakdown of views/kudos/comments on chapter per chapter basis like the “other” site? I feel like that would complete this site. Also, it would allow authors to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. That will be so cool 🙂
I do not know which “other” site is meant here, although I might be able to guess. I will not be pushing for statistics tools for views/kudos/comments because what I’ve seen of the culture around comparing those numbers borders on toxic.
Tracking views by chapter is a measure of database hassle we don’t need and would add no value — views/hit counts are already inexact and sometimes inaccurate. Adding kudos per chapter would disproportionately favor long works — and would be a hassle to create; our system is not set up to track that per chapter. Any form of per-chapter info tracking would result in authors trying to “game the system” — writing shorter chapters to get more kudos, or if the main page only showed an average, writing longer chapters.
I don’t see how this would help authors understand their strengths and weaknesses — a chapter is not “weak” if it’s only a short transition scene, but it’s likely to get fewer kudos than a longer plot-heavy one. Multi-chapter works are not better, in a literary sense, than single-chapter ones. And a high hit count says nothing about the quality of the work — popular fandoms, pairings and tropes get more hits than less-popular ones, but that doesn’t tell the author what their strengths are.
I will not support measures to add statistical analysis of views/kudos/comments — not for the existing features, and definitely not expanding them to per-chapter data tracking.