[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.]
What kind of research did you do about board work specifically before deciding to run? Thanks!
When deciding to run for board this year, I spoke to current and past board members about the duties and responsibilities, as well as workload and time management. I also have been regularly reading the internal bi-weekly updates that let volunteers know what tasks have been worked on and completed over the past two weeks by the Board and Board Assistants Team and following along with the progress and pace of work.
As I mentioned in my platform, I had considered running for Board for the past few years, but my schedule and circumstances were never quite permissive enough to allow me to do so until now. Since at least 2024, I have been speaking with current and former board members about the work involved, as well as with our Elections Committee about that process, so this is something I have put a lot of thought into.
With AO3 exiting beta, what is your/Board vision regarding next steps of AO3 development and how do you plan to assist in Board capacity to accomplish them?
My ideal top priority for AO3 development would be our ongoing internationalization efforts to make the Archive translatable. As our user base grows and diversifies, it’s more important than ever for us to make the Archive more accessible to people for whom English is not their first language. I would encourage our Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) Committee to prioritize this project and promote it among contributors.
My very selfish feature wish would be for the Marked for Later list to be filterable. I understand from conversations with AD&T that this is more difficult than it seems since it would mean decoupling Mark for Later from the general History, but I dream of having the ability someday even though I know it is not a current priority.
How do you plan on addressing generative AI in fandom spaces? Given the recent challenges/issues from AI-scrapers, spambots, etc, do you have a vision/plan to strengthen Ao3’s site security and protection of fanworks?
Our Systems and AD&T committees have been monitoring the situation with scrapers and spambots on AO3 and have taken measures to reduce the impact as much as they currently can at this time. I would encourage them to continue to do what they are able to with both our current tools and potential new solutions to reduce the risk as much as possible without also burdening regular users.
AO3 – the archive that eats other archives – has gone mainstream (making headlines when exiting beta), yet with the amount of soft power and sway the OTW has gathered over the years, OTW has done very little to support fandom community outside of AO3. Any plan to change this?
While it’s true that AO3 is one of the largest fanfiction hosting sites and is talked about publicly now more than ever, I would disagree that the OTW does not support the fandom community outside of AO3. Our other projects– such as Fanlore, our fandom wiki, and our Transformative Works & Cultures open source academic journal– help preserve information about fandom, fanworks, and fannish history. Our Legal committee is a strong advocate regarding fandom-relevant legislation and court cases. They have a list of the amicus briefs they have signed onto available to view. The software that AO3 runs on is open-source and available for others to use to build their own archives – I know of at least one new archive using it that started this year! I would be interested in seeing the OTW use this recent attention to promote our projects other than AO3.
Are there any plans for OTW to start working more with non-AO3 archives, regardless of what software they run on? Or supporting indie archives in situ instead of waiting for them to need rescued via Open Doors?
I spoke with our Open Doors committee, and they do have some ideas for ways to work with other archives that would be exciting to see in the future, but no immediate plans at this point. All of our committees are very busy with their current projects and workloads, but as we continue to recruit and grow as an organization, I think outreach like this to other indie archives would fit right in with our mission statement and be a wonderful goal to pursue.
Posting non-text works to AO3 currently requires hosting the materials off-site. While in many cases this is not a problem, AO3’s TOS is far more permissive than most image hosts, which creates difficulties uploading certain kinds of fan works. Do you have any thoughts on this situation?
The landscape for image hosting has changed a lot in the last few years, with previous options either no longer allowing explicit images or only hosting the uploaded images for a short period of time, which make them unsuitable for some fanworks or for embedding the images elsewhere. I understand the frustration around having to repeatedly find new solutions and encountering broken links.
It is my understanding that our Terms of Service is able to be as permissive as it is in part because we only host text works. If we were to consider hosting images or other media, there would be a lot of considerations we would need to take into account. There would be technical considerations, as images and other media besides text take up much more storage space. Legally, we would have additional responsibilities as well as potentially be covered by new regulations and requirements. We would also require substantially more moderation resources and volunteers for our Policy & Abuse committee. All of these concerns would need to be addressed and considered by the relevant committees before making any decisions about expanding our hosting capabilities.