[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!
Before deciding to run, I started by making sure I could genuinely commit, both mentally (since this role is very public-facing, which can be taxing, and burnout is a real thing) and in terms of time. I read through the Board training materials in our internal documentation, including the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap, to understand the full scope of the role and honestly assess whether my capabilities would contribute meaningfully and beneficially to the organisation and its volunteers. When I grew more confident in my decision, I reached out directly to Board members and someone on the Board Assistants Team to get a clearer picture of what the work looks like day-to-day and what the Board would be focused on going forward.
What I heard was honest: that it’s a lot of work and not all of it is glamorous, but the flip side is that the Board is genuinely shaping the organisation’s future in a very concrete way – and that matters to me. But what also came through was that, above professional expertise (which I do have), it matters to be present, collaborative, and deeply committed to the OTW.
Going in with clear eyes about the workload and the role’s nature felt important. I didn’t want to declare my intention to run until I felt genuinely ready for what the job actually is, not just what I imagined it to be.
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?
When the Archive exited open beta, we acknowledged that the software itself had been stable and mature for a while, especially on a massive scale (with over 10 million active users). With that said, it’s important to recognise that the Board does not dictate features; that’s AD&T’s domain, and that’s how it should be!
Where the Board can genuinely help contribute is in supporting the conditions that make good development possible: consistent resourcing, protecting AD&T and Systems from overcommitment, and ensuring that what replaces/follows the 2013 roadmap reflects where AO3 actually is today, including the legal and regulatory landscape we operate in now.
My priorities centre on two things: stability and accessibility. To me, that means ensuring our volunteer developers are sustainably resourced and not burning out as they maintain an ever-growing platform, while simultaneously protecting AO3 from external threats that could disrupt or constrain it altogether. In terms of accessibility in the broadest sense, I think of interface localisation and translation, making non-English fanworks easier to tag and discover, and disability accessibility. AO3’s mission is to be a home for fanworks, and that mission is only partially fulfilled if significant portions of the global fan community find the platform difficult to navigate or culturally oriented away from them.
I’ll be honest that as a white, able-bodied person, I don’t personally experience many/any of these barriers, which is why I think it matters a lot to advocate for them. In Board capacity, that means raising these considerations in roadmap discussions and making sure they’re treated as genuine priorities rather than nice-to-haves.
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?
Generative AI is a conversation we, unfortunately, see more of in fannish spaces. I want to be upfront: I personally dislike GenAI, and I view much of what’s happening as an extension of the broader commodification of fandom spaces, especially fanfiction, which has only thrived because it wasn’t commercial. That said, my personal feelings can’t be the basis for Board or OTW policy, and it’s important to be careful here.
On policy, the OTW already has expanded our prohibition on commercial activity to cover scraping content for generative AI training through Cloudflare AI protections, rate limiting and traffic monitoring for abusive collection. None of this is foolproof, and every response involves weighing aggressive blocking against real harm to legitimate users, especially those relying on accessibility tools, and we can’t undo collection that’s already happened. Further restrictions would need to be carefully evaluated against that tradeoff.
I won’t pretend to have deep technical security expertise – my background is in a different field. I’d lean on collaboration, working closely with relevant committees and outside expertise where warranted, while committing to reevaluating options as scraping tactics evolve and ensuring we have the resources to act when better solutions emerge.
Legally, our options are limited too. Legal Advocacy has pushed back against US-compliant sites hosting copies of the Archive, but we don’t own copyright in individual works, nor can we enforce against sites refusing to comply with US law. Much AI training is also likely fair use, and there’s wariness around non-copyright approaches like TOS claims, since those tend to entrench commercial monopolies more than protect ordinary users.
Regardless, whatever we do cannot turn into policing individual authors for “looking like” they used AI. There’s no reliable way to detect that, and it risks harming creators rather than addressing the real problem.
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?
I’d like to gently push back on the premise. Over its near 20 years, the OTW has done real work beyond AO3, whether that be through Fanlore preserving Fandom history, Open Doors rescuing and rehoming entire archives that would’ve otherwise been lost, or our Legal Advocacy, which benefits fandom broadly through things like amicus briefs, legislative comment, and fan-facing legal education. So I don’t think it’s fair to say we’ve done very little.
That said, I do understand that there’s a legitimate point underneath the question. AO3 is our raison d’être and, deservedly, our most visible work, but it’s fair to ask whether our other work has kept pace. I will say that my priorities lie internally: most of our HR and organisational structures haven’t scaled with the org’s growth, and I think that has to be solid before we take on many new external commitments. As I have also stated on my platform, I aim to strengthen equity and accessibility beyond Anglocentric fan spaces, especially within the OTW. I would like to see this pushed beyond our organisational structure. Once we are in a healthier position, I’d like to explore things like advisory and/or financial support, small grants or fiscal sponsorship for independent fan projects and archives, and stronger relationships with allied organisations so fandom’s advocacy voice is collectively stronger and better supported.
None of this is a near-term plan, but I don’t think “not right now” should mean “not ever.”
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?
From where I sit and based on what I understand of our current capacity (especially after speaking to other committees): No.
I do not believe this is currently feasible when I think of current capacities. We’re still 100% volunteer-run and shouldn’t overcommit, though it could be worth exploring in the future once certain internal structures are in better shape through supporting smaller archives that are overall self-sustaining outside funding.
My priority is with the OTW and its internal structures, which need to be 100% stable before the organisation takes on supporting other archives, which includes having things like an Executive Director and improving issues like workload distribution. We realistically can’t meaningfully help others if we’re not 100% solid ourselves. As it stands, Open Doors exists for a reason, and they do their work incredibly well. Potentially expanding their scope (or founding a new committee altogether) before properly having addressed internal capacities and opportunities for improvement would risk stretching us too thin to do either job properly.
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?
I acknowledge that this is frustrating to many users. However, AO3 hosting text only is largely for legal reasons, and hosting images at scale carries a different kind of liability entirely.
I don’t think there’s an easy fix here, if there’s one at all, and I’d rather be honest than promise one.
Hosting images at AO3’s scale would raise significant legal, moderation, and infrastructure questions well beyond a simple feature request, as this would require massive storage infrastructure and expensive bandwidth. This would be a potential discussion to be had alongside committees like AD&T, Systems, Legal, and Policy & Abuse, with all weighing in on what’s actually feasible and responsible, and whether better guidance on host options could help in the near term, even without a structural fix.