[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.]
How familiar are you with all OTW projects and committees, including but not limited to AO3 and Fanlore, have you worked with them in any capacity that could prepare you for Board work?
As stated in my platform, I currently serve as one of Fanlore’s Co-Chairs, which has given me hands-on leadership experience within the OTW, from managing volunteers and expectations to setting priorities and navigating conflict. Although the roles of Chair vs Board differ in scope (organisation-wide level vs mostly committee-focused), the underlying skills transfer, and I do believe I have been given real exposure beyond the Fanlore committee. I’ve collaborated/worked with committees like Communications, Finance, and Tag Wrangling in various capacities, which has given me a clearer sense of how OTW’s projects intersect and depend on each other, and where friction between committees tends to show up, and I view it as a good foundation for Board-level work.
That said, I am not equally familiar with every project or committee. My deepest experience (outside of being an AO3 user) is with Fanlore, and I have more to learn about the day-to-day realities of committees I haven’t worked closely with, such as AD&T, Support or TWC. But I see that as experience I’m genuinely eager to build, and I am looking forward to the opportunities of working with more committees and developing a broader understanding of the organisation as a whole.
Board members are elected from existing volunteers, and the Elections committee often reports difficulty finding candidates. How would you improve the volunteers’ understanding of what Board service entails, so more people feel prepared and willing to run in the future?
I actually think the issue isn’t a lack of understanding. Most volunteers who’d be strong candidates for the position likely have a reasonably accurate understanding that Board work is a significant commitment of typically three years (barring partial-term seats if applicable, and those aren’t guaranteed), and that’s why people hesitate to run. Making the workload sound more appealing than it is would be dishonest, so I don’t think that’s the fix. Additionally, there are some real structural issues we can’t fix that likely hold people back from declaring candidacy, such as privacy. Board members have to use their real names, which can be a genuine barrier for volunteers who’ve built their fandom life around pseudonymity.
Another factor is that Board work is organisational-level oversight, which is a very different kind of work from the specific, hands-on projects that drew most of us into OTW volunteering in the first place. Someone who joined Tag Wrangling because they love tagging, or Fanlore because they love documentation, may have little interest in the broader administrative and governance work a Board position actually involves.
Beyond the Board being honest about its specific experiences and day-to-day work, the only sustainable fix isn’t convincing more current volunteers to run, but growing the overall volunteer pool. That way there would simply be more people, with more varied interests and comfort levels, to potentially draw Board candidates from over time.
Board members are required to continue serving in their previous committee roles alongside their many Board responsibilities. In recent years, several Directors have stepped down before completing their terms. Do you think these expectations contribute to turnover, and what changes would you suggest to improve Board retention?
I think in cases of multiple roles across committees it can definitely contribute to turnover, but I’d also say the dual-role expectation is largely necessary. Board members who stay connected to committee-level work don’t lose sight of the day-to-day realities the org actually runs on. That said, I think it’s also important to recognise that lives can change unexpectedly, and I do not fault anyone for stepping down; burnout happens, and circumstances change in ways no one can plan for.
Ultimately, I don’t think we can, or should, try to eliminate turnover entirely; some of it reflects healthy, honest limit-setting.
The one variable we can change are people who don’t go into the role with eyes wide open, which brings me back to the Board being honest about their experiences and volunteers who are interested feeling like they can reach out to talk about them.
Other than that, it comes down to addressing the structural issues I’ve mentioned before: improving HR support, documentation, and workload distribution across the org so Board members don’t have to absorb strain that better systems could prevent. Board training in particular has significantly improved, but that same support has to extend beyond those structures.
As the OTW doesn’t mandate chair term limit, some volunteers have been chairing for decade. Some would argue that there are certain correlations between organisational inertia and the prolonged lack of leadership turnover. How would you address all of these during your term?
As a Chair myself, I hear this concern, and I think there’s real truth to it. It’s easy for leadership to get comfortable over time. We often go in with ambitious plans, and reality sets in that balancing those with the day-to-day demands of running a committee is harder than expected, which can naturally shift focus toward maintenance rather than change. That’s not necessarily a leadership failure; it’s often just what happens without structural pressure to keep evolving.
At the same time, I don’t think the answer is as simple as mandating term limits. I’ve seen firsthand how finding successors can be difficult, and training new Chairs takes time and resources, which is a process that unfortunately often doesn’t start until current leadership is already approaching burnout. Additionally, not every volunteer wants leadership responsibilities and treating longer tenures like an inherent problem risks pushing out capable Chairs without a proper replacement.
What I would focus on instead is preventing the conditions that lead to inertia in the first place, through closer collaboration between Board and committees and honest goal-setting that’s based on committee feedback and regular feedback that genuinely asks whether a Chair still has the support, capacity, and achievable goals they need. From there, I’d also like to see succession planning become a standard, mandated part of every committee’s structure, not just some committees. That way, we ensure trained successors exist well before a transition becomes urgent or forced, and turnover can happen more naturally.
Once that structure is reliably in place, term limits are a much more reasonable conversation to have. Turnover then wouldn’t be rushed or mean losing institutional knowledge, leaving a committee rudderless, or led by a hastily-trained successor grasping at straws because they weren’t properly prepared before stepping into the role.
Volunteers in the OTW can hold multiple roles across committees; this includes Board members and committee chairs. These also hold significant influence over recruitment/staffing, workflows, and policy decisions. How can the organization prevent the risks of concentrated informal power, conflicts of interest, burnout, and unclear accountability?
In my experience, most concentrated power doesn’t necessarily happen in bad faith, but rather by accident, but I do understand the underlying concern. When the same small pool of experienced volunteers ends up holding multiple leadership roles, it’s often less about anyone seeking power and more about there being few people both willing and trained to take on responsibility.
I believe we need structural fixes, which includes public accountability through regular and independent audits. Transparent reporting on major decisions would also help demystify how and why things get decided, and make it much harder for problems to fester quietly. Additionally, letting volunteers have meaningful access to information, relevant records and decision rationale should be standard, so there’s less concentrated power. I’d also want to see as much decision-making flattened where possible without leaving committees on their own, by empowering them to operate with real autonomy within their own purview, rather than funneling decisions upward through the same small set of people who already hold multiple roles.
Beyond that, I’d like to see clear conflict-of-interest disclosure processes for anyone holding overlapping roles, so recusal can be expected and normal rather than awkward; succession planning (as I’ve said in a previous answer) so influence doesn’t calcify around whoever’s been around longest; and regular workload audits to catch concentration and burnout risk before they become entrenched. Burnout in particular tends to hit hardest exactly where power is most concentrated, since the same people absorbing disproportionate responsibility are also the ones with the least room to step back. That’s another reason succession planning and even workload distribution matter here specifically, not just as general org health measures.
Would you consider doing audit on OTW committee purviews vs. actual practice, when the OTW currently has: 2 Translation committees; Strategic Planning and OCR handling multiple overlapping work and projects; AO3 Docs who couldn’t publish much needed FAQs such as searching and filtering after multiple years of drafting?
I would consider an audit with the caveat that it’s done in collaboration with the committees involved and actually aimed at what’s creating friction; whether that’s a purview-versus-practice mismatch or another root cause, so Board can help remove those roadblocks rather than evaluate anyone’s work.
Overlap between committees isn’t an inherent problem, and it’s important to me not to make anyone’s work feel scrutinised or made redundant just because purviews intersect. Some overlap can reflect genuine structure instead of dysfunction. Looking at the specific examples here: URT covers specific high-need languages for user-facing needs, while Translation aims to make all OTW content available in as many languages as possible. Similarly, Strategic Planning forms and implements the org’s overall strategic plan, while OCR develops and supports implementation of the Organizational Culture Roadmap; a defined subset of that broader work. On paper, these aren’t duplicates; they’re differently scoped.
However, purviews on paper don’t always match day-to-day function, which is where I see value in an audit: understanding whether volunteers and users experience clear boundaries in practice, or whether overlap creates friction, duplicated effort, or unclear ownership.
Where it concerns Docs: Years of drafting day-to-day function, which is where I see value in an audit: To understand whether volunteers and users experience clear boundaries in practice, or whether overlap creates friction, duplicated effort, or unclear ownership. I don’t want to assume the exact cause without in-depth input from the committee itself, which is exactly why an audit should focus on identifying and removing the real bottleneck.
I believe the Board shouldn’t just impose an audit on committees without their involvement. I’d want this done collaboratively, to better understand and identify friction where it exists. This ties to my broader goal of long-term organisational sustainability: genuine support, not a report that sits unused.
The OTW seems to have a history of committees/subcommittees/workgroups facing challenges in becoming sustainably operational, like ICCR (Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Subcommittee) recently. This seems to be in part due to limited early-stage support, including documentation, training, and staffing. What strategies should the organization use to ensure the sustainable development of its committees in the future?
ICCR is a bit of a special case, and largely reflective of the OTW’s history. This org started as a small, close-knit group of fans who mostly knew each other, and got by for years without a formal dispute resolution process beyond something like Constructive Corrective Action Procedures. As the org has grown, our HR and conflict-resolution needs have grown faster than our procedures have been able to keep up with. ICCR is us trying to catch up, which has unfortunately resulted in unclear responsibilities and discontented volunteers.
As I’ve said before, I want to focus on improving our HR needs, so cases like this won’t repeat. To me this includes clear and Board-supported targets for measuring progress from the start, clear training plans and defined responsibilities well before any new committee launches or work starts, instead of building them reactively once problems surface. For specialised, sensitive work like ICCR’s, I think custom workshops or even paid outside expertise are worth considering, rather than assuming volunteers alone can build this kind of infrastructure from scratch while also doing the work itself.
Ultimately, sustainable committee development means front-loading the structure we’ve historically added only after something broke.
Some of the smaller OTW committees are understaffed: this limits their training capacity and makes recruitment difficult, which in turn creates a cycle of persistent understaffing. Training length and quality also vary between committees. What can the Board and committees do to address the recruitment bottleneck and training imbalance?
As Chair, this is a process I’m unfortunately familiar with. It’s a vicious cycle that not only makes recruitment, but also retention, more difficult.
For some committees, e.g. technical ones like Systems or AD&T, I’d want to consider hiring (more) contractors for limited periods to relieve immediate pressure so that Chairs and existing volunteers actually have time to focus on recruitment and onboarding, rather than being stuck firefighting.
For committees where this isn’t a possible fix or those in acute crisis, I think there’s also a case to be made for deliberately narrowing scope temporarily: pausing non-essential projects and “lower-value” tasks, and focusing only on what prevents immediate failure. That reduces day-to-day stress enough for a committee to actually onboard new volunteers and gradually rebuild capacity, rather than trying to train people while simultaneously drowning in every currently existing responsibility at once. This would need to be done in consistent communication with the Board, so that we can help assess instead of leaving volunteers to scramble and drown.
Beyond that, better visibility into what committees actually do would help recruitment broadly. Some committees struggle simply because people don’t know they exist or what the work looks like day-to-day; more concrete, accessible descriptions of daily work could help potential volunteers self-select in.