Archive of Our Own

I. OTW CODE OF CONDUCT

On June 7, 2026, Board approved a new OTW Code of Conduct. This policy comes as the result of months of collaboration between Board Assistants Team, Organizational Culture Roadmap, and Volunteers & Recruiting (including their Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution subcommittee).

This policy update was a goal on the internal culture roadmap created and announced in 2024. As part of the update process, the policy underwent several rounds of review, including one by all OTW volunteers. Thank you to all OTW volunteers who provided feedback!

Volunteers & Recruiting is now at work rolling out the updated policy and getting agreements from all OTW volunteers.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In June, we celebrated AO3 reaching 11 million registered users. \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) deployed several bug fixes, including quality-of-life and security improvements. They've also continued to make progress on their ongoing work to internationalize AO3.

Open Doors announced that Kraith Collected, a collection of Star Trek zines set in the Kraith universe, will be added to AO3. This month, their import assistants also finished importing all unfilled prompts from the Library of Moria!

In May, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 4,814 tickets; Support received 4,125 tickets; and User Response Translation completed 77 requests from PAC and Support.

In June, Policy & Abuse worked with AD&T to publish updates to the Terms of Service FAQ, which includes new answers to common questions like how to find out what's allowed on AO3. You can view the differences here! We hope you find it helpful!

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 650,000 tags in May, or approximately 1,400 tags per wrangling volunteer. They also collaborated with Communications to publish a Tumblr post about updates to the Assassin's Creed fandom tree and a news post announcement of "No Fandom" changes, including 23 new canonicals.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications also established an OTW RedNote (小红书) account in June. This will be a second platform for us to connect with Chinese-speaking fandom (along with our existing Weibo account). If you use RedNote or know anyone who'd be interested in OTW announcements in Chinese on the platform, pass it along!

At the end of May, Fanlore wrapped up their Public Do-May, a public domain fandoms-themed month. They also ran their annual Bingo Challenge with tasty pastry-themed badges for editors to collect.

On June 15, 2026, TWC released Issue 48, a special issue on "Disability and Fandom" guest edited by Olivia Johnston Riley and Lauren Rouse. The essays in this issue focus on disability both as a marginalized identity and as a critical scholarly approach to fandom and fan studies.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections announced candidates for the 2026 OTW Board. This year's election will be uncontested, as there are three candidates running for four open seats. Platforms for each candidate can be viewed on the Elections website. They also provided the public an opportunity to submit questions to the candidates which will be published soon, refer to the Elections Timeline page for specific dates. Translation is working alongside Elections to make election-⁠related content available in as many languages as possible.

Meanwhile, Development & Membership has begun working on premiums for the October Membership Drive.

Board, Board Assistants Team, and Organizational Culture Roadmap also continued to collaborate on developing procedures to handle compromised volunteer accounts and other situations that necessitate urgent access removal.

Board also approved signing-on to a letter opposing the overbroad NO FAKES Act, which could negatively impact fan art and artists.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

From May 24 to June 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 204 new requests and completed 189, leaving them with 87 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of June 22, 2026, the OTW has 1,037 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 (Senior Software Developer)
New Communications Volunteers: Caitlynne, callmeri, and 4 other Posting Volunteers, belana, Bianca Sevidal, and Xiao Yi (Social Media Moderators)
New Elections Volunteers: Jahnavi and 1 other Communications Specialist, 1 Candidate Liaison, and 1 Chair Track Volunteer
New Fanlore Volunteers: Hobgirl, Minty, and 2 other Chair Track Volunteers
New Legal Volunteers: asatistic (Paralegal) and Kat M (Trademark Specialist)
New Open Doors Volunteers: elusivefalsehoods (Import Assistant)
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Anam (Volunteer)
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Beth B, Lululu, and tomurai (Supervisors)
New Translation Volunteers: artemissmythe, Karasu, madinator, and 3 other Volunteer Managers, and 1 Translator

Departing AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 (Software Developer)
Departing Communications Volunteers: Aditi Paul, Caitlynne, callmeri, and 2 other Media Outreach Volunteers, 1 Chair Assistant, 1 Posting Specialist, 1 Report Writer, and 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Technical Volunteers and 3 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Erica L., Wond3rland, and 4 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Translation Volunteer Manager, Alisé, and 3 other Translators
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: Kseniia and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON OPEN DOORS

Open Doors is preparing to import ArtisticAlley, the last FictionAlley house. Unfortunately, they've only been able to retrieve thumbnail versions of the artworks. They're currently asking creators if they can provide copies of the full versions. If you're an ArtisticAlley creator and can provide your full artworks—or would like Open Doors to do anything other than import the thumbnail copies—please check your emails and reply, or get in touch with Open Doors directly. They will begin importing after 30 June.

In May, Open Doors also announced the import of multifandom fanfiction archive Mediafans and its hosted Duncan/Methos zine Futures Without End. They also completed the semi-automated portion of the import of HBO Oz archive Unit B, with more works being imported manually in the coming months. These additional works comprise Big Bang fics, the Unit B Yahoo Group, and the Cellblock 5 Yahoo Group. Thank you to everyone on Open Doors' technical and administrative teams who contributed!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Accessibility, Design & Technology worked on more security updates as well as quality-of-life bug fixes and AO3 internationalization work. Thank you to the coders for those fixes and to the testers for helping with swift releases! They also published release notes for March.

In April, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 4,358 tickets. PAC also worked with Communications to publish a news post spotlighting ways to keep your AO3 account secure as part of World Password Day. Also in April, Support received 4,325 tickets. User Response Translation completed 77 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 638,000 tags in April, or approximately 1,300 tags per wrangling volunteer. They also collaborated with Communications to publish a Tumblr post about a new Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom metatag and a news post announcement of 21 new "No Fandom" tags.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore celebrated Public Domain Fandoms, or Public DoMay, on their socials all throughout the month! Check out their Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter/X for fun featured articles and posts.

Their annual Bingo Challenge also will begin on June 16 and will end June 29! It's open to new and experienced editors alike, and everyone is encouraged to join in!

Legal continues to answer internal and external questions and monitor the changing legal situation for privacy and free speech.

TWC continued to work on their planned issues related to Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms. May was the deadline for nominations for the Fans of Color Research Prize, which recognizes the best article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC. The next issue will be a general issue published in September.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections continues to prepare for the 2026 OTW Board of Directors election, which will fill four seats (three full term seats and one partial term seat).

If you'd like to vote this year, you must become an OTW member by June 30. To become a member, you must donate at least $10 USD in one donation and check the yes circle under "Do you want to be an OTW member?" on the donation form.

Board, Board Assistants Team, and Organizational Culture Roadmap spent the month collaborating on projects, including sharing the Code of Conduct draft for review from OTW volunteers and working on tasks related to closing out the OTW Crisis Management Plan project.

Finance completed the audit of the OTW's 2024 financials and began preparing our 2025 financials to be audited.

Development & Membership worked on wrap up from the April Membership Drive and began thinking ahead to the next one in October.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In May, Volunteers & Recruiting opened recruitment for four roles for the Fanlore, Communications, and Open Doors committees.

From April 22 to May 23, Volunteers & Recruiting received 202 new requests, and completed 177, leaving them with 70 open requests. As of May 23, 2026, the OTW has 1,040 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: 2 Event Coordinators and 1 Fanhackers Volunteer
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Advisor and 1 Digital Collections Intern
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Arashi, Bellis, Citrine, lazyredheeler, Rika G, SaltDove, ZoeT, and 3 other Volunteers
New User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Policy & Abuse Chair and 1 Organizational Culture Roadmap Head
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Fanhackers Lead and 2 Convention Specialists
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Financial Analyst
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Volunteer and 1 Import Assistant
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Allonym and 15 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Katarina Hjarpe and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. APRIL'S MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

April's Membership Drive ran from April 24-27 and raised $362,171.85 USD across 9,702 people in 87 countries, with 8,035 donors choosing to become OTW members. Thank you so much for your support!

This year, the April Drive spotlighted Accessibility, Design, & Technology (AD&T) and their behind-the-scenes work in developing, updating, and maintaining the AO3’s software and infrastructure. If you're familiar with coding and would like to help improve AO3, contributions from the community are welcome; for details, check out AO3's Software Contributing Guidelines and other documentation at our GitHub repository. All contributors are credited in AO3's release notes which detail recent code updates and fixes.

Development & Membership worked with Communications on drafting and publishing Drive-related news posts, which Translation made available in 23 languages. Finance posted an update on the 2026 budget prior to the Drive.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In April, AD&T worked on security updates, quality-of-life bug fixes, and making more parts of AO3 translatable. They also welcomed their first long-term contractor who has already begun submitting pull requests and reviewing code. AD&T previously engaged with contractors for specific projects, but this is their first time hiring someone to work on the AO3 code with a broader scope.

AO3 Documentation completed their biannual review of user-facing documentation.

Open Doors announced the import of SlasHeaven and received enormous support from the Spanish-speaking community on AO3. They also began importing the works from the Watchmen Kinkmeme to AO3, which has been in progress for several years due to pre-import complications.

Policy & Abuse continued work on some major updates to the Terms of Service FAQ and coordinated with Communications on a news post about spambots. Going forward, this post will be updated as new spam behaviors get reported. In March, Policy & Abuse received 4,560 tickets, while Support received 3,466 tickets. User Response Translation completed 71 translation and beta tasks for Policy & Abuse and Support.

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 613,000 tags, or approximately 1,400 tags per volunteer. They also announced 27 new "No Fandom" tags.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications started the month with a lighthearted April Fool's post spotlighting omegas and coordinated with AD&T for the site's temporary logo change. This was then followed by a more serious announcement about AO3 exiting beta. Across both posts, Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee helped moderate over 5,600 comments, most of which were positive and joining the celebration.

Communications also coordinated the OTW's attendance at Supanova, a fan convention in Melbourne, Australia. Thank you to everyone who came to see us! Fanwork recommendations from those who attended have been collected in the Supanova 2026 AO3 Collection.

Fanlore prepared a public domain-themed month for May. Check out their Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter/X for featured articles, and join their Discord server for a themed editing chat!

Legal continues to answer questions from fans and internally, especially around new laws restricting internet freedom.

In March, TWC released their special issue on Gaming Fandom and are currently in production for their June special issue on Disability and Fandom. Their editorial sections are working on the general issue for September and the 2027 special issues on Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections is preparing for this year's election, which will fill four seats on the Board: three full-term seats (3 years) and one partial term seat (1 year). The election will open on August 14, and members need to make a donation of at least $10 USD before July 1 if they'd like to vote.

Organizational Culture Roadmap's Code of Conduct draft has been reviewed for legal compliance, clarity, and other factors by an external nonprofit HR firm they partnered with on this project. They have incorporated their feedback and the updated draft will soon be available for review by all volunteers.

Board collaborated with Board Assistants Team to hold the second-quarter public Board meeting with 51 attendees. Thank you to everyone who attended! Meeting minutes are available on the OTW website. Board Assistants Team also continued progress on ongoing projects, including investigating mental health resources for volunteers, investigating volunteer retention within the committee, and supporting AD&T with documentation work.

In April, Board consulted with Legal and Volunteers & Recruiting to approve changes to the OTW's recruitment policies. The OTW will now require all applicants confirm they're 18 years old or older when applying for positions. Previously, some positions were open to volunteers aged 16 or 17. This change will only affect applicants moving forward and will not impact current volunteers.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In April, Volunteers & Recruiting opened recruitment for three roles for Legal and Policy & Abuse.

From March 23 to April 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 201 new requests, and completed 295, leaving them with 45 open requests. As of April 22, 2026, the OTW has 1,051 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Rhine (Translation Chair)
New Communications Volunteers: Jo Foderingham Brown (Social Media Moderator)
New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: anzie, Cocoa, GGLadybug, and 1 other News Post Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: Orla Maeve, Bre Hartfiel, and 3 other Volunteers
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: AAAthea, Agata, AlexTheTwin12, Amalaa, Aza, BerryBlue, Cait B, CherryAmaretto, Chien, Cid, Elistanel, Em L, Fujirope, hen, Hershel, inezblue, Insidia, Izhi, Kirave, Kvalli, Lacosta Seren, Liz27, Lua, Marieta, Marilianne, Milo, mina, moonjelly, Nootmeg, Novace, Pingj, Pinkie, Potato, principalityofmusicalchairs, PurplePurl003, rexmachina, Sachet, Sambuca, sequencefairy, Shira, Snowy, SophiaSun, Stephenie, Tets, Toni, ValerieM00ny, Vandali, vinnawis, Wesley, Winnie, Xiaohe, and 3 other Volunteers
New User Response Translation Volunteers: AifasInTheSky, Cadira, Lacuna, ­Matilda, mocong, shilight, and 6 other Translators

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Fiona M (AO3 Documentation Chair)
Departing AD&T Volunteers: Bilka (QA Supervisor)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing BAT Volunteers: Deniz (Volunteer)
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Chair Track Volunteer and 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Ember J, Lost_for_good, and 3 other Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Shubhi Tandon and 2 other Translators

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. AO3 IS EXITING OPEN BETA

In early April, we announced that AO3 is exiting open beta!

AO3 has grown and changed a lot since open beta launched in 2009! We've gone from 347 users to over 10 million and from 6,598 works to over 17 million. We've also introduced many features in that time, including the tag system and tag wrangling, additional privacy settings that allow creators to restrict their works or comments to logged-in users, downloads for offline access to fanworks, and more.

Since AO3's software has been stable for a long time, this change is mostly cosmetic and doesn't indicate everything is finalized or perfectly working. Our volunteer coders and community contributors will still be adding to and improving post-beta AO3 every day.

For more information on AO3 exiting open beta, check out the announcement for details.

II. ELSEWHERE AT AO3

In March, we celebrated AO3 reaching 17 million works! \o/

Beyond exiting beta, Accessibility, Design & Technology also performed two important upgrades in March: updating Elasticsearch to version 9 and Ruby on Rails to version 8.1. With these two upgrades, AO3 is on the latest version for two of its most important pieces of software. They also published January’s release notes.

Systems published a postmortem on early March's AO3 downtime.

Open Doors announced the import of SlasHeaven, a Spanish-language slash fanfiction and fanart archive, as part of their Online Archive Rescue Project.

In February, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 5,674 tickets, which is over 2,000 fewer tickets than the previous month and marks the first decrease in PAC's backlog since 2024. PAC also coordinated with Communications on a news post describing various spambots seen on AO3 and how we're combating them. Also in February, Support received 3,031 tickets, and User Response Translation completed 42 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling announced 31 new "No Fandom" canonical tags in their March round-up. On the @ao3org Tumblr, they announced changes to Critical Role fandom tags, creating an overarching fandom metatag for the Exandrian Universe and having specific campaigns or other media split into subtags. They hope these changes will help users better tag and filter for the works they want to see.

In February, Tag Wrangling wrangled over 543,000 tags or approximately 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications has updated the OTW News by Email service! You can now subscribe specifically to recruitment posts. If you're already subscribed to OTW News by Email and would like to change what emails you receive, please contact Communications via their contact form.

In March, Fanlore ran a monthly editing challenge inviting users to ​​archive external links on a page.

Legal answered a number of questions about pending and newly enacted laws around the world, as well as dealing with internal requests from OTW committees.

TWC released No. 47 of Transformative Works and Cultures, a special issue on Gaming Fandom edited by coeditors Hayley McCullough and Ashley P. Jones.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board and Board Assistants Team continued work on ongoing and newer projects, including making progress on the OTW website project with Communications, supporting Accessibility, Design & Technology with their documentation, and supporting Finance with streamlining messaging policies. They also began preparing for the next public Board meeting scheduled for April 18.

In March, Development & Membership caught up on their recurring donation gifts and put in more regular procedures for them going forward. In conjunction with Communications and Translation, they're now preparing for April's Membership Drive by getting graphics and new gifts ready.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for three committees this month: Communications (News Post Moderation), Translation, and User Response Translation.

From February 21 to March 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 160 new requests and completed 159, leaving them with 66 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of March 22, 2026, the OTW has 992 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Becca Bun and Jules Moon (Fanlore), Rebecca Tushnet and Stacey Lantagne (Legal)
New Communications Volunteers: LinnK, Jahnavi, and 3 other Social Media Moderators
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin and 1 Social Media & Outreach
New Open Doors Volunteers: Andrea T and 4 other Import Assistants; Kathy and 1 other Technical Volunteer; adyn, Seren, Claire M, and 2 other Administrative Volunteers; and 1 Liaison
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
New TWC Volunteers: 1 Symposium Editor
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: miffmiff, PippaLane, and 2 other volunteers

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Open Doors Chair, 2 Fanlore Chairs, and 1 Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Lead
Departing AD&T Volunteers: 1 Senior Volunteer and 1 Liaison
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach
Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Bookkeeper
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 4 Tag Wranglers and Soppon (Tag Wrangling Supervisor)
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ito, Polyxeni Foutsitsi, and 3 other Translators; 1 Chair Trainee; and 1 Volunteer Manager
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY

On February 15, Communications coordinated many International Fanworks Day (IFD) activities, including a Feedback Fest highlighting fanwork recommendations, an editing challenge in conjunction with Fanlore, and an IFD Discord server with games and chatting. Additionally, Translation helped make IFD materials available in 22 languages. Thank you to everyone who joined us in celebrating!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In February, we celebrated AO3 reaching 10 million registered users! \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) focused on some important upgrades and bug fixes, including upgrading to Ruby on Rails 8 and improving the collection revealing process. They also published release notes for December's code changes.

AO3 Documentation began their biannual review of user-facing documentation.

In the past month, Open Doors signed five new agreements with moderators to import their archives to AO3! Fandoms include Highlander, The Magnificent Seven, My Chemical Romance, and others. They also completed the import of Slashknot, a Slipknot (band) fanfiction and fanart archive.

In January, Support received 3,811 tickets, while Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 7,972 tickets. User Response Translation completed 12 requests from PAC and 37 requests from Support. PAC continues to work closely with AD&T and Systems to combat spam that users have been experiencing across the site.

Tag Wrangling announced 28 new "No Fandom" canonical tags for February. In January, they wrangled over 648,000 tags, or around 1,400 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore ran a Femslash February monthly editing challenge! Systems also helped upgrade Fanlore to a new version of MediaWiki.

In February, Legal had one of their volunteers participate in a briefing for staffers in the U.S. Legislature to gain a deeper understanding of copyright fair use. Elsewhere, Legal answered a number of questions internally and from users.

TWC is preparing their March 2026 issue on "Gaming Fandom" for publication. They also completed an update of TWC's editorial board as part of their ongoing work to expand TWC's scope, diversify their discipline in terms of historically marginalized fans and scholars, make the journal more international in scope, and increase multimodal approaches.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has concluded all Board-committee check-ins and is reviewing key themes across the organization. They also voted to approve an interpretative rule of one bylaw to better accommodate any future Board members with hearing disabilities.

Board Assistants Team continued work on various projects, including revamping the OTW Board Discord and researching projects on volunteer retention, public meeting best practices, and volunteer mental health.

Organizational Culture Roadmap continued work on the OTW Code of Conduct update project by finishing a summary of internal survey results and adjusting Code of Conduct drafts based on recommendations from an external HR firm. The OTW Crisis Management Plan has been finalised and approved by the Board.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In February, Volunteers & Recruiting ran recruitment for seven roles across four committees and one workgroup.

From January 23 to February 21, Volunteers & Recruiting received 182 new requests and completed 295, leaving them with 61 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of February 21, 2026, the OTW has 985 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: 3 Social Media Moderators
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager and 1 Translator
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr and peaandsea (Chair Assistants) and 1 Volunteer

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Elizabeth Wiltshire (Organizational Culture Roadmap Head) and 1 Elections Chair
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: Abby (Social Media Moderator) and 2 Weibo Moderators
Departing Elections Volunteers: 1 Voting Process Architect
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Mei and 2 other Import Assistants, and 1 Chair Assistant
Departing Support Volunteers: Mily and RRHand (Volunteers)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Indes, lifeisyetfair, PinkBrain, plantpun, and 14 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Idiosincrasy (Volunteer Manager and Translator), 3 Volunteer Managers, and 1 Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr, peaandsea, and 1 other Senior Volunteer; and 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. AO3 STATISTICS ROUND-UP

2025 was a busy year for AO3! The site continued to see rising traffic, with Communications publishing an update on AO3 statistics from 2020-2025. In December, Support received 3,589 tickets, totaling to over 40,000 tickets received in 2025, an all-time high. Meanwhile, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 6,357 tickets in December, totaling approximately 47,500 tickets in 2025. Check out PAC's pie chart for more details.

In the first half of January, User Response Translation translated or betaed 32 ticket requests from Support and PAC.

Open Doors finished importing three archives in December: Absolution - The Inugrrrl Memorial Archive about the manga InuYasha, InDeath.net Fan Fiction about the In Death book series by J.D. Robb, and The Pinky and the Brain Page about the cartoon Pinky and the Brain. In total, Open Doors completed the imports of eight archives in 2025! They also announced the import of the Randall Morgan Memorial Archive, a Queer as Folk (US) fanfiction archive by the creator Randall Morgan.

In December, Tag Wrangling wrangled approximately 598,000 tags, or around 1,300 tags per volunteer. In total, they wrangled approximately 4,944,000 tags in 2025. They also continued work on handling "No Fandom" additional tags, publishing December and January news posts detailing recent changes. In total, Tag Wrangling published nine "No Fandom"-related news posts in 2025 covering around 399 new canonical "No Fandom" additional tags.

II. ELSEWHERE AT AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology coordinated improvements to bookmark searches in the latter half of January, including the ability to filter bookmarks by word count. They also continue their work on performance improvements, bug fixes, and working with PAC and AO3's spam detection service to address spam comments. In conjunction with Communications, they posted a December 2025 update on how to recognize and report AO3 spambots.

In January, Tag Wrangling updated their Fandom Tag Metatag guidelines, including clarifying when a fandom metatag should be made and when to merge closely related fandoms into one fandom tag. Check out the news post detailing the new policy.

As part of International Volunteers Day (IVD) 2025, Communications collected and batched answers to the IVD Q&A by committee, resulting in five committee-specific news posts highlighting Communications, Support, Tag Wrangling, Translation, and Volunteers & Recruiting. Answers across committees, along with additional responses not featured in the news posts, have been compiled in a separate AO3 work.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore ran an editing chat to close out 2025, and it was a lot of fun! They also began preparing for their annual IFD Fanlore Challenge and Femslash February event! Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr for announcements.

Legal answered many internal and external questions this month.

TWC is readying the publication of the two 2026 special issues: "Disability and Fandom" and "Gaming Fandom". They also continue work on the two 2027 special issues: "Music Fandom" and "Latin American Fandoms", and there continues to be a rolling deadline for submitting to TWC’s next general issue.

In January, Communications' Fanhackers wrote about the Transformative Approaches to Fan Identity, and they began a multi-post survey of acafannish research and publishing resources.

IV. GOVERNANCE

In December, Board announced the resignations of two directors: Kathryn Solderholm and Erica Frank. We would like to thank Erica and Kathryn for their service as members of the Board, and wish them all the best in their future endeavours with the OTW.

In January, Board finalized and approved the OTW Procurement & Purchasing Policy. They and the Board Assistants Team (BAT) organised the first quarter of 2026 public Board meeting on January 18 which had 54 attendees. Minutes of this meeting will be available soon on the OTW website. Elsewhere, Board and BAT continued work on document review and archiving board statements, Code of Conduct tasks in conjunction with Organizational Culture Roadmap, and ongoing projects for mental health resources for volunteers, scheduling tools, public meeting best practices and volunteer retention in BAT. BAT also updated their OTW website committee page.

Organizational Culture Roadmap finalized a confidentiality policy in preparation for upcoming external recruitment.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In December, Volunteers & Recruiting thanked all OTW volunteers on International Volunteer Day with their organization-wide email and graphics campaign. In January, they ran recruitment for Open Doors.

From November 22 to January 23, Volunteers & Recruiting received 355 new requests, and completed 378, leaving them with 52 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of January 23, 2025, the OTW has 1,013 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Subcommittee Leads/Workgroup Heads: Eevee (Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Lead) and megidola (Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Head)
New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Lulu S (Chair Trainee)
New Fanlore Volunteers: Elfie, Konsta Morales, Watts, and 1 other Graphic Designer
New Open Doors Volunteers: Addiebees, AviLine, feelyx, LeighR, Marie K, meservey66, MetaKass, miffmiff, Mort, pinkconstellations, SleepyJane, Spit, StormySea, Truendz, Vail, and 11 other Import Assistants
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: megidola (Supervisor) and 1 Chair Track Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Chelsea Cheyanne, inspiredstork, Sanity, will, and Yrindor (Supervisors)
New Translation Volunteers: Rhine and 1 other Chair Trainee; Arushi, athursdayschild, Eirinar, Linarii, Mira8, Niki K, Phoebe B­, Pi, Rita P, and 12 other Translators
New TWC Volunteers: Fiona M, Yumi, and 3 other Layout Editors; and 2 Outreach and Communications Editors
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Eki, f0f8ff, HARRitte, Jules R, Laus, PanPan, rosings, zoy zauce, and 3 other Translators

Departing Directors: Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm
Departing Committee Chairs: 1 Communications Chair and 1 Elections Chair
Departing BAT Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Communications Volunteers: KW Ukuku (TikTok Moderator), Lori P (Graphics Volunteer), 1 Fanhacker Volunteer, and 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Graphic Designer, 2 Membership Data Specialists, and 2 Volunteers
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Discord Moderator, 1 Outreach Analyst, and 1 Policy & Admin
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Pelagia and 1 other Administrative Volunteer, Wynne (Import Assistant), and 1 FCPP Intern
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Nary and 22 other Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Nary and 1 other Supervisor; Asas Carmesins, Bruno, Eevee, lianneder, Lily_Haydee_Lohdisse, McBangle, Sayornis, Tea Huimyni, and 10 other Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Teelee (Task Assistant); Illiterations and 4 Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: Melanie Kohnen (Review Editor); Courtney Lazore and 1 other Proofreader; and 1 Symposium Editor
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Senior Volunteer and 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON FANLORE

In November, Fanlore ran the Fanlore No Fault November challenge: a catch-up event for earlier badges editors missed! The challenge ran from November 16 to 30, with many editors participating and earning badges from previous months.

Curious about editing Fanlore? Check out the New Visitor Portal and Tutorial for getting started!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

On November 14, we celebrated AO3's 16th anniversary! \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology continued to prepare emails for translation and improved how the download and chapter index menus behave with each other on smaller screens.

AO3 Documentation updated the Contacting the Staff FAQ.

Open Doors finished importing Oz Magi, an Oz annual gift exchange, and Stayka's Saint Seiya Archive, a Saint Seiya archive. They also shared an annual roundup of the fanzine collections created in the last year for fanworks imported through the Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) and announced the upcoming import of a Harry Potter archive, PhoenixSong.

In October, Policy & Abuse received 5,061 tickets, setting a record high for the third month in a row. Support received 3,043 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 600,000 tags, or over 1,380 tags per wrangling volunteer.

Tag Wrangling also continues to create new "No Fandom" canonical tags and announced a new batch of tags for November.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

TWC continues to prepare for the two upcoming 2026 special issues: "Disability and Fandom" and "Gaming Fandom". The submission deadline for the two 2027 special issues, "Music Fandom" and "Latin American Fandoms", is also quickly approaching on January 1.

In November, the OTW filed an Amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court should clarify the rules surrounding who can challenge a trademark registration application. In a case involving whether someone should own the trademark "Rapunzel" for dolls of the character Rapunzel, the OTW argued that the Trademark Office should consider the interests of the public—including fans—in deciding whether to award private ownership over a word or symbol that may be in the public domain.

Legal also worked with Communications on a news post about recent legislation and have responded to a number of comments and queries on this post and other issues.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board continued work on annual turnover and meeting with all committees. They made progress on the OTW Procurement Policy and expected to get it finalized soon. They, along with the Board Assistants Team, also continued to work with Volunteers & Recruiting and Organizational Culture Roadmap on the ongoing Code of Conduct review.

Development & Membership has been catching up on post-Drive tasks.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

December 5 was International Volunteers Day! As a volunteer-run organization, the OTW would not be possible without the support and diligence of our volunteers. We thank all our volunteers, past and present, for the work they've contributed to the OTW.

If you're curious about volunteering for the OTW, we recruit for various positions on a regular basis, and recruitment will next open in January.

From October 25 to November 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 287 new requests, and completed 270, leaving them with 63 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of November 22, 2025, the OTW has 983 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Fanlore Volunteers: Luana and 2 other Chair-Track Volunteers
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Anderson, Araxie, corr, Aspenfire, Klm, Mothmantic, Nova Deca, vanishinghorizons, and 1 other Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 90Percent Human, Aeon, Alecander Seiler, ambystoma, Astrum, Atlas Oak, batoidea, Bette, Bottle, bowekatan, Bruno, Chaosxvi, Destiny, DogsAreTheBest312, Dream, elia faustus, Ellexamines, Elliott W, Gracey, jacksonwangparty, Jean W, Kalico, Keira Gong, Kiru, lamonnaie, Lavender, Loria, Lucia G, LWynn, Max, Nikki, Nioral, noctilucent, Our Hospitality, Primo, Rie, Salethia, Sapphira, sashene, Schnee, Scylle, sneakyowl, soymilk, Thaddeus, TheCrystalRing, thewritegrump, Water, Wintam, yucca, and 1 other Tag Wrangling Volunteer
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
New TWC Volunteers: Lys Benson (Copyeditor)
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Cesium (Translator)

Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Irina, Paula, and 2 other Import Assistants; 1 Administrative Volunteer, and 1 Fan Culture Preservation Project Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Communications News Post Moderation Liaison
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Julia Santos (Tag Wrangling Supervisor); blackelement7, pan2fel, and 7 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: weliuona and 2 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Alisande and 2 other Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

October's Membership Drive ran smoothly, with Communications drafting posts in coordination with Development & Membership, and Translation making drive materials available in 26 languages. Finance also published a mid-year budget update prior to the Drive. This year's October Drive spotlighted Systems, who handle the OTW's server infrastructure, respond to outages, and perform routine upgrades and maintenance to ensure the OTW's projects remain available.

In total, we raised around $290,000 USD during the Drive, with around 2,500 gifts requested and around 7,000 people either starting or renewing their OTW membership. Thank you so much for your support!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In October, AO3 celebrated reaching 16 million works. Thank you to everyone who helped us achieve this milestone!

Accessibility, Design & Technology upgraded their servers to Ruby 3.4. They had a record 6 releases in 3 weeks which included bug fixes, usability improvements to a variety of AO3's site features, and further preparatory work for making AO3's interface and emails translatable in the future.

AO3 Documentation updated the Orphaning FAQ.

Open Doors announced two new import projects: The Pinky and the Brain Page, a Pinky and the Brain fanfiction archive, and Dreaming the Answers, an X-Files fanzine.

In September, Policy & Abuse received 4,300 tickets, while Support received 3,372 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 520,000 tags—around 1,150 tags per wrangling volunteer.

Tag Wrangling also continued the process of creating new "No Fandom" canonical tags and released a new batch of tags in October.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications' Con Outreach division coordinated the OTW's attendance at COMICUP ShangHai Plus 2025 in Shanghai, China, and MCM Comic Con London 2025 in London, England. Thank you to the volunteers who tabled these conventions, and everyone who said hi to us there!

Fanlore celebrated a Books themed month in October! Their next editing challenge will give editors a chance to earn missed badges from previous challenges. Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr for announcements about the challenge, which will run from November 16 to 30.

In October, Legal and an ally, the Wikimedia Foundation, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that Mississippi's online age verification statute overburdens mission-driven platforms and threatens the free speech rights of those platforms and their users. For more details, head over to our latest Spotlight on Legal Issues. Legal also answered a number of queries from fans.

TWC is finishing reviewing articles for the two upcoming 2026 special issues: "Disability and Fandom" and "Gaming Fandom".

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board held their third quarter public Board meeting on October 5 in the Board Discord. There were 35 attendees, and they answered 8 questions. Meeting minutes are available on the OTW website. Board also approved signing on to two US Supreme Court amicus briefs, one on opposing an age verification law and one on public domain of a folklore character.

The Board Assistants Team assisted with Board turnover, continued work on the OTW website, and collaborated with Organizational Culture Roadmap towards their goals. Organizational Culture Roadmap is currently in the process of evaluating responses to a survey of volunteers about the OTW Code of Conduct.

Strategic Planning continues to prepare for the 2026-2029 Strategic Plan. They are currently exploring different tools to support them in running the next phase: prioritization.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for five committees this month: Fanlore, Open Doors, Policy & Abuse, Translation, and User Response Translation. Volunteers & Recruiting also finalized an update to the OTW Name Policy, which contains information on what OTW names are now permitted, under what name volunteer work may be credited publicly, how to request a reference letter if someone's OTW name is not their legal name, and more.

From September 25 to October 24, Volunteers & Recruiting received 145 new requests, and completed 140, leaving them with 54 open requests. As of October 24, 2025, the OTW has 983 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg (Board Directors), and Rachel Linton (Vice President)
New Committee Chairs/Leads: Kyrie (Support)
New AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 and ömer faruk (Software Developers)
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 2 Development & Membership Volunteers
New Open Doors Volunteers: eviltothecore13 and 1 other Technical Volunteer
New Support Volunteers: V Snow (Chair Assistant)
New User Response Translation Volunteers: meat (Volunteer Coordinator)

Departing Directors: Jennifer Haynes (Director) and Kathryn Soderholm (Vice President role only)
Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Accessibility, Design, & Technology Chair
Departing AD&T Volunteers: 1 Software Developer and 1 Senior Volunteer
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing BAT Volunteers: spacegandalf (Volunteer)
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Vihi (News Post Moderator)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Executie, Hazelwyrm, Jas, SCEnt Hope, Zoë Two Dots, and 4 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: heine and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Amy2 (Projects Volunteer) and Ehryn (Volunteer)

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. UPDATES TO AO3 COLLECTIONS

In late September, Accessibility, Design & Technology updated AO3's collections feature by introducing collections tags—allowing more granular filtering and browsing between collections. This update also generally improved collection performance, introduced the ability to mark collections as "Multifandom", and added Subcollections to the Collections filtering page.

For more details on recent AO3 releases and code changes, check out the most recent release notes.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Besides updates to Collections, AO3 committees also continued work in a variety of areas.

Open Doors finished importing My Mongoose, a The Sentinel ezine archive, and announced two new import projects: Faerie: Tolkien Fanfiction and Forging Ghost, a Spike/Angel archive.

Tag Wrangling continued their work on creating new "No Fandom" canonical tags and announced another batch of tags in mid-September. On the @ao3org Tumblr, Tag Wrangling also announced changes to Critical Role fandom tags in light of the upcoming Campaign 4. They hope these changes will help users in finding and filtering for the works they want to see.

In August, Policy & Abuse received 3,863 tickets, while Support received 4,319 tickets—the current record for the most tickets either committee has received in one month. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 579,000 tags, or over 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.

From mid-July to mid-September, User Response Translation helped Support and Policy & Abuse with 38 translation requests.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore's Stub September editing challenge was a big success! Thank you to everyone who took part. For October, Fanlore is currently running a book-themed month. Check out the Help page for how to take part and claim a book-themed badge!

TWC's Transformative Works and Cultures has released issue No. 46, a general issue! It includes the launch of a new special section, New Currents. This section collects articles on new topics or approaches at a smaller scale than a special issue. In this issue, New Currents focuses on how fans and fan studies scholars engage with AI as a tool for transformative engagement with fannish texts.

In September, Legal responded to a number of user queries; they also joined allies in filing an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in the case of Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment. The case deals with when internet service providers can be held responsible for the actions of their users.

Legal's brief discussed the importance of internet access as a practical necessity of daily life and argued that holding service providers liable for users’ copyright infringement based only on accusations of infringement, rather than actual proof of infringement, would threaten innovation and creativity by creating an incentive for service providers to deny service to creators without requiring evidence or providing due process. There is no date set yet for when the case will be argued before the Supreme Court.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections closed out the 2025 election—congratulations to the OTW's new Board Directors: Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg!

In preparation for October's membership drive, Development & Membership has been organizing new donation gifts, Finance has been compiling the pre-drive 2025 budget update, and Communications and Translation have prepared the associated news posts.

Board coordinated with Communication's Con Outreach division to attend EagleCon in Los Angeles, USA, and received the Lemonade award on the OTW's behalf. Elsewhere, the Board Assistants Team (BAT) continued work on OTW website updates, prepared for the quarterly Board meeting, and completed a report on non-profit training.

Organizational Culture Roadmap, in conjunction with BAT, Board, and Volunteers & Recruiting, continued work on the cross-committee review of the OTW's Code of Conduct. A survey was sent out to all volunteers soliciting their feedback for potential Code of Conduct updates.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

This month, Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for 3 committees: Fanlore, TWC, and Tag Wrangling.

From August 21 to September 24, Volunteers & Recruiting received 171 new requests and completed 174, leaving them with 46 open requests. As of September 24, 2025, the OTW has 991 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New BAT Volunteers: Cait B, Deimos Crow, MelMel, MustardPot, and Sullie Tosho (BAT Volunteers)
New Communications Volunteers: 2 Chair Assistants
New Development & Membership Volunteers: Kae Coolen, Maddie64, and Mako (Graphic Designers); Danielle G., jennybug, LizLeaf, and 2 other Development & Membership Volunteers
New Open Doors Volunteers: AuroraT, Kayla G, and vinnawis (Chair Assistants); and Julie Bozza (Senior FSHP Volunteer)
New Strategic Planning Volunteers: Harlan Lieberman-Berg (Cybersecurity Delegate)
New Systems Volunteers: E.V. Moebius (Systems Volunteer)
New TWC Volunteers: 1 Review Editor

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Board Assistants Team Chair
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing BAT Volunteers: Harlan Lieberman-Berg (Cybersecurity Delegate)
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Julie Bozza (Chair Assistant) and 1 Import Assistant
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Strategic Planning Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: SlantedKnitting (Support Volunteer)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Mayrin, Yuechiang Luo, and 7 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Translation Volunteer Manager and 3 Translators

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. 2025 BOARD ELECTION

Elections successfully closed the 2025 OTW Board Director election. Congratulations to the OTW's new Directors: Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg! Elizabeth and Harlan will be replacing the seats of outgoing Board members Jennifer Haynes and Zixin Zhang.

Many committees collaborated on Board Election work, with Communications helping distribute announcements, Development & Membership coordinating with OTW members, and Translation making Elections material available in multiple languages.

Elections would like to thank all the candidates who ran, the volunteers from across the OTW who assisted Elections in their work, and everyone who engaged with the election by asking questions or turning out to vote.

Statistics from this year’s election were made available on September 1: out of 15,138 eligible voters, 2,197 cast a ballot, representing 14.5% of potential voters.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In August, AO3 celebrated both one million Mandarin Chinese works and nine million users. Thank you to everyone who's helped us reach these milestones!

Also in August, Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) deployed a couple releases that included bug fixes and security improvements, and Systems continued their routine tasks, such as improving performance and auditing Archive traffic for malicious bots. User Response Translation began completing ticket translation requests, and Open Doors announced the import of Faerie, a Tolkien fanfiction archive.

In July, Policy & Abuse received 3,570 tickets, while Support received 3,999 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled just over 636,000 tags, or over 1,400 per wrangling volunteer!

Elsewhere, Tag Wrangling coordinated with AD&T and announced changes to fandom tag policies for fangames and fanmade web series in a series of three posts on the @ao3org Tumblr. The first post outlined the general policy, while the second post focused on Undertale and the third post focused on Fangans from Dangan Ronpa. Lastly, Tag Wrangling also coordinated with Communications to announce 20 new "No Fandom" canonical tags on AO3 News.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Legal is continuing to answer user queries and monitor legal developments. Although there are many concerning legal developments around freedom of speech and expression online, they are not directly affecting AO3. Legal also dealt with some unauthorized app who’ve used OTW and AO3 trademarks in confusing ways.

Transformative Works and Cultures has two active calls for papers, both due by January 1, 2026. The first is a special issue on Latin American Fandoms, and the next is a special issue on Music Fandom.

Communications' Con Outreach division wrapped up Worldcon 2025 in Seattle, Washington, USA - thank you to everyone who tabled and who said hi to us! You can check out con goers' recommendations in the con's AO3 collection.

Fanlore's themed month for July, Fandom in Color, was a big success! Their next editing challenge, Stub September will run from September 14-28, and graphics will have an animals with swords theme. Check their Bluesky, Twitter/X and Tumblr for announcements.

IV. GOVERNANCE

In August, Board, Board Assistants Team (BAT), Organizational Culture Roadmap, and Volunteers & Recruiting began a cross-committee review of the OTW's Code of Conduct. This review aims to ensure the Code of Conduct still serves both the OTW as an organization as well as its many volunteers.

Elsewhere, Board collaborated with other committees on Crisis Communication Guidelines, began their biennial review of the Board Confidentiality Policy, had their quarterly check-in with Legal, and approved the 2024 Annual Report. Minutes from July's public Board meeting are now available on the OTW website. Board also started preparations for the upcoming Board turnover after receiving the 2025 OTW Board election results.

BAT continued work on several projects, including collaborations with the Organizational Culture Roadmap and a report on nonprofit training. Lastly, Strategic Planning continued work on their two-year progress report on the implementation of the current strategic plan.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In addition to the aforementioned Code of Conduct Review, Volunteers & Recruiting also began a project focused on workgroups, aiming to increase the OTW’s ability to support projects that might not fit within the purview of a single committee.

This month, Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for two committees: BAT and Development & Membership.

From July 23 to August 20, Volunteers & Recruiting received 203 new requests, and completed 252, leaving them with 51 open requests. As of August 20, 2025, the OTW has 982 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: GrayIsNotEmo, KW Ukuku, Magda19, and 1 other TikTok Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: Becca Bun, Jules Moon, Tiff, Zoe Bird, and 2 other Social Media & Outreach Volunteers
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Ain, embobem, Gail, Rissi, and 2 other Policy & Abuse Volunteers
New Support Volunteers: ChangYan, Clarice Strand, Jennifer Elliott, llianne, John Pork, Louie, Maycix, melon8, Mily, nayogn, Stevie, TinaOe, viewofsilence, Wtchmn23, Ziting, and 8 other Support Volunteers
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: amphob, Bec, Berix, Bettelort, bingus, Bismuth, bluejello, Clarissa, Daisya, dila, Draconic, Drakoshig, firstestly, genitus6, grexigone, Hazelwyrm, heliolatry, Jas, KD, Lace, Lau, Leo M, Leuconoen, Maris, Mary, Nerva, nekojoo, null_ice, Nyxia, Pandasaurio, pickledragon, radiance, Ravenna, rikka, RJ, Sabrina_Tangerina, sarkastic, Sayornis, SCEnt Hope, shrikes, Soyash, Talixa, Tea Huimyni, Thunder, twistingsands, Zee, and 1 other Tag Wrangling Volunteer
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Ana Niccals, Bekyro, PerpetuallyPurple, and 2 other Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Communications Chair
Departing BAT Volunteers: 2 Board Assistant Team Volunteers
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Event Coordinator, 1 Media Outreach Volunteer, 1 Report Writer, and 2 TikTok Moderators
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Esin and 9 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Janka (Translator)

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. UPCOMING BOARD ELECTION

The 2025 OTW Board Election will be held on August 15-18, a week from today.

Elections, Communications, and Translation worked together to announce candidate and voting information. Voting instructions have been emailed to all eligible OTW members, and translated versions of voting instructions are available on the Elections website. Candidate answers to Q&A questions can also be found on the Elections website, and a live Candidate chat was held on August 2 via Discord.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Legal has been closely monitoring legal developments and proposals about internet age verification in the US, UK, and around the world and taking steps to ensure that the AO3 user experience will not change. They also responded to a number of user queries and dealt with a commercial company that has been using the AO3 trademark in a confusing way.

In early July, Accessibility, Design, & Technology resolved some issues and downtime related to creating bookmarks on AO3. They also deployed several releases of bug fixes and improvements, including a performance improvement for the page that administrators use to search for user accounts. Lastly, in conjunction with Systems having installed and set up new servers, they finalized some Elasticsearch upgrades. You can refer to the recent release notes for more details.

In June, Support received 3,348 tickets, while Policy & Abuse received 3,738 tickets. Their TOS Spotlight news post series has now concluded; if you missed it, we encourage you to look it over and contact Policy & Abuse if you have any further TOS questions.

Tag Wrangling continues to test processes for wrangling canonical tags in "No Fandom"—tags that aren't specific to any particular fandom—and announced some new canonical tags on July 14. More tags will continue to be canonized and announced on a regular basis.

In June, Tag Wrangling handled over 526,000 tags, or over 1,200 tags per volunteer! \o/

III. OPEN DOORS IMPORTS CONTINUE

Open Doors finished importing all fanfiction from the Harry Potter archive FictionAlley and is now processing fanart hosted on the site. You can find all imported works in the FictionAlley collection. Unclaimed works are currently restricted to logged-in AO3 users, but per Open Doors' agreement with the archivist, they will be unlocked 30 days after the import is fully completed.

All FictionAlley creators should have received one or more emails with links to claim, orphan, delete their works, or prevent the import of any additional works of theirs in the future. If you were a creator and did not receive this email, please contact Open Doors for assistance. You can also contact Open Doors if you would like to prevent future imports of your Harry Potter works specifically.

The import process for HarryPotterFanFiction.com and MuggleNet Fan Fiction are also underway. If your email address has changed since you were a member of either archive, or you would like Open Doors not to import your works, please contact Open Doors. Please refer to the import announcements for a full list of how Open Doors can assist you.

Elsewhere, Open Doors has continued their importing work on My Mongoose, an archive for The Sentinel.

IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications' Con Outreach team wrapped up Capital City Comic Con in Lansing, Michigan, USA—thank you to everyone who tabled and who said hi to us! You can check out con attendees' fanwork recommendations in the convention's AO3 collection.

Fanlore's themed month for July, Fandom in Color, was a big success! They're now planning their next editing challenge, Stub September, which will be themed around animals with swords this year. Check out Fanlore's social media (Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr) for announcements about the challenge, which will run from September 8-21.

Transformative Works and Cultures is finalizing their upcoming general issue, volume 46, which will be published on September 15. Their upcoming Latin American Fandoms and Music Fandoms specific issues are still accepting submissions until January 1, 2026. Lastly, they collaborated with Communications on an OTW website page about the TWC committee, outlining the team behind the publication and spotlighting TWC's Fans of Color research prize.

V. GOVERNANCE

Board held the quarterly Board meeting on July 20 on Discord. There were 44 attendees, and minutes will be available soon on the OTW website.

Alongside preparing for the Board meeting, Board and the Board Assistants Team collaborated across the OTW and made progress on several goals, including the OTW Crisis Management Plan, OTW Procurement Policy, Cybersecurity Report, Paid Staff Transition, and researching nonprofit training resources.

Finance is wrapping up 2024 reconciliations and working with auditors for the 2024 audit.

VI. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for three committees this month: Communications, Fanlore, and Policy & Abuse. Volunteers & Recruiting also closed out all projects carried over from previous years and plan to start new projects this year in accordance with their 2025 roadmap goals.

From June 23 to July 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 175 new requests, and completed 124, leaving them with 102 open requests. As of July 22, 2025, the OTW has 926 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Deniz (News Post Moderation Volunteer)
New Open Doors Volunteers: Kriti S (FCPP Intern)
New Support Volunteers: moonlithic, SlantedKnitting, and 23 other Support Volunteers
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translation Volunteer Manager and 1 Translation Task Assistant

Departing Communications Volunteers: 2 Fanhackers Volunteers
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 2 News Post Moderation Volunteers
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Policy & Abuse Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Jennifer D2 (Liaison to User Response Translation), Geraldine and 2 other Support Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: demilyver, Goodwin, Ratty, and 11 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Ducky (Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer) and 1 Tool Implementation Lead

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON FICTIONALLEY IMPORT

Open Doors has nearly finished importing FictionAlley, a Harry Potter archive. With approximately 29,000 works imported so far, it is Open Doors' largest import yet. You can check out all imported works at the FictionAlley collection. Unclaimed works are currently locked to logged-in AO3 users only, but per Open Doors' agreement with the FictionAlley archivist, they will be unlocked 30 days after the import is fully completed.

All FictionAlley creators should have received one or more emails with links to claim, orphan, delete their works, or prevent the import of any additional works of theirs in the future. If you were a creator and did not receive this email, please contact Open Doors for assistance. You can also contact Open Doors if you would like to prevent future imports of your Harry Potter works specifically.

Open Doors has two other Harry Potter archives currently in their queue: HarryPotterFanFiction.com and MuggleNet Fan Fiction. If your email address has changed since you were a member of either archive, or you would like Open Doors not to import your works, please contact Open Doors. Please refer to the import announcements for a full list of how Open Doors can assist you with either import.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) coordinated with Board and Volunteers & Recruiting to formally decommission the Quality Assurance & Testing (QA&T) subcommittee—thank you to everyone who has served on QA&T over the years. Quality assurance and testing of AO3's code will continue under the oversight of AD&T's new QA Supervisor role. AD&T's latest releases have focused on various bug fixes, code clean-up, and monitoring improvements: check out the release notes. Also, Systems has installed some new Elasticsearch servers and repurposed the old ones as application servers! \o/

Open Doors announced the import of Absolution – The Inugrrrl Memorial, an InuYasha fanfiction memorial archive.

In May, Support received 3,177 tickets, while Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 3,763 tickets—a nearly 40% increase which is likely due to PAC's recent TOS spotlight series. PAC worked with Legal and Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee to review over 1,700 comments across seven posts, with more than 400 comments receiving a reply. PAC will also be recruiting soon, so look out for the upcoming recruitment post!

In June, Tag Wrangling neared completion of phase two of three of their committee-wide guideline discussions on fandom metatags. They also launched a new procedure which streamlines creation of new "No Fandom" canonical tags, which are canonical tags not specific to any particular fandom. The committee plans to post announcements periodically detailing new tags, including one in a few weeks.

In May, Tag Wrangling handled over 610,000 tags, or over 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore's Annual Bingo was a huge success! \o/ 25 participants completed at least one bingo, and 16 got a total blackout. Thanks to everyone who took part!

In July, Fanlore is running a themed month—Fandom in Color—which celebrates characters of color, the contributions of fans of color, and more! Check out their social media (Bluesky and Tumblr) for page spotlights throughout the month.

Communications is now overseeing the OTW's Convention Outreach division, which was previously run by Development & Membership. If you have inquiries regarding OTW's convention presence, Communications can be reached through their contact form on the OTW website.

TWC is finalizing their upcoming general issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, volume 46, which will be published on September 15. They are still accepting submissions for their Latin American Fandoms special issue until January 1, 2026.

IV. THE 2025 ELECTION AND GOVERNANCE

Elections announced the 2025 Election candidates; this year's election is contested, with three candidates running for two open seats in this year's election. Their platforms are available on the Elections website. Communications has been coordinating public posts, while Translation is working on translating candidates' platforms.

2025's OTW Board Election will take place on August 15-18. OTW Members who plan to nominate a proxy should contact Elections by August 6. Specific dates for Q&A and Candidate Chats will be made available on the 2025 Election Timeline page.

Development & Membership has been checking membership for Board candidates and donors who want to vote in this year's election, while Finance has begun preparing for the 2024 audit.

Board uploaded minutes from the April 2025 Board public meeting to the OTW website. They also approved two new Finance Bookkeepers, held check-in meetings with Legal and the Paid Staff Transition Lead, and continued to work with the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup. The Board Assistants Team's work also continues on several projects, including the Procurement Policy and Board Discord Server Guidelines revamp.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for two committees—Tag Wrangling and Support—and two subcommittees—News Post Moderation and Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution—this month.

From May 19 to June 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 147 new requests and completed 139, leaving them with 53 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of June 22, 2025, the OTW has 944 volunteers. \o/

New Committee Chairs/Leads: 2 Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Heads
New AD&T Volunteers: 1 QA Supervisor
New Communications Volunteers: 2 Convention Specialists and 3 TikTok Moderators
New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Mossie, Vihi, and 1 other News Post Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: 90PercentHuman, Hobgirl, Sparrow, and 1 other Policy & Admin Volunteer
New Finance Volunteers: Scott and 1 other Bookkeeper
New Open Doors Volunteers: Bette, devinwolfi, Kelpie, korry, November_Clouds, Pat Zarzecka, scattered_coreopsis, Starlings and 6 other Import Assistants
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Goal Supervisor; megidola and 1 other Volunteer
New Support Volunteers: 2 Chair Assistants
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Adri Jaimes, Lia404, ttom1323, and 5 other Translators
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Felipe and friki (Translators)

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Nary (Support) and 2 QA&T Leads
Departing AD&T QA&T Volunteers: runt and 1 other QA&T Testing Volunteer
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Leja, Evolcahra, and 1 other Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Lead
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Convention Specialist
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Import Assistants and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Sandra 002 (Volunteer)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: ladydragona (Supervisor); Daniailís, MFY11EP, Barbara Thomas, and 3 other Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Mirjam, DaisyJane, DanielUL, and 6 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. 200 NEWSLETTERS

This month marks the 200th edition of the OTW Newsletter! Starting in February 2012, the newsletter has consistently provided updates on committees across the OTW. Over time, the newsletter's format has grown and shifted, settling into the format used today.

If you're curious, older newsletter editions can be found on AO3 News and the OTW website! Thank you so much for supporting the OTW and our projects. Here's to many more!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Policy & Abuse is currently running a weekly spotlight series about the AO3 Terms of Service. These news posts have been highlighting various nuances of AO3's policies, and Policy & Abuse has been coordinating with Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee to answer follow-up questions in the comments.

AO3 reached 15 million fanworks in May! Communications published a news post to celebrate.

Also in May, Accessibility, Design, & Technology deployed a few enhancements related to username and password changes, as well as fixed some longstanding bugs in tag sets. Systems is preparing to mount new servers, after which they'll be able to get them up and running for AO3.

Open Doors announced the import of Homosapien Press: the publisher of multi-fandom fanzines such as Samurai Errant, Homosapien, and Pure Maple Syrup. They also completed the import of Slash Advent Calendar. Lastly, they launched a way for archivists and publishers to designate a Fannish Next of Kin to take over collection management post-import.

In April, Policy & Abuse received 2,734 tickets, while Support received 3,003 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled just over 490,000 tags, or approximately 1,100 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore's annual Fanlore Bingo Challenge is in full swing! This year the event is running from June 2 to June 15, and the bingo is beach themed. All Fanlore visitors and editors, new and old alike, are invited to participate!

Fanlore also celebrated May with a themed month: Creature Feature! Their editing chat on the Fanlore Discord server was a big success; thank you to everyone who joined. You can check out Creature Feature highlights on Fanlore's Tumblr.

Translation's recent recruitment led to the addition of a new translation team for Irish! User Response Translation's first ever recruitment has also concluded.

Transformative Works and Cultures continues to seek submissions for their upcoming special issue on Latin American Fandoms. The deadline for submissions is January 1, 2026.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections announced the 2025 Election Timeline in coordination with Communications and Translation. Candidates will be announced on June 22, and the deadline to become a member for voting is June 30.

Development & Membership is continuing to send donation gifts from April's Membership Drive. They're also starting to work on membership queries for the 2025 election and related mini-Drive in June.

Board, with the help of the Board Assistants Team, held a public board meeting on April 26, 2025. The meeting had 74 attendees, and Board answered 10 questions live and 7 questions asynchronously after the meeting. Meeting minutes are available on the OTW website.

Board also approved the creation of the Organizational Culture Roadmap workgroup, continued work on Crisis Procedures and Paid Staff Transition projects, and met with the Cybersecurity Delegate to discuss their report and next steps. The Board Assistants Team continued work on multiple ongoing projects, including updates to the Board Discord moderation guidelines, OTW roadmap goals, and non-profit training.

Lastly, Board announced the resignation of Zixin Zhang as a Board Director. We wish Zixin all the best in her future endeavors.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for three committees this month: Fanlore, Finance, and Open Doors. Volunteers & Recruiting also began a large-scale project regarding their procedures on inductions and removals. This project aims to ensure documentation is consistent across all roles in the OTW, focusing especially on tools managed by Volunteers & Recruiting.

From April 21 to May 18, Volunteers & Recruiting received 154 new requests and completed 149, leaving them with 36 open requests (including inductions and removals listed below).

As of May 18, 2025, the OTW has 933 volunteers. \o/

New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
New Open Doors Volunteers: Fandoms_addict and 1 other Admin Volunteer
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: BlackTeaAndVodka, WonderfulWorld, Pent,­ and 1 other Policy & Abuse Volunteer
New Strategic Planning Volunteers: Everett Merian and Camilla Zhao
New Support Volunteers: 1 Tag Wrangling Liaison
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Ebonwing, Jazzberries, Keladry, megidola, and Tal (Tag Wrangling Supervisors)
New Translation Volunteers: Bluebear, flatlander woman, Lavinia, Mici Pici, ömer faruk, Somber, and 3 other Translation Volunteers
New TWC Volunteers: 1 Symposium Editor
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Ekevka, meat, Patkiecoo, Remu, and 4 other URT Translators

Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Chair-Track Volunteer and 1 TikTok Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy and Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Fandoms_addict (Import Assistant) and 3 other Import Assistants, and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 Support Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Eirinen, Luhba, Vyslanté, and 2 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: D.Taradi, dhriti, hedvig, Mai, Meep, and 4 other Translation Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. APRIL'S MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

Development & Membership ran April's Membership Drive, which ended with just over US$269,000 raised from over 8,000 donors. Communications helped distribute news posts, while Translation made Drive information available in 24 languages.

In anticipation of the April drive, Finance posted the 2025 budget.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Although AO3 has not experienced a data breach, malware and reused passwords can still put accounts at risk. On World Password Day, Policy & Abuse published a reminder about how to keep your AO3 account secure and other internet security best practices.

In April, Open Doors announced the import of Garlic Press and Poison Pen Press, a collection of fanzines for Star Trek: The Original Series. This is the first of their Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) publisher imports. They also completed the import of Snow Lands.

Also in April, Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed a number of bug fixes and improvements to AO3, including performance improvements to the invitation queue and fixing the bug that made animated gifs not animate when uploaded as pseud icons. They also published release notes covering changes made in March.

In March, Policy & Abuse received 2,988 tickets, while Support received 2,909 – less than Support received in the previous two months, but still above their usual average.

Tag Wrangling announced some new "No Fandom" additional tags, or tags not specific to particular fandoms. This update included tags related to Pregnancy and Reader-Insert. In March, the committee wrangled over 460,000 tags, or approximately 1,150 tags per wrangling volunteer!

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore is running a themed month for May, focusing on monsters and creatures in fandom. Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Tumblr, or Twitter/X for featured articles, and join their Discord server for a themed editing chat in May!

In April, Legal continued responding to user queries, tracking legislation, and preparing to respond to events as they unfold.

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) has announced their second annual Fans of Color Research Prize! The award recognizes the best peer-reviewed article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC in the preceding three years (for 2025, no earlier than 2022) and furthers the journal’s goal to support scholars whose work fills critical gaps in fan studies literature about racially marginalized and/or non-Western fans. The winner will receive a US$500 cash prize. Submissions are due to [email protected] no later than May 15, 2025 (Anywhere on Earth).

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board ran their second public meeting on April 26 in the Board Discord server. Their agenda was announced beforehand, and meeting minutes will be available on the OTW website soon.

The Board Assistants Team continued work on ongoing projects, including revamping the Board Discord and investigating non-profit training. In conjunction with Board and the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap team, they also devoted a lot of focus to working on the OTW Crisis Procedures and making related edits to the Procurement Policy draft.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for four committees in March: Policy & Abuse, Strategic Planning, Translation, and TWC.

From March 19 to April 20, Volunteers & Recruiting received 200 new requests, and completed 208, leaving them with 45 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of April 20, 2025, the OTW has 918 volunteers. \o/

New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: chocolatedreams, Evolcahra, and 3 other Documentation Editors
New Open Doors Volunteers: bubble-sort, Maciej, and 1 other Technical Volunteer
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Ana, Murus, Yuca, and 1 other Policy & Abuse Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Alpha, amihan, Andrea T, ari v., Ata Māhina, Aurum, Azure Guest, blossomshed, Canoe, Catrain, Cesario, Corbin, CrystalM, Dalmuri, ECS, Ellie-Bee, Executie, Fyodor, Gialla, greenribbon, Hai, Hima, iri, Ishmael, Jesse Reno, kaijuboyy, Knight, Krchov, Lillie, Luke, Mária_Waluigi, Mayonayys, midoriC, midwinter, Paxsky, PinkBrain, Rain, Ratty, Sarah Wallenfelsz, Shinji, skeleton-kai, Spit, Sunny1, TheDragonflyBox, tomurai, Ushio, Vip, Wicked, Xanya V, and 3 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
New Translation Volunteers: Ailín and 5 other Translators
New User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Liaison from Policy & Abuse

Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Site Moderator and 1 Graphics Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Jennifer D2
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Policy & Abuse Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Strategic Planning Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 1 Tag Wrangling Supervisor and 4 Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Eilean and 4 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Frost The Fox (Senior Volunteer) and 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON GOVERNANCE

Board finished their letter for the 2024 Annual Report. They also approved the OTW signing another letter opposing online ID checks, approved several payment requests, and began planning for their next public Board Meeting. They also continued work on multiple ongoing projects with the Board Assistants Team and Roadmap Team, including Crisis Procedures, Cybersecurity Audit, and Paid Staff Transition projects.

Based on the lessening workload for the Webs committee and following internal discussions with multiple committees, Board announced in late February that Webs would be decommissioned. Moving forward, Systems will handle requests that would have gone to Webs and take over the remaining duties of Webs.

II. AT AO3

In March, Accessibility, Design & Technology focused on deploying bug fixes, improvements for tag wranglers, and groundwork to enable translation of email text. They also announced comment rate limits would be put in place for logged in users, aimed at preventing spam comments.

Open Doors finished importing the older works of Due South Seekrit Santa, an annual Due South gift exchange!

In February, Policy & Abuse received 2,807 tickets, while Support received 3,709 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 470,000 tags, or approximately 1,100 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore continues to host monthly themed editing challenges, with April's focusing on expanding stubs. They also prepared for their upcoming themed month for May: Creatures!

Legal responded to a number of user queries in March and has been closely tracking many legislative proposals that could affect fans and fan expression online.

TWC announced the publication of Volume 45 of Transformative Works and Cultures, a special issue on Sports Fandoms, guest-edited by Jason Kido Lopez and Lori Kido Lopez.

IV. PREPARING FOR DRIVE

In March, Development & Membership prepared for the April membership drive; they worked with external vendors to order new premiums, and collaborated closely with Communications and Translation to prepare news posts.

In preparation for the April membership drive, Finance worked on finalizing 2024 accounting and the 2024 budget.

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for 3 committees in February: Open Doors, Policy & Abuse, and Tag Wrangling. From February 19 to March 18, Volunteers & Recruiting received 128 new requests and completed 117, leaving them with 66 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of March 18, 2025, the OTW has 862 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Brian Austin (AD&T), Bilka (AD&T QA&T Lead)
New AD&T Volunteers: Bilka (Senior Volunteer)
New Communications Volunteers: Aditi Paul, Caitlynne, and callmeri (Media Outreach Volunteers); an (Posting Specialist)
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant

Departing BAT Volunteers: 1 Project Specialist
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Posting Specialist and 1 Graphics Designer
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Kate G (Moderator)
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Convention Specialist
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Graphics Designer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: antonomasia (Tag Wrangling Supervisor and Tag Wrangling Chair Assistant), Lou Stina Forest and 1 other Tag Wrangling Volunteer
Departing Translation Volunteers: Sil (Translator)
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Copyeditor

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY 2025

On and leading up to February 14th, Communications celebrated the 11th annual International Fanworks Day (IFD)! Translation helped make IFD content available in 26 languages.

Celebrations included a Feedback Fest, Discord server chatting and games, the IFD Fanlore Challenge in collaboration with Fanlore, and more. Thanks to everyone who participated and joined the festivities, and to the volunteers from across the OTW who helped with its organization. We hope you enjoyed!

II. AT THE AO3

In February, Accessibility, Design & Technology implemented a few performance improvements and focused on important software updates (Ruby and Rails). Systems continued to work on keeping AO3 stable while waiting on new Elasticsearch servers. Jointly, they published an update on Intermittent site slowness and errors, which Translation helped make available in 22 languages.

Open Doors finished importing the memorial archive Remembering Tiger Lily Roar. It was enthusiastically received, especially from fans of Batman, Young Justice, and Nightwing.

In January, Policy & Abuse received 2,957 tickets, while Support received 3,595. AO3 surpassed 70,000 canonical fandoms, and Tag Wrangling wrangled over 465,000 tags: more than 1,100 tags per wrangling volunteer!

In February, Tag Wrangling also collaborated with Communications on a page for the OTW website about the Tag Wrangling Committee, which gives an overview of their work, who they collaborate with most, and explains the "lifecycle of a tag."

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

In addition to the annual IFD editing challenge, Fanlore also ran a themed Femslash February month! Check out the highlighted posts on their Tumblr.

Legal worked with others to advocate against legal proposals requiring ID checks and age verification for websites in various jurisdictions. They also responded to a number of questions from the public.

TWC announced a new upcoming special issue this month, titled "Latin American Fandoms"! The deadline for submissions is January 1, 2026, and the issue is slated for publication in 2027.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board held the first quarter public meeting on January 26, with 69 attendees and 13 questions asked. All questions were answered live and the official meeting minutes are available on the OTW website.

Board Assistants Team worked hard on several ongoing projects this month: a review of the Board Discord server, non-profit training research, and OTW emergency procedures as part of the OTW culture roadmap.

In February, Strategic Planning provided Volunteers & Recruiting with research on volunteer retention at organizations similar to the OTW. This is a step in the Strategic Plan's Retention goal to better support OTW volunteers and keep them engaged throughout their time volunteering. They’ve also worked on research for goals related to Paid Staff positions.

Development & Membership arranged OTW's attendance at Ret-Con in Durham, North Carolina, U.S., this month where one of their volunteers ran a panel on searching for lost media. Come see the OTW soon at the Tucson Festival of Books in Arizona, U.S.; Chicago Entertainment and Comic Expo (C2E2) in Illinois, U.S.; Supanova Melbourne in Australia; CitrusCon (online); and more—our tables have plenty of goodies and shenanigans to share!

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for three committees in January: Communications, User Response Translation, and Volunteers & Recruiting.

From January 22 to February 19, Volunteers & Recruiting received 135 new requests and completed 91, leaving them with 72 open requests. As of February 19, 2025, the OTW has 863 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs: Apple and choux (Communications)
New Communications Volunteers: Indes (Posting Specialist) and 1 Site Moderator-Weibo
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr (Senior Volunteer), Ehryn, Gwendolyn, Kalincka, Kathleen B, and 2 other Volunteers

Departing Directors: Jenni D. (Paid Staff Transition Lead)
Departing Committee Chairs: Prisca (Translation Chair), Jenni D. (QA&T Lead)
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Moderator
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Shipping Specialist and 1 Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 4 Import Assistants
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Roland, Inrainbowz, Sijing, and 20 other Tag Wranglers, and 1 Supervisor
Departing Translation Volunteers: A_I, Hao and 2 other Translators

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. SPOTLIGHT ON OPEN DOORS

In December, Open Doors completed imports for Elysejský klíč, a Czech-language Harry Potter archive; VinXperience, a message board with fanfiction featuring characters played by actor Vin Diesel; Between the Lines, an archive of JAG fanfiction including a great deal of Mac/Harm fic; Smoochies, a site dedicated to bishounen, shounen-ai, and yaoi fanworks; and All About Spike, a Buffy and Angel archive focussing on the character Spike.

Their annual announcement celebrated the completion of ten archive import projects in 2024, with over 13,000 works!

They also announced the upcoming imports of Slash Advent Calendar, a multifandom slash challenge that ran every December from 2002 to 2005; MuggleNet Fan Fiction, a Harry Potter fanfiction archive; and Remembering Tiger Lily Roar, a memorial archive for a well-loved fanfiction writer.

II. AT THE AO3

In January, Accessibility, Design & Technology published release notes detailing recent AO3 code updates. They also migrated their library to store collection, skin, and pseud icons.

Support received 2,207 tickets in December; ticket levels remain high due to ongoing server issues and site disruptions.

Tag Wrangling finalized another round of updates to some Additional Tags not specific to any fandom, otherwise known as No Fandom tags. They have also continued work behind the scenes on a streamlined process for dealing with small synonym changes to No Fandom tags, an alteration on their existing fast-track procedures.

In December, volunteers wrangled more than 560,000 tags across more than 69,000 fandoms - more than 1,300 tags per wrangling volunteer!

Also in December, Policy & Abuse received 2,559 tickets, totalling to just over 28,000 tickets in 2024! Check out the pie chart for more details.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications has been working hard this month preparing for International Fanworks Day (IFD) in February! They’ve been collaborating with Translation to make IFD news posts available in many languages. Communications also celebrated the OTW TikTok passing 10,000 followers! Last but not least, they’ve been busy scoring the trivia game held to celebrate AO3’s fifteenth anniversary.

To close out 2024, Fanlore ran an editing chat, and it was a lot of fun! They are also preparing for the annual IFD Fanlore Challenge, as well as Femslash February this month! Keep an eye on their Twitter/X and Tumblr for more details.

In January, TWC began preparations to publish two special issues: Gaming Fandom and Disability and Fandom. They also counted down their top 20 #TWCHits over on Bluesky!

Also in January, Development & Membership's convention outreach coordinated OTW's attendance at Arisia in Boston, Massachusetts, US! Keep an eye on the OTW's social media, such as our Tumblr and Bluesky, for future convention attendance updates.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board, in conjunction with the Board Assistants Team held their first quarterly meeting of 2025 in the Board Discord server. During the meeting, they shared decisions made since the last meeting, a wrap-up on the AO3 Terms of Service update, updates on the 2024 Culture Roadmap, and the new 2025 Board Roadmap. They also received a number of questions, both those submitted asynchronously in advance and those asked during the meeting, and all were answered live. Meeting minutes will be made available on the OTW website soon.

Legal spent December and January closely monitoring new laws, lawmaking proposals, and legal developments around the world that could affect fans. They answered a number of queries from fans about legal developments, and also answered concerns about unauthorized apps or sites that may purport to be related to the AO3.

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

On December 5, Volunteers & Recruiting celebrated International Volunteer Day 2024 and ran their organization-wide email and graphics campaign recognizing OTW volunteers' work.

From November 22 to January 21, Volunteers & Recruiting received 215 new requests and completed 321, leaving them with 37 open requests. As of January 21, 2025, the OTW has 889 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs: Indes and The Professor (Fanlore), xeno (News Post Moderation Lead)
New Communications Volunteers: Tal and 2 other TikTok Moderators
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Shipping Assistant
New Elections Volunteers: Kasia Sophia Vahtera and Elle Thompson (Communication Specialists); Caira, Harold Liu, Kriti, RIMI, and 1 other Voting Process Architect; and 1 Team Coordinator
New Fanlore Volunteers: Patchlamb (Gardener), Silarona and 1 other Team Coordinator, and 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer and 1 Import Assistant
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 2 Chair Assistants, Irina and 3 other Supervisors
New Support Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Lute, Sobriquett, Soppon, and 1 other Tag Wrangling Supervisor
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Jennifer D2 and 3 other Liaisons

Departing Committee Chairs: 1 Fanlore Chair
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Graphic Designer
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: hheyhalley (Chair Track Volunteer), 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer, 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer, 1 Social Media Moderator, and 1 Outreach Analyst
Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Financial Analyst
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Amanda Hartley and 1 other Administrative Volunteer, 3 Import Assistants, and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 3 Volunteers
Departing Support Volunteers: Luthor
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Echo H and 10 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: angrytomato, Maya Habee, Sina, yohanna, and 2 other Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Proofreader
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: aliceslantern
Departing Webs Volunteers: 1 Webs Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. UPDATES TO AO3 TERMS OF SERVICE

Board has voted to approve the new AO3 Terms of Service (TOS), which is now live. The 2-week feedback period prior to the vote received several thousand comments, and Policy & Abuse (PAC) worked with Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee to respond to more than 400 of them. The overall reaction was positive, and everyone involved is excited by the number of users who agreed this is an improvement to the TOS. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback!

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) and PAC worked hard throughout October and November to roll out the new page changes, including some accessibility improvements. In the coming months, PAC plans to add new questions to the Terms of Service FAQ addressing some of the comments they received.

II. CONNECTING WITH FANS

In November, Communications engaged with fans in social media-specific posts. One series was dedicated to warning users about the U.S. congressional bill HR 9495, and another highlighted AO3-related trivia commemorating the site’s 15th anniversary. The OTW is also now on TikTok! Initial videos have gotten lots of engagement, and Communications is excited to connect with fans on a new platform.

Fanlore ran the new Fandom Friendships Challenge for the first time, in collaboration with Communications' Fanhackers. The challenge ran from November 11 to 24, with 24 editors participating and 18 editors completing all six tasks. Congratulations in particular to FaalThien and Indes, as well as Lianne from Fanhackers, for their effort in organizing this new challenge from scratch!

Legal responded to several queries about law and fandom, and they worked with other committees to coordinate responses about how U.S. electoral and legislative developments might affect the OTW and AO3. The short answer is: the OTW will continue to provide an inclusive space for fannish expression. The OTW will stand up for fans' free expression in court and legislatively, in the U.S. and worldwide.

We have seen that fans have been a powerful force for promoting free expression. We will continue to pay close attention to political matters that may affect us, and we will continue to let people know when there are opportunities for their voices to be heard.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE AO3

Since the code changes involved in TOS updates concluded, AD&T published a new release featuring code from several new contributors to welcome them to the AO3 project. As a reminder, AD&T welcomes code contributions from the community: check out AO3's contribution guidelines for more information!

Open Doors announced the import of the Fan Fiction Writers Archive, a multifandom fanfiction archive that began in the 1990s as a GeoCities website. They also shared a roundup post regarding the fanzine fanworks preserved so far via the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP).

In October, Support received 1,761 tickets, while Policy & Abuse received 2,626 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled more than 410,000 tags across over 20,600 fandoms: more than a thousand tags per active wrangler!

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has selected and approved new co-chairs for the new User Response Translation committee. They are glad to see the new committee established and will continue to assist with its initial setup. They are also monitoring trending topics that may potentially influence the OTW’s development.

Board has also continued Board training for new Directors, asynchronous check-ins with various committees, and working with the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap team.

Board Assistants Team (BAT) worked on a host of projects and tasks: writing replies to volunteer feedback about the OTW Whistleblower FAQs, drafting or updating internal documentation, investigating non-profit training, working on the OTW website, assisting with the OTW Culture Roadmap, and more!

Finance issued and filed the 2023 Form 990, and the 2023 audit report is in its last stages! Both will be uploaded to the OTW website soon.

Translation also finished their translations of the latest Budget update, which is now available in 28 additional languages.

Transformative Works and Cultures is looking forward to the upcoming publication of our Centering Blackness in Fan Studies special issue on December 15!

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for 4 roles for 3 committees this month: AO3 Documentation, Fanlore, and Elections.

From October 22 to November 21, Volunteers & Recruiting received 211 new requests, and completed 180, leaving them with 98 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of November 21, 2024, the OTW has 941 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Board Members: Kathryn Soderholm (Vice President), Qiao Chu (Secretary), Jenni D. and Kate G (Paid Staff Transition Leads — non-Director, non-Officer roles)
New Committee Chairs: Qiao Chu and Taki (User Response Translation), Dan-i (Strategic Planning)
New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Ariel Godwin, AuroraT, jothefanbeing, Leja, and 1 other Editor
New BAT Volunteers: Deniz and Lucia S.
New Elections Volunteers: 1 Communications Specialist and 1 Voting Process Architect
New Fanlore Volunteers: cbaryo, Hiely, and Yumi (Graphic Designers)
New Open Doors Volunteers: Al L., arahith, Bit, Doogle, Fandoms_addict, Jamie KB, MT, pan, Teanderthal, Wynne, and 6 other Import Assistants
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 17pansies, AliceMk, Anah, Anita, annanomaly, Cell, Curve, Donna, DracoLunae, Ember J, Entity, Fishy, Hylluto, Inar, Jules R, Kate1648, Koma, LaReveuse, Leonids, LilyMae, LilyP, Lost_for_good, LumiAna, Mari C., meat, Meg Creamer, Morgan Drake, PhoenixAsh, Quinn V, Raikki, Recc, Rosie R, silver_greystorms, Starlings, Strawb, Sunflower, surefireshore, SWColeson, and vi
New Translation Volunteers: thestarlesscity (Volunteer Manager) and 1 other Translator

Departing Directors: Zixin Zhang (Secretary role only)
Departing Committee Chairs: Morgan Drake (AO3 Documentation) and 1 Strategic Planning Chair
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Graphics Volunteer and 1 Site Moderator-Weibo
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Elections Volunteers: 3 Team Coordinators
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Hesandi (Import Assistant) and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Policy & Abuse Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Strategic Planning Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Jocelin and 32 other Support Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant; Beth B (Supervisor role only) and 1 other Supervisor; Art, Cherie, Ella B., Felix Engler, Gretal, Issay, lasttai, Laula, Laurie G, Monnie, Rook, Vincent, Yuan, YunShan, Yun D., Zhal, and 11 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Task Assistant; Alba, Aline, Kathleen P, Noemie, shirasade, Sofia M, Vincent, and 7 other Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: 1 Proofreader
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Erica, whetherwoman, and 2 other Volunteers

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. AO3 TERMS OF SERVICE UPDATE

Policy & Abuse, Legal, and Accessibility, Design & Technology have been hard at work regarding an update to the AO3 Terms of Service. Among other things, this update involves clarifying wording in both the Content Policy and the "Underage" Archive Warning. This update will not affect what fanworks are allowed or not on AO3, nor will it affect how this Archive Warning is enforced.

In conjunction with Communications, a public call for feedback was posted and comments will be accepted until November 18. Please refer to the news post and Policy & Abuse's proposed changes for more detail.

II. OCTOBER MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

Development & Membership worked with Communications to announce the October membership drive! With the help of Translation, the news posts were translated into 28 languages. Finance also posted the 2024 Budget Update in anticipation of the membership drive.

The October membership drive raised almost $215,000 USD from 6,995 donors, 6,020 of whom chose to be members! Development & Membership is now verifying addresses, packaging premiums, and heading to local post offices with the help of their new regional shipping specialists.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE AO3

In September, Support and Systems were handling issues related to downtime and site slowness. Systems has posted a post-mortem of events and analysis on their official AO3 account, which details the causes and effects of some of the issues.

Due to downtime and other factors, Support received 4,151 tickets in September, around double their usual monthly count. They ask for your patience as they work through the high volume of tickets.

Policy & Abuse received 2,264 tickets in September. They also have an incoming class of new volunteers and look forward to training them.

Also in September, Tag Wrangling volunteers wrangled over 430,000 tags, which amounts to over 1,000 tags per tag wrangler. They also finished their last recruitment round of the year and began inducting their latest batch of volunteers.

Open Doors announced the import of older works from due South Seekrit Santa, an exchange devoted to the Canadian television series due South. They also finished the last details from the West of the Moon archive import, an archive for hobbit-centric gen fanworks. They continue to work on other import projects and documentation for the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project.

IV. VARIOUS OTW ACTIVITY

Communications is happy to see their email delivery service has been steadily gaining followers since its launch. The service recently passed 1,000 subscribers and now has about 1,100 subscribers!

Fanlore ran a Video Game-themed month in October! You can check out featured articles on their Tumblr.

Development & Membership's convention outreach division organized a table for Confabulation Fan Convention at Chicago, USA. OTW volunteers had a blast talking about their experience volunteering, fan vidding, and exploring world landmarks!

Legal has responded to a number of user queries this month, including queries about YouTube counter-notices, shadowcasting, UK legislation, and academic research on fandom. They also dealt with some apps that are confusing users into believing they’re associated with the AO3.

TWC has been preparing two special issues: Centering Blackness in Fan Studies and Sports Fandoms to be released in the coming months.

V. GOVERNANCE

Board and the Board Assistants Team (BAT) organized Board's fourth quarter public meeting on September 29. They had 55 attendees and answered 9 questions. The official minutes for this meeting were voted on and published on the OTW website.

Official Board turnover happened on October 1, and incoming Board members are getting settled in.

Board and BAT have been participating in several projects and policies related to the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap. BAT has also been working on procurement documentation, OTW website updates, and various cross-committee tasks. They’ve been assisting the Board on several ongoing projects, including Whistleblower Policy FAQ documentation and responding to external questions directed at the Board.

Strategic Planning is working on compiling internal sustainability plans from all committees as part of the plan’s internal sustainability goal. They're also reaching out to the committees responsible for the Paid Staff goal as those implementation goal dates approach.

VI. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting has been hard at work training their new recruits and getting them settled in, saying farewell to one of their chairs, Cyn, and welcoming Eevee as the new co-chair. They also conducted recruitment for 3 committees in October: AO3 Documentation, Elections, and Fanlore.

From September 22 to October 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 149 new requests and completed 135, leaving them with 62 open requests. As of October 22, 2024, the OTW has 924 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs: Eevee (Volunteers & Recruiting)
New Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Team Lead
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Shipping Specialist
New Fanlore Volunteers: 3 Discord Moderators
New Open Doors Volunteers: Brianna Dardin (Senior Technical Volunteer) and 1 Administrative Support Volunteer
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Emka, iwasnttrainedforthis, megidola, Trinity, and 3 other Volunteers
New Translation Volunteers: AnneHelena, Aquiles T. M., hans, Helpi K, Jaya, Luki, tritongue, and 2 other Translators
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Alisande and 1 other Volunteer

Departing Directors: Kari Dayton and Michelle Schroeder
Departing Committee Chairs: Cyn (Volunteers & Recruiting)
Departing Board Assistant Team Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer and 1 Graphics Designer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: SonoSvegliato (Import Assistant), Brianna Dardin and 2 other Technical Volunteers; 1 Administrative Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: Arly Guevara
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Eevee (Supervisor role only), Lysippe, and 7 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Elintiriel (Volunteer Manager role only) and 1 other Volunteer Manager; Nachali, Parul Hunnargikar, Summerfanreader, and 4 other Translators

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. BUMPS ALONG THE WAY

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) and Systems investigated issues with users having trouble staying logged in. Unfortunately, what should've been a simple change to the code for handling cookies led to multiple periods of disruption.

The issues seem to have been resolved, but they're still working together to figure out the cause and prevent issues like this in the future. Systems plans to release a postmortem work on their official AO3 account once they are confident that the issues are fully resolved. Elsewhere, AD&T worked on small bug fixes and enhancements.

II. AT THE AO3

Tag Wrangling paused their long-running project to standardize fandom tree structures, and they will conduct a comprehensive review of the current guidelines regarding them. Discussions regarding the guidelines are in development, so they can better meet users' needs.

In August, tag wranglers handled more than 450,000 tags across over 67,000 fandoms, which amounts to more than a thousand tags per wrangler. Policy & Abuse received 2,175 tickets, while Support received 2,358 tickets.

AO3 Documentation has been holding meetings regarding updates to their style guide, and has been working on updates on several documents.

Open Doors completed importing The 9 Forum, an archive of fanworks for the 2009 film "9". They also announced the import of the Choices Fanfic Archive, for works based on the game "Choices: Stories You Play". They are continuing work on other import projects, reviewing applications for the Import Assistant role, and documentation for the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project.

III. ELSEWHERE AT OTW

Communications and Translation celebrated the OTW's 17th anniversary! They are glad to see users celebrating in news post comments sections and across social media. The anniversary-specific site skin was well received, and also led to some users exploring site skins for the first time!

Fanlore had a busy month with their Stub September editing challenge! It was a big success; thanks to everyone who took part and awarded badges. Video Game Month also started October 1 – check out Fanlore's Tumblr and Twitter/X for more information!

Development & Membership has been busy preparing for the upcoming Drive in October! They are excited to share the new thank-you gifts they have been working on. They have also been working hard to improve some of their documentation this month, and getting additional gift shipping support set up.

Legal joined allies in sending a letter to the U.S. Senate and Congress expressing concerns with the proposed NO FAKES Act. The act would create constitutionally questionable restrictions on free expression and put undue burdens on Internet platforms.

Transformative Works and Cultures published their annual general issue on September 15 – this is Issue #43 for the journal! Next up, they have two special issues: Centering Blackness in Fan Studies and Sports Fandoms.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board had a busy month. They are in the process of finalizing Board turnover as they welcome two elected Board members: Erica Frank and Rachel Linton. They also ran the fourth quarter public Board meeting on September 30. Meeting minutes will be made available soon on the OTW website.

Board Assistants Team continued its work on ongoing projects, such as overseeing the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap. They also helped draft FAQs for the OTW Whistleblower Protection Policy so the project can be officially marked as complete. Additionally, they worked on some internal policies and procedures and prepared for the public Board meeting.

Strategic Planning has reviewed the 1-year assessment of the Strategic Plan with the Board to prepare for its release to the OTW and in public-facing announcements.

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for 3 committees in September: Open Doors, Tag Wrangling, and Policy & Abuse.

From August 24 to September 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 102 new requests, and completed 109, leaving them with 53 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of September 22, 2024, the OTW has 925 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Erica Frank, Rachel Linton
New Communications Volunteers: 2 Chair Track Volunteers and 1 Media Outreach Volunteer
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 3 Shipping Specialists
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
New Translation Volunteers: Teelee (Task Assistant), 1 other Task Assistant, and 1 Volunteer Manager
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: infinity-inkling and Query (VolCom Volunteers)

Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Ceme, Dan L (Tag Wranglers), and Madi (Supervisor role only)
Departing Translation Volunteers: Reptile Ruler (Translator), and 1 other Translator

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.