endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (Default)

The OTW has announced the next public Board meeting will be held on April 26 from 15:00 to 16:00 UTC. For some that will actually be the 27th, though, so be sure to check what time that is for you.

The posted agenda:

  • Decisions made since the last public meeting
  • Updates to the Board Year Roadmap
  • Strategic Planning One Year Implementation Report
  • Any other business (Questions & Answers)

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last approximately an hour. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions. Questions that are not answered during the meeting will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the #questions-answers channel starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting.

For this meeting, there is the option to send in questions in advance through a Google Form. You'll need to be logged into a Google account in order to submit a question, and only one question per person will be accepted. Questions can be submitted up to three days before the meeting begins or until fifty questions have been submitted. At that point, the form will be closed.

Because procedures may continue to change, we recommend reading through the OTW Discord's Community Guidelines in the #rules channel to familiarize yourself with the details of how meetings will be run.

We hope to see you there!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team

endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (Default)
On Your Left! — Changes to Captain America Fandom Tags – @ao3org on Tumblr

On Your Left! — Changes to Captain America Fandom Tags



Hello! In the near future, Marvel tag wranglers will be updating fandom tags on AO3 to separate the upcoming Captain America movies featuring Sam Wilson as Captain America from the trilogy of films with Steve Rogers as Captain America.

To do this, we will be renaming the fandom Captain America (Movies) to Captain America (Chris Evans Movies) and creating a new fandom named Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies). Both will be made subtags of Marvel Cinematic Universe and Captain America - All Media Types.

In summary:
  • Captain America (Chris Evans Movies) will refer to the 2011, 2014, and 2016 movies featuring Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, and Bucky Barnes.
  • Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies) will refer to the 2025 movie Brave New World featuring Sam Wilson and Joaquín Torres. This fandom tag will also refer to any sequel Captain America movies starring Sam Wilson in the title role.


Read More →


We here at End OTW Racism oppose this decision.

Not only is this inconsistent with their existing policies, but it’s also unnecessary, unasked-for, and causes issues for those already writing about Sam Wilson as Captain America.

Primarily, we’re concerned that there are many Sam Wilson fans and many MCU fans of color in the comments declaring that they oppose this decision, which raises questions: who asked for this? How did this become such a pressing concern that it needed to happen now? Who decided this? Given the cultural context of pushback against having Black actors cast in roles originated by white actors, including the #NotMyCap movement, this decision seems to cater to the worst of fandom, further marginalizing stories about Black characters and treating stories about white characters as the “neutral default.”

We, the team behind End OTW Racism, wanted to speak on this issue not because we’re personally invested in the MCU fandom, but because we wanted to use this opportunity to highlight how AO3 specifically (and the OTW generally) makes institutional decisions that uphold racist biases, perhaps without even intending to do so. We’re also concerned at the lack of transparency behind this decision - there is no indication how or why this decision has been made, nor by whom and what spurred them to decide this now, in a current cultural and political climate that’s grown ever more hostile to Black people.

Regarding their existing policies: they cite James Bond as example, but James Bond films often change continuity with each successive actor, and Sam Wilson as Captain America exists in the same continuity, timeline, and universe as Steve Rogers as Captain America in Disney’s MCU. Moreover, there are several counter-examples where fandoms aren’t split off into a new tag when a new lead is introduced to the same storyline/continuity - as mentioned in the comments on this post, AO3 hasn’t done this for Bridgerton or Doctor Who (among others).

The Bond parallel is further irrelevant because the actors are all playing a character with the same name. Captain America is a title that multiple characters have assumed. In other fandoms, when there are multiple characters with the same title (such as Doctor Who and Black Panther), current practice seems to be to use character and freeform tags to disambiguate, which many commenters on this announcement confirm.

The cited existence of non-MCU Captain America films also doesn’t hold water, as The Flash seems to be disambiguated just fine with its myriad of tags, including The Flash (Movie 2023), The Flash (TV 1990), and The Flash (TV 2014). Many other comic books and comics adapted into tv and film likewise don’t seem to suffer from having multiple continuities and multiple actors as leads of similarly-titled projects, sometimes released simultaneously. Changing the tag to “Captain America (MCU films)” would disambiguate between MCU/non-MCU film continuities very well, without needing to isolate “Sam Wilson as Captain America” stories away from the rest of the MCU films in which he plays such a prominent role.

This decision also seems to default all existing MCU Captain America stories to the Chris Evans as Captain America tag, which requires all authors who’ve written about Sam Wilson as Captain America to do the labor of “fixing” their stories, as if they’ve been the ones to mistag their work. This also doesn’t take into account the many Alternate Universe stories and such that may feature Sam Wilson as Captain America prior to him taking on the mantle in canon, putting those authors in a bind as to where their stories “belong.”

We encourage those who are similarly opposed to this decision to write to AO3 with their concerns: https://archiveofourown.org/support

If you need a sample script, you are welcome to use or adapt the following:
Dear Tag Wrangling Team,

I am writing to you to express disapproval of the planned changes to the Captain America tag by splitting it into “Captain America (Chris Evans Movies) ” and “Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies)” and to encourage the OTW to change the tag to “Captain America (MCU)” instead.

Sincerely, [Your Name]
endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (End OTW Racism dark red)
The End OTW Racism movement was originally founded with a singular goal and narrow scope: Hold the OTW accountable to its promise to review and revise their TOS to enable the Policy & Abuse team to better address racist harassment. The organization has since revised their policies to enable greater flexibility and power in addressing TOS violations which fulfills the original intent of the Fandom Against Racism team.

That said, confronting and overcoming racism within fandom spaces is not a one-and-done deal that can be completely solved by a TOS change. With the fulfillment of our original goal we have considered the ways we can continue to confront racism within fandom on a more ongoing basis.

We have determined that the best use of our platform is to maintain a fairly narrow scope on fandom institutions engaging in racist behaviors or policies. Going forward we will endeavor to highlight these instances as they arise and provide people with actions they can take to counter or speak out against these policies.

While this is a shift in how our team has operated thus far, we feel it is in line with the spirit in which we began. We will maintain our focus on institutions and institutional missteps, not fan or ship wars or individual incidents of interpersonal racism. We will continue to work against racist policies that harm our fellow fans to make fandom a better space for all of us.

-The Fandom Against Racism Team
endotwracism: @ End OTW Racism (@ End OTW Racism green)

The OTW has announced the next public Board meeting will be held on January 26 from 23:00 to 23:59 UTC. For some that will actually be the 27th, though, so be sure to check what time that is for you.

The posted agenda:

  • Decisions made since the last public board meeting
  • AO3 Terms of Service Update wrap up
  • OTW Culture Roadmap update
  • 2024 Board Roadmap wrap up and 2025 Board Roadmap
  • Any other business (Questions & Answers)

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last approximately an hour. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions. Questions that are not answered during the meeting will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting.

For this meeting, there is the option to send in questions in advance through a Google Form. You'll need to be logged into a Google account in order to submit a question, and only one question per person will be accepted. Questions can be submitted up to three days before the meeting begins or until fifty questions have been submitted. At that point, the form will be closed.

Because procedures may continue to change, we recommend reading through the OTW Discord's Community Guidelines in the #rules channel to familiarize yourself with the details of how meetings will be run.

We hope to see you at the meeting!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team

endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (Default)

When we started this movement, one of our goals was that the OTW would take on the task of “reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS”.

With your help, we organized and drew attention to this issue, demonstrating to the OTW the support behind such an action.

The OTW has now taken this action. They write “We have clarified in the policy that we consider harassment of groups of people (not just of specific individuals) to be a violation; explicitly included interactions with OTW volunteers as an example of something our harassment policy applies to”. Generalizing the Abuse Policy should give the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee greater flexibility to determine how to address TOS violations.

We are proud of what we accomplished together, and we will continue to push for more improvements in the future, so that fandom can truly be a place for all of us.

You can read the AO3 Terms of Service: 2024 Update Guide on the AO3. If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback, you can contact the Board of Directors through the OTW website.

endotwracism: @ End OTW Racism (@ End OTW Racism green)

The OTW has announced the next public Board meeting will be held on September 30 from 00:00 to 01:00 UTC. For some of us that will actually be September 29, though, so be sure to check what time that is for you.

The posted agenda:

  • Decisions made since the last public board meeting
  • 2024 OTW Board Election wrap-up
  • OTW Culture Roadmap update
  • Board Roadmap update
  • Any other business (questions & answers)

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last approximately an hour. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions. Questions that are not answered during the meeting will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting.

For this meeting, there is the option to send in questions in advance through a Google Form. You'll need to be logged into a Google account in order to submit a question, and only one question per person will be accepted. Questions can be submitted up to three days before the meeting begins or until fifty questions have been submitted. At that point, the form will be closed.

Because procedures may continue to change, we recommend reading through the OTW Discord's Community Guidelines in the #rules channel to familiarize yourself with the details of how meetings will be run.

We hope to see you there!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team

endotwracism: @ End OTW Racism (@ End OTW Racism green)

The OTW has announced the next public Board meeting will be held on July 14 from 13:00 to 14:00 UTC. For some of us that'll be July 15, though, so be sure to check what time that is for you.

The posted agenda:

  • Decisions made since the last public board meeting
  • Organizational Culture Roadmap Update
  • Board Year Roadmap Update
  • Any other business (Questions & Answers)

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last approximately an hour. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions. Questions that are not answered during the meeting will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting.

For this meeting, there will be the option to send in questions in advance through a Google Form. You'll need to be logged into a Google account in order to submit a question, and only one question per person will be accepted. Questions can be submitted up to three days before the meeting begins or until fifty questions have been submitted. At that point, the form will be closed.

Because procedures may continue to change, we recommend reading through the OTW Discord's Community Guidelines in the #rules channel to familiarize yourself with the details of how meetings will be run.

We hope to see you there!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team

endotwracism: @ End OTW Racism (@ End OTW Racism green)

The OTW has announced the next public Board meeting will be held on April 21 from 02:00 to 03:00 UTC. For some of us that'll be April 20, though, so be sure to check when that is for you.

The currently planned agenda:

  • Decisions made since the last public board meeting
  • DEI and organizational culture update
  • Organizational Culture Roadmap
  • Any other business (Questions & Answers)

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last approximately an hour. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions.

Questions should be asked in the #open-chat channel where they will be collected by moderators and added to the ⁠#questions-voting channel. There, they will be upvoted by meeting attendees and then answered in order of descending emoji count. The Board requests that questions be reasonable and polite, under 50 words, and that each person only submits one. Questions that require Board members to read and respond to any linked posts will not be accepted.

Unanswered questions will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel, starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting. This means if your question isn't covered in the meeting, there's still a chance it'll be answered later.

The full Community Guidelines can be found in the OTW Discord's #rules channel, and we recommend reading them to familiarize yourself with how the meeting will be run.

We hope to see you there!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team

endotwracism: @ End OTW Racism (@ End OTW Racism green)

The OTW has announced the next public Board meeting will be held on January 28 at 2:00 AM UTC. For some of us that'll be January 27, though, so be sure to check what time that is for you.

The currently planned agenda:

  • Decisions made since the last public board meeting
  • Diversity update
  • 2024 Board Roadmap
  • Any other business (Questions & Answers)

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last approximately an hour. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions.

Questions should be asked in the #open-chat channel where they will be collected by moderators and added to the ⁠#questions-voting channel. There, they will be upvoted by meeting attendees and then asked in order of descending emoji count. The Board requests that questions be reasonable and polite, under 50 words, and that each person only submits one. Questions that require Board members to read and respond to any linked posts will not be accepted.

Unanswered questions will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel, starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting. This means if your question isn't covered in the meeting, there's still a chance it'll be answered later.

The OTW Discord's Community Guidelines can be found in the #rules channel, and we recommend reading them to familiarize yourself with the details of how the meeting will be run.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you at the meeting!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team

endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (Default)
The next public OTW Board meeting will be held on November 12 at 1:00-2:00 AM UTC. For some of us that's actually November 11, so be sure to check when that is for you.

The currently planned agenda, from the Board Calendar:

  • Decisions made since the last public board meeting

  • Welcome new Board members

  • Announce officer roles

  • Diversity update

  • Any other business

Meetings are held in the OTW Discord server and last an hour. If you've attended OTW Board meetings in the past, this one will be a little different. The Board will address the agenda first, and once that business is concluded they will take at least ten questions.

Questions should be asked in the #open-chat channel where they will be collected by moderators and added to the ⁠#questions-voting channel. There, they will be upvoted by meeting attendees and then asked in order of descending emoji count. The Board requests that questions be reasonable and polite, under 50 words, and that each person only submits one. Questions that require Board members to read and respond to any linked posts will not be accepted.

Unanswered questions will be combined and posted as weekly Q&A threads in the ⁠#questions-answers channel, starting two weeks after the most recent public meeting. This means if your question isn't covered in the meeting, there's still a chance it'll be answered later.

Also new is a set of Community Guidelines, which can be found in the #rules channel. We encourage you read them to familiarize yourself with the details. As this process is new for the Board, too, these rules may continue to be refined in the lead-up to the meeting and so the information shared in this post may not be in its final form.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you at the meeting!

—The Fandom Against Racism Team
endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (Default)
[syndicated profile] otw_news_feed posted: September 2023 Newsletter, Volume 182
Board has continued to be busy training incoming Board members! They have approved a few Finance requests this month, and are gearing up for an upcoming Board meeting. Board has also begun talking with a potential DEI consulting firm, and are excited to continue moving forward with this project.
endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (Default)
The OTW Board Elections are over, and with that wraps up our second End OTW Racism action! Thank you to everyone who has participated over the last few months, whether by voting, attending the July 2 OTW Board Meeting, submitting questions for the candidates, sharing our posts, writing to the OTW Board, providing us critique and feedback, and more.

Now that we’ve completed two End OTW Racism actions, we wanted to take a breath and tell you a little about how we started. We began as a team of five people in May who felt spurred by renewed conversations we’d seen on twitter about racism within the OTW and wanted to do something about it. As we’ve shared in our FAQ, the core organizers are all fans and users of AO3, including both people of color and white folks, who have been in fandom for decades. We’ve added new core organizers since May, but also some organizers have rolled off, so we remain a small and diverse team.

Since the beginning, we’ve had four specific demands for the OTW:
  • Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Committee to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

  • A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

  • Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

  • Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on the OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

This may be surprising, but we only began planning our first action in May five days before we announced it! And we’ve been working really hard since then on top of our other individual life obligations. We also rolled straight from our first action into our second because of the timing of the OTW Board Elections, which made things even busier.

We’re very proud of all we’ve accomplished and everything that has happened since then - not only the work we’ve done and the progress we’ve made on our specific goals, but also the way that a larger conversation has opened up publicly about many other forms of racism and dysfunction within the organization. These conversations have, of course, been going on for years, both inside and outside the OTW, and more recent efforts have built on the work of fans of color calling out racism in fandom for decades, particularly Black fans. The discussions that have happened since May included thousands of people in fandom and have become wide-ranging, and we’re thankful to everyone who has been part of them. Organizing and running this campaign has also been a learning process, and we've grown so much from the feedback we've received. We look forward to being even better as we continue on with our specific anti-racist lens.

We couldn’t have done any of this without all of you, the community that has fostered and spurred these conversations and put them into action. We’re also really excited to see that other campaigns are coming up to address aspects of racism in fandom that are outside our narrow scope. We hope our example of what you can do as a small team can be an inspiration to anyone else who wants to start their own parallel anti-racist efforts too.

Since it’s been an exhausting (but thrilling!) few months, our core team is going to be taking a pause for a few months to reflect and regroup before planning another action focused on our specific goals. We also want to figure out how to engage more of the community in our planning for future actions, since we know there are lots of people who are excited about this work, and we weren’t able to do that in the quick turnaround between the first and second actions.

In the meantime, we’re excited to announce that two partner projects will be launching next month! These will not be led by our core organizers, but by other fans who have volunteered to take them on.

Anti-Racist Fanlore Project: An effort to update Fanlore, the fandom history wiki run by the OTW, with articles that flesh out the history of racism and anti-racism in fandom. This will be a collaborative project run through a new Discord server, and we welcome people of all levels of experience with Fanlore editing, including people who have never done it before! We’ll need people for a wide range of tasks: project management, research, drafting, reviewing, and posting to Fanlore.

Anti-Harassment Street Team: A group aimed at supporting people who are harassed for talking about racism in fandom, including developing de-escalation practices, creating resources on curating your own space, correcting misinformation, and more. This project will also be collaborative and run through a new Discord server.

You can sign up for these projects on our Volunteer Sign-Up Form. If you already signed up for either of these projects at any time in the last few months, you will receive an email with more information when each project kicks off.

Apart from those projects, we’ll see you again for our next action in a few months. If you need to get hold of us in the meantime, you can email us at endotwracism [at] gmail [dot] com, though we may take a little while to get back to you. Thank you again for your passion and support in fighting racism in the OTW!

- The Fandom Against Racism Team
endotwracism: “END OTW RACISM” in bold text, each word on a single line against a contrasting color in shades of red and brown. (Default)
The OTW posted their 2023-2026 Strategic Plan on July 24, following up on six years of work since their previous 2017-2020 Strategic Plan. A Strategic Plan is a guiding document that many organizations and companies will develop to outline long-term goals and how to achieve them.

OTW’s Strategic Plan consists of three parts:
  • Vision Statement 2022-2025, which outlines the mission, priorities, and challenges for the organization, and was published a year ago.

  • 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, which gives a timeline for what the organization plans to work on and achieve at various intervals, beginning in July 2023.

  • Strategic Planning Implementation Support Plan, which provides guidelines for the Strategic Planning Committee and the entire organization to monitor the progress of the priorities outlined in the plan.

We wanted to provide our analysis and feedback on the Strategic Plan from the perspective of our goals to hold OTW to its commitments to hire a diversity consultant by the end of 2023, update their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist harassment and abusive content on AO3, and provide more transparency.

Strategic Planning Process


The process for developing the Strategic Plan was opaque for people who are not staff, board, or volunteers with the OTW. The draft version of the Strategic Plan was not circulated to members or AO3 users outside the organization before it was finalized. While it is not unusual for nonprofits to only solicit feedback from their own staff and board on such a document, most nonprofits and websites tend to do other forms of proactive community engagement such as through surveys, focus groups, workshops, and more to understand the needs of people who do not work for the organization. In the absence of that kind of engagement, the Strategic Plan could have been an opportunity for the OTW to seek input from a wider base, including OTW members, AO3 users, Fanlore editors and viewers, editors of and contributors to Transformative Works & Cultures, mods of archives imported through Open Doors, and more.

Additionally, the OTW mentions that they received feedback from volunteers in the year between when the Vision Statement was published in 2022 and when the final plan was published this year, but the Vision Statement itself has not been updated to reflect that input. Given that the Vision Statement guides the organization’s priorities and themes of work, this is also a missed opportunity.


Strategic Planning Timeline and Actions


Diversity Consultant


The Vision Statement includes one bullet point under “Diversifying Spaces” on this topic: “Contracting with an individual or organization to consult on issues of racial bias and inequality within the Organization and its projects. Options for this will be researched by a dedicated Diversity Consultant Research Officer, appointed by the Board of Directors.”

The timeline in the Strategic Plan includes goals for the Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DRCO), the volunteer who was appointed in April 2022 to research diversity consultants. The DRCO is to give their first report to the board in three months (October 2023), a year and a half after being appointed. The DRCO is supposed to then give reports every three months, which will be “shared both internally and externally to users”, and the DRCO and/or consultant are to check in with Volunteer Coalition leaders every six months.

There is no other mention of the goals for the diversity consultant themselves in the timeline, nor a confirmation of the commitment to hire a diversity consultant by the end of 2023, which the OTW Board stated in their July 1 public meeting.

Anti-Harassment Policy Updates to TOS


There is no mention of TOS updates to address racist harassment and abusive content on AO3.

Transparency


The Vision Statement included two sections that are relevant here: one on “External Communication” as a priority area, and a section under “Challenges” on “Public Narrative” that included possible goals such as sharing more information about OTW’s history, purpose, and structures in infographics; encouraging committees to create public-facing video content to explain the work that they do; and revising the overall communications strategy to improve transparency and communicate the missions effectively.

The timeline in the Strategic Plan includes two goals that follow up on this in 18 months:
  • Strengthen Overall Communications Strategy: International and multilingual external communications strategy is clarified and further developed.”

  • Strengthen Consistency and Reach of Public Messaging: Clear guidance for consistency across our platforms to support raising awareness of the OTW mission is developed.”

The Strategic Plan also mentions that the DRCO will give quarterly reports to the Board on their progress, which will also be shared both internally and externally.

Other relevant areas


The Vision Statement’s section on “Diversifying Spaces” also had other strategies intended to address racism, including creating volunteer resource groups who “may suggest, advise, be consulted on, or provide information for OTW policies that may affect their experience within the OTW and our projects”; trying to expand recruitment to diversify volunteer, staff, and board candidate bases; and providing more features to give individual AO3 users more control for filtering and customization.

The timeline in the Strategic Plan included these goals:
  • Recruitment: In 6 months, “each committee will have reviewed research on and taken action to improve diversity and decrease bias in candidate selection processes.”

  • Volunteer Coalitions: In 12 months, “research into volunteer coalitions is completed and initial volunteer coalitions start being formed”; and every six months from there, the DRCO and/or consultant will check in with the Volunteer Coalition leaders.

Implementation


The Implementation Support Plan primarily consists of actions that the Strategic Planning Committee and leadership will take to ensure plan implementation, including checking in with teams, evaluating progress on goals and creating documentation, providing support for committees, monitoring the plan’s feasibility, and celebrating goal completion.

Our recommendations


  • Given that the hiring of a diversity consultant has been lagging for three years, and since it is not in these documents, the commitment to hiring a diversity consultant by the end of 2023 should be reiterated in other official OTW communications.

  • When the DRCO and Board have developed a scope of work for the diversity consultant, the Strategic Plan timeline should be updated to include key milestones and expected deliverables for the consultant within the 2023-2026 time period.

  • The regular updates that are currently assigned to the DRCO in the timeline should be extended to the diversity consultant once hired, to ensure transparency.

  • The Strategic Planning Committee should provide more specifics on how they are evaluating progress on the plan’s goals, and ideally give updates at regular intervals on that progress.

  • For the next Strategic Plan, the OTW should engage with the Volunteer Coalitions, particularly those that are intended to support volunteers of color and non-western volunteers, as well as reach out to stakeholders outside of the organization itself, including OTW members and people who engage with OTW’s projects (AO3, Fanlore, Open Doors, and Transformative Work & Cultures).

  • The next Strategic Plan should also be completed in a timely manner to prevent missing coverage of years, which was what happened for 2021 and 2022.
endotwracism: @ End OTW Racism (@ End OTW Racism green)
The election is over, and we'd like to congratulate (in alphabetical order) Anh Pham, Kathryn Soderholm, and Qiao Chu, who have been elected to serve full terms on the OTW Board of Directors, and Jennifer Haynes and Zixin Zhang, who have been elected to partial terms. We recognize that this is a turbulent time for the OTW, and that running for Board at any time takes guts and a lot of hard work, but especially so now, and we appreciate the time and labor you all have put into answering questions about how you envision your time serving on the Board and guiding OTW policy.

It really was a rollercoaster of an election season. With an original ballot of seven candidates for three seats, the field eventually narrowed to five candidates, and then unexpected resignations led to the opening of five total seats, creating an uncontested election. Still, voting mattered, as the number of votes each candidate got determined if they won a full term (three years) or a partial (two years), and we want to thank everyone who showed up to #VoteToEndOTWRacism.

Through their prepared bios and platforms, the Q&As posted to the Elections site, and the four Candidate Chats, OTW members and stakeholders had ample opportunity to get to know the candidates and learn about their ideas for improving the OTW, and we're excited to see how they might implement their plans once they take their seats.

Today we're going to take a look at how their stated priorities might guide the new Board, specifically in addressing our three main demands:
  1. Terms of Service (TOS) updates that address racist and bigoted harassment.
  2. Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3 months.
  3. Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic.

As candidates, all five stressed the importance of updating the TOS (or the way the current TOS is enforced) to better protect fans from harassment on AO3, with Anh, Kathryn, and Qiao all listing it as a priority.

All five also spoke of hiring and working with a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) consultant, with Anh, Kathryn, and Qiao all speaking of filling the position soon, and Kathryn expressly calling it a priority.

And, continuing the positive trend, all five offered multiple ways the OTW could improve transparency within the organization and with stakeholders outside the organization! We are particularly interested in Zixin’s suggestion to increase the section on Board work in the monthly newsletters (something Qiao also mentioned!) as well as improve the Board Meeting process to have it better moderated and more efficient, as this would be a great step towards that transparency and engagement with the user base, and her idea to set up clearer internal guidelines on crisis resolution and make them accessible to all volunteers would be a tangible way of increasing transparency within the org.

Kathryn is also concerned about documentation and believes the OTW needs to establish: clear org-wide standards for when to use Constructive Corrective Action Procedures (CCAP), an org-wide crisis communication plan, and org-wide standards for moderating comments on news posts, and that these standards can, and should, be created within the first year.

And, finally, Anh discusses having the group tasked with implementation of the OTW's strategic plan develop infographics to better communicate that plan as a means of fostering outreach to OTW members and users to bring them in to contribute to the OTW’s processes. Unfortunately the strategic plan does not currently reference any of our goals, but if updated, this could be a great path of dialogue between users and the organization.

The new Board will be seated October 1, 2023, and we look forward to seeing what they can accomplish by working together to make the OTW and its platforms a safe and welcoming place for fans of color.
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Over on Tumblr, we reblogged a post titled A pattern of dismissal and retaliation: the experiences of Zixin Z. and the Chinese volunteers by [tumblr.com profile] fandomantiracism. We want to urge everyone who is still unfamiliar with the situation to read about it, and to continue amplifying Zixin Z's words.

In our original reblog, we made an error about the committee Zixin Z is on, and her role, which has been corrected in the link above.

Since we have also received conflicting information about the OTW's Weibo account (mentioned in the post), we reached out to OTW Comms for clarification and got a quick response:

Hello

Our Weibo account has not been shut down, and has, in fact, added a third moderator since one of its current moderators will be on Board this coming year.

You can find a list of all our social media accounts on our website: https://www.transformativeworks.org/where-find-us/

Claudia Rebaza
Communications Committee
Organization for Transformative Works
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The Candidate’s Q&A’s have been posted by OTW and we invite everyone to read through our compilations on TOS and Diversity Consultant updates. We also encourage people to dig further into the candidate’s fuller responses.

In addition, we have put together a few questions and we invite each candidate to answer on any platform they choose. We will boost any responses we receive. Our platform is also open should a candidate prefer to email or DM us.
  1. When someone experiences or witnesses racist harassment and abuse within the OTW, or as a user of their platforms, what should they do within the current processes in place? What changes to current processes, if any, would you propose?
  2. How does the organization’s current structure inhibit the ability to execute change and how do you plan to deal with it?
  3. Will you carry through on the commitment made by the current Board to hire a diversity consultant, ideally before the end of the year?
  4. Will you commit to providing regular updates in the OTW monthly newsletter on the process of TOS updates and the hiring of a Diversity Consultant, even if the update is that there is no change?
  5. If there is one thing you would like people to know about dealing with race issues/racism within the OTW, what would it be?
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The transcripts from the four candidate chats have been posted to the OTW Elections site:

Chat #1 with Anh P, Kathryn S, and Zixin Z

Chat #2 with Jennifer H, Qiao C, and Zixin Z

Chat #3 with Anh P and Jennifer H

Chat #4 with Kathryn S and Qiao C

We've compiled a doc with questions and answers relevant to our goals, and for comparison purposes we've also got a doc with the full Q&A grouped by question and one arranged by candidate.

The election will be held August 11-14 from 12:01 am UTC on Friday to 11:59 pm UTC on Monday. If you're eligible to vote, you should already have received voting instructions by email. If you haven't received these instructions, visit OTW Elections to find out what you can do.

Because there are five open seats on the OTW Board and five candidates, the election is uncontested, but voting is still important as the three highest ranked candidates will be elected to full-term seats and serve 3 years on the OTW Board of Directors. The remaining two candidates will serve a partial term of only two years.

We urge everyone eligible to vote to do so!

--The Fandom Against Racism Team
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We've had reports of the voting information email from #OTW Elections sent on July 22-23 not reaching all recipients. Visit OTW News for instructions on what to do if that's happened to you.
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Two weeks ago we uplifted two posts from Dhobi ki Kutti, a fan of color and OTW volunteer, that recount the retaliation she's experienced at the hands of OTW leadership for speaking out against racism within the organization. One post shared a Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP) letter from OTW Chairs that reads as a blatant attempt to silence her. The other demanded the suspension of OTW Board Member Alex Tischer for their repeated racist remarks. Tischer has since resigned from the Board, along with Antonius Melisse and Natalia Gruber.

Kutti's latest post Racism within the OTW goes into further detail about her experiences as a volunteer, and the racism she's witnessed and been subjected to:

In 2020, when I asked the OTW Board to document the conversation around #BlackLivesMatter, and racism, and they put it off, I started gathering evidence. I had an idea of writing a report, a thorough, researched, documented argument that could prove to anyone without a vested interest in denying it, that the Organisation for Transformative Works was infected, from top to bottom, with structural racism.

This post is not that report. I had not intended to become active in the org because I had already learned that it was futile, but in May 2023 I saw fellow and ex volunteers being abused by a hostile management, and there was no way I could keep quiet about it. I focussed on victim advocacy, and on uncovering facts by asking questions in public, so that there was a documentation that other volunteers could look towards. In the process, I became a target of the kind of relentless racialised microaggressions that wear you down, no matter how prepared you are. And then of course the org decided to escalate with the macro aggression of sending me a CCAP, the kind of blatantly racist written proof that, to anyone outside the org, was a piece of evidence beyond any doubt.

We here at End OTW Racism offer Dhobi ki Kutti our full support and will continue to push the OTW to address the racism within its organization. You can read dhobikikutti's full post here on Dreamwidth.
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[personal profile] endotwracism posted: Candidate Q&A Answers
As part of our analysis of the Candidates Q&A answers with regards towards our goals (specifically: Updated TOS, Diversity Consultant and Transparency) we are presenting the candidates answers to questions related to these topics in a format to allow for ease of comparison.


This post has been updated with candidate answers from the fourth and final Q&A.
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