Well this is depressing.

[minoanmiss]

Well, there's fandom and then there's fandom. There's the really nifty person whom I want to write a story for (and need to finish a draft before 7 pm tomorrow), and the news I just learned which is weighing down my little heart.

This is an excerpt from the meeting minutes for the OTW's Board meeting on 9/29. I was going to link, but the meeting minutes have been taken down.

Q: This might be a little off-topic but I have to satisfy my curiosity. Is the board aware of the continuing public “pressure” being exerted by outside groups who want the OTW to implement changes to Ao3 that could result in unfavorable changes for creators? […] Sure, there’s been a troubling amount of talk (and maybe it’s just all talk) on outside social media sites (It’s Twitter, it’s always Twitter) of groups that want to pressure the OTW to implement censorship guidelines for Ao3. Is that even on your radar?

A: This is a perennial pressure for the Organization for Transformative Works, but the AO3 was founded to protect inclusivity of content and we remain committed to that mission.

Those "outside groups" being referred to are fans who have been asking AO3 to do more about issues of racist fanworks and racist abuse on its premises. (They're not referring to the antis, for reasons discussed "here.")

I wrote a wistful post about this ongoing fight a few days ago. My usual reaction to this kind of thing has been to leave. But, TL pointed out to me once that "you [MM] make your own exiles," and another wise friend reminded me, "silence and departure are always options, but not always the only or the best." So, you know, I'm not going to leave this time. Even though half of fandom is saying "AO3 is an archive and that means collecting everything including racist fanworks and racist harassment of creators, and if you object to that you're a hypocrite and should go away and build your own completely improbable Less Racism Archive." I think that a belief in freedom of expression does not need to include a blanket condonement of racism. If AO3 really wants to be rid of fans of color, including this fangirl who has supported it from the very start, they will have to throw us out.

At least that's how I feel right now. I'm still thinking over the ethics of it, both for me and for fans of color in general (by which I mean, how I can help or hurt other fans of color).

Now to shake off this gloom and write this story.

Comments

[or_midnight]

ohhhhh, that ask and response are making my blood boil, so I can only imagine how fans of color must feel. It's been a lot of years and a lot of different online handles ago, but it bears remembering that at a personal level, *you* were instrumental in welcoming *me* to fandom. Outside group, my entire white ass.

[harpers_child]

At some point non-profits have to start having employees and paying people. I know Ao3 works on a small budget for what it does, but maybe it's time to be a grown up non-profit.

Something something that one story/metaphor about how you don't become a nazi bar. (You shut that down the first time you see a dogwhistle patch not when you look up and see skinheads.)

[kore]

It looks, from the July meeting minutes, like they're trying to get "the Paid Staff Transition Officer, the officer would be in charge of investigating what structures we as an organisation need to create in order to be able to hire paid professionals in the OTW." *hands*

[goss]

:(

[sonia]

Wow. That's heartbreaking. You would think (well, I would think) that it's caricature, but no, it really is that bad. Don't people get embarrassed to be white supremacy's mouthpiece?!

Best wishes for your story. I hope it brings delight in the writing and in the reading of it.

[gingicat]

I need to go read the minutes myself.

[minoanmiss]

I'll see what I can do to get a copy of the PDF. I should've PDFed it myself when I first read the letter.

[dine]

gah! that is infuriating and just plain wrong. knowing they're not willing to even address the issue honestly is depressing

[hitchhiker]

oh no :( that has got to be really hard. *hug*

[kore]

and if you object to that you're a hypocrite and should go away and build your own completely improbable Less Racism Archive

That "friendly reminder it's open source!" mix of patronizing bullshit and racism just makes me want to grind my teeth to powder. Sure, everyone has the capability to start up and build and run an archive! No sweat, you just do it from home while teaching your university classes on Zoom or WFH programming! Christ. It's such a nonstarter and it's just meant to cut off discussion and I hate it.

And people are still spouting that "you don't have any solutions, all you do is complaaaaaaain about the hard work other people do" bullshit. The threads by fiercynonym are a pretty devastating rebuttal to that. People have been suggesting things! For a while now!

TRANSPARENT: don’t just take community input back to your organization and make decisions behind a curtain; be open about the info you’re receiving and what you plan to do with it (and, as I mentioned above, involve community in the decision-making)

AO3 has totally failed at transparency on a number of levels of years and years now. The Board only started being open about the budget after that Paypal fiasco. They need to stop freaking out after firestorms erupt and claiming they can't fix the damage, and be proactive and start planning how to make the whole environment better. Like, implement a fucking BLOCK FEATURE.

I'm not thrilled by what they actually seem to mean by "Diversity Consultant Research Officer" either (emphasis mine):

https://www.transformativeworks.org/board_minutes/board-meeting-minutes-11-july-2021/

What sorts of decisions the officers would be expected to make
The Board envisions these roles as ones focused on mainly on research, rather than decision-making. In the case of the Paid Staff Transition Officer, the officer would be in charge of investigating what structures we as an organisation need to create in order to be able to hire paid professionals in the OTW. Likewise, the Diversity Consultant Research Officer would also research and explore possibilities for diversity consultants and present their findings to the Board, who would then evaluate them and make a decision on how to move forward.

....Recruitment for officer roles
At this time, the Board is focusing on internal recruitment for the new roles, as existing knowledge of the OTW would be essential in order for them to achieve their goals.

Workload issues
Historically, in the OTW, several volunteers have accumulated multiple roles, which can lead to overwhelmed volunteers. Since we’re planning to recruit internally, there is a possibility it might be better for people stepping up as officers to leave their pre-existing roles. However, there are many roles in the organisation that could probably still be held alongside officer roles, as the workload of each OTW position can vary quite a lot. Committee chairs, who have a heavier workload, might need to go on hiatus or step down from chairing to take on this role, for example, but volunteers with a lighter workload might not.

tl;dr They're making the same. Fucking. Mistakes. They always have re overloading volunteers, choosing to "recruit from within" and the same old "Oh but it has to be someone from inside OTW to understand our unique uniqueness" line.

[clevermanka]

I hadn't read all the other notes you comment on here and jesus. fucking. christ. /o\

[kore]

(Are these the wrong meeting minutes? https://www.transformativeworks.org/board_minutes/board-meeting-minutes-29-september-2021/

They do have that question there

Some questions from guests:

This might be a little off-topic but I have to satisfy my curiosity. Is the board aware of the continuing public “pressure” being exerted by outside groups who want the OTW to implement changes to Ao3 that could result in unfavorable changes for creators? […] Sure, there’s been a troubling amount of talk (and maybe it’s just all talk) on outside social media sites (It’s Twitter, it’s always Twitter) of groups that want to pressure the OTW to implement censorship guidelines for Ao3. Is that even on your radar?
This is a perennial pressure for the Organization for Transformative Works, but the AO3 was founded to protect inclusivity of content and we remain committed to that mission.

Multiple questions asking for timelines for a number of different things (paid staff, new officer roles, blocking feature).

We can’t give timelines but we will do our best to share more information as things progress.

[anna_wing]

Quite a lot of the stuff on AO3 is nothing that I would care to read. But I would be very concerned about this suggestion, because AO3 has global participation, from many nationalities and ethnicities, and genuine diversity will always mean disagreement, even about things that some people might consider fundamental.

[lemonsharks]

And yet, I think we can all agree that racist harassment and spitefic and untagged Nazi fetish porn without a way to block users so that their work disappears from one's logged in view is in fact bad.

Also, I think we as a group of kind and respectful people can all agree that if the folks who are unhappy are the MAGA hat wearing assholes and fuckin Tories?

That is a feature, not a bug.

[kore]

(Anyway, my apologies for blatting all over your comments, I'm still also REALLY upset about the Fanlore thing and how they're also not listening to fans on that photo ID issue)

[minoanmiss]

OMG I NEED your comments. beyond wanting them. I KNOW you will both inform and sympathize with me. I half wanted to drop you a line and ask what you thougth but I didn't want to pressure you if you weren't up for it.

*clings to you*

[ororo]

Arrgghh. Shriek. *HUGS*

[minoanmiss]

*hugs you back a lot*

[sabotabby]

I'm always conflicted about these things, when a space I love becomes hostile. I don't have a huge attachment to Ao3, although I'd want to download all of my fics and nice comments if I were to leave, so I don't have a dog in this race. But there's a lot that's good about it that would be lost by a mass exodus.

That said, one of Ao3's weak spots is that it's the only archive of its sort, which means that bad actors can have a disproportionate effect, especially where issues of FREEZED PEACH are concerned. Back in my day, it was much easier to yeet oneself from drama as there were other spaces that one could yeet to. And, possibly idealistically, I think the availability of other spaces makes it easier to control things like racist fanworks, because it should be the racists who get yeeted from Ao3, not fans of colour.

I don't know if this makes sense because I'm just waking up. I'm certainly not saying that you, or I, or anyone should take on the project of creating new spaces and archives so much as the board needs to start saying "well, the code is open source" to the people braying about their supposed right to create racist fanworks.

[kore]

And, possibly idealistically, I think the availability of other spaces makes it easier to control things like racist fanworks, because it should be the racists who get yeeted from Ao3, not fans of colour.

It keeps reminding me of that anecdote where women were being attacked at night and a politician suggested a curfew for women, to which someone else replied, "But it's not the women who are doing the attacking."

[amaebi]

I'm so sorry. :(

[princessofgeeks]

Thanks for the heads up about this. I have never volunteered for OTW and have not had the time or energy to keep up with what's going on with them, even the board elections lately, except for using the archive of course.

I hope people can continue to hold their feet to the fire over doing something about the racist content, but it's such a slog, as bureaucratic as they are, from what I hear from people who have been on their board in the past.

I think it's kind of a shame that AO3 has become the only game in town when it comes to archives. It's a fantastic accomplishment of fandom, but making it possible for readers to skip the racism would really be a good thing. Sigh.

[cjsmith]

AUGH. All of that is so awful. I'm sorry. :(

About those last few paragraphs

[ng_moonmoth]

Your quote about silence and departure not always being the best options, and how you are feeling right now, put me in mind of the sentiments expressed in this song. Particularly relevant are these lines from the chorus:

& I will not cede this city
to the ones who looked the other way
by walking with the ones who walked away

The inspiration for the song was "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin, but I see an echo of what you are facing in the song's narrative.

It will be because of you, and the people you inspire, that the good of AO3 will not be overrun by the bad.

Re: About those last few paragraphs

[minoanmiss]

OMg, this made me cry. Thank you.

hugs you gratefully

(The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is very special to me. It helped me leave Fundamentalism. )

[gloss]

Is the board aware of the continuing public “pressure” being exerted by outside groups who want the OTW to implement changes to Ao3 that could result in unfavorable changes for creators?
ARRRRGGGGGHHH
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they're so happily using the well-worn bullshit of the "outside agitator" narrative, but then they go on to make a distinction between those Scary Anti-Racist Types and "creators", as if...what? Those who need and want things like blocking options *aren't* creators, aren't also members of the community?

It's all so predictable and awful. I'm sorry, bb.

[corvidology]

All mindsets come with their own dangers - having a mindset in itself is something we should all be careful about instead of being open to new POVs - but one of the biggest ones of the 'liberal' mindset is knee-jerk "I AM ANTI-CENSORSHIP eleventy!!!!" without stopping to consider the actual argument being put forward.

[lemonsharks]

I've found that the left has the unfortunate tendency to tie itself in knots over absolute tolerance (including tolerance of bigots and bigotry); intolerance of bigotry expels bigots form the community, a net good. Also: and moral relativism (there is no right or wrong), when there actually are a few absolute moral rights and moral wrongs which transcend borders and cultures.

OTW doesn't have a good test for "does this fictional work constitute hate speech?" but I can think of several fictional works which clearly do espouse and endorse a hateful point of view, from little house on the prairie to birth of a nation.

But the most common functions I've seen requested is a robust block function and the ability to make bookmarker tags visible, and some kind of "contains bigotries" required archive warning. However, OTW and AO3 are more concerned with people getting their panties in a bunch over their bigoted fanwork being tagged "bigoted fanwork" than they are about marginalized people running into triggering shit I warned for.

I went through something similar with them a few years ago when I had a fandom stalker and A03 chose to protect the stalker rather than give me the information I needed to protect myself.

[china_shop]

A: This is a perennial pressure for the Organization for Transformative Works, but the AO3 was founded to protect inclusivity of content and we remain committed to that mission.

Oh, goddammit. >:-(

I feel like there's a tension between their "archive ALL the things" mission statement and the fact that they are a pretty high-profile hosting/publishing platform, and also a COMMUNITY (we won a Hugo together!). And I (as someone who isn't in the field of making spaces safer and is very willing to be told "nope, that won't work!") keep thinking that the way to manage that tension is to take a leaf out of the search engine playbook and implement a default "safe search", which users can switch off at their caveat emptor peril.

I don't know how you decide which works get flagged (obviously if the system for that was badly designed, it would be open to abuse by racists), but I'm sure someone smarter than me has a theory about that.

Mostly, I just really wish they'd do something, aaaaaargh!

[julian]

SIGH.

I appreciate decisions to stay and work for the good, in whatever way you can. I just wish it weren't necessary.

*hug*

[used_songs]

Thank you for this post and the comments it engendered. I had managed to miss this whole fandom conversation until yesterday. I'm catching up on the conversation.

[minoanmiss]

It's not like you have anything else to do these days! *hugs you strengtheningly*

[lavendertook]

What a cluster fuck they’ve become. So is everyone running AO3 white and have they been OK with that? Are they all straight, cis, and able bodied too? And is the “diversity" hire going to be someone BIPOC who won’t get to vote on whether their diversity advice is accepted or not--eesh, that’ll be special. Do none of them think that their values being like FB’s is a problem? That absolute free speech actually reinforces the status quo hierarchy because those in power do have louder voices than the oppressed or are they fine with reinforcing oppression? Just rhetorical questions. We know the majority of white women in the US voted for Trump. It’s a shame that being international hasn’t done anything to change the balance of power or how the players involved regard it.

[gingicat]

I think the culture of "antis" has overwhelmed people's good judgment.

Tagging helps, but one cannot tell if the child abuse story is written to rebuke child abuse, or the worse side, without reading it and then, if the story itself is pro-abuse, reporting it. I discovered that I can't reliably trust underage writers to tag their fics as underage.

The OTW is in a position where they need to design some paid positions. Maybe paid moderators with a variety of life experiences, working to very specific guidelines. Everyone on the team skims every new story, any story that's flagged is discussed. Paid, because no-one could do this as a volunteer.

[dhampyresa]

I think that a belief in freedom of expression does not need to include a blanket condonement of racism.

I agree. Lots of countries, including my own, have laws forbidding hate speech without otherwise restricting freedom of speech. Due to the international nature of OTW/AO3 it'd be harder to implement/enforce but it'd be nice to at least see what conversations they're having about it.

[ilyena_sylph]

Several days late to this "party" because Life, but...

Jesus frog on a pogo stick, AO3, come on.

Get your act together and build a goddamn block and mute function like you should have from day one so that fen of color Don't Fucking Have To Keep Dealing With This Shit.

I am so sorry the Board keeps having the wrong people's backs.