Agenda
- Decisions made since last public meeting
- 2025 OTW Board Election wrap-up
- OTW Culture Roadmap update
- Board Roadmap update
- Any other business (Questions & Answers)
Transcript
The meeting can be read in full on the official OTW Board Discord server. In order to access it, you’ll need to join our Discord server.
Present
- Anh Pham
- Elizabeth Wiltshire
- Erica Frank
- Harlan Lieberman-Berg
- Kathryn Soderholm
- Qiao Chu
- Rachel Linton
Guests
- (The Violet) Howler
- alogical
- arty
- asspolo
- Beatrice_Otter
- Bilka
- bluedreaming
- connect_the_stars
- copacet
- daisy
- Deimos Crow
- EchoEkhi
- Egg
- elekanahmen
- Elf
- havesomewords
- itsmeimhere
- jeiroh
- keladry
- ladydragona
- Lily (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
- LtMel
- Lydia
- MistbornHero
- muffinman29
- MustardPot
- nonplussed
- PAULA ꓯꓶꓵꓯꓒ
- pitytheviolins
- Polinfickipedia
- Ruin
- ShirouHokuto
- Sullie Tosho
- Teyke
- therealmorticia
Open Session
Decisions made since the last public meeting
- Approved minutes of previous public Board meeting.
- Approved Finance requests.
- Reviewed and approved 2024 Annual Report.
- Approved signing on to an amicus brief in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment regarding secondary liability for ISPs.
- Approved signing on to an amicus brief in Netchoice v. Fitch, challenging Mississippi’s age verification law.
- Approved archiving of the Multi-Committee Discussion Policy (which was outdated and no longer reflected the organizational workflow).
- Approved Crisis Communication Guidelines.
- Approved BAT volunteers.
- Approved changes made to the Strategic Plan.
2025 OTW Board Election wrap-up
We want to begin by thanking all the candidates that ran for Board this year. Running for Board is a significant commitment and we are incredibly grateful for everyone who put in the time and effort to do so. We would also like to thank the Elections Committee for all of their hard work in running this election, as well as everyone who voted, attended Candidate Chats, submitted questions, or otherwise participated. We deeply appreciate how much you care about the OTW and our mission.
And now, we’d like to welcome our new Board members! This election filled two seats for full 3 year terms as Board Directors. We are proud to present our new Board Members, Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg. We are very excited to have them join us! We also want to thank outgoing Board Members, Jennifer Haynes and Zixin Zhang. We appreciate their dedication and service and wish them all the best.
Election of Officers
- For Treasurer, Finance chair Yuechiang Luo to continue in her role. – unanimously approved
- For Secretary, Qiao Chu – unanimously approved
- For Vice President, Rachel Linton – unanimously approved, one abstention
- For President, Anh Pham – unanimously approved, one abstention
OTW Culture Roadmap update
The Organizational Cultural Roadmap Team is proud to share that the Cybersecurity Audit goal has been formally completed. The Cybersecurity Delegate role has been moved to Strategic Planning to better support the coordination and implementation of their audit report’s recommendations through Strategic Planning’s standard monitoring and tracking processes. (The Cybersecurity Audit was a goal in the 2023-2026 Strategic Plan as well as the Organizational Roadmap.)
Unfortunately, since one of the Paid Staff Transition Co-lead retired from the OTW earlier this year, the project progress has been affected substantially. We’re pleased to share that our current Paid Staff Transition Lead, Kate G., has been doing outreach to several nonprofits that went through transition from all volunteer organisations to a hybrid model of volunteers and paid employees. As this work is still ongoing, more details will be shared at a later date. Additionally, Board is scheduled to check-in with PSTL within two weeks, we’re looking forward to more PSTL updates and will share them with you in the next public Board meeting.
We also have a new active goal: Revising and Updating the Code of Conduct (COC) to bring it up to the current era and make it more clear, enforceable, and usable. Work on this goal has begun and a survey was sent out to survey all OTW volunteers on their knowledge of the current COC (viewable here: Code of Conduct). The survey period closed yesterday and volunteers are now working on analyzing the input and beginning to draft an updated COC.
Board Roadmap update
2025 Board Roadmap update
We shared the Board Year Roadmap in our first quarter of 2025 meeting; meeting minutes available here. We’ve only included items here that have an update, so items that were completed before the last meeting or haven’t been worked on have been removed.
Trust, Safety, and Accountability
- Review and revise OTW policies for volunteer discipline – ONGOING
- Improve Board transparency by sharing regular updates and improving the Board response time to communication – ONGOING
- Review Board Confidentiality Agreement (this policy is reviewed every two years) – ONGOING
As we shared in our earlier update about the Culture Roadmap, work on Code of Conduct review is ongoing which is one of the two most important policies/procedures regarding volunteer discipline (the other is planned to follow the revision of the COC). Documentation on Board email and communications is something we’re always working to improve although a preliminary overhaul has been completed (as we noted before, the exact timeframe of reply depends on the topic of the message). We have completed an updated draft of the Board Confidentiality Agreement which has been passed to our Legal committee for review, and then Board members will be asked to re-agree to its updated terms.
Soliciting Expertise
- Finalize OTW Procurement Policy and related documentation (Continued from 2024) – ONGOING
The policy draft has been reviewed by a few more stakeholders. We’ve admittedly focused on other goals over the last few months and we’re hoping to redirect focus toward this soon!
Following Existing Plans
- Collaborate with Paid Staff Transition Lead to work on transitioning the OTW to a hybrid volunteer-paid staff model. – ONGOING
- Collaborate with OTW Roadmap Team and work on Organizational goals (Continued from 2024) – ONGOING
- Support implementation of the Strategic Plan by completing our own goals and supporting other committees (Continued from 2024) – ONGOING
These goals are ongoing and will continue to be ongoing as we address a variety of tasks related to them, including meeting with stakeholders, providing assistance, and participating in discussions around them as we’re needed.
Board Assistants Team (BAT) Committee
- Work with BATs to create systems to better manage Board tasks (Continued from 2024). – ONGOING
- Increase active BAT membership by 20% – COMPLETED
- Create and improve documentation around regular BAT and Board tasks – ONGOING
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve completed our goal of increasing our active BAT membership by 20% with our recruitment this quarter. We’ve welcomed 5 Batlings (new BAT volunteers) who are currently completing training and working on their first tasks. We continue to work on documentation improvements, but a huge amount of work has already been done in terms of documenting processes.
While it’s hard to define an exact “definition of done” for this goal, we hope to have completed all currently planned documentation tasks by the end of the year. News ones will always be added, but the hope is that the current to-do list will be addressed by year’s end!
2020 Board Roadmap update
With the recent updates regarding AO3 Collection Tags and Improvements to Collection Filters, we have fulfilled the last of the promises listed in our 2020 Statement from the OTW Board of Directors, Chairs, & Leads – a version updated in 2023 can be found here as well.
This marks a significant milestone for us! To list a few, since the update two years ago, we have:
- Completed a culture audit covering the entire organizational (huge thanks to our Diversity Consultant Research Officer for assisting us in onboarding them),
- Completed the AO3 TOS review and implementation (kudos to our Policy and Abuse committee for leading that project!),
- Established the OTW Culture Roadmap Workgroup to work on the OTW Culture Roadmap based on findings from our culture audit summary and begun addressing the goals listed in it,
- Established 2 new committees and 2 new subcommittees to improve OTW internal workflow—including the Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution subcommittee, an independent body addressing volunteers’ internal complaints and conflicts,
- Made several changes to the procedures of Board public meeting and Board communication, to improve transparency regarding Board work and OTW progress.
We know that creating a safer environment for our users and volunteers is an ongoing responsibility, and we remain deeply committed to addressing harassment with both urgency and care. While the steps outlined in our 2020 statement marked an important beginning, we recognise that true progress requires continuous effort beyond fulfilling those initial commitments. We are dedicated to building on that foundation with transparency, accountability, and compassion.
AOB
No items
Open Question time
Q1: Has the OTW implemented any more protections against data-scraping for AI use after the incident against AO3 earlier this year?
A: Thank you for the question. We believe the data scrape to which you are referring took place in February 2025. Since then, we have implemented new tools via CloudFlare to block bots, which should help to prevent future scraping. While this solution is not perfect, more robust solutions would have a significant negative impact on some of our users, especially those using older devices or accessibility tools. That’s because these involve challenging every request, not just those that look like they come from a scraper. We will continue to do our best to implement new tools and make changes to prevent bot scraping while protecting legitimate uses of the site.
Q2: Is there a way for us to have open questions and answers to other committees and not just the board? eg what is on the roadmap for tech
A: If you would like to ask a specific committee a question, there is a contact form on our website here. If you aren’t sure which committee is the correct one to direct your question to, the Communications Committee will make sure it gets to the right place!
If you want to know more about what committees are working on, you can check the news posts on AO3 and the OTW website. You can also subscribe to OTW News by Email to receive news posts in your email inbox! The news posts include our monthly newsletter, the OTW Signal, which includes updates from multiple committees.
Q3: Will we be able to filter our own bookmarks by word count in the future?
A: Due to the way that bookmarks are stored in the database, some of the sorting and filtering options that are available for searching works are not possible for bookmarks. It is possible that more options will be added in the future, as our volunteer coders are aware that it is a frequently requested feature.
There is also a workaround you might choose to use, going forward: when you bookmark a work, you have the opportunity to add bookmark tags, and there are canonical tags for various word counts. You can rely on the bookmark tags to find the works later using the “other bookmarker’s tags to include” field in the Sort & Filter options.
If you have any questions, or run into any other problems, please reach out to Support through their contact form.
Q4: Do you plan to post the results of the Cyber Security Audit publicly?
A: No. We don’t currently intend to post the report itself publicly, as it has extensive internal technical information about the current security posture of OTW. That being said, it’s important to understand that the audit wasn’t a third-party examination of whether we meet a list of requirements, like a food safety audit, or a financial audit — there’s no pass or fail. Rather, the information from the audit will be used to help the Board and the committee chairs prioritize how and where to best improve our security posture.
Q5: will there be a function in the future to allow search and filtering in a user’s history?
A: Adding a way to filter the History and Marked For Later lists is a request we’ve received many times before. Our volunteer coders have discussed it, but they haven’t made a final decision yet. Such a feature would greatly increase the number of records being sorted and filtered through our system, and we would want to ensure that it doesn’t place too much strain on the site before we could make any such change.
As a current example, while there are currently over 1 billion bookmarks on the site, the “History” table currently includes over 14 billion views, so making that information searchable and sortable would require processing over 14 times as much data as we currently do for bookmarks. As such, it’s unlikely we would be able to do this at the present time and also keep the site up and running.
We appreciate your feedback, as user input helps us gauge priority and interest, and helps us better plan Archive upgrades. If you have any other questions about technical features, please direct them to Support through their contact form.
Q6: will there be a function in the future to report/hide/delete bookmark comments since they are visible to public?
A: You can currently report bookmarks if you believe the bookmark violates the Terms of Service. However, bookmarks belong to the creator of the bookmark, not the work being bookmarked (on AO3 or off-site). Therefore, there are no plans to allow users to delete or otherwise remove the bookmarks of other users.
Q7: why can’t we have a roadmap/open Q&A session with the other committees? It would be helpful to know what the timeline and list of tasks for tech, for instance, so we know what features are being planned for and what is the timeline to expect them!
A: Assuming that you’re talking about having a public meeting like this one with other committees, we know that there is interest and it is something that we would be very happy to see in the future. However, meetings like this take a lot of planning and involvement of personnel, so the relevant committee/s would have to decide that it is a good use of their volunteers’ time. If any committees are interested, we would gladly support it and share our expertise.
Q8: what is AO3 doing to follow up with the data that was scrapped in Feb. 2025? Is there any legal action that the organization is pursuing to prevent the use of our materials?
A: Our Legal team took action and this data set has been removed by the original hosting site. However, there may still be copies of the data set that this individual or other individuals are circulating privately. In addition, unscrupulous individuals may seek to share data like this on foreign hosting sites that may or may not respond to DMCA requests and legal action. If you locate other data sets, you are welcome to report any links to that site to the Legal committee directly and they will handle it from there. We will continue to monitor for future incidents like this and take further legal action as appropriate and available.
If you discover that your own work has been reposted, you retain ownership of your work, so you can also issue a DMCA request. If you have questions about doing so, you can contact our Legal committee for help.
Asynchronous Questions
All questions asked were answered live, so there are no asynchronous question responses.
The meeting was adjourned at 00:50 5 October 2025 UTC.
Minutes approved by the Board on 25 October 2025.