Agenda
- Decisions made since last public meeting
- 2025 OTW Board Election
- Updates to the Board Roadmap
- Updates to the OTW Culture Roadmap
- 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
- Erica Frank
- Kathryn Soderholm
- Qiao Chu
- Rachel Linton
Guests
- ailinen
- alogical
- Alyndra
- Arvion
- Beatrice_Otter
- bluedreaming
- calamario
- Caprice
- CMDonovann
- dazyndara
- Egg
- Emka
- Faeryn
- FBV
- Gammarad
- GemAnthony
- Glimmer
- Harlan L.B.
- havesomewords
- Heyfren
- jeiroh
- Junco
- keladry
- Keltena
- ladydragona
- Lydia
- Melo
- mlraven (they/them)
- MTHello
- nonnie
- Odawel
- PAULA ꓯꓶꓵꓯꓒ
- Phlebas
- pitytheviolins
- Polinfickipedia
- ShirouHokuto
- soundofsnow
- stork
- Sunlit Skycat
- Szabo Dorottya
- thickSnakeSnack
- vinnawis
- xeno
- ZG
Open Session
Decisions made since the last public meeting
- Approved minutes for the previous Board meeting.
- Approved Finance requests.
- Approved signing onto a letter opposing an act which could undermine online speech and risk artists’ control over their performances, likenesses, voices, and other intellectual property.
- Approved signing onto an amicus brief opposing age verification laws that could harm nonprofits like us.
- Approved new Finance Bookkeeper volunteers.
- Approved formation of the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup (more on this in the OTW Culture Roadmap update).
- Approved the decommission of the Quality Assurance & Testing subcommittee.
2025 OTW Board Election
We are pleased to announce that this year OTW Board election will be contested – that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats. There are 3 candidates running for 2 seats – in alphabetical order by given name:
- C. Ryan S.,
- Elizabeth W.,
- Harlan L.B.
Their Bios & Platforms are available on the Elections website. This year’s election will be held August 15-18. As usual, the election membership deadline is June 30. If you’re interested in voting, please make sure your membership is active as of that date. For additional Elections information, such as Voting Instructions for 2025, or other frequently asked questions, please visit the Elections website.
Updates to the Board Roadmap
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 – STARTED,
- 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) – STARTED,
Conversations about reviewing and revising OTW policies for volunteer discipline have begun and are in the initial stages as part of the OTW Culture Roadmap, we hope to have more updates on this soon! Documentation to improve the speed of Board processes continues to be made and our response time has been reduced (although the exact timeframe of reply depends on the topic of the message). In consultation with the Legal committee, we have also started preparations for reviewing the Board Confidentiality Agreement, as well as Board Conflict of Interest policy. More updates will be shared at subsequent public meetings.
Soliciting Expertise
- Finalize OTW Procurement Policy and related documentation (Continued from 2024) – ONGOING,
Discussions related to finalizing some details of the Procurement Policy Draft are ongoing and progressing! After this is complete, we will move to the second half of our Soliciting Expertise goals which is related to creating Requests for Proposals.
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,
Work on all existing plans is in progress! Working on these items and trying to complete tasks related to our existing plans has been a major focus for us this quarter and we’ve been able to make some amount of progress on all of them which is very exciting! We’ll provide more information on the OTW Culture Roadmap as part of the next agenda item.
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% – STARTED,
- Create and improve documentation around regular BAT and Board tasks – ONGOING,
BAT has completed a ton of work over the last quarter both in terms of writing up documentation for BAT and Board processes/systems and also preparing for recruitment (updating training and recruitment documentation/making other internal preparations). They are planning to recruit within the next quarter and complete our goal related to increasing their size by 20%.
Updates to the OTW Culture Roadmap
We are pleased to share that several progress has been made to the OTW Culture Roadmap, most notable is the establishment of the OTW Culture Roadmap Workgroup since May 2025.
Previously, the OTW Culture Roadmap was a cross-committee project team consisting of volunteers from multiple committees within the OTW. However, after several months working together, we decided it would be more beneficial long-term to switch over to a more formal structure, such as a workgroup – with the ability to open recruitment campaigns for additional personnel. Workgroups are temporary collaborative teams made up of members from multiple committees that join together to complete a specific project, unlike committees which are intended to be permanent groups.
We also have updates on some specific projects.
As part of OTW Emergency Procedures, Crisis Communication Guidelines have been drafted and reviewed by all OTW volunteers. This document provides guidelines for external communication on behalf of the OTW during crisis events and aims to prevent conflicting messages and misrepresentation. After the project team finishes incorporating feedback from Org-wide reviews and completing a final check over the guidelines itself, the policy will be submitted to the Board for approval and implementation.
In collaboration with the Paid Staff Transition Lead and Cybersecurity Delegate, we have been making progress regarding several goals related to the Paid Staff Transition project and Cybersecurity Strategic Plan, which is very exciting! Since the last public meeting, the Board coordinated discussions between volunteers from Systems and AD&T as well as the Cybersecurity Delegate to work on the Cybersecurity report. We also had a meeting with the Paid Staff Transition Lead discussing next steps on the Paid Staff Transition project. As these work and discussions are strictly internal, we cannot share additional information at this time.
AOB
No items
Open Question time
Q1: With the OSA (Online Safety Act) coming into effect on 25th July in the UK, do you have anything planned regarding the age verification that this law requires?
A: AO3 will not be implementing further age verification measures at this time. In the future, if AO3 intends to make changes to data collection or other changes that impact user privacy, in response to this or any other law, we will communicate clearly with our users.
Q2: What effects, if any, will the passage of age verification laws like the one in Texas affect OTW project operations such as the Archive of Our Own?
A: At this time, current US laws—including the age verification law in Texas—do not cover AO3. However, if that changes, we are willing to defend our users’ free speech and privacy rights in court. If you have specific questions, you can contact our Legal committee using the contact form.
Q3: What sort of progress has been made on protecting fan works from being stolen by AI scrapers and users?
A: As of April 2025, 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. 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.
Q4: AO3 is still safe with the orange fuhrer being president of the US?
A: The Board and Legal are closely monitoring the situation. The US still has the best legal environment for the work of the OTW, and if that changes, we will take appropriate action and communicate any changes to users. The AO3 itself also has numerous protections and backups.
Q5: If there is an upsurge of AI slop as has been the case on other platforms, do you have a strategy to combat it?
A: While work created using artificial intelligence is not, in itself, a violation of the Terms of Service, we are aware that AI usage has contributed to an increase in spam. Our Policy and Abuse, AD&T, and Systems teams are working diligently to identify and combat new methods of identifying and countering spam, including implementing new tools and making changes on the Archive. We’ll continue to work to combat spam both by non-users and user accounts.
As for allowing AI, the Board has previously discussed why AI-generated works are allowed in a newspost here. In addition, our Terms of Service Update Guide explains why a ban on AI-generated content is not currently enforceable. In general, it is not possible to conclusively determine when works are AI-generated unless the author discloses their use. Because many users wish to filter out AI-generated works, we don’t want to discourage users from this disclosure.
Q6: There’s been some confusion in the wake of the latest AI Scraping about if the OTW retains finances for defending fanfic writers from copyright disputes if someone goes after the fanfic writer. Does the OTW have the ability to do this or is this a misunderstanding of OTW’s mission/legal goals?
A: The OTW’s mission and goals include defending the legality of fanworks. If a fanwork creator is targeted by a copyright owner in relation to issues related to the legality of fanworks, we encourage them to contact our Legal team using the contact form.
The OTW’s finances have not been impacted by the recent AI scraping incident, and we retain our focus on and ability to protect the interests of fanwork creators, and provide an archive for fanworks.
Q7: Many things on the Roadmap are listed as Ongoing without further details. Can you talk more about the BAT or the progress of the culture change team? What things have gone well? What has been challenging?
A: The BAT, or Board Assistants Team, is a committee dedicated to helping with Board activities, including administrative work, progress tracking, and improving transparency. For example, our BATs assist the Board in this discord server moderation, including but not limited to meeting moderation and preparations. The BAT and Board have made a lot of progress in creating materials that formalize processes for BAT work and future recruitment of BAT volunteers. We plan to use these materials for training as we proceed with external recruitment for BATs in the near future. The Organizational Culture Roadmap Team is making good progress, but a lot of it is project planning, administrative, or going through rounds of drafting and revising drafts. For example, we have successfully transitioned into being a Workgroup rather than a Board Project, which means that we will be able to do formal recruitment rounds later this year.
With more active volunteers, we hope to make more, faster progress! However, we are very proud of the progress that we have made on several projects, including the Paid Staff Transition, Cybersecurity, and Emergency Procedures projects that were mentioned earlier in the meeting.
Q8: Has the security bug taken advantage of in the code created by nyuuzyou to upload much of AO3 to huggingface been closed
A: As mentioned in our response to question three, we’ve added some new tools to help prevent bot scraping, although there is no perfect solution. We’re not sure exactly what you’re referring to with this security bug, but if you believe you have identified a security issue with AO3, we ask that you contact our team directly at [email protected] with details and reproduction steps.
Q9: With cloudflare implementing a permission based approach on content to prevent AI scraping unless paid, will the OTW be releasing a public statement that they will not accept payment for AO3 content?
A: While the OTW does not currently have a statement planned, we remain committed to being a non-commercial space. No commercial activity of any kind is permitted on AO3. In addition, fanwork creators retain their copyright on all content posted to AO3. Because this copyright belongs to creators, not the OTW, we could not charge for the use of this content in any capacity. We will make a public statement in the future if it becomes necessary to do so.
Asynchronous Questions
All questions asked were answered live, so there are no asynchronous question responses.
The meeting was adjourned at 00:50 20 July 2025 UTC.
Minutes approved by the Board on 4 August 2025.