Posts in Newsletter

I. SPOTLIGHT ON GOVERNANCE August saw three new OTW Board Directors announced: congratulations to Jennifer Howard, Rebecca C. Moritz, and Theodore Bloyd. Thank you to our outgoing Board Directors Anh Pham and Qiao Chu! Board and Board Assistants Team have begun preparing for Board turnover, which will happen on October 1. On August 1, Board held a public meeting with 37 attendees. Minutes are available on the OTW website. Elsewhere, ongoing project work continued, including BAT volunteer retention research, drafting training for new Board members who have never served as Chairs, and investigating mental health support options for volunteers. II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN In… Read more

I. AO3 SECURITY & PHISHING COMMENTS In late July, Policy & Abuse (PAC) coordinated with Accessibility, Design & Technology and Systems to increase AO3 account security measures against logins with insecure passwords in response to an active phishing comment scam targeting thousands of users. PAC also worked with Communications and Support to publish several social media posts to help users secure their accounts and keep them informed. We’d like to remind you that AO3 volunteers will never communicate with you about the status of your account through comments on your works. We will also never require payment from users to make an account or to… Read more

I. OTW CODE OF CONDUCT On June 7, 2026, Board approved a new OTW Code of Conduct. This policy comes as the result of months of collaboration between Board Assistants Team, Organizational Culture Roadmap, and Volunteers & Recruiting (including their Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution subcommittee). This policy update was a goal on the internal culture roadmap created and announced in 2024. As part of the update process, the policy underwent several rounds of review, including one by all OTW volunteers. Thank you to all OTW volunteers who provided feedback! Volunteers & Recruiting is now at work rolling out the updated policy and getting agreements… Read more

I. SPOTLIGHT ON OPEN DOORS Open Doors is preparing to import ArtisticAlley, the last FictionAlley house. Unfortunately, they’ve only been able to retrieve thumbnail versions of the artworks. They’re currently asking creators if they can provide copies of the full versions. If you’re an ArtisticAlley creator and can provide your full artworks—or would like Open Doors to do anything other than import the thumbnail copies—please check your emails and reply, or get in touch with Open Doors directly. They will begin importing after 30 June. In May, Open Doors also announced the import of multifandom fanfiction archive Mediafans and its hosted Duncan/Methos zine Futures Without… Read more

I. APRIL’S MEMBERSHIP DRIVE April’s Membership Drive ran from April 24-27 and raised $362,171.85 USD across 9,702 people in 87 countries, with 8,035 donors choosing to become OTW members. Thank you so much for your support! This year, the April Drive spotlighted Accessibility, Design, & Technology (AD&T) and their behind-the-scenes work in developing, updating, and maintaining the AO3’s software and infrastructure. If you’re familiar with coding and would like to help improve AO3, contributions from the community are welcome; for details, check out AO3’s Software Contributing Guidelines and other documentation at our GitHub repository. All contributors are credited in AO3’s release notes which detail recent… Read more