Archive of Our Own

American Horror Fic Exchange, an American Horror Story fanfiction exchange archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work(s) on American Horror Fic Exchange
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The exchange’s owner, jandjsalmon, decided to import the works from LiveJournal in order to safeguard the history of fandom and prevent meaningful works from potentially vanishing. By moving these stories to Archive of Our Own, where a large and active fanfiction community exists, the archivist wants to ensure the works remain accessible, organized, and protected.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with jandjsalmon to import American Horror Fic Exchange into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works from American Horror Fic Exchange to AO3 in August 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on American Horror Fic Exchange?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your American Horror Fic Exchange pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

• You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
• You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
• You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
• You would NOT like your works moved to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
• You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
• You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your LiveJournal account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the American Horror Fic Exchange mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to AO3
• adding your works to the new collection American Horror Fic Exchange

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of American Horror Fic Exchange on Fanlore If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve American Horror Fic Exchange!

- The Open Doors team, jandjsalmon

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Do you know SQL and Python or other programming languages and want to rescue at-risk fan archives? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Chinese to English? Would you like to translate AO3 tags from another language to English? Are you fluent in a language other than English? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Open Doors Technical Volunteer - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 110 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 45 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Specified Languages) - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 50 applications
• Translation Translator - closing 22 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. We only accept volunteers who are 18 years of age or older. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Open Doors Technical Volunteer

Do you know SQL and Python or other programming languages and want to rescue at-risk fan archives?

The Open Doors project receives many requests to rescue fan sites which are at risk of disappearing because their owners can no longer maintain them. The sites we import to the Archive Of Our Own range from database-driven archives based on common software packages like eFiction and Automated Archive to hand-coded HTML sites that are over twenty years old!

As a technical volunteer for Open Doors, you will process the contents of legacy sites to do the following:

• analyse the original data to find all the content and metadata needed for the import
• remove spam, legacy navigation and personal information such as email addresses from HTML files
• convert tags to official AO3 tags as specified by the Tag Wrangling team
• ensure no text exceeds AO3's character limits, splitting summaries, notes or chapters as needed
• detect and fix any garbled text resulting from encoding errors
• detect and fix any invalid author emails and empty chapters
• convert the cleaned data to MySQL tables in a standard format that can be ingested automatically into the Archive

As the person responsible for ensuring that all the content from the original site is correctly imported to the AO3, you will have an excellent eye for detail and an ability to work independently within the rules of Open Doors. You will also liaise regularly in chat with other Open Doors volunteers, keeping them up to date with your progress on your assigned tasks.

To apply for this role, you must be at least 18 years old and legally of age to open explicit fanworks in your local jurisdiction.

Please note that you will be asked to complete a short coding test (to be returned in 1 week) as part of your application. You are not expected to spend more than an hour on this coding test, though you are welcome to do so if you have time. We do not permit the use of AI tools during the selection process for this position.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 30 applications

Apply to be an Open Doors Technical Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.

If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we're currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which fandoms are eligible will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are currently in need.

Wranglers need to be fluent in English but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially Čeština (Czech), isiZulu (Zulu), Français (French), Polski (Polish), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), ไทย (Thai), and 日本語 (Japanese), but knowledge of additional languages is always appreciated!

If you are fluent in 中文 (Chinese), we strongly encourage you to apply for our Chinese Tag Wrangling role, which is specifically designed to support our growing Chinese community. We welcome all dialects!

We also have a separate Specified Languages role, intended to provide additional opportunities for applicants fluent in the following languages: Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Español (Spanish), Filipino, Italiano (Italian), Português (Portuguese), Türkçe (Turkish), Українська (Ukrainian), Русский (Russian), and 한국어 (Korean). If you speak one of these languages, we encourage you to consider applying for that role, as space in the general role can fill quickly.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 110 applications

Apply to be a Tag Wrangling Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the Archive.

If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we're currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which fandoms are eligible will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are currently in need.

Additionally, for this role, applicants will also need to be fluent in English and any dialect of Chinese (中文). We welcome applicants fluent in any Chinese dialect! The work of those in this role will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and, in addition, will also involve translating tags from Chinese into English.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 45 applications

Apply to be a Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Specified Languages)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the Archive.

If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which fandoms are eligible will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are currently in need.

For this role, wranglers need to be fluent in English and any dialect of one of the following languages: Filipino, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), Italian (Italiano), Korean (한국어), Portuguese (Português), Russian (Русский), Spanish (Español), Turkish (Türkçe), or Ukrainian (Українська). This role is designed to help provide additional opportunities in languages in which we see a continuous need while having resources to support the volunteers in those languages.

If you are fluent in 中文 (Chinese), we strongly encourage you to apply for our Chinese Tag Wrangling role, which is specifically designed to support our growing Chinese community. We welcome all dialects!

If you are fluent in languages other than mentioned on the above list, including English, we welcome you to apply for our general wrangling role.

Applications are due 22 July 2026 or after 50 applications

Apply to be a Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Specified Languages) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Translation Translator

If you enjoy working collaboratively, if you're fluent in a language other than English, if you're passionate about the OTW and its projects, and want to help us reach more fans all around the world, working with Translation might be for you!

Translation volunteers help make the OTW and its projects accessible to a wider global audience. We work on translating content by the OTW and its projects from English to other languages, such as site pages, news posts, AO3 FAQs and AO3 Support emails. (However, we do not translate fanworks.)

We really need volunteers who speak Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Galician, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, European Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh—but help with other languages would be much appreciated. If you're interested in starting a team for a language we don't have yet, you're very welcome to!

(Please note that our Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese teams are not accepting new members at this time.)

Applicants will be asked to translate and correct short text samples and will be invited to a chatroom interview as part of the selection process. More information about us can be found on the Translation committee page.

Applications are due 22 July 2026

Apply to be a Translation Translator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Elin, who volunteers as a Communications Event Coordinator and Translation Volunteer Manager.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I currently hold two different positions at the OTW.

For one, I'm part of the Communication committee's Events Coordination team. As an example for what we do, whenever you see a post on the AO3 homepage celebrating a milestone, or on the OTW website commemorating one of our anniversaries, I might have had a hand in it! We also organize special activities to go with some events, such as a a themed bingo we did recently, the special anniversary skin we released for AO3's 15th anniversary, or even our annual International Fanworks Day (IFD).

As for my second role, I'm also a volunteer manager in our Translation committee. It's a very varied position, as volunteer managers pull the strings behind the scenes necessary to keep a 200+ people strong committee running smoothly. That encompasses a lot of different day-to-day tasks. Some of those tasks include: preparing documents for translation, and assigning them to translators, helping translate news posts and posts concerning larger events, such as the OTW's Membership Drive, and are generally being the first point of contact for any problems a translator might run into. And that's just a small part of our work!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Honestly it varies a lot! Like most OTW volunteers, I have a day job that takes up a lot of my time and energy during the week, so I'll typically do small, quick tasks on weeknights, if possible. Those tasks that require a sustained amount of focus and effort I try to save for the weekend. It also varies by time of year how much work I do for each of my roles! For example, when IFD rolls around in February (and during the months leading up to it), my workload during the week might increase for a time.

What made you decide to volunteer?

Story old as time, I suppose, but I've been reading fanfic on AO3 for a long time (since I was 14 or 15, I believe) without getting into fan communities much. I really wanted to return something to fandom space at large, and AO3 in particular. When I saw that the OTW was recruiting for German translators, I applied, and was accepted!

During my time as an active translator (volunteer managers usually mostly step back from that) my work included translating all these amazing news posts other volunteers had written. I wanted to try my hand at coming up with posts myself, which was one of my motivations to apply as an Event Coordinator. And then I realized that as a volunteer manager I'd have even more varied tasks I could tackle, so I switched roles inside the Translation committee last year!

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Probably figuring out how to balance my day job/hobbies/relationships with OTW volunteering! For me personally it's very easy to head straight into burnout, as I'm very enthusiastic about any new tasks I've taken on. However, there are always more things to do, and I've had to learn to occasionally take a step back and take a break, the better to sustain my enjoyment of the work I do!

What fannish things do you like to do?

Reading fanfic, primarily! In a variety of fandoms, for a variety of ships (or platonic relationships). More recently, I've also started taking more of an interest in other online fan spaces, though I tend to lurk more than actively involve myself. Otherwise, I like creating my own AO3 site skins – ⁠I find it quite meditative – ⁠and I swear one of these days I'll actually commit to finishing a story myself and posting it.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Mass Effect Kink Meme a prompt meme for the Mass Effect games, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have works on The Mass Effect Kink Meme
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The archive is being imported to AO3 to preserve the works and make them available to a wider audience.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Liara!Mod to import The Mass Effect Kink Meme into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works from The Mass Effect Kink Meme to AO3 no sooner than August 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who have work on The Mass Effect Kink Meme?

Most fanwork fills on The Mass Effect Kink Meme were posted anonymously. All the anonymous fills will be imported to AO3 using the collection's archivist account. If the creator of a fill chose not to post anonymously, however, and if they have an email address listed on their Dreamwidth or LiveJournal profile, we will send an import notification to that email address.

We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All fanworks archived on behalf of a self-identified creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. If you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your LiveJournal or Dreamwidth pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

• You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
• You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
• You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
• You would NOT like your works moved to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
• You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
• You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your LiveJournal or Dreamwidth account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the Mass Effect Kink Meme mods to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to AO3
• adding your works to the new collection The Mass Effect Kink Meme

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of The Mass Effect Kink Meme on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve The Mass Effect Kink Meme!

- The Open Doors team and Liara!Mod

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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 from all OTW volunteers.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In June, we celebrated AO3 reaching 11 million registered users. \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) deployed several bug fixes, including quality-of-life and security improvements. They've also continued to make progress on their ongoing work to internationalize AO3.

Open Doors announced that Kraith Collected, a collection of Star Trek zines set in the Kraith universe, will be added to AO3. This month, their import assistants also finished importing all unfilled prompts from the Library of Moria!

In May, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 4,814 tickets; Support received 4,125 tickets; and User Response Translation completed 77 requests from PAC and Support.

In June, Policy & Abuse worked with AD&T to publish updates to the Terms of Service FAQ, which includes new answers to common questions like how to find out what's allowed on AO3. You can view the differences here! We hope you find it helpful!

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 650,000 tags in May, or approximately 1,400 tags per wrangling volunteer. They also collaborated with Communications to publish a Tumblr post about updates to the Assassin's Creed fandom tree and a news post announcement of "No Fandom" changes, including 23 new canonicals.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications also established an OTW RedNote (小红书) account in June. This will be a second platform for us to connect with Chinese-speaking fandom (along with our existing Weibo account). If you use RedNote or know anyone who'd be interested in OTW announcements in Chinese on the platform, pass it along!

At the end of May, Fanlore wrapped up their Public Do-May, a public domain fandoms-themed month. They also ran their annual Bingo Challenge with tasty pastry-themed badges for editors to collect.

On June 15, 2026, TWC released Issue 48, a special issue on "Disability and Fandom" guest edited by Olivia Johnston Riley and Lauren Rouse. The essays in this issue focus on disability both as a marginalized identity and as a critical scholarly approach to fandom and fan studies.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections announced candidates for the 2026 OTW Board. This year's election will be uncontested, as there are three candidates running for four open seats. Platforms for each candidate can be viewed on the Elections website. They also provided the public an opportunity to submit questions to the candidates which will be published soon, refer to the Elections Timeline page for specific dates. Translation is working alongside Elections to make election-⁠related content available in as many languages as possible.

Meanwhile, Development & Membership has begun working on premiums for the October Membership Drive.

Board, Board Assistants Team, and Organizational Culture Roadmap also continued to collaborate on developing procedures to handle compromised volunteer accounts and other situations that necessitate urgent access removal.

Board also approved signing-on to a letter opposing the overbroad NO FAKES Act, which could negatively impact fan art and artists.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

From May 24 to June 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 204 new requests and completed 189, leaving them with 87 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of June 22, 2026, the OTW has 1,037 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 (Senior Software Developer)
New Communications Volunteers: Caitlynne, callmeri, and 4 other Posting Volunteers, belana, Bianca Sevidal, and Xiao Yi (Social Media Moderators)
New Elections Volunteers: Jahnavi and 1 other Communications Specialist, 1 Candidate Liaison, and 1 Chair Track Volunteer
New Fanlore Volunteers: Hobgirl, Minty, and 2 other Chair Track Volunteers
New Legal Volunteers: asatistic (Paralegal) and Kat M (Trademark Specialist)
New Open Doors Volunteers: elusivefalsehoods (Import Assistant)
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Anam (Volunteer)
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Beth B, Lululu, and tomurai (Supervisors)
New Translation Volunteers: artemissmythe, Karasu, madinator, and 3 other Volunteer Managers, and 1 Translator

Departing AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 (Software Developer)
Departing Communications Volunteers: Aditi Paul, Caitlynne, callmeri, and 2 other Media Outreach Volunteers, 1 Chair Assistant, 1 Posting Specialist, 1 Report Writer, and 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Technical Volunteers and 3 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Erica L., Wond3rland, and 4 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Translation Volunteer Manager, Alisé, and 3 other Translators
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: Kseniia and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In April, we deployed improvements to tag search and several security fixes. We also made some progress on making more parts of AO3 translatable. And of course, AO3 officially exited open beta in April as well!

In addition to the milestones above, we also had several new contributors to the AO3 codebase this month. Thanks and welcome to Aya Sayadi, bre-nana, Jesse Malark, kinnerapriyap, Kylie, and Ling-Yi!

Credits

• Coders: Aya Sayadi, Bilka, bre-nana, Brian Austin, caitlin, Danaël / Rever, EchoEkhi, Jesse Malark, kinnerapriyap, Kylie, Ling-Yi, marcus8448, not-varram, ömer faruk, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, Tom Milligan, Xiang Rassul Li
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, james_, marcus8448, redsummernight
• Testers: Berix, Bilka, Brian Austin, C. Ryan Smith, calamario, choux, Dre, james_, lydia-theda, marcus8448, megidola, mumble, ömer faruk, pk2317, Tal, therealmorticia, TinaOe

Details

0.9.469

On April 2, we removed the "beta" note from our site header! End of an era.

• [AO3-7364] - Removal of references to the AO3 being in beta.
• [AO3-7361], [AO3-7365] - Gem updates.

0.9.470

On April 3, we deployed a quick security fix.

• [AO3-7372] - We made sure that when removing images from comments we didn't leave potentially dangerous HTML in their placeholders.

0.9.471

We deployed a couple more fixes related to image embeds on April 4.

• [AO3-7373], [AO3-7374] - We made sure that when we disable embedded images in comments, the restrictions can't be bypassed with creative HTML.

0.9.472

Our April 13 deploy included an improvement to our tag search and a bunch of other miscellaneous fixes.

• [AO3-7244] - We prepared the help pop-ups about our rich text editor and HTML mode for translation.
• [AO3-7283] - We added a configuration option for the number of shards that Elasticsearch data for pseuds and tags is stored in.
• [AO3-7293] - We added two more options to the Wrangling Status section of our Tag Search.
• [AO3-7326], [AO3-7327] - Your statistics page and your preferences page now have your username in the browser's page title!
• [AO3-7339] - The way we'd structured the translatable portions of our password reset emails wasn't compatible with future translation work, so we made sure the wording will work in different languages.
• [AO3-7348] - We removed the word "Archive" from the success message "You are now using the default Archive skin again!"
• [AO3-7355] - To build the dropdown menu for each user, we now only query the database once if the user has special permissions that require another menu item, and then save that information. Much nicer to the database servers!
• [AO3-7359] - When a site admin is viewing their two-step verification backup codes, there is now a button at the bottom of the page to copy the codes to the clipboard.
• [AO3-7360] - Updated a link on our Privacy Policy page.
• [AO3-7368], [AO3-7369] - The browser page title now reflects whether you're on the page listing our public site skins or public work skins.
• [AO3-7370], [AO3-7371] - Gem updates.

0.9.473

Another grab bag of fixes and improvements went out on April 24.

• [AO3-6229] - We now make sure the 404 Page Not Found error always looks like it's part of AO3, and not just a blank white page.
• [AO3-6281] - On pages listing gifts for recipients without an AO3 account, apostrophes in a recipient's name wouldn't be properly displayed. Now it all looks tidy.
• [AO3-6531] - On some works, if there were replies to a now-deleted comment, the whole comment section wouldn't load. We fixed the way we handle deleted comments in a thread, so everything should display as expected.
• [AO3-6604] - Admins can create banners (the informative blue, red, or yellow text boxes at the top of all pages) and save them for later, or delete outdated ones. It's now impossible to accidentally delete the banner currently in use.
• [AO3-7080] - If an account was suspended, we now make sure the email address associated with that account can't be used to leave guest comments.
• [AO3-7140] - When creating a draft work to eventually fulfill an assignment, the page listing your assignments would display some contradictory information about the status of your work. (Is it a draft? Was it accidentally posted?) The work title now contains the word "(Draft)" and we display the date it was created.
• [AO3-7165] - We now make sure you can pick a different site skin from the list of options in the footer even if you have disabled JavaScript.
• [AO3-7295] - We cleaned up some old code that would be unsafe to rerun now.
• [AO3-7322] - When a tag wrangler visits the tag wrangling assignment page, the filter selection now defaults to their name.
• [AO3-7333] - The page listing your challenge claims now has your username in the browser's page title!
• [AO3-7351] - If a character or relationship tag belonged to several fandoms (such as the book and the movie version of a franchise), and you entered all the applicable fandoms when posting your work, the character or relationship would show up several times in the autocomplete suggestions. The autocomplete has now calmed down a bit and won't show you duplicates of the same tag anymore.
• [AO3-7377], [AO3-7381] - Gem updates.

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• Academic Rivalry
• AO3 Skins
• AO3 Site Skins
• AO3 Work Skins
• Birth Control Tampering
• Brat Taming
• Burping Kink
• Off-Screen Character Death
• Graphic Depictions of Childbirth
• Non-Graphic Depictions of Childbirth
• Implied/Referenced Childbirth
• Cover Art Welcome
• Fanart Welcome
• Podfic Cover Art Welcome
• Translations Welcome
• Dark Fluff
• Past Dubious Consent
• Implied/Referenced Eating Disorders
• Groveling
• Hypnosis Kink
• Graphic Depiction of Injuries
• Non-Graphic Depiction of Injuries
• Guided Masturbation | Masturbation Instructions
• Male Characters Masturbating
• Female Characters Receiving Oral Sex
• Male Characters Receiving Oral Sex
• Pregnancy Reveal
• Polycules
• Porn With Some Plot
• Canon-Typical Racism
• Reproductive Coercion
• Locker Room Sex
• Masked Sex
• Stealthing | Non-Consensual Condom Removal
• Stressed Characters
• Malesub | Male Submissive Characters
• Submissive Top Characters
• Title from a Song

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Angst and Drama is now a subtag of both Angst and Drama
• Family Drama is now a subtag of Drama
• Not Wearing Underwear has been removed as a subtag from Underwear
• Painful Sex is now a subtag of Pain

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you're intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you've never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here's a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month's new canonical tags:

• AO3 Skins
• Cover Art
• Fanart
• Masturbation
• Oral Sex
• Polyamory
• Pregnancy

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven't gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it'll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Candidates Announcement

The Organization for Transformative Works is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2026 Election (in alphabetical order by given name):

• Jennifer H.
• Rebecca C. M.
• Theodore B.

As previously announced, Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm stepped down from their positions on the Board. Anh Pham and Qiao Chu are also stepping down from the Board as they have reached the end of their terms. There are seven Directors on the OTW's Board and this year there are four open seats; three full-term seats lasting 3 years and one partial term seat lasting 1 year.

Because we have four seats to be filled and three candidates, the 2026 election will be uncontested – that is, the members of the OTW will not vote on which candidates fill the seats.

The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a live chat – date and time to be announced based on candidate availability.
In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them!

Platforms and Bios

We asked each candidate to provide us with a Bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions:

• Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?
• What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?
• Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?
• What is your experience with the OTW's projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.
• How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work?

You can read both the candidates' answers to these questions and their bios by following the links below.

• Jennifer H.
• Rebecca C. M.
• Theodore B.

Question & Answer (Q&A)

To better accommodate the time constraints of the election and the workload for candidates, we are asking members of the public to limit their submissions to one question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded. There is a limit of three questions per person.

Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 28 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions:

• Questions must be a maximum of 50 words long.
• Any submitted questions repeating what is already addressed on Platforms will be ignored. This is to allow candidates to dedicate more time to answering new questions.
• Similar questions will be grouped together to avoid candidates giving repetitive answers. Elections volunteers will decide which questions are similar enough to group.
• If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention it is a follow-up so Elections volunteers know not to treat it as a repeat.
• Submit only one question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded.
• There is a limit of three questions per person.

The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for members to read all the answers.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Did someone make a wish for more Archive of Our Own (AO3) users at 11:11? Because that wish has come true and we are proud to share that just four months after we celebrated 10 million registered users, AO3 now has 11 million registered users! This means an average of around 250,000 people have made an AO3 account every month since then.

In honor of getting what we wished for, we're spotlighting the Gift feature on AO3! Gifts are works that are dedicated by the creators. For example, a work may have been written for a friend's birthday, created for a Gift Exchange, or simply something you made while thinking of someone else. Is there anyone you've created fanworks for that you'd like to spotlight? You can gift something to someone even if they don't have an AO3 account!

If you'd like to gift a work to someone else, refer to How do I gift a work to someone? or refer to our general Gifts FAQ for more information.

Thank you for being a part of this milestone with us and we look forward to celebrating many more achievements with you in the future (18 million works is right around the corner)!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Kraith Collected, a collection of Star Trek zines set in the Kraith universe, is importing a copy of the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) in Kraith Collected
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Kraith Collected is a series of works in the Kraith universe, a series of Star Trek: The Original Series fanfictions, many originally published in other zines. Each volume contains works by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and other writers whose works went through several rounds of edits to be given a number in the Kraith chronology and become part of the official Kraith universe. There are also two pieces of meta, Kraith Creator's Manual and Understanding Kraith, which describe the Kraith universe.

The fanzines to be imported are:

• Kraith Collected: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Kraith Creator's Manual: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Understanding Kraith: Fanlore page and AO3 collection

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Kraith Collected to import a copy of the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW's servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Kraith Collected to AO3 after July 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) in Kraith Collected?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your creator pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

• You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than the publisher has a record of.
• You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
• You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
• You would NOT like your works copied to AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the fanzine collections.
• You are happy for us to preserve your works on AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
• You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with Kraith Collected to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors website for instructions on:

• importing your works to AO3
• adding your works to the new collections listed above

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Kraith Collected, Kraith Creator’s Manual, and Understanding Kraith on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Kraith Collected!

- The Open Doors team and Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Ellipsis, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler and also a Technical Assistant for the Communications Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I currently hold two roles with the OTW.

I wrangle tags on AO3 for a couple of smallish fandoms with lots of characters. So I’m frequently digging through wiki pages and scrubbing through episodes to figure out if the character someone tagged is from canon or an OC. It's always very satisfying to provide new canonical character tags.

I am also the "Technical Assistant" for Communications. My primary responsibility there is managing the "OTW News By Email" automations. I set up all the automations and keep an eye out for and troubleshoot any issues; this occasionally involves reaching out to Systems or the newsletter service’s support team. I also help out if any subscribers reach out for help with their subscriptions. Beyond the "News By Email" stuff, I also help with investigating or suggesting other tech solutions for the Communications committee and occasionally help to write/research some of the more technical news posts.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
I do most of my focused volunteer work on the weekends, since I’ve got a full-time job during the week (and by the time I’m done work for the day and figure out food and whatnot I don’t have much time or energy left).

Every Saturday evening I work on Comms tasks. Exactly what I’m doing depends on what I’ve got on my plate. One thing I frequently work on is writing documentation about how the News By Email automation works. (Right now I manage everything myself but it's important to make sure there is good documentation in case someone else has to hop in and do something.) I also researched and drafted a news post recently, which involved a lot of rounds of feedback from different committees since it was inspired by a request from Support and relates to AD&T. Other common tasks include helping answer support queries about the email subscription, adding new functionality (the ability to subscribe just to recruitment posts went live recently), and cleaning up unsubscribed users.

If something breaks or otherwise goes weird I’ll jump in outside of my standard hours, but most of the time things can wait.

Every other weekend I tend to do wrangling work sometime during the day on Saturday or Sunday. Often I’ll host or attend a "wrangling party" (set times when lots of folks wrangle and cheer each other on). During that time I’ll check through whatever new tags have come in for my fandoms and sort them accordingly. I’ve got a few fandoms with lots of characters, so there are almost always some new characters or relationships to make canonicals for. I’ll also occasionally dig through the additional tags to check if anything has gained enough usages to get a canonical.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I initially joined as a tag wrangler. As an avid reader of fic, a programmer, and someone who finds categorization interesting, I find the tag system on AO3 really awesome. So when I found out how it worked and that you could volunteer to wrangle tags, I started eagerly watching for recruitment posts. It took a couple rounds before there was a post that was recruiting for wranglers for a fandom I had experience with.

A couple of years ago (once I’d been a wrangler for a while), Communications was looking into sending out news posts by email. They asked for volunteers who were willing to be test subjects and report back on receiving emails. However, the services they were testing weren’t a good fit and they were running into a lot of issues. I got curious and fell down a research rabbit hole and suggested another service. The service was one that required a bit more technical knowhow, though, and the volunteers running the test weren’t comfortable setting it up, so I offered to test it out and report back. They ended up going with the service I suggested and asked me to help set it up for real. Then eventually Communications asked me if I was interested in officially joining the committee as a "Technical Assistant."

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Executive functioning. I’ve got ADHD (and Autism) so I struggle with intrinsic motivation and easily lose track of time, especially when I’ve got a full-time job eating all my spoons (energy). When I first started volunteering, I had been laid off and was unemployed so I had a lot of spare time and energy. So finding the balance once I was back to working full time was tricky.

In the last year or so I’ve started being firmer on scheduling specific times to do my volunteer work to help avoid losing track completely. For Comms work, I have a scheduled time set up each week that I work. And at that time another Comms volunteer will poke me on the volunteer messaging service to check in and ask about what I’m doing that evening; having that sort of external check in is massively helpful for me. Signing up to host wrangling parties serves a similar purpose in giving me external accountability about being present at a specific time to wrangle.

What fannish things do you like to do?
Mostly reading so much fic. I started reading fanfiction when I was a kid, probably around 8 or 9 years old. One of my real-life friends introduced me to it and in their words they "created a monster." (I don’t know exactly when I started reading because I no longer have the email I used at that time and my autistic kid brain was hung up on "you aren't supposed to have an account if you aren’t 13" so I read for quite a while before getting my FFN account). I occasionally count up how many words I’m reading per week and I’m frequently somewhere around 200k words per week. (It varies a bit depending on the density of the fic and how much else I’ve got going on. When I’m unemployed, it goes way up.)

I try to leave lots of comments as my way of giving back to all the authors who provide all the wonderful fics I get to read for free. (I’ve recently started using the sticky note app on my phone to compose comments with blockquotes while I’m reading so I can call out favorite bits or “live react” a bit.)

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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 End. They also completed the semi-automated portion of the import of HBO Oz archive Unit B, with more works being imported manually in the coming months. These additional works comprise Big Bang fics, the Unit B Yahoo Group, and the Cellblock 5 Yahoo Group. Thank you to everyone on Open Doors' technical and administrative teams who contributed!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Accessibility, Design & Technology worked on more security updates as well as quality-of-life bug fixes and AO3 internationalization work. Thank you to the coders for those fixes and to the testers for helping with swift releases! They also published release notes for March.

In April, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 4,358 tickets. PAC also worked with Communications to publish a news post spotlighting ways to keep your AO3 account secure as part of World Password Day. Also in April, Support received 4,325 tickets. User Response Translation completed 77 requests from PAC and Support.

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 638,000 tags in April, or approximately 1,300 tags per wrangling volunteer. They also collaborated with Communications to publish a Tumblr post about a new Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom metatag and a news post announcement of 21 new "No Fandom" tags.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore celebrated Public Domain Fandoms, or Public DoMay, on their socials all throughout the month! Check out their Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter/X for fun featured articles and posts.

Their annual Bingo Challenge also will begin on June 16 and will end June 29! It's open to new and experienced editors alike, and everyone is encouraged to join in!

Legal continues to answer internal and external questions and monitor the changing legal situation for privacy and free speech.

TWC continued to work on their planned issues related to Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms. May was the deadline for nominations for the Fans of Color Research Prize, which recognizes the best article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC. The next issue will be a general issue published in September.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections continues to prepare for the 2026 OTW Board of Directors election, which will fill four seats (three full term seats and one partial term seat).

If you'd like to vote this year, you must become an OTW member by June 30. To become a member, you must donate at least $10 USD in one donation and check the yes circle under "Do you want to be an OTW member?" on the donation form.

Board, Board Assistants Team, and Organizational Culture Roadmap spent the month collaborating on projects, including sharing the Code of Conduct draft for review from OTW volunteers and working on tasks related to closing out the OTW Crisis Management Plan project.

Finance completed the audit of the OTW's 2024 financials and began preparing our 2025 financials to be audited.

Development & Membership worked on wrap up from the April Membership Drive and began thinking ahead to the next one in October.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In May, Volunteers & Recruiting opened recruitment for four roles for the Fanlore, Communications, and Open Doors committees.

From April 22 to May 23, Volunteers & Recruiting received 202 new requests, and completed 177, leaving them with 70 open requests. As of May 23, 2026, the OTW has 1,040 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: 2 Event Coordinators and 1 Fanhackers Volunteer
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Advisor and 1 Digital Collections Intern
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Arashi, Bellis, Citrine, lazyredheeler, Rika G, SaltDove, ZoeT, and 3 other Volunteers
New User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Policy & Abuse Chair and 1 Organizational Culture Roadmap Head
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Fanhackers Lead and 2 Convention Specialists
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Financial Analyst
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Senior Technical Volunteer and 1 Import Assistant
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Allonym and 15 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Katarina Hjarpe and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical "No Fandom" tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

• All Characters Are Adults
• Anal Hooks
• Anal Prolapse
• Prolapse
• Vaginal Prolapse
• Baby Trapping
• Burping
• Cooking Together
• Coprophagia | Eating Feces
• Feces | Poop
• Cryptic Pregnancy | Character Didn't Know They Were Pregnant
• Developing Feelings
• Drug-Induced Heat
• Forced Heat
• Induced Heat
• Heat Suppressants
• Scent Blockers
• Implied/Referenced Suicide Attempts
• Inferiority Complex
• Sexual Trauma
• Sports Injuries
• Stubbornness
• TBI | Traumatic Brain Injury

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

• Alternate Universe - Radio is now a subtag of Radio
• Power Bottom is now a subtag of Bottoming
• Service Top is now a subtag of Topping
• Corsetry has been removed as a subtag from Clothing Kink
• Latino Character has been removed as a subtag from Hispanic Character

In Conclusion

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

• Past "No Fandom" Additional Tags Updates and 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts

For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected.​ If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we're still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Manacles Press, publisher of various fanzines including Nudge Nudge Wink Wink (Professionals), McPikus Interruptus (Wiseguy), and Consupiscence (multifandom), is importing the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Manacles Press was run by Megan Kent and Charlotte C. Hill in the 1990’s, publishing both anthology and novel zines. Megan and Charlotte are happy to archive these works in an effort to preserve fannish history and to keep the fanworks available and free.

The fanzines to be imported are:

• Arabian Nights: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Chains of Being: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Concupiscence: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• McPikus Interruptus: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Never Let Me Down: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Nudge Nudge Wink Wink: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Outrider: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Professional Dreamer: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Walking Distance: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• What If…: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Whisper of a Kill: Fanlore page and AO3 collection

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Manacles Press to import the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW's servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Manacles Press’s fanzines to the AO3 after June 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your creator pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than the publisher has a record of.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the fanzine collections.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with Manacles Press to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collections listed above

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Manacles Press and its fanzines on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Manacles Press’s fanzines!

- The Open Doors team, Megan and Charlotte

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The OTW Elections committee is pleased to announce that the timeline for the 2026 election for new members of the Board of Directors has been posted!

As previously announced, Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm stepped down from their positions on the Board. Anh Pham and Qiao Chu are also stepping down from the Board as they have reached the end of their terms. There are seven Directors on the OTW's Board and this year OTW members will elect four new Directors - three Directors to serve a full-term (3 years) and one Director to serve a partial term (1 year).

This year's election will be held August 14-17. This means that the deadline for volunteers to declare their candidacy is June 19.

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. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?".

You can find out how to become a member on the Elections website, or if you're familiar with the process, you can donate here!

If you want to know more about the election process in general, you can check out the Elections Policies.

We're looking forward to an active election season with ample communication between candidates and voters, and we hope you'll be a part of it. Don't forget to follow the Elections committee on Bluesky and Tumblr to keep up to date with the latest news!

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact Elections.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Our releases in March included a slew of collection, bookmark, and history bug fixes, as well as several improvements for site admins.

Special thanks to first-time contributors charliewhiskee, Dobe, goose, Lubczi, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), and Xiang Rassul Li!

Credits

• Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, charliewhiskee, Cubostar, Daniel Haven, Danaël / Rever, Dobe, EchoEkhi, FlyingFalcon, goose, Lubczi, Mae Light, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, ömer faruk, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), Richard Hajek, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, varram, Yi Fang, Xiang Rassul Li
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Daniel Haven, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, slavalamp
• Testers: Berix, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, EchoEkhi, hvalrann, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, pk2317, therealmorticia, Ven, wichard

Details

0.9.462

On March 2, we deployed a patch for the gem we use to manage authentication (to address a performance issue related to the March 2026 Downtime).

• [AO3-7306] - Devise patch to prevent an excessive amount of strain on the database.

0.9.463

Our March 6 deploy included a few gem updates.

• [AO3-6916] - Migrated from Gitpod/Ona to devcontainers for our development needs, as Gitpod was no longer suitable.
• [AO3-7271] - Updated which data is included when comments are sent to our spam checker for evaluation.
• [AO3-7305] - We updated the internationalization of some emails based on feedback from translators.
• [AO3-7227], [AO3-7304], [AO3-7308] - Code cleanup and gem updates.

0.9.464

On March 12, we released a whole bunch of bug fixes.

• [AO3-6359] - In some rare cases it was possible to delete the pseud that corresponds with your username. We fixed this edge case.
• [AO3-6688] - In order to prevent tragic accidents, we've made it harder to delete your entire History. Instead of a small "Are you sure?" popup, you are now directed to a confirmation page that requires another button click.
• [AO3-7214], [AO3-7215] - On a page with several bookmarks, closing and opening the "Edit" or "Save" functions on several bookmarks would get the popup form all confused which bookmark you wanted to edit or save. Or, in some cases, the buttons would just disappear on you! We've now sorted out the underlying JavaScript to let you save, or indeed edit, the bookmark you clicked on last.
• [AO3-7273] - When an account is banned for posting spam, we now also automatically delete all its profile contents, including any icons and alt text.
• [AO3-7285] - The user ID was missing from a page accessible to Policy & Abuse volunteers; we've added it now.
• [AO3-7290] - When you access AO3 without being logged in, you might be able to scroll down the page a bit, but then a popup will inevitably ask you to agree to our Terms of Service before you can continue. We now take you back to your scroll position once you click the button.
• [AO3-7314] - We've fixed the draft deletion to make sure it adheres to the correct deletion dates even for drafts created in the short month of February.
• [AO3-5683] - We fixed some security warnings pointed out by the helpful Brakeman tool.
• [AO3-7302] - We changed the code for displaying work meta-information so it accesses the work in one unified way.

0.9.465

On March 18, we released a bunch of bookmark, admin, and accessibility fixes.

• [AO3-5937] - On some pages, the "Save" button on bookmarks was visible to logged-out users, not that clicking it would do anything. Now it's only there when you're logged into your account.
• [AO3-6203] - On tag pages, we display a list of tags associated with the one you're browsing, e.g. the characters or relationships for a fandom (with a limit of 300 tags per type). For large fandoms, for example, that would put a considerable strain on the database. We have now moved to getting this data from our search engine, so retrieving the associated tags doesn't hammer the database servers anymore.
• [AO3-7030] - When we introduced Archive skins, we envisioned a system where users could create custom CSS to change the appearance of AO3, and then apply to make the code available to other users with a button click. This was never a sustainable idea, so we've been working on phasing it out. Now only official accounts, e.g. those belonging to the AO3 development team, can apply to have their skin reviewed for general usage. (All users can still create skins for themselves and make the code available in other ways, e.g. on GitHub or Tumblr or as a fanwork on AO3.)
• [AO3-7131] - The text used by screen readers to announce a help link was confusing, reading out the question mark we use to indicate the availability of the help popup. We've cleaned up the way we generate the text, which should be easier to follow now.
• [AO3-7256] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific bookmark can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
• [AO3-7272] - When accessing a comment via the "Reply to this comment" link, some buttons would be gone for site admins or logged-out users that they'd normally be able to use, e.g. if viewing a single comment thread. Now the buttons are always there!
• [AO3-7303] - On your Statistics page, the tool-tip you get when hovering over a graph would flicker if it popped up right under your cursor. That's fixed now, so it should be easier to read.
• [AO3-7317], [AO3-7318] - We removed an incorrect ARIA attribute from some HTML.
• [AO3-7319] - If a site admin bans an account for posting spam, they are now redirected to the admin dashboard for that account (after the successful deletion of all the spam).
• [AO3-7335] - We fixed that running all the tests in one sitting would leave extra files and models behind.

0.9.466

We upgraded to Rails 8.1 on March 20.

• [AO3-7328] - We updated Rails, the framework the AO3 runs on, to the next major version.
• [AO3-7346] - Updated a gem used by our search engine to address a security issue.

0.9.467

For our penultimate March release, we deployed several display fixes and small site improvements on March 25.

• [AO3-5866] - The links to work creators in our RSS feeds were broken; now they're fixed!
• [AO3-6138] - Leaving kudos on a work with JavaScript disabled would previously knock you back to the top of the page. You can now see the success message (or the friendly hint that you've already left kudos) without having to scroll down to it.
• [AO3-6385] - On the page displaying all prompts in a prompt meme, or all requests in a gift exchange, the page content would overlap the sorting buttons at the top if viewed on a small screen. Now everything looks tidy.
• [AO3-6498] - To assist in abuse cases involving our gifting feature, members of the Policy & Abuse team can now access a user's refused gifts page.
• [AO3-7059] - We will now display a warning message if the password you're using to log into AO3 was found in a data breach documented on HaveIBeenPwned.
• [AO3-7255] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific series can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
• [AO3-7268] - If you try to navigate to the inbox for a nonexistent user, you will now get an Error 404, since, like the user, the inbox does not exist.
• [AO3-7280] - Creating a multi-chapter draft and then hitting "Post" on the first chapter would indeed post that chapter, but treat the work as a whole still as a draft. It now publishes the work, with the first chapter, leaving any other chapters alone so you can post them later.
• [AO3-7315] - Members of the Policy & Abuse team can now edit and save a work's tags, e.g. to change the selected language, even if it has more than 75 tags. (As a regular user, you'd be prompted to remove tags from your work until you're below the limit.)
• [AO3-7323] - We updated the introductory text on our homepage.
• [AO3-7352] - Our previous fix making help text links more accessible for screen readers unfortunately prevented some content in work blurbs (e.g. warnings and ratings) from being read out loud. This has now been fixed!
• [AO3-7329], [AO3-7330] - Your History page and the page listing your blocked users now have your username in the browser's page title, as they always should have.
• [AO3-6906] - Updating the autocomplete for users and pseuds no longer depends on an unmaintained library!
• [AO3-7120] - In the rare case that the admin search results for a user are outdated, admins can now manually mark the search to be updated.
• [AO3-7338] - We recently changed how we cache bylines, and now all that new code is organized neatly in its own file.
• [AO3-7354] - We updated Rails to 8.1.2.1 for some security fixes.

0.9.468

On March 31, we deployed another batch of miscellaneous fixes and performance improvements.

• [AO3-6998] - Trying to search all signups in a gift exchange by pseud would cause an Error 500; now it returns the signup you were looking for!
• [AO3-7062] - AO3 site admins can now view all work blurbs on a user's "Works in Collections" page.
• [AO3-7223] - We prepared the help pop-ups on the Preferences page for translation.
• [AO3-7284] - When we rebuild our Elasticsearch indexes, we batch multiple objects together into one reindexing operation. We can now easily configure how large those batches are.
• [AO3-7292] - On the page for managing wranglers assigned to fandoms, the button to remove a wrangler only had a small clickable area around the X. Now the whole button does what it's supposed to do.
• [AO3-7311] - When a collection's settings were changed, e.g. from moderated to unmoderated, that information wasn't fully reflected everywhere. Now we make sure that listings and search results are updated immediately.
• [AO3-7321] - If you subscribe to a work that is then added to an unrevealed collection, we now display a "Mystery Work" placeholder on your subscriptions page until and unless the work is revealed again.
• [AO3-7332] - The page listing your muted users now has your username in the browser's page title!
• [AO3-7341] - If old jobs are still running on the development environment when a coder pushes changes to their branch of the Archive software, those jobs will now be stopped to save resources.
• [AO3-7347] - We cleaned up an unused method related to prompts.
• [AO3-7350] - We improved the performance of the History page by reducing the number of queries required to show each page.

Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you a frequent Bluesky, Twitter | X, or RedNote user who enjoys helping others? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer - closing 20 May 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• Communications Social Media Moderator - closing 20 May 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applicants
• Communications Social Media Moderator (Chinese) - closing 20 May 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applicants
• Open Doors Import Assistant - closing 20 May 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer

Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you an organizational wizard? Do you have an interest in preserving fannish history or experience in wiki editing? The Fanlore committee is looking for new Chair Track Volunteers to join our team!

Fanlore is the committee responsible for maintaining and promoting the Fanlore wiki. We promote Fanlore on social media, run Fanlore editing challenges, support Fanlore editors, write the wiki's policy and help pages, and respond to emails from editors and readers. The Chair Track Volunteer position is for people who have the time and dedication to learn all about our operations so that they can be considered for the role of committee Chair.

We're looking for someone who has experience in wiki editing and an understanding of social media, who is comfortable with personnel management and training new recruits, and who is experienced in leadership or management whether in a business or nonprofit environment. Candidates also need strong time management skills and the ability to work on and track multiple tasks at a time. If that's you, please apply!

For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within one week of submitting your application.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role.

Applications are due 20 May 2026 or after 40 applications

Apply to be a Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Communications Social Media Moderator

Are you familiar with Bluesky and Twitter | X? Do you want to help connect the public with the OTW?

The Communications committee is recruiting for Social Media Moderators to help us manage our Bluesky and Twitter | X. Social Media Moderators will help the OTW maintain an active presence on their platform, creating or reblogging a range of posts of relevance and interest to the OTW's userbase, and doing outreach to fan groups and individuals on the site. Moderators are also responsible for handling user questions and managing responses to the OTW's news content. You will be working as part of a team, and you must be able to dedicate at least 3-4 hours each week to the OTW.

For this position, we are seeking people who are familiar with both platforms as they are managed jointly by the same team of people and who ideally have experience moderating a social media page. We are also interested in hearing from those with customer service experience, especially in an online environment. We expect you to have an interest in fandom at large and an understanding of the concerns and activities of the OTW (although we will, of course, provide you with training once you start).

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. If you're a frequent Bluesky or Twitter | X user who enjoys helping others, have a wide-ranging interests across the fandom space, and are curious and willing to learn, we'd love to hear from you!

Applications are due 20 May 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply to be a Communications Social Media Moderator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Communications Social Media Moderator (Chinese)

Do you use RedNote? Do you want to connect Chinese fans with the OTW?

The Communications committee is recruiting for RedNote Moderators to help start up and oversee the OTW's presence on RedNote, the Chinese social networking site.

RedNote Moderators will be part of a team creating content for the OTW RedNote, posting regularly about topics related to the OTW. Moderators will also respond to user questions and comments to help them find answers to their questions about the OTW's projects. Additionally, they will act as a link between the OTW and the RedNote community, providing updates to the rest of the OTW on trends and events within Chinese fan communities.

You are required to be fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese and must be over 18 to apply for this role.

We are looking for volunteers familiar with RedNote and passionate about outreach on the platform. They should be able to maintain a consistent level of work, collaborate inside the team and with other committees, ask for help when needed, and be proactive about suggesting ways the OTW can better connect with its users. If you're interested in doing outreach to Chinese-language fandom communities, this is the position for you!

Applications are due 20 May 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply to be a Communications Social Media Moderator (Chinese) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Open Doors Import Assistant

Do you enjoy spreadsheets, self-paced projects, and helping protect fanworks from getting lost over time? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? Do you still guiltily--or not so guiltily--love the first fanwork that opened your eyes to fandom?

Open Doors is a committee dedicated to preserving fanworks in their many formats, and we're looking for volunteers to support this goal. The work we do preserves fan history, love, and dedication to fandom: we keep fanworks from offline and at-risk archives from being lost, divert fanzines from the trash, and more.

Our import assistants contribute to our goal by:

• Importing works to AO3 from rescued digital archives and fanzines
• Searching AO3 for existing copies of works that creators have already uploaded themselves (to prevent us from importing duplicate versions when we import an archive)
• Compiling and correcting spreadsheets of works from an archive to be imported and/or tags to use on those works
• Copyediting/proofreading works from fanzines that have been scanned from PDFs (to ensure that the scanned works were transcribed properly by the software we used)

The training is self-directed, and so is the work for the most part, though we also have weekly working meetings/parties for people to all chip in and work on tasks together! Import assistants can generally alternate the types of tasks they work on. At any one time, we usually have several tasks of different types available.

To apply for this role, you must be at least 18 years old and legally of age to open explicit fanworks in your local jurisdiction.

If you're interested, click on through for a longer description of what we're looking for and the time commitment. For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within 3 days of submitting your application.

Applications are due 20 May 2026 or after 40 applications

Apply to be an Open Doors Import Assistant at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Whatsit, who volunteers as a Chair in training for the Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) and a tag wrangler.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
As a tag wrangler, I make sure that the fandoms I wrangle have properly canonized tags, which helps users find works that have the characters, relationships, tropes, and themes they're looking for. I fully and completely believe that the tagging system on AO3 is practically one of the modern wonders of the world, and I'm really pleased to be able to do my small part in contributing to it.

My other role is working for the Policy & Abuse committee, where we respond to reports of Terms of Service violations. Anyone who's ever spent time on an unmoderated comments section somewhere knows the importance of moderation in keeping a site usable and enjoyable, and PAC works (mostly) behind the scenes to make sure that's the case for AO3.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
I try to spend at least an hour or so per day on PAC work, since some of it is time-sensitive and has deadlines attached. This often involves working with tickets that have been sent in about violations, but sometimes it means working on documentation updates or helping to train new volunteers on the committee.

I usually also do at least one big tag wrangling session per week, during which I get caught up with wrangling the tags in my fandoms. I really like putting music on and settling in for a few hours (or more) of wrangling, so this setup works really well for me.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I have a background in book indexing and a particular interest in categorization and taxonomy, so as soon as I found out that tag wranglers were a thing on AO3, I definitely wanted to be one! It sounded like the kind of thing that would be right up my alley (and it was). On a broader level, I think AO3 is one of the best things going on the Internet, in terms of creating a space where people can freely share their fanworks without fear of the content purges that have plagued many other sites. With censorship encroaching on so many other spaces, I think what AO3 stands for is more important than ever. I really believe in the philosophy of the site and I'm glad to be a part of it.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Time management! I'm on two separate committees and I also have a day job and a fairly active family life, which is a lot to juggle. But I've had success setting boundaries for myself that keep me from over-committing or burning out. I find that setting specific times during which I'll do specific tasks not only keeps that task from eating up my entire day (which either wrangling or PAC work could otherwise easily do) but also allows me to really focus on that task during the allotted time.

What fannish things do you like to do?
I'm an active fic writer and I participate in quite a few multi-fandom fic exchanges. I find that having an external deadline is great for motivating me to actually finish a fic, something I was historically not great at before doing exchanges. I also hang out on a couple of fandom discords and have been known to go to the occasional convention. And, of course, I spend entirely too much of my free time reading vast amounts of fic.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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 code updates and fixes.

Development & Membership worked with Communications on drafting and publishing Drive-related news posts, which Translation made available in 23 languages. Finance posted an update on the 2026 budget prior to the Drive.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In April, AD&T worked on security updates, quality-of-life bug fixes, and making more parts of AO3 translatable. They also welcomed their first long-term contractor who has already begun submitting pull requests and reviewing code. AD&T previously engaged with contractors for specific projects, but this is their first time hiring someone to work on the AO3 code with a broader scope.

AO3 Documentation completed their biannual review of user-facing documentation.

Open Doors announced the import of SlasHeaven and received enormous support from the Spanish-speaking community on AO3. They also began importing the works from the Watchmen Kinkmeme to AO3, which has been in progress for several years due to pre-import complications.

Policy & Abuse continued work on some major updates to the Terms of Service FAQ and coordinated with Communications on a news post about spambots. Going forward, this post will be updated as new spam behaviors get reported. In March, Policy & Abuse received 4,560 tickets, while Support received 3,466 tickets. User Response Translation completed 71 translation and beta tasks for Policy & Abuse and Support.

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 613,000 tags, or approximately 1,400 tags per volunteer. They also announced 27 new "No Fandom" tags.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications started the month with a lighthearted April Fool's post spotlighting omegas and coordinated with AD&T for the site's temporary logo change. This was then followed by a more serious announcement about AO3 exiting beta. Across both posts, Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee helped moderate over 5,600 comments, most of which were positive and joining the celebration.

Communications also coordinated the OTW's attendance at Supanova, a fan convention in Melbourne, Australia. Thank you to everyone who came to see us! Fanwork recommendations from those who attended have been collected in the Supanova 2026 AO3 Collection.

Fanlore prepared a public domain-themed month for May. Check out their Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter/X for featured articles, and join their Discord server for a themed editing chat!

Legal continues to answer questions from fans and internally, especially around new laws restricting internet freedom.

In March, TWC released their special issue on Gaming Fandom and are currently in production for their June special issue on Disability and Fandom. Their editorial sections are working on the general issue for September and the 2027 special issues on Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections is preparing for this year's election, which will fill four seats on the Board: three full-term seats (3 years) and one partial term seat (1 year). The election will open on August 14, and members need to make a donation of at least $10 USD before July 1 if they'd like to vote.

Organizational Culture Roadmap's Code of Conduct draft has been reviewed for legal compliance, clarity, and other factors by an external nonprofit HR firm they partnered with on this project. They have incorporated their feedback and the updated draft will soon be available for review by all volunteers.

Board collaborated with Board Assistants Team to hold the second-quarter public Board meeting with 51 attendees. Thank you to everyone who attended! Meeting minutes are available on the OTW website. Board Assistants Team also continued progress on ongoing projects, including investigating mental health resources for volunteers, investigating volunteer retention within the committee, and supporting AD&T with documentation work.

In April, Board consulted with Legal and Volunteers & Recruiting to approve changes to the OTW's recruitment policies. The OTW will now require all applicants confirm they're 18 years old or older when applying for positions. Previously, some positions were open to volunteers aged 16 or 17. This change will only affect applicants moving forward and will not impact current volunteers.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In April, Volunteers & Recruiting opened recruitment for three roles for Legal and Policy & Abuse.

From March 23 to April 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 201 new requests, and completed 295, leaving them with 45 open requests. As of April 22, 2026, the OTW has 1,051 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Rhine (Translation Chair)
New Communications Volunteers: Jo Foderingham Brown (Social Media Moderator)
New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: anzie, Cocoa, GGLadybug, and 1 other News Post Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: Orla Maeve, Bre Hartfiel, and 3 other Volunteers
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: AAAthea, Agata, AlexTheTwin12, Amalaa, Aza, BerryBlue, Cait B, CherryAmaretto, Chien, Cid, Elistanel, Em L, Fujirope, hen, Hershel, inezblue, Insidia, Izhi, Kirave, Kvalli, Lacosta Seren, Liz27, Lua, Marieta, Marilianne, Milo, mina, moonjelly, Nootmeg, Novace, Pingj, Pinkie, Potato, principalityofmusicalchairs, PurplePurl003, rexmachina, Sachet, Sambuca, sequencefairy, Shira, Snowy, SophiaSun, Stephenie, Tets, Toni, ValerieM00ny, Vandali, vinnawis, Wesley, Winnie, Xiaohe, and 3 other Volunteers
New User Response Translation Volunteers: AifasInTheSky, Cadira, Lacuna, ­Matilda, mocong, shilight, and 6 other Translators

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Fiona M (AO3 Documentation Chair)
Departing AD&T Volunteers: Bilka (QA Supervisor)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing BAT Volunteers: Deniz (Volunteer)
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Chair Track Volunteer and 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Ember J, Lost_for_good, and 3 other Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Shubhi Tandon and 2 other Translators

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Today is World Password Day, and we'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of some best practices to keep your accounts secure.

Last year, AO3 saw a rise in users who lost access to their AO3 accounts due to reused or insecure passwords that were found in data breaches from other sites. In response, our Policy & Abuse committee alongside our Accessibility, Design, & Technology, and Systems committees took steps to recover, secure, and notify the owners of over 10,000 at-risk accounts.

Over the past year, we released many new features to proactively make AO3 accounts more secure, including:

• Automatic confirmation emails notifying you when your username, password, or email has been changed
• Adding a verification step to the process for changing the email associated with your account
• Notifying you if your current or new password matches a password that was discovered in a data breach from another site
• Preventing users from choosing new passwords that are extremely short
• Increasing the maximum password length from 40 to 72 characters
• Requiring you to provide the email address associated with your account in order to reset your password
• Updating the layout and wording of how you change or reset your password

How To Protect Your AO3 Account

The best thing you can do to protect yourself on AO3 and other sites is ensure your passwords are strong, unique, and secure. In general, for both AO3 and elsewhere, we recommend that you:

• Regularly check haveibeenpwned.com to see if your emails, passwords, or other information has been exposed in data breaches or whether your passwords have appeared in known data breaches.
• Change your passwords for any breached websites and any accounts on other sites where you may have used the same password.
• Set a unique, secure password for each and every one of your accounts on all platforms.
• Use a password manager. This will help you to set unique, secure passwords for each of your accounts without worrying about forgetting them. Many browsers have a free, built-in password manager if you would prefer to avoid third-party software.
• Make sure to check your email regularly. Don't use a temporary, school, or work email for any personal accounts. (If you need to update the email associated with your AO3 account, go to your Preferences page and click on the "Change Email" button in the top right. Follow the instructions on that page to update your email address.)
• Keep your antivirus software and operating system up to date, and set them to scan for malware regularly.
• Log out when you've finished using devices that others have access to, and don't share your personal devices with other people.
• Never reuse passwords or share your passwords with anyone for any reason.

Future Changes

Keeping AO3 safe for all our users is one of our highest priorities. We continue to remain on the lookout for other ways we can help you protect your account.

We encourage you to follow us on our official platforms and sign up for OTW News by Email to keep track of important announcements and updates to AO3. If you're specifically interested in learning about new features, security updates, and bug fixes, we recommend that you pay attention to our release notes.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.