Summer Wild Unicorn Sightings

Or I'm forced to recollect about more OTW things this past month than I maybe wanted lol

end-otw-racism is organizing a second call to action, #Vote to End OTW Racism, to turn out members to vote in the upcoming election for four board of director positions on August 11 to 14, 2023. So if you had perhaps donated to OTW before all these recent discussions, then check if you're eligible to vote. You also still have until June 30, 2023 to donate $10 USD and become a member to vote in this year's election. Edit: troisroyaumes@federatedfandom.net is offering "to send 10 USD to ten fans of color who want to vote in the upcoming election but cannot afford to pay" and the offer is matched by someone else for up to ten additional fans of color.

And if you rather not donate to OTW, then you can still read up and submit questions to the seven candidates running or participate in the upcoming candidate chat (no membership required for either). Deadline for submitting questions is June 25, 2023. The chat is expected sometime in July.

I debated whether I actually want to donate to vote this year. I had donated the first two years to vote in elections but the elections were uncontested, and then I stopped donating because I realized that OTW wasn't really prioritizing making the archive and its organization more diverse and inclusive. I did, however, volunteer as a tag wrangler from 2011 to 2015 (before the election implosion) in a small effort to make OTW and fandom more diverse and inclusive.

But I read the candidates' bio and platforms from this year and am excited that there are three Asian candidates, Anh P., Qiao C. and Zixin Z., pushing to make OTW more accessible to non-Anglosphere users like translating the AO3 interface and Fanlore articles. To provide some contexts, OTW had been working on translating the AO3 interface into multiple languages as early as 2011 lol. I don't know if the project has stalled since then or what but I'm glad to see the feature being pushed again.

I also want to note that these candidates are being super careful in their wordings due to the Sinophobia and racism that one of the candidates faced last year 😔

See also doctorskuld's Preliminary rundown of the candidates for OTW Board 2023 for his summary and takes of the candidates.

I'm also under no illusion that a new board will fix everything or anything really. See the 2011 and 2015 elections and the turnovers of the board.

But yes, in the spirit of trying to achieve changes:

I wrote to the board using a template from runpunkrun and end-otw-racism asking for more publicity of board meetings. I also included questions that have been posed to OTW before, either by myself or others, about increasing diversity in the membership and being careful about replicating *ism in the goal of preserving history.

The letter doesn't have much nuances due to a 1,00 characters limit unfortunately.
Hi OTW Board,

Thank you for reaffirming your commitments to make OTW "more welcoming and inclusive to fans of color, and preventing and combating racist harassment on our platforms".

To that end, I encourage OTW to better [publicize] your meetings as many have suggested: post announcements on all news platforms, email notices to all OTW members & maintain an opt-in mailing list for non-members.

I also have a few questions:
- Making OTW more diverse and inclusive has been a long-time goal. How is OTW removing barriers to becoming a voting member & increasing the demographic of its membership & committee leadership to reflect its users and volunteers?
- Preserving fan culture is [an] OTW mission, but when preserving artifacts & recording history, how does OTW acknowledge, warn and/or prevent the replication of harassment and hate speech, etc? What processes and resources are available for volunteers & users on how to identify and what to do when encountering such cases?
Thank you,
jane
I submitted questions to the candidates about the same two topics. Again, not much nuances due to a 50 words limit this time.
- Making OTW more diverse and inclusive has been a long-time goal. How do you think OTW can remove barriers to becoming a member and increase the demographic of its membership and committee leadership to reflect its users and volunteers?
- Preserving fan culture is [an] OTW mission, but when preserving & recording history, how do you think say Fanlore can acknowledge, warn or prevent replicating of harassment & hate speech? In your volunteer experience, what resources are available for volunteers & users on what to do when encountering such cases?
I donated $10 to OTW to become a voting member and matched the donation to Con or Bust which is now operating under The Dream Foundry and which helps fans of color attend conventions that they might not otherwise be able to afford. Con or Bust just revived last year so I'm not sure how its operation is now, but they helped many fans of color in the past. Edit: It looks like they issued 14 grants as of November 2022 for the year.
If I can make it to OTW board meeting on July 2, 2023 at 20:00 UTC and if time allows, I'll pose the same two questions above. See runpunkrun's How to Find and Attend OTW Board Meetings.

And in the month of updates, Mythical Dragons & Wild Unicorns: A Decade Later has also been updated again: see End OTW Racism, Postscript and the rough timeline visualization and table of selected events. Take care!

Summer Wild Unicorn Sightings

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