An OTW Elections Post from Someone Who Needed an OTW Elections Primer a Month Ago (and who started listening to Hamilton at the same time)

singingkingoftheroad:

The first thing I want to say is: if you take nothing away from this post, please take away that if you are a current OTW member who is eligible to vote in the upcoming election, you should vote!  VOTE VOTE VOTE!  (If you’re not sure if you are eligible, DevMem can tell you.)

The second thing I want to say is: the OTW is straight-up full of amazing people.  I have met so many individuals with incredible commitment to, and investment in, the organisation since I joined the conversation that started in the comment threads of the AO3 fundraising posts in early October (link to a different post unhelpfully inserted in each of the preceding words). Over 500 volunteers are currently working to make the AO3/other OTW services and products available to users, and many of them have strong feelings about the issues I discuss below.  I mention this because this is absolutely an organisation that needs change, but it’s also an organisation that very deeply wants change.  You may not get that impression from official communications, but the majority of people who keep the services you know and love running know there are problems, and want to see the situation improve.  If you, like me, have kept a casual-but-interested eye on this for a few years and jumped into the conversation earlier this month: whatever you think is wrong, there is likely someone within the OTW who agrees with you, who is trying to change things from the inside.  This is another reason to VOTE VOTE VOTE!  Help amplify the voice of the people who already make the AO3 and other OTW services possible and would like to improve them.

The third thing to note is how OTW elections work. There’s a great post about that here, but the most important thing to know is that you can theoretically provide a vote to anyone you rank.  If you don’t want to support a candidate, do not rank them, not even last.  Rank, in order of preference, only people behind whom you would be happy to put your full support.

Okay! With those things said, here we go. Who lives who dies who tells your (extremely long but detailed for a reason) story, all that:

I. If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for? The organisation, as it currently operates, is severely lacking in a number of crucial systems, tools, and safeguards.  This should matter to all of us because there’s a lot of money at stake; because many people currently volunteering for the organisation (and keeping the AO3 up) are frustrated and/or drained; and because stronger systems mean improved services, happier volunteers, diminished risk, more likelihood of organisational longevity, better AO3 timez, and ultimately, more bang for your buck (which is a thing you’re allowed to want as a donor and member).

II. And if you were to ask me who I’d promote—two spots are open on the Board this year, out of a total of seven.  There are six candidates for those two spots; one of them, Andrea Horbinski, is a current Board Member, and the other five (Alex Tischer, Aline Carrão, Atiya Hakeem, Katarina Harju, and Matty Bowers) are all OTW staffers serving on various committees.  Those five candidates are all committed to a more-or-less shared agenda of organisational change that includes more transparency, privileging functioning services over other priorities, and better management practices.  If you are interested in those three things, ranking these five candidates, and only these five candidates, in any order on your ballot is your best bet to effect change within the OTW this election.

III. And so the elections experiment begins: Voting people into office isn’t enough.  There is a well articulated post on this issue here (with follow-up commentary here), but any person wishing to effect significant change in an existing system is going to face an uphill battle, not least because current OTW regulations allow Board Members to vote any of their peers out, with or without reason, with a two-thirds majority.  So: stay engaged!  Stay supportive! Become personally involved if you can.  Keep an eye on official OTW news and an eye out for new tools and platforms keeping you updated on OTW issues (coming soon to a lake you know, in a nearby park…).  The current Board has committed to producing a budget and several other materials by mid-November.  Check them out when they are issued (and communicate your interest in seeing them if they’re not).

IV. The other fifty-one! Like the title of the post says, I’m a relative newcomer to this conversation, but I’ve spent the last three weeks fully immersed in it, drawing information from all the resources I can—the last year and a half of all official OTW materials, conversations with past and current members, volunteers, Board Members, and staff, and general Wikipedia-hole-type burrowing into the issues on several platforms.  Below the cut is an itemised list of thirty years of disagreements (just kidding).  The below is a collection of some of the reasons why the OTW would benefit from vigorous change, and why (one more time) you should VOTE VOTE VOTE.  Elections are November 6-9.  Voter instructions are here.

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