Archive of Our Own

Last November we asked the community to submit questions to our OTW volunteers in celebration of International Volunteer Day. In this series of posts we will spotlight some of our committees' responses.

The Communications committee (Comms) disseminates information to the general public, media, and fans. We draft and beta news posts and social media posts, and are often the first point of contact for anyone interested in the OTW.

We asked Comms for replies to your questions, and received a lot of feedback! Below you can find a selection of their answers:

Communications Committee Specific Questions

Question: We're so thankful for how fast you guys always respond when the ao3 website goes down. I was wondering what's the circus like behind the scenes when it happens? xD Do you usually first notice when we start panicking, or does someone keep an eye on it 24/7, do emails start flying from social team to it, is it usually scary or is it very organised and calm since you're so experienced, who makes the decision to pull the plug for a few hours if it's really bad and looks hopeless, stuff like this. Thank you!
Committee answer:
Accessibility, Design, & Technology (AD&T) and Systems (our two main technical committees) have already given their own replies to this, but from Comms’ end, we often are the ones that handle posting and disseminating information for downtimes! We work hand in hand with AD&T and Systems to ensure that we're distributing the most accurate and concise information to the public, and coordinate with our fellow volunteers to make sure that it’s sent out in time. We do our best to handle the public logistics so that our coders can focus on their own work!

General Questions

How many hours a week do you spend on your OTW volunteer work?

• It truly depends on the week! Typically I would say ~4 hours, for just keeping on top of things and my weekly tasks. It can be upwards of 10 if there's things outside of the norm or that require a bit of research. (Caitlynne)
• For me, it depends on the time of year most of all! As an Event Coordinator, half of the year I'd say it's ~2-6 hours a week. The bulk of our anniversaries and holidays converge into fall and winter, during that time it's more ~6-8 hours. (Elin)

How do you manage your volunteer time, and do you do the same thing every day like with a day job?

• I hop on my computer pretty frequently throughout the week, so I tailor my OTW time to when I'm on my PC. If there's a day I'm busy and away from my PC, I know I'll have to "catch up" the next day when I have time, so to speak. (Tiana)
• I try to check our chat tool/the Comms email when I can throughout the day and give a dedicated half hour or so on my laptop in the evenings. It doesn't always work out, but that's the goal! (callmeri)

What's your favorite part about volunteering at the OTW?

• I like that tending the little OTW!Tumblr corner of the landscape helps the whole fandom ecosystem. (Remi)
• The best part of volunteering at the OTW is the people, for sure! The social aspect is easily what motivates me the most to stay. I have made lots of friends and the Communications committee has been a really supportive environment! (stork)

What's the aspect of volunteer work with the OTW that you most wish more people knew about?

• We are fans just like you! There are so many different cultures and fandoms coming together every day to make the organisation run. (Tal)
• We are really big on emojis! The custom emoji feature on our chat tool is definitely getting a lot of mileage with us XD. Also, you can put OTW work on your resume if you want to. (stork)

What does a typical day as an OTW volunteer looks like for you?

• Check the Tumblr notes and ask box in the morning, before scrolling through my personal dash and then the tags the organisation follows looking for Things To Queue. Mosey through the #ao3 tag on occasion to reply or leave little notes to folks. Every day is similar, but none are The Same. (Remi)
• I often start by checking and responding to messages from other volunteers, and then make a list of current tasks to work on. Sometimes that means brainstorming activities for a special milestone, other times it's writing posts, or preparing for an event. (Elin)

What is your favorite animal? Alternatively, do you have a favorite breed of cat/dog?

• I love bats and think they're super cute, but identify with possums on an emotional level. (Caitlynne)
• My favorite animal is a saiga antelope. Fave dog breed: Irish wolfhound. (Communications volunteer)

Do you enjoy reading fanfic? If so, what's your favorite work on AO3?

• For a dyslexic person I seem to read A LOT of fanfic... I actually tend to read more on AO3 than actual books?? Anyway, my favourite of all time would have to be unholyverse. I don't think anything can beat that… (Gray)
• I love reading fic so much it's kind of concerning how many tabs I have open all the time. My favourite fic is locked but another fave is between the sheets by DasWarSchonKaputt. og. goat. mother. (choux)

Do you write any fanfic yourself? What do you enjoy about it?

• I do write. I enjoy the creativity and the ability to explore characters. (Communications volunteer)
• I do! It's my favorite hobby and one I neglected a bit last year. I hope to get back into the swing of it in 2026. (Tiana)

What fandoms are you (currently) in?

• I’m very active in the Dan and Phil fandom :3 (Gray)
• Mostly MDZS and IWTV for the past few years, but Heated Rivalry took over my brain so it looks like I'm getting on that ride. (callmeri)

Do you feel glad or proud to see fanfiction in your mother tongue?

• I'm also a tag wrangler, so I get to participate in tag translation (every tag wrangled needs to have a documented english translation). There aren't as many German works, but we have loads of German volunteers – this means there's often several of us running to translate whenever there's a German tag. it's really cool to see very specific cultural references in works! (Tal)
• I read a TON of socmed AUs in Filipino along with the Filipino fics in general! I'm super happy to see fanwork in Filipino and when a creator is Filipino as well! especially when I see actual locations or cultural tidbits getting referenced. (choux)

Thanks so much to every volunteer who took the time to answer!

(For more answers, check out this work on AO3, where we collect additional replies to each question!)

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.

Last November we asked the community to submit questions to our OTW volunteers in celebration of International Volunteer Day. In this series of posts we will spotlight some of our committees' responses.

The Volunteers & Recruiting committee (VolCom) is in charge of inducting, retiring, and placing volunteers on hiatus. They handle personnel records and tool access, as well as assisting with the formation of new committees, subcommittees, and workgroups.

We asked VolCom for replies to your questions, and received a lot of feedback! Below you can find a selection of their answers:

Volunteers & Recruiting Committee Specific Questions

Question: Sometimes I want to help the OTW, and consider applying for a volunteer position like tag wrangling, but I don't have a lot of time to commit. Is there anything I can do sporadically, or without a lot of time per week?
Committee answer:
All of our roles come with a weekly time expectation—when we recruit for a role, we post a position description, it's listed there. For some roles, the time requirement starts at two hours per week, while for others it may be five hours or more. How this time is split up in a week depends a lot on the role.
If you find yourself not having enough time to volunteer, but still want to support the OTW, please take a look at our How You Can Help page.

Question: Since this is a non-profit organization, if I wanted to become a volunteer (for fun and because I care about the work being done here), would I be able to use my time as legitimate service hours? (for highschool for example)
Committee answer:
The OTW is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the United States, but whether we are a good fit for legitimate service hours depends on the specific requirements your school/work/etc may have. Our volunteers usually do not volunteer under the name they use at school or at work, but if you are comfortable letting either your Chairs or the Volunteers & Recruiting committee know that name, you can receive a written proof of volunteering. If there are other requirements, e.g. a proof of volunteered hours, we can't guarantee that this will be possible for all roles. If you are considering this option, please reach out to the relevant committee via the contact form to discuss what's possible.

Question: Is there a limit to how many times someone can apply to volunteer and be rejected? How many times should you try before giving up? I've applied at least five or six times to different groups and I'm wondering if I should stop bothering you!
Committee answer:
We do not have a limit for applications to the OTW in general. However, if you've been repeatedly not accepted for a role, chances are that you are not fulfilling the requirements for that role. Additionally, some committees might have their own restrictions (see the recruitment post and/or position description). Please also consider your application quality and whether there are other reasons that might lead to you not being offered a role. You can email us and ask why an application was rejected - it depends on the committee how much feedback they are willing to give, as the goal is not to write the "perfect application". Our roles differ a lot in the skills required, so keep an eye out for other roles that might be better suited for your skill set!

Question: What types of things can be done by volunteers? I say this as someone who'd love to volunteer at some point in the future, but have no idea if I have any skill that would actually be helpful.
Committee answer:
The skill sets required from our volunteers depend a lot on the role: There are roles that require some kind of formal education or in-depth knowledge of a specific topic, such as being a lawyer or a financial analyst. Other roles, however, are teaching all required skills during the training period, for those roles it mostly depends on being the "type" for the role. For us in VolCom, it's more of the latter than the former. For example, our volunteers need to enjoy documentation work and ticking off tasks of to-do lists while being able to do work autonomously. There are many roles in the OTW that look for a specific type of person more than a person with a specific set of skills, or the skills are very transferable: Skills such as project management, navigating tricky interpersonal situations, dividing big-picture goals into actionable items, etc. If you keep an eye on our socials and the news posts, you will see us recruiting regularly. Each role comes with a position description that explains both what the volunteers in this role do, and what is required of applicants, so just watch out for a role that matches your skills and interests!

General Questions

How many hours a week do you spend on your OTW volunteer work?

• This tends to vary by week as well as by role! As a tag wrangler I used to spend about 3 hours a week on my fandoms, and though it has required some "pruning" of what fandoms I'm working on, most of mine were currently consistent enough that this is a pretty stable amount of time for me. For Volunteers & Recruiting, where I serve as both volunteer and co-chair, the time is a lot more fluid. For volunteer-specific tasks I can go between 5-10 hours a week, and for chair work that's an addition of another 3-5 hours per week. The work done isn't always in solid chunks of time -- I do try to count in the time I have even when I'm just catching up on messages from various other volunteers/committees, but in general that's where I've fallen. (Eevee)
• I'm a VolCom volunteer and it depends, but I'm mainly spending around 4 to 5 hours minimum working for my committee. It can go from processing inductions or removals or following up on a specific request we've received from an OTW member, which in this case is usually pretty easy, to bigger tasks like running recruitments or reviewing documents. In that last case, I like to take 2 solid hours during every work session to really dive into it. (Kalincka)

How do you manage your volunteer time, and do you do the same thing every day like with a day job?

• I usually block some time on my weekly calendar to get to it! Usually, I do OTW work in the evening, after I've come back from my day job. I work an 8-4, and I live fairly close to my workplace, which means that commuting doesn't eat up too much of my schedule. There are days when I don't do OTW work, but I always check my emails and Slack multiple times a day to make sure I'm not skipping something urgent. Tasks can vary so even if they're mainly cases, they vary, so I don't find it too repetitive! (Kalincka)
• I spend at least fifteen minutes every day on volunteering - keeping up with what's happening, seeing if there is anything urgent that needs to be dealt with. Usually, that means I look at my emails and our internal chat platform at least three to four times a day. This is mostly the same every day. I work on cases and on documentation frequently - sometimes that happens spontaneously, sometimes I block time in my personal calendar so I don't end up making other plans. This is not as regular and scheduled as me keeping track of what's going on in the organization and my committee, but it usually happens for a few hours every two to three days.
  I also have the benefit of having a very flexible daytime job and working a lot from home, which means a lot of my work days consist of me doing an hour of my paid job, an hour of OTW work, three hours of paid job, and so on.There are a lot of recurring tasks or categories of tasks, but it's still so many different categories of tasks that it's not getting boring. (corr)

What's your favorite part about volunteering at the OTW?

• I love meeting other volunteers and learning how the OTW works. I find it super fascinating to learn how such a large organization runs and at the same time meet the people behind the scenes of it all. (Bekyro)
• Getting to work together with so many people from all over the world who care for so many different fandoms. I have gotten to talk to people from so many countries that I would have never met otherwise. I also think that AO3 (and the whole OTW) defies a world in which value and worth are measured in financial units - we don't get paid, the writers on AO3 and Fanlore don't get paid, the readers don't get paid. Being a part of this awesome project makes me proud and happy. (corr)

What's the aspect of volunteer work with the OTW that you most wish more people knew about?

• We don't have shareholders or people with financial interests that tell us what to do. We're all regular fandom people who love fandom and want to maintain a place that's a home (an archive) to all transformative works. Sometimes, when I browse through discussions about the OTW, I get the feeling that people don't know that we are not a for-profit company, that we are not making any money, that every wrangled tag, every written news post, every design decision for AO3, every Fanlore policy, all of these things are made by fandom people in their free time. We're doing this not because we want to earn money with AO3 or the other projects, but because we love fandom and are dedicated to the OTW's mission. (corr)
• There is a lot more to the OTW than AO3! I encourage people to check out Open Doors and the other projects the OTW is holding up, it's worth a look. I know I've learned so much thanks to Fanlore, and I didn't even know that it was OTW volunteers that upheld this platform. (Kalincka)

What does a typical day as an OTW volunteer looks like for you?

• There's one thing that never changes, and it's checking emails/cases/messages. It's the foundation of my typical day. The tasks in themselves always vary. As a VolCom volunteer I'm pretty sure I do at least one removal per week. (Kalincka)
• I check my emails and our chat platform multiple times a day to monitor if something urgent comes up - as I get sent an email for every change in our cases, I also keep track of those like that. That's what I do every day. On days that I do active work, I focus either on documentation, training, or handling cases, and spend one to five hours doing that. (corr)

What is your favorite animal? Alternatively, do you have a favorite breed of cat/dog?

• My favorite animal are sheep! Unfortunately, I don't own any sheep. My favorite breed of cat is trash can kitty, all of the cats I have are the ones nobody at the shelter wanted, and they are the best cats I've ever met (I might be biased). (corr)
• I would have to say birds, especially parrots. I love Sun conures, but cockatiels are definitely high up there too (if they weren’t, my own would probably peck me) (yes, I am very biased). If we include fantasy creatures, dragons are also at the top (Bekyro)

Do you enjoy reading fanfic? If so, what's your favorite work on AO3?

• I love reading fanfic! It's the reason I stumbled upon the OTW in the first place. I wouldn't say I've got a single favorite fic in the entire world, but I keep a list. Off the top of my head, and since we're in an end-of-the-year period, I would heavily recommend reading this Klaus fic (formerly titled 'In the name of love'). It warms my heart every time (Kalincka)
• I do! While I do not have any favorite fic, as I read depending on my mood, I do have a bunch I keep returning to. I’m scared to check how big my collection of fics I reread has gotten nowadays. (Bekyro)

Do you write any fanfic yourself? What do you enjoy about it?

• I do, even if it's less than I'd like due to lack of time. I have about 350k words published on AO3 and half a million in drafts, which is what I wrote in the last four years.
  I like to get my readers to yell at me. My writer discord is really good at getting upset with me, if I'm not being insulted for hurting their feelings, I didn't do my job right. I am mostly a character-driven writer, and I like to put my characters into situations or make them face negative consequences. I also love to write healing, but I am decidedly not a fluff writer - the things I write as comfort for myself tend to get comments of people saying that I still hurt them. (corr)
• I do, though ironically not as much since I started volunteering for the OTW. I love expanding on the worlds given to us, doing missing scenes, fixing tragedies from canon, or imagining canon-compliant AUs (I promise, these are possible!). (Eevee)
• I do not, to the despair of my fic writing friends. Although I may give it a try sometime if the mood strikes. (Bekyro)

What fandoms are you (currently) in?

• I've not been super active in fandom spaces lately, but the last time I was active was in Haikyuu!! and SK8. Recently I've fallen into a danmei rabbit hole starting with 2ha but I haven't read/written much in it. I also read a lot of bl manhwa/manga! (Eevee)
• A few years ago, I read this questionable book series called All For The Game by Nora Sakavic, and I have accepted my fate of living in this fandom. I love-hate the books, I love-hate the fandom, and I have found amazing friends in the fandom. Apart from that, I read a lot fandom-blind, as I am looking for specific kinds of stories or tropes. (corr)

Do you feel glad or proud to see fanfiction in your mother tongue?

• I love that they exist! I think AO3 was one of the first sites where I saw the language I grew up speaking as an option and something about that felt so validating? I don't read in my native language, but I come across them when translations are requested for tags in my native language and I'm always so excited when they show up. (Eevee)
• While I don’t read any of them myself, I do find it nice knowing they exist. Especially as my native tongue is a smaller one, and it normally tends to drown among the countless bigger languages that exists (Bekyro)

Thanks so much to every volunteer who took the time to answer!

(For more answers, check out this work on AO3, where we collect additional replies to each question!)

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.

On December 5, people all over the world observed International Volunteer Day (IVD) to acknowledge the work of volunteer workers everywhere, and their efforts, dedication, and passion. Since its conception in 1985, IVD has invited us to recognize the ways in which volunteers contribute to communities and are at the forefront of many people-led initiatives.

Here at the Organisation of Transformative Works (OTW) we depend entirely on that drive, as our organization is 100% volunteer-run! Our volunteers handle our strategic planning, administration, infrastructure, development, any day-to-day tasks required in running a non-profit organization, and so on. Volunteers aren't just the backbone of the OTW, they are its whole skeleton!

Have you ever wondered what a day in the life of an OTW volunteer looks like? The answer is: It's hard to say! Depending on where in the OTW they are active, their tasks and responsibilities can look very different from those of the next volunteer. Volunteers also work a very wide range of weekly hours, depending on their position(s) and availability: anything from one hour to over twenty hours a week!

For this IVD, we wanted to give you a chance to get to know those volunteers behind the scenes of the OTW and its projects. That is why we sent out a call across our social media for you to send us your most burning questions.

Here are some of those questions with answers from our volunteers!

Questions for Specific Committees

• Question for the Policy & Abuse committee:
  How often do you deal with people who want to censor something on AO3? Is it a common complaint?
  Committee Answer:
  AO3 frequently receives complaints about "offensive content", which includes suggesting that we should remove or censor content that is allowed on AO3. In the past five years, complaints about offensive content have consistently been one of the top three types of Policy & Abuse tickets, albeit not the largest. The Policy & Abuse committee regularly publishes a breakdown of the previous year's tickets, which for 2024 can be found here. Information about 2025's tickets will be available in a newsletter early next year.
• Question for the Volunteers & Recruiting committee:
  What types of things can be done by volunteers? I say this as someone who'd love to volunteer at some point in the future, but have no idea if I have any skill that would actually be helpful.
  Committee answer:
  The skill sets required from our volunteers depend a lot on the role: There are roles that require some kind of formal education or in-depth knowledge of a specific topic, such as being a lawyer or a financial analyst. Other roles, however, are teaching all required skills during the training period, so for those roles it mostly depends on being the "type" for the role. For us in VolCom (Volunteers & Recruiting Committee), it's more of the latter than the former; for example, our volunteers need to enjoy documentation work and ticking off tasks from to-do lists while being able to do work autonomously. There are many roles in the OTW that look for a specific type of person more than a person with a specific set of skills, or the skills are very transferable: Skills such as project management, navigating tricky interpersonal situations, dividing big-picture goals into actionable items, etc. If you keep an eye on our socials and the news posts, you will see us recruiting regularly. Each role comes with a position description that explains both what the volunteers in this role do, and what is required of applicants, so just watch out for a role that matches your skills and interests!

General Questions across Committees

• How many hours a week do you spend on your OTW volunteer work?
  For myself on Systems, it varies. I usually spend at least an hour a day between checking in on alerts, tickets, and responding to any inquiries from other committees internally. It usually ends up being more, as some of those requests are more involved than others. Any time there's an outage or issue, the number of hours usually goes much higher. (FrostTheFox, Systems committee chair)
• How do you manage your volunteer time, and do you do the same thing every day like with a day job?
  What I do each day varies based on what events are coming up for Board and the OTW! We may be working on research projects, preparing for a public Board meeting, replying to questions from the public, or many other things. The variety is a huge part of why I enjoy what I do honestly. I wouldn't enjoy it as much if it was the same every day. Volunteering for the OTW is nice because by and large, you get to pick what ours and schedule you'd like to have. I personally try and block out sections of my time to work on OTW-related tasks and do occasional checking in outside of this time. (therealmorticia, Board Assistants Team committee chair)
• What's your favorite part about volunteering at the OTW?
  Assisting AO3 users, most notably Vietnamese and Chinese users, in my capacity as Support volunteer. Some weeks when the stress from my other OTW roles catches up to me, doing Support work and answering Support tickets remind me of the reason why I started this whole endeavour in the first place: I want to give back to fandom and help AO3 users navigate the Archive a little bit easier. (Anh Pham, Support committee)
• What's the aspect of volunteer work with the OTW that you most wish more people knew about?
  Sometimes the things you think will be simplest are the hardest, and vice versa. Personally, I've had to nix features I really wanted myself because they just wouldn't be practical given our volume of users and current resources. (Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee volunteer)
• What does a typical day as an OTW volunteer looks like for you?
  I volunteer as an Open Doors Administrative Volunteer and as an Open Doors Chair Assistant. Both are project management-oriented roles: I help manage archive imports and the committee itself! I start my volunteering time by checking on the status of my archives, answering questions as they arise, making sure archive import tasks are progressing along - it's always something different! I also work on various projects for committee management, such as documenting workflows and new procedures or running weekly working meetings. (Kayla, Open Doors committee)
• What is your favorite animal? Alternatively, do you have a favorite breed of cat/dog?
  Aside from cats & dogs, my favorite animal is a sloth. They’re mood and they sound really funny (look it up on youtube!). Favorite dog breed is airedale terrier, because my boyfriend has one and she’s hilarious. She lives with his mom now that he’s studying/working in my city, and I’ve only seen her a few times, so I’m convinced she thinks I’m some sort of weird extension of my bf that just randomly appears every 6 months or so. (kati, Translation committee)
• Do you enjoy reading fanfic? If so, what's your favorite work on AO3?
  I do! Finding a favorite was the hardest thing I've ever done and I had to dig through my bookmarks, anything by author hanville would make the cut, to be honest, but my absolute favorite is mosaic broken hearts with this is me trying as a really, really close second. (Camila Lopez, Tag Wrangling committee)
• Do you write any fanfic yourself? What do you enjoy about it?
  I write so many fics. @.@ It's a lot of fun to explore favourite characters in new ways, and to get to expand the worlds in which they live. I'm also cursed to have very few fandoms in which my favourite characters or ships have a lot of content, so I end up having to make it all myself. (Fun fact: I actually found my partner due to a rare pair!) (C, AO3 Documentation committee)
• What fandoms are you (currently) in?
  Well, Heated Rivalry obviously. I'm also really into Fallout, The Pitt, and Formula 1 RPF. (I'm not even a sports person. I don't know how I ended up in sports RPF, yet here I am.) (Whatsit, Policy & Abuse committee)
• Do you feel glad or proud to see fanfiction in your mother tongue? I grew up in German fandom, and I owe some German fandom writers a lot when it comes to my own existence in fandom. I very much stay away from it now lmao. I can't handle anything remotely smutty written in German, and some peculiarities of fanfiction that I can tolerate in English are a dealbreaker in German, as well as grammar and punctuation. I do love that it exists - fanfiction and fandom in general is an amazing space that should not be limited by the language one speaks. (corr, Volunteers & Recruiting committee)

(For more answers from our volunteers, check out this work on AO3, where we'll post additional replies to each question!)

We are exceedingly grateful to all volunteers who have taken time out of their day to compose answers, and for the amazing work they do at the OTW on a daily basis! They are the lifeblood of the OTW, AO3, and our other projects!

If you too want to become part of the OTW and help out as a volunteer, keep an eye on our recruitment posts! And if you're afraid of missing a post, no worries: You can subscribe to our monthly OTW News by Email service for a neat summary of what's currently happening at the OTW!

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 2020, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) made a commitment to our users, members, and volunteers that we would work towards making our organization and our projects more welcoming and inclusive to fans of color, and preventing and combating racist harassment on our platforms.

We provided an update on this work in 2023, acknowledging that progress had not been as fast as we had hoped, sharing details of the changes that had been made by that point, and laying out the road ahead.

Today we are delighted to share that we have fulfilled the last of the promises we made to you back in 2020. While we celebrate the hard work and dedication to improvement that has taken us to this point, we also regret that it has taken us five years to get here. We are sincerely grateful for all the support we've received from our users, members, and volunteers to complete this work, and we apologize that it has taken this long to do so.

This post lays out both the progress we've made and the specific ways our 2020 promises have been fulfilled, as well as what is coming next and how we will ensure that our work doesn't stop here.

What We've Done

Since our update in 2023, we have completed the following goals to help protect our users and volunteers against harassment:

1. Reviewed and updated the AO3 Terms of Service (TOS) and TOS FAQ. You can read more about this update in the news post announcing the TOS review as well as the accompanying review guide. For some key highlights, we:
   1. Simplified the language and removed redundancies throughout the TOS in order to improve readability for all users, including those who may have English as an Additional Language (EAL);
   2. Generalized the Abuse Policy to provide the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) with greater flexibility to determine how to address harassment and other TOS violations; and
   3. Reviewed the existing mandatory Archive warnings and considered new ones.
2. Improved admin tools, particularly for the Policy & Abuse committee so that they can more easily handle Abuse reports.
3. Implemented improvements to AO3 to help curate your Archive experience, including:
   1. Expanded blocking features to cover more situations, including preventing unsolicited gifts from blocked users and preventing kudos from users you've blocked.
   2. Further limiting how guest users can interact with you, such as stripping embedded images in guest comments and adding a preference to prevent guests from replying to your comments on other users' works and on news posts.
   3. Restarted the creation of "No Fandom" canonical additional tags to allow users to more easily filter in and filter out for concepts as they want. Read more about new canonicals in the Tag Wrangling news posts.
   4. Implemented collection tags and improved collection filters.
4. The Diversity Consultant Research Officer completed their internal review, engaged with contractors, and made a culture audit firm recommendation to the OTW Board in 2023.
1. Following that recommendation, the OTW contracted with an audit firm and underwent a months-long organizational culture audit that included interviews with volunteers at every level of the organization and in every committee.
2. The Board, working with the firm and OTW volunteers from several committees, created an Organizational Culture Roadmap of items that need to be addressed and changed to promote a healthier and safer OTW for all our volunteers.
3. To ensure the completion of these goals, we established the OTW Culture Roadmap Workgroup. This is an independent body from the Board so that this work is unaffected by Board turnover. This work remains ongoing and will continue long beyond this update.
5. Made multiple changes to the procedures of public Board meetings and Board communications generally, to improve transparency regarding Board work and OTW progress. This includes:
1. Implemented a new moderation system for public Board meetings, as of the November 2023 public meeting, allowing the Board to address questions raised during public meetings; since the July 2024 public meeting, started addressing questions submitted asynchronously from people who can’t attend the meeting live.
2. Implemented professional customer relationship management tools for Board work and Board email/communication.
3. Released bi-weekly internal updates regarding Board and BAT work to OTW volunteers.
6. Created two new committees and two new subcommittees to better support the completion of these goals and our long-term sustainability as an organization:
1. Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution: subcommittee responsible for addressing volunteer complaints and conflicts independent from involved committees.
2. News Post Moderation: subcommittee responsible for moderating comments on AO3 and OTW news posts, ensuring they abide by the OTW News Post Moderation Policy.
3. Board Assistants Team: committee assisting the OTW Board of Directors with administrative tasks and project management.
4. User Response Translation: committee responsible for addressing PAC and Support’s translation needs in specific high-need languages.
7. Completed and published a Whistleblower Protection Policy to outline and enshrine the protections for people who make reports about misconduct in the OTW.

What We're Doing

We know that creating a safer environment for our users and volunteers is an ongoing responsibility, and we remain deeply committed to addressing harassment with both urgency and care. While the steps outlined in our 2020 statement marked an important beginning, we recognise that true progress requires continuous effort beyond fulfilling those initial commitments. We are dedicated to building on that foundation with transparency, accountability, and compassion.

We are committed to and already continuing to work beyond our 2020 promises to ensure that this work does not end here. Some examples of our ongoing commitment include:

1. Completing the ongoing project to review the OTW Code of Conduct in full, bringing it into line with industry standards and updating it in collaboration with volunteer feedback;
2. Supporting the ongoing development and growth of the Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution subcommittee;
3. Working on the 2023-2026 Strategic Plan's Diversifying Spaces goals; and
4. Making AO3 more accessible for EAL users through our ongoing internationalization efforts. We've recently finished preparing all emails for translation and are continuing to work on other parts of the site.

Moving Forward

Looking forward to the future, we want to maintain our progress in this area and continue to improve transparency about changes within the OTW. We will make efforts to share information about updates like these in the monthly newsletter and our quarterly public Board meetings on Discord (you can also find updates from our quarterly meetings in our meeting minutes).

We appreciate your ongoing support and patience throughout these efforts, and we offer our sincerest apologies for the extended time required to fulfill our promises. Although progress has been slower than anticipated, we are very excited to share that our major goals are now complete and we are committed to continuing improvement into the future.

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 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:

• Angst with a Bittersweet Ending
• Angst with a Hopeful Ending
• Angst with a Sad Ending
• Angst with No Happy Ending
• Characters Yelling or Screaming
• Cheek Kisses
• Hand Kisses
• Domdrop
• Farming and Ranching
• Figure Skating
• Flower Symbolism
• Ghost Stories
• Giant/Tiny Relationships
• Internalized Victim Blaming
• Long Chapters
• Short Chapters
• Mating Cycles
• Near Drowning
• Non-Sexual Spanking
• Pining While Fucking
• Platonic Yandere
• Pumpkin Carving
• Rapid Pregnancy
• Right Person Wrong Time
• Robot Gore
• Ruined Orgasms
• Soft Dom Characters
• Throuples | Triad Relationships
• Wank and Tell | Creator is Open to Comments about Masturbating to This Work
• Will They Won't They Relationships

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:

• Angst
• Big Guy, Little Guy
• Height Difference
• Flower Symbolism
• Ghosts
• Mating Cycles
• Pining While Fucking
• Throuples
• Wank and Tell
• Yandere

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.

The Randall Morgan Memorial Archive, a Queer As Folk (US) fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

This memorial account was set up with the assistance of Open Doors and Irishcaelan, the maintainer of Randall’s personal website, Randall’s Rambles. Randall also wrote under the pseudonym Brian Hennessey. Randall Morgan was taken from us in 2013, and this site is a permanent place where the fanworks he so loved to create will go on.

Open Doors will be working with Irishcaelan to import Randall Morgan’s works into a separate memorial account on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving his works in their entirety, all graphics currently in his works will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works by Randall Morgan to the AO3 after December. You will find them on the RandallMorgan_memorial account.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Randall Morgan and Randall’s Rambles 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 honored to be able to help preserve the works of Randall Morgan, and while we mourn the loss of Randall, we also realize that we are fortunate that he had a friend who was given permission to collect and preserve his works on the AO3 so that they will not be lost. Thinking about the death of a fandom friend may be difficult, but it can also be an opportunity to consider what will happen to your fanworks and accounts and those of your friends after your deaths. The Archive of Our Own has an option to name a Fannish Next of Kin, someone who would be able to gain access to your accounts in the case of your death or incapacitation. By naming someone who can act on your behalf, you can decide ahead of time how you want your AO3 accounts handled going into the future.

- The Open Doors team and Irishcaelan

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 (OTW) Board of Directors is saddened to announce that Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm have resigned from their roles as Board Directors for personal reasons. Their resignations are effective as of December 11, 2025.

Erica was elected to her seat in 2024, and her term was set to end in 2027; her seat will be filled in the upcoming election as a one-year term. Kathryn was elected to her seat in 2023, and was already scheduled to be replaced in the upcoming election. In the meantime, both of their seats will remain vacant.

We would like to thank Erica and Kathryn for their service as members of the Board and for their years as OTW volunteers. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

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 FANLORE

In November, Fanlore ran the Fanlore No Fault November challenge: a catch-up event for earlier badges editors missed! The challenge ran from November 16 to 30, with many editors participating and earning badges from previous months.

Curious about editing Fanlore? Check out the New Visitor Portal and Tutorial for getting started!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

On November 14, we celebrated AO3's 16th anniversary! \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology continued to prepare emails for translation and improved how the download and chapter index menus behave with each other on smaller screens.

AO3 Documentation updated the Contacting the Staff FAQ.

Open Doors finished importing Oz Magi, an Oz annual gift exchange, and Stayka's Saint Seiya Archive, a Saint Seiya archive. They also shared an annual roundup of the fanzine collections created in the last year for fanworks imported through the Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) and announced the upcoming import of a Harry Potter archive, PhoenixSong.

In October, Policy & Abuse received 5,061 tickets, setting a record high for the third month in a row. Support received 3,043 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 600,000 tags, or over 1,380 tags per wrangling volunteer.

Tag Wrangling also continues to create new "No Fandom" canonical tags and announced a new batch of tags for November.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

TWC continues to prepare for the two upcoming 2026 special issues: "Disability and Fandom" and "Gaming Fandom". The submission deadline for the two 2027 special issues, "Music Fandom" and "Latin American Fandoms", is also quickly approaching on January 1.

In November, the OTW filed an Amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court should clarify the rules surrounding who can challenge a trademark registration application. In a case involving whether someone should own the trademark "Rapunzel" for dolls of the character Rapunzel, the OTW argued that the Trademark Office should consider the interests of the public—including fans—in deciding whether to award private ownership over a word or symbol that may be in the public domain.

Legal also worked with Communications on a news post about recent legislation and have responded to a number of comments and queries on this post and other issues.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board continued work on annual turnover and meeting with all committees. They made progress on the OTW Procurement Policy and expected to get it finalized soon. They, along with the Board Assistants Team, also continued to work with Volunteers & Recruiting and Organizational Culture Roadmap on the ongoing Code of Conduct review.

Development & Membership has been catching up on post-Drive tasks.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

December 5 was International Volunteers Day! As a volunteer-run organization, the OTW would not be possible without the support and diligence of our volunteers. We thank all our volunteers, past and present, for the work they've contributed to the OTW.

If you're curious about volunteering for the OTW, we recruit for various positions on a regular basis, and recruitment will next open in January.

From October 25 to November 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 287 new requests, and completed 270, leaving them with 63 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of November 22, 2025, the OTW has 983 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Fanlore Volunteers: Luana and 2 other Chair-Track Volunteers
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Anderson, Araxie, corr, Aspenfire, Klm, Mothmantic, Nova Deca, vanishinghorizons, and 1 other Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 90Percent Human, Aeon, Alecander Seiler, ambystoma, Astrum, Atlas Oak, batoidea, Bette, Bottle, bowekatan, Bruno, Chaosxvi, Destiny, DogsAreTheBest312, Dream, elia faustus, Ellexamines, Elliott W, Gracey, jacksonwangparty, Jean W, Kalico, Keira Gong, Kiru, lamonnaie, Lavender, Loria, Lucia G, LWynn, Max, Nikki, Nioral, noctilucent, Our Hospitality, Primo, Rie, Salethia, Sapphira, sashene, Schnee, Scylle, sneakyowl, soymilk, Thaddeus, TheCrystalRing, thewritegrump, Water, Wintam, yucca, and 1 other Tag Wrangling Volunteer
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
New TWC Volunteers: Lys Benson (Copyeditor)
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Cesium (Translator)

Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Irina, Paula, and 2 other Import Assistants; 1 Administrative Volunteer, and 1 Fan Culture Preservation Project Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Communications News Post Moderation Liaison
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Julia Santos (Tag Wrangling Supervisor); blackelement7, pan2fel, and 7 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: weliuona and 2 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Alisande and 2 other 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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely 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 AuroraT, who volunteers as an administrative volunteer for Open Doors.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I'm an administrative volunteer with the Open Doors Committee, which helps import at-risk digital archives to AO3 in order to preserve fanworks that might otherwise be lost. I'm responsible for project management, walking an archive and its archivist through our lengthy import process. We put a lot of effort into keeping track of the metadata for each work and respecting creators' privacy, so a lot of what I do involves managing spreadsheets and communicating with the archivist, other committees in the OTW, and other teams in the Open Doors Committee. I also write documentation for the committee, updating or writing down our procedures and information about the archives I'm managing.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
There's a lot of variety in what an import project requires, so my weeks tend to vary a lot. Sometimes, I'll spend one of our weekly meetings working on a single task, such as preparing the documents we need to initiate a new import or cleaning up a spreadsheet. Other times, I'll jump around from task to task: emailing a different committee, discussing a procedure change with other admin volunteers, responding to feedback on documentation I wrote, creating the AO3 collection where we'll add the works we imported, answering a ticket from a creator wanting to claim works we previously imported, and so on.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I'm a huge supporter of the OTW's mission to preserve fanworks and fight censorship, and I had been watching calls for volunteers for positions I was qualified for in order to contribute to those efforts. I'd recently gotten much more into fanwork preservation when I began working at a library with a zine collection, where I was managing cataloguing and shelving a backlog of donated zines. Project management and working with spreadsheets is a lot of fun! When I saw the application for the administrative volunteer position, it seemed in line with my interests and skills, so I applied.

(Coincidentally, and unbeknownst to me when I applied, the library I was working at is one of Open Doors' partner institutions for our Fan Culture Preservation Project, which helps connect donors with physical fanworks to libraries and archives with zine collections. Some of the donations I was processing were facilitated with the help of Open Doors!)

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
It's absolutely task management. Our process for importing an archive is over a hundred steps long and some of those require a lot of prep work and communication between people. And that's not even including documentation or other administrative work! Thankfully, through the miracle of digital checklists and automatic reminders, as well as the detailed procedure instructions Open Doors has written over the years, it's not too difficult to keep on top of everything. Plus, I have my lovely fellow committee members to help out when I need it :)

What fannish things do you like to do?
I read a lot of fanfiction these days, especially longfics—the one I'm currently reading is over 430k words long and still being published. I also really like to leave long comments on the fics I read. It's a lot of fun to get that sweet, sweet AO3 email that the author responded to me! Recently, I started writing fanfiction for the first time in several years. Joining a new fandom really helped get those creative juices flowing.

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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely 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 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:

• Alternate Universe - Cakeverse | Cake and Fork
• Best Friends to Lovers
• Friends to Strangers to Lovers
• Lovers to Strangers
• Broken Ribs
• Canon-Typical Incest
• Consensual Incest
• CFNF | Clothed Female Naked Female
• CMNM | Clothed Male Naked Male
• Characters with Two Penises
• Hemipenes
• Choking Kink
• Fleshlights
• Group Chats
• Honeypot Missions
• Identity Crisis
• Impalement
• Implied/Referenced Breeding Kink
• Impostor Syndrome
• Just the Tip
• Lavender Marriages
• Mating Cycles/In Rut
• Meet-Ugly
• No Character Bashing
• NTR | Netorare
• Older Bottom Characters
• Younger Top Characters
• Younger Top Characters/Older Bottom Characters
• Pacifiers
• Parentification
• Screen Reader Friendly
• Talking About Feelings
• Tragic Backstory

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:

• Cakeverse
• Chatfic
• Character Bashing
• Friends to Lovers
• Meet Ugly

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 & 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts & Announcements

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 two 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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

PhoenixSong.net, a Harry Potter fanfiction and fanart 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 PhoenixSong.net
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

PhoenixSong.net is being archived at AO3 to help ensure that the works will remain available. AO3 will also give its users the ability to review and respond to reviews, which hasn’t been the case at PhoenixSong.net for a while now.

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 Sherylyn to import PhoenixSong.net into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all images currently in PhoenixSong.net will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Phoenixsong.net to the AO3 after November. 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 PhoenixSong.net?

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. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your PhoenixSong.net 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 you used on the original archive.
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 archive collection.
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 archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your PhoenixSong.net 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 PhoenixSong.net mod 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 collection PhoenixSong.net

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 PhoenixSong.net 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 PhoenixSong.net!

- The Open Doors team and Sherylyn

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.

AO3 is turning 16! It's been another year of growth for AO3. Since this time last year, we passed both eight million and nine million registered users! We also passed 14 million, 15 million, and 16 million fanworks on the site, including one million works in Mandarin Chinese—the first non-English language to reach this milestone!

AO3's committees have also done a lot of important work this year! Accessibility, Design, & Technology published multiple important code releases, including security improvements like sending you an email when you or someone logged in to your account changes your username, password, or email as well as new features like allowing you to use CSS custom properties in site skins or add tags to your collections!

AO3's Tag Wranglers published four updates on "No Fandom" tags, which are tags that are not associated with any particular fandom. Many of the new tags they've made canonical (marked common) include commonly requested ones like Breeding Kink, Mind Break, and Rivals to Lovers. Check out the full list of new and modified No Fandom tags!

OTW Open Doors announced the import of five fanwork and two zine archives to AO3, including fanworks related to fandoms such as Harry Potter, Inuyasha, and Star Trek: The Original Series. You can look through all old import announcements by browsing AO3 news for the Open Doors tag.

Policy & Abuse published a series of important Terms of Service (TOS) Spotlight news posts that answered common questions about violations of AO3's TOS. Check them out here:

• Non-fanworks
• Ratings & Warnings
• Fandom, Language, and Other Tags
• Offensive Content
• Harassment
• Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
• Commercial Promotion

We're so excited about all the wonderful things that have happened this year and we can't wait to see what future years bring!

Prompt!

To celebrate AO3's 16th birthday, we want to prompt you to post a fanwork featuring 16 in some way! This could be a work about Season/Series 16 of a show, or a character with 16 in their name like Android 16 (Dragon Ball), or even a character celebrating their 16th Birthday. We encourage you to get creative! When you post your works on AO3 or social media, tag them #AO3Celebrates16!

Comment!

If you don't feel like creating a work, that's okay! Instead, celebrate this anniversary with us by commenting on 16 fanworks and recommending your favorite in the comments!

Thank you for celebrating 16 years of AO3 with us!

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

I. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

October's Membership Drive ran smoothly, with Communications drafting posts in coordination with Development & Membership, and Translation making drive materials available in 26 languages. Finance also published a mid-year budget update prior to the Drive. This year's October Drive spotlighted Systems, who handle the OTW's server infrastructure, respond to outages, and perform routine upgrades and maintenance to ensure the OTW's projects remain available.

In total, we raised around $290,000 USD during the Drive, with around 2,500 gifts requested and around 7,000 people either starting or renewing their OTW membership. Thank you so much for your support!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In October, AO3 celebrated reaching 16 million works. Thank you to everyone who helped us achieve this milestone!

Accessibility, Design & Technology upgraded their servers to Ruby 3.4. They had a record 6 releases in 3 weeks which included bug fixes, usability improvements to a variety of AO3's site features, and further preparatory work for making AO3's interface and emails translatable in the future.

AO3 Documentation updated the Orphaning FAQ.

Open Doors announced two new import projects: The Pinky and the Brain Page, a Pinky and the Brain fanfiction archive, and Dreaming the Answers, an X-Files fanzine.

In September, Policy & Abuse received 4,300 tickets, while Support received 3,372 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled over 520,000 tags—around 1,150 tags per wrangling volunteer.

Tag Wrangling also continued the process of creating new "No Fandom" canonical tags and released a new batch of tags in October.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications' Con Outreach division coordinated the OTW's attendance at COMICUP ShangHai Plus 2025 in Shanghai, China, and MCM Comic Con London 2025 in London, England. Thank you to the volunteers who tabled these conventions, and everyone who said hi to us there!

Fanlore celebrated a Books themed month in October! Their next editing challenge will give editors a chance to earn missed badges from previous challenges. Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr for announcements about the challenge, which will run from November 16 to 30.

In October, Legal and an ally, the Wikimedia Foundation, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that Mississippi's online age verification statute overburdens mission-driven platforms and threatens the free speech rights of those platforms and their users. For more details, head over to our latest Spotlight on Legal Issues. Legal also answered a number of queries from fans.

TWC is finishing reviewing articles for the two upcoming 2026 special issues: "Disability and Fandom" and "Gaming Fandom".

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board held their third quarter public Board meeting on October 5 in the Board Discord. There were 35 attendees, and they answered 8 questions. Meeting minutes are available on the OTW website. Board also approved signing on to two US Supreme Court amicus briefs, one on opposing an age verification law and one on public domain of a folklore character.

The Board Assistants Team assisted with Board turnover, continued work on the OTW website, and collaborated with Organizational Culture Roadmap towards their goals. Organizational Culture Roadmap is currently in the process of evaluating responses to a survey of volunteers about the OTW Code of Conduct.

Strategic Planning continues to prepare for the 2026-2029 Strategic Plan. They are currently exploring different tools to support them in running the next phase: prioritization.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for five committees this month: Fanlore, Open Doors, Policy & Abuse, Translation, and User Response Translation. Volunteers & Recruiting also finalized an update to the OTW Name Policy, which contains information on what OTW names are now permitted, under what name volunteer work may be credited publicly, how to request a reference letter if someone's OTW name is not their legal name, and more.

From September 25 to October 24, Volunteers & Recruiting received 145 new requests, and completed 140, leaving them with 54 open requests. As of October 24, 2025, the OTW has 983 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg (Board Directors), and Rachel Linton (Vice President)
New Committee Chairs/Leads: Kyrie (Support)
New AD&T Volunteers: marcus8448 and ömer faruk (Software Developers)
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 2 Development & Membership Volunteers
New Open Doors Volunteers: eviltothecore13 and 1 other Technical Volunteer
New Support Volunteers: V Snow (Chair Assistant)
New User Response Translation Volunteers: meat (Volunteer Coordinator)

Departing Directors: Jennifer Haynes (Director) and Kathryn Soderholm (Vice President role only)
Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Accessibility, Design, & Technology Chair
Departing AD&T Volunteers: 1 Software Developer and 1 Senior Volunteer
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing BAT Volunteers: spacegandalf (Volunteer)
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Vihi (News Post Moderator)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Executie, Hazelwyrm, Jas, SCEnt Hope, Zoë Two Dots, and 4 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: heine and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Amy2 (Projects Volunteer) and Ehryn (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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

We’ve heard from users concerned about many recent laws and their potential to impact AO3. We want to reassure you that while this continues to be a challenging time with a number of troubling laws under consideration around the world, AO3 is not currently affected. AO3 is run by a noncommercial, nonprofit organization, and it does not implement infinite scroll, offer recommendations to users, or use other techniques with which many regulators are concerned.

While these bills should not directly impact AO3, they are a reminder to stay alert for potential legal issues affecting fans in your area. Where applicable, the OTW encourages people to contact their local representatives and voice their concerns. You can read more about the OTW's Legal Advocacy work on our website.

Chinese Obscenity Laws and Danmei Authors

We have received a number of inquiries from concerned users regarding the arrests of dozens of danmei writers in China. As an organization, the OTW wholeheartedly shares these concerns. We stand firmly in support of free expression and we are closely monitoring the situation.

Age Verification Laws

Age verification laws have been proposed in multiple states and countries around the world. These laws create barriers that prevent open access to information, hamper the right to freedom of speech, and threaten users’ privacy. The OTW continues to strongly oppose these laws and we want to assure you that we do not intend to introduce age verification on our projects. We continue to monitor for opportunities to make our voice heard and encourage fans to do so as well. Local voices are often the most important for policymakers to hear from.

We've filed two amicus briefs on age verification laws already this year. One, filed with Wikimedia (who runs Wikipedia) and other organizations, in Netchoice v. Brown, urged the appellate court to uphold a block on the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act which requires online platforms to verify users' ages before allowing access, restrict certain content for minors through strict controls, and actively monitor and edit content in order to remain compliant with these restrictions.

In a second amicus brief filed with Wikimedia in Netchoice v. Fitch, we expressed concerns with Mississippi House Bill 1126, which threatens platforms’ ability to distribute free knowledge by imposing broad, sweeping restrictions that encroach on free speech rights.

Copyright

We also filed another amicus brief with other organizations in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, where we discussed the importance of internet access as a practical necessity of daily life, and argued that holding service providers liable for users’ copyright infringement based only on accusations of infringement, rather than actual proof of infringement, would threaten innovation and creativity by creating an incentive for service providers to deny service to creators without requiring evidence or providing due process.

UK’s Online Safety Act

We are monitoring how the Online Safety Act is being interpreted and enforced by the authorities.

Russia’s LGBT Ban

Russia’s restrictions on LGBT-themed content have escalated from a 2013 law aimed at protecting minors to a sweeping ban on all positive depictions of LGBT relationships. In 2023, the Russian Supreme Court labeled the "international LGBT movement" as extremist, effectively criminalizing LGBT advocacy. We strongly condemn this and continue to monitor the situation.

Game Storefronts Delisting NSFW Content

Recently, gaming storefronts Itch.io, Steam, and Valve have begun removing or restricting adult content, citing pressure from payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. These moves are obviously concerning for freedom of expression. The OTW remains committed to both fans' privacy and freedom of imagination. We will not change our policies on explicit or queer media.

KOSA

We continue to monitor the progression of KOSA, which has been reintroduced in the United States Congress. Although AO3 is not a covered platform under this bill, the legislation, if passed, is likely to have serious freedom of speech and privacy implications for all internet users. OTW Legal has already communicated its opposition to this bill to Congress and continues to encourage U.S. users to voice their opposition to it.

Australian Online Safety Act

While we do not believe that this law as-is applies to AO3 or any of our other projects, this is a developing situation that we will continue to monitor. Read more about this in our earlier post: Social Media Bans and AO3.

With regard to all the above legislation as well as any in the future, AO3 and the OTW will do whatever we can to preserve access to AO3 and inform users if anything changes. We remain committed to freedom of expression and will defend it as necessary to ensure that AO3 remains a safe, open space for creative expression.

Is there a new law that might affect fans or fannish activities in your country or region? Send us a message about legislation you think we should know about. (Submitting a concern doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a future Spotlight on Legal Issues post.)

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely 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 Julie Bozza, who volunteers as a Senior FSHP Volunteer and project manager for the Open Doors AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) for Open Doors.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I first did a Five Things in March 2022, for my role as an Open Doors Administrative Volunteer. Back then, Open Doors’ main focus was on preserving fanworks from digital archives that were at risk of being lost. We had also established the Fan Culture Preservation Project (FCPP) which helps fans looking for a new home for their physical fannish artifacts to get in touch with interested collecting institutions, such as the University of Iowa Libraries.

Since then, I’m delighted to say that Open Doors partnered up with the fan-run preservation project Zinedom to create the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP), which runs as part of FCPP.

The OTW is keenly interested in preserving and engaging with our shared fannish history, and making fanworks available to our community. I love the thought that someone might be browsing through Fanlore, or reading an issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, and get curious about a particular fanwork - maybe dating back to a zine published 50 years ago —and then be able to find the text and related artwork preserved on AO3.

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

We have a number of fanzine publishers and individual creators who are already working with FSHP to import their fanworks to AO3. The import process can be quite lengthy, and has numerous steps, so a typical week might involve anything from exchanging emails with publishers or creators, to setting up a formal agreement with them, scanning fanzines and using OCR to convert the PDFs into editable text, proofreading the text, creating AO3 archivist accounts and collections, and so on… At some point we start the actual importing of works as well!

The Open Doors team has a few informal working meetings during the week, so I do my work then and keep an eye out for any FSHP-related questions. We have a large team of volunteers who help with the various tasks, along with their other OTW work, so all sorts of queries can arise.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I used to publish fanzines myself, starting in the late 1980s, and I wrote for and read other zines. As the decades-old badge on Fanlore’s Zine page announces, “FANZINES ARE FANDOM”. That was certainly the case for me, especially here in Australia, which can seem a long way from anywhere! There were wonderful events and conventions, and a group of Australian Buckaroo Banzai fans who would meet up for film screenings and Mongolian meals, but for me the heart of fandom was not only in the people but also in the creativity to be found in zines.

When the task came up of developing the idea of FSHP, writing up the necessary policies and processes, and getting the project underway, it made perfect sense to me that I would volunteer to help drive that.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
We love spreadsheets in Open Doors, and couldn’t organise our imports of digital archives so well without them. But we knew that FSHP was going to be more complicated still, and we needed a database in order to manage a creator’s fanworks across a range of fanzines - and a publisher’s fanzine content across a range of creators - while dealing with different processes for word-based works and visual-based works.

It was a challenge—but an enjoyable one—to design and map a useful database, with helpful hints and tips from other OTW volunteers. And then to build it. And then to transfer across a whole lot of data from a number of spreadsheets that varied in content and organisation.

What can I say? I loved it! We’ve started using the FSHP Database for real now, and so far (luckily) the complaints have been minimal.

What fannish things do you like to do?
What I love most is writing, but alas I don’t do so much of that anymore. I love The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and the related tv show, so re-reading and re-watching those is entertaining. Otherwise, Fandom is my fandom - and, now that I’m retired from the day job, I’m devoting many of my hours to supporting OTW’s work in the world. The only thing that could possibly be nicer than that would be for me to be writing again as well!

Meanwhile, if you are a reader, creator, or publisher of fanzines - and there is zine fic or art that you’d like to see preserved on AO3 - please do get in touch with Open Doors. We’d love to help!

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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In October, we continued our internationalization efforts to make AO3's interface and emails translatable. We also worked on usability improvements to a variety of site features, including clarified buttons for posting and editing works, improved password reset messages and forms, and more consistent redirects when logging in or out. Alongside these updates, we overhauled exchange participants' Assignments pages and smoothed out other smaller issues across the site.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Cole Kelling, Cubostar, John Pork, and Tani!

Credits

• Coders: Abhinav Gupta, anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, CJ Record, Cole Kelling, Connie Feng, Cubostar, dismayonnaise, Emily Wiegand, Ivedonestranger, Jake Faulkner, james_, John Pork, katieyang, marcus8448, nil-cipher (Wanda), Samridhi, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, Tani, weeklies, Yanpei Wang
• Code reviewers: anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, Hamham6, james_, lydia-theda, redsummernight, Sarken, Scott, slavalamp, weeklies
• Testers: Allonautilus, Anh P, AuroraT, Bilka, Brian Austin, choux, Deniz, hvalrann, Keladry, killiane, Lute, lydia-theda, Meep Linger, megidola, ömer faruk, ­Pent, pk2317, Sarken, Scott, Teyris, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.433

On October 1, we deployed improvements around password changes and resets. We also made some other small security fixes all around the site.

• [AO3-2520] - We made it possible to delete comments with JavaScript disabled.
• [AO3-5640] - When a Policy & Abuse admin tries to leave notes on an account without selecting an action to connect those notes to (e.g., banning the user or just making notes), they will now get a sensible error message.
• [AO3-7023] - We fixed the invisible error you'd get if you tried to create a bookmark for an invalid external URL.
• [AO3-7125] - The site we linked on our "Session Expired" error page to explain how to clear your browser cache removed their tutorial, so we are now linking to a different site.
• [AO3-7127] - We bumped rexml from 3.4.1 to 3.4.2.
• [AO3-7136] - Since the 8tracks website no longer exists, we removed it from the list of allowed sources for embedded media and the Terms of Service FAQ.
• [AO3-7137] - We bumped the rack gem from 2.2.17 to 2.2.18 to deal with a security issue.
• [AO3-6139] - The series we created in our automated tests didn't always contain a work, which was confusing. We've updated them to always contain at least one work.
• [AO3-6968] - AO3's tag wranglers often need to access or post comments on tags, so we added links in the wrangling bins to make that easier to do.
• [AO3-7038] - We restricted the ability to grant all current users invitations to admins with certain roles.
• [AO3-7086] - We updated the wording and layout of the change password page (as well as some related error messages) to improve clarity and ease of use.
• [AO3-7112] - To assist users resetting their password, we updated the instructions in the password reset email.
• [AO3-7114] - We improved the error message you received when you tried to reset your password using an invalid or incorrect link so that it actually explains what went wrong.
• [AO3-7126] - We improved the wording of the most recent login information in the user history accessible to admins.

0.9.435

On October 3, we upgraded to Ruby 3.4 and it all went smoothly! Except that our release script skipped a version number again, but that's a very minor problem for a major upgrade.

• [AO3-7145] - We upgraded Ruby from version 3.2 to 3.4 in multiple slow steps.
• [AO3-7148] - To reduce deprecation errors with the Ruby 3.4 upgrade, we replaced the unmaintained unicode_utils gem with Ruby's built-in Unicode case folding.

0.9.436

On October 9, we overhauled the page where a user's challenge assignments are listed to make it easier to find incomplete assignments. We also fixed some style issues and did a lot of work for our ongoing project to internationalize the entire site!

• [AO3-7029] - The Low Vision Default skin was missing the links to skip to and from the filters; the links are now present.
• [AO3-7077] - We fixed some old, broken links tag wranglers saw when looking at the tag wrangling tools page.
• [AO3-5349] - When someone fills your prompt from a prompt meme, you get an email. We've prepared this email for translation.
• [AO3-6415] - To help gift exchange participants find assignments they need to fulfill, we've split Assignments pages into two pages: Unposted Assignments and Completed Assignments. Additionally, completed assignments are no longer counted in the sidebar, and all assignments are now listed in order of assignment date to ensure that your most pressing assignments are displayed first.
• [AO3-7005] - Some buttons in iOS Safari had bold text, so we unbolded them to match all the other buttons.
• [AO3-7020] - We've set up our work byline cache to be translatable without any risk of showing a cached translation to someone who isn't using that locale. This is an important first step in preparing more cached content for interface translation.
• [AO3-7043] - We migrated the filter taggings table, which helps keep track of which canonical tags apply to a work, so it can hold more rows and won't run out of room in the future.
• [AO3-7055] - We made the emails you get when someone leaves you a comment or edits it translatable.
• [AO3-7075] - We added some extra padding around the "Last visited" text on works in your history.
• [AO3-7103] - We updated the email you receive when Open Doors uploads a work of yours as part of importing an archive to AO3.
• [AO3-7105] - Similarly, we updated the email you get if you don't already have an AO3 account when Open Doors imports one of your works.

0.9.437

On October 13, we changed the buttons for posting, previewing, and editing a work to have clearer names and behave more consistently. We also fixed a number of small bugs.

• [AO3-4181] - We made it so that pressing "Cancel" while editing a work redirects you to the specific work you were editing, instead of the page with all your works.
• [AO3-6217] - We fixed the 500 error that occurred when an admin pressed "Cancel" on the page to edit a work's tags or language.
• [AO3-7018] - You will no longer receive a 500 error if you enter an invalid URL in a collection's custom header URL field. Instead you will get an error message telling you what the problem is.
• [AO3-7108] - We fixed a problem where the default skin could have the wrong attributes in development installs.
• [AO3-7124] - For chapters with custom titles, the chapter title in the work download wouldn't include the chapter number. We've added it now, so the chapter title always matches what you see on the website.
• [AO3-7154] - We fixed a bug that was preventing Policy & Abuse admins from adding a custom note when banning a spambot.
• [AO3-5996] - We're renaming a database column on comments to more accurately reflect its purpose. As part of that, we've now started recording data in the column with the new name.
• [AO3-7153] - We updated the rack gem from version 2.2.18 to 2.2.20 to address a security issue.
• [AO3-6644] - Collection header images used to allow .jpg files but not .jpeg files. Now we accept both formats, since they're the same type of image.
• [AO3-7085] - We added a "Save Draft" button to the form for posting a new work and updated all of the buttons at the bottom of the forms for posting, previewing, or editing a work to be more clear and consistent.
• [AO3-7096] - To make it easier to debug issues with collections' unrevealed and anonymous settings, we're now tracking when they were last updated. (Please note that this information is only intended for admins with database access and is not included on the site interface.)
• [AO3-7106] - We moved the code for editing your profile from the users controller to the more fitting profile controller.

0.9.438

On October 17, we deployed a large refactoring of how we handle redirects back to pages that you came from, which made redirects after logging in and out much more reliable and also fixed some redirect-related 500 errors when accessing AO3 through alternative URLs.

• [AO3-3011] - You will no longer get an error 404 if you hide a site banner and then log out.
• [AO3-3719] - If you open a restricted work while logged out and then log in from the page you are redirected to, you will now be redirected back to the work instead of to your user dashboard.
• [AO3-5842] - If you change your skin using the footer, you will stay on the page you were viewing with the correct skin applied, instead of being redirected to the page about the skin.
• [AO3-5913] - When you log in for the first time, you will now only get a message saying you've successfully logged in instead of a confusing message that says, "Your account has already been activated."
• [AO3-6402] - When you delete an account and log in to a different one, you will no longer be directed to the "Account deleted!" page, which would make you wrongly think you deleted the account you just logged into.
• [AO3-5949] - Across a variety of corners of AO3, we've changed where you get redirected to when you log in, log out, or cancel actions, so that it's generally more logical to what you're trying to do.

0.9.439

On October 20, we made several internationalization-related email updates and released a variety of smaller fixes.

• [AO3-4309] - We prepared the subscription email for translation, which involved some complicated localization and caching problems all at once!
• [AO3-5804] - Together with preparing the subscription email for translation, we also changed it to only show a chapter's byline if it is different from the already listed work byline.
• [AO3-5805] - And while we were at it, we also made sure the chapter byline in the subscription email really is the chapter byline, and not the work byline.
• [AO3-7128] - We prevented collection maintainers with differing roles on a parent and subcollection from being listed twice in subcollection blurbs and profiles.
• [AO3-7163] - We fixed a bug that prevented the live validation error messages for the fields on the edit profile page from showing up.
• [AO3-7173] - We fixed an error 500 when you updated your filtered inbox (such as marking a comment as read) while accessing AO3 via an alternative URL.
• [AO3-7162] - We upgraded the version of github/codeql-action from 3 to 4.
• [AO3-7172] - We upgraded the redis gem from version 3.3 to 4.8.
• [AO3-6733] - If a work or user has been reported to Policy & Abuse, AO3 won't let you report them again for a period to prevent duplicate reports. We've made this period configurable so that it can be adjusted as needed.
• [AO3-7063] - We prevented Safari on iOS from assuming that random numbers were phone numbers and turning them into links to call those numbers.
• [AO3-7069] - To assist with testing, we made it possible to display specific works in our email previews.
• [AO3-7113] - We updated the form for changing your password as part of a password reset to more closely match the form you see if you're changing your password while logged in.
• [AO3-7155] - We added a missing space between the text and the arrow on the "Previous Chapter" link at the bottom of multichapter works.

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 will provide an overview of some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued a method which streamlines creation of 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:

• Accidental Child Acquisition
• Alternate Universe - YouTubers
• Aunt/Niece Incest
• Grandfather/Grandson Incest
• Mother/Daughter Incest
• Bathing Together
• Showering Together
• Ball Gags
• Cervix Penetration
• Penetrative Sex
• Coming Inside Someone
• Consensual Blood Drinking
• Dark Romance
• Discussions of Death
• Erectile Dysfunction
• Good Parenting
• Implied/Referenced Cannibalism
• Instagram
• Oh. OH. | Italicized Oh Moment
• Lovers to Enemies to Lovers
• Rivals to Friends to Lovers
• The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known
• Non-Sexual Nudity
• No Pregnancy
• Nuzzling
• Parasocial Relationships
• Partially Canon Compliant
• Past Suicide Attempts
• Pet Play
• Pillow Princesses
• Piss Drinking
• Pissing Inside Someone
• Reverse Harem
• Shock Collars
• Situationships
• Trauma Recovery
• Texting Fic
• Wound Fucking
• Y/N Used for Reader-Insert

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts with which you’re intimately familiar, others may be concepts you’ve never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers over 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:

• Accidental Baby Acquistion
• Y/N
• Dark Romance
• Incest
• “Oh”
• Parasocial Relationship
• Reverse Harem
• Texting Fic
• Watersports

While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future on the 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 & 5 Things Said by Wrangling Volunteers
• Past Fandom-Specific and "No Fandom" Tag Wrangling Change Posts & Announcements

Got Questions?

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.

We do ask, however, that requesters 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 two 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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is a partnership between the Open Doors committee and fan-run preservation project Zinedom through which fanfiction and fanart originally published in print fanzines is imported to the Archive of Our Own. Fanworks can be imported to AO3 with the consent of either the creators of the works or the publisher of the fanzine in which the fanworks were published.

Today, Open Doors is pleased to announce a list of collections that it has created since September 2024 to house fanworks imported through the FSHP. A collection has been created for each fanzine from which one or more fanworks have been imported, but these collections do not contain every work from each of these zines, and many so far only include one work each in cases where Open Doors only has permission to import that particular work. For full transparency, Open Doors plans to continue to announce collections as they are created that may or may not grow with additional fanworks as additional permissions are obtained from more creators in the future.

As of August 2025, Open Doors has created the following collections to represent fanzines from which it has imported works:

• A Gathering of Blacque
• A Little Past, A Little Future
• A Question of Trust
• Act 5
• Another K/S Zine
• Betrayed
• Bondmates
• Charisma
• Cheap Thrills
• Choices
• Cold Fish and Stale Chips
• Companion
• Contact Christmas
• Counterpoint
• Cyberdreams
• Derelicts
• Despatch
• Duet
• Dyad
• Encounters
• Enigma
• Friends Will Be Friends
• Hierarchy of Needs
• Hysterical Historicals
• Impossible Things
• Leap in the Dark
• LoneStar Trek
• Mind Meld
• Mirrors of Mind and Flesh
• More Missions, More Myths
• No Greater Love
• Nocturne
• Old, Bold Spies
• One Way or Another
• Out of Bounds
• Outrider
• Portraits
• Scales of Justice
• Tantalus
• The Black Box
• The Cosmic Collected
• The Eightfold Fence
• The Fake's Progress
• The First Duty
• The Long and Winding Road
• The Pits
• Thrust
• TREKisM at Length
• Uncharted Waters
• Undercover
• Vault of Tomorrow
• Voyages
• Wheels of Darkness and Other Stories
• Worlds Apart

For answers to frequently asked questions, please see the FSHP page on the Open Doors website. If you'd like to give Open Doors permission to import any of your fanworks that have been previously published in print fanzines, or if you have any other FSHP-related queries, please contact the Open Doors Committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of any fanzines in which they may have been published on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

Thanks for your interest in preserving fannish history for future generations of readers!

- The Open Doors team

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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Are you fluent in a language other than English? Do you have graphic design skills and enjoy creating social media content? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? Are you fluent in a language other than English, passionate about AO3, and want to help us better reply to users all around the world? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

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

• Translation Translators - closing 29 October 2025 at 23:59 UTC
• Fanlore Graphics Designer Volunteer - closing 29 October 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• Open Doors Import Assistant - closing 29 October 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 50 applications
• User Response Translation Translators - closing 29 October 2025 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. 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.

Translation Translators

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, Catalan, Estonian, Filipino, Galician, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, European Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese 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 Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian teams are not accepting new members at this time. If you are fluent in one of these languages and interested in volunteering, please consider volunteering for another team within the organization instead. The User Response Translation Committee is currently recruiting for the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese, as well as Russian. For more information, please refer to the Volunteering page.)

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 29 October 2025.

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

Fanlore Graphics Designer

Would you like to help Fanlore reach more fans and get new editors? Do you have graphic design skills and enjoy creating social media content? If so, we need your help! The Fanlore team needs designers to create graphics and banners for social media posts, editing challenges and other outreach projects to help us reach more fans and potential editors. We have a lot of amazing fan history and fandom content, but we need you to help others find out about it. If you think you might enjoy that, come and join us!

If you’re interested, please prepare a portfolio of your work to submit with your application. As part of our design review process, applicants will also be asked to create a sample graphic for Fanlore. Further directions will be given upon applying.

Applications are due 29 October 2025 or after 40 applications.

Apply to be a Fanlore Graphics Designer 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 29 October 2025 or after 50 applications.

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

User Response Translation Translators

Are you fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, or Spanish, and want to help us better communicate with AO3 users all over the world?

User Response Translation (URT) volunteers help AO3 committees to correspond with users in other languages. URT translators will assist the Policy & Abuse and Support committees by translating correspondence between these committees and AO3 users into specific languages. URT does not translate AO3 or OTW site pages, news posts, or fanworks.

We are looking for volunteers who are at least 18 years old and fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, or Spanish. Applicants will be asked to translate and beta (edit) short text samples as part of the selection process.

(If you are fluent in languages that are not listed above and interested in volunteering, please consider volunteering for another team within the organization instead. The Translation Committee is currently recruiting for the following languages: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Estonian, Filipino, Galician, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, European Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh. For more information, please refer to the Volunteering page.)

Applications are due 29 October 2025.

Apply to be a User Response 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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Celebrations are in order, because the Archive of Our Own (AO3) has recently surpassed 16 million fanworks! Incredible timing, as very soon AO3 will also celebrate its 16th anniversary (keep an eye out for that)!

As always, we'd like to thank each and every one of you for contributing to this achievement. Whether you are out there creating fanworks celebrating them in the comments, sharing them online or hosting fandom-related events - or engaging in fandom in any other of the myriad possible ways - you are a cornerstone of the archive's continued existence, growth and improvement!

Speaking of improvements: Did you know that you can learn about all the latest changes and updates to AO3 by reading our change logs? Our volunteer programmers, code reviewers and testers work tirelessly behind the scenes to maintain the site, combat bugs, and bring you new features. If you are interested in reading the latest releases, simply filter AO3 news using the release notes tag.

Or, if you want to delve deeper into some AO3 and OTW related technical topics, the Systems committee—who manages the OTW's servers and technical infrastructure—occasionally posts about exciting insights into past tech-related issues with AO3 on their account: AO3_Systems.

If you are interested in coding yourself, you can even contribute to improving AO3's code, all without becoming a volunteer! You can find more in our Contributing Guidelines on GitHub.

Whether you are a tech enthusiast or here to celebrate reaching 16 million works on AO3, we are once again more than grateful for your support, and excited to share more achievements with you in months and years to come!

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