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Open Doors has nearly finished importing FictionAlley, a Harry Potter archive. With approximately 29,000 works imported so far, it is Open Doors' largest import yet. You can check out all imported works at the FictionAlley collection. Unclaimed works are currently locked to logged-in AO3 users only, but per Open Doors' agreement with the FictionAlley archivist, they will be unlocked 30 days after the import is fully completed.
All FictionAlley creators should have received one or more emails with links to claim, orphan, delete their works, or prevent the import of any additional works of theirs in the future. If you were a creator and did not receive this email, please contact Open Doors for assistance. You can also contact Open Doors if you would like to prevent future imports of your Harry Potter works specifically.
Open Doors has two other Harry Potter archives currently in their queue: HarryPotterFanFiction.com and MuggleNet Fan Fiction. If your email address has changed since you were a member of either archive, or you would like Open Doors not to import your works, please contact Open Doors. Please refer to the import announcements for a full list of how Open Doors can assist you with either import.
Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) coordinated with Board and Volunteers & Recruiting to formally decommission the Quality Assurance & Testing (QA&T) subcommittee—thank you to everyone who has served on QA&T over the years. Quality assurance and testing of AO3's code will continue under the oversight of AD&T's new QA Supervisor role. AD&T's latest releases have focused on various bug fixes, code clean-up, and monitoring improvements: check out the release notes. Also, Systems has installed some new Elasticsearch servers and repurposed the old ones as application servers! \o/
Open Doors announced the import of Absolution – The Inugrrrl Memorial, an InuYasha fanfiction memorial archive.
In May, Support received 3,177 tickets, while Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 3,763 tickets—a nearly 40% increase which is likely due to PAC's recent TOS spotlight series. PAC worked with Legal and Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee to review over 1,700 comments across seven posts, with more than 400 comments receiving a reply. PAC will also be recruiting soon, so look out for the upcoming recruitment post! In June, Tag Wrangling neared completion of phase two of three of their committee-wide guideline discussions on fandom metatags. They also launched a new procedure which streamlines creation of new "No Fandom" canonical tags, which are canonical tags not specific to any particular fandom. The committee plans to post announcements periodically detailing new tags, including one in a few weeks.
In May, Tag Wrangling handled over 610,000 tags, or over 1,200 tags per wrangling volunteer.
Fanlore's Annual Bingo was a huge success! \o/ 25 participants completed at least one bingo, and 16 got a total blackout. Thanks to everyone who took part!
In July, Fanlore is running a themed month—Fandom in Color—which celebrates characters of color, the contributions of fans of color, and more! Check out their social media (Bluesky and Tumblr) for page spotlights throughout the month.
Communications is now overseeing the OTW's Convention Outreach division, which was previously run by Development & Membership. If you have inquiries regarding OTW's convention presence, Communications can be reached through their contact form on the OTW website.
TWC is finalizing their upcoming general issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, volume 46, which will be published on September 15. They are still accepting submissions for their Latin American Fandoms special issue until January 1, 2026.
Elections announced the 2025 Election candidates; this year's election is contested, with three candidates running for two open seats in this year's election. Their platforms are available on the Elections website. Communications has been coordinating public posts, while Translation is working on translating candidates' platforms.
2025's OTW Board Election will take place on August 15-18. OTW Members who plan to nominate a proxy should contact Elections by August 6. Specific dates for Q&A and Candidate Chats will be made available on the 2025 Election Timeline page.
Development & Membership has been checking membership for Board candidates and donors who want to vote in this year's election, while Finance has begun preparing for the 2024 audit.
Board uploaded minutes from the April 2025 Board public meeting to the OTW website. They also approved two new Finance Bookkeepers, held check-in meetings with Legal and the Paid Staff Transition Lead, and continued to work with the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup. The Board Assistants Team's work also continues on several projects, including the Procurement Policy and Board Discord Server Guidelines revamp.
Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for two committees—Tag Wrangling and Support—and two subcommittees—News Post Moderation and Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution—this month.
From May 19 to June 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 147 new requests and completed 139, leaving them with 53 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of June 22, 2025, the OTW has 944 volunteers. \o/
New Committee Chairs/Leads: 2 Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Heads
New AD&T Volunteers: 1 QA Supervisor
New Communications Volunteers: 2 Convention Specialists and 3 TikTok Moderators
New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: Mossie, Vihi, and 1 other News Post Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: 90PercentHuman, Hobgirl, Sparrow, and 1 other Policy & Admin Volunteer
New Finance Volunteers: Scott and 1 other Bookkeeper
New Open Doors Volunteers: Bette, devinwolfi, Kelpie, korry, November_Clouds, Pat Zarzecka, scattered_coreopsis, Starlings and 6 other Import Assistants
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Goal Supervisor; megidola and 1 other Volunteer
New Support Volunteers: 2 Chair Assistants
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Adri Jaimes, Lia404, ttom1323, and 5 other Translators
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Felipe and friki (Translators)
Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Nary (Support) and 2 QA&T Leads
Departing AD&T QA&T Volunteers: runt and 1 other QA&T Testing Volunteer
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Leja, Evolcahra, and 1 other Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Lead
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Convention Specialist
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Import Assistants and 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Sandra 002 (Volunteer)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: ladydragona (Supervisor); Daniailís, MFY11EP, Barbara Thomas, and 3 other Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager; Mirjam, DaisyJane, DanielUL, and 6 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, 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.
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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 Rhine, who volunteers as a volunteer manager in the Translation Committee.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
As a Translation volunteer manager I mostly deal with admin work that surrounds the work our translators do – be it talking to other committees about things that are to be translated, preparing English texts for translation, making sure our version of the text is up to date, or getting texts published once they are translated – along with more general personnel stuff like recruiting new translators, keeping a clear record of who is supposed to be working on what and who is on break, checking in with translators and how they feel about their work, that kind of thing. Having been in this role for some time now, I also help with mentoring newer volunteer managers in how to do what we do, at the scale we do it.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
There isn't one singular stereotypical week in this role, but some different modes with different focuses that are more or less typical for me:
What made you decide to volunteer?
I actually started volunteering at the OTW as an AO3 tag wrangler back in 2020, when lockdowns were on the horizon and I felt like I could pick up some extra stuff to do. Growing up bilingual and with some extra languages under my belt, I ended up hanging out in some of the spaces with lots of OTW translators. Then I found out that I could internally apply as a Translation volunteer manager, and the rest is pretty much history. At that point I was missing the feeling of doing some volunteer management and admin work anyway!
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
On a high level, I'd say it's striking a balance between the expectations and the reality of the work the Translation Committee does, including the sheer scale. On a more concrete level, it's like this: Being a translator in the Translation Committee is, by default, a relatively low commitment, with a number of optional tasks and rosters that we encourage people to take on, if they have the time and attention to spare. Part of how we ensure that is by dealing with as much of the overhead in advance as we can, as Translation volunteer managers.
This means that for instance, when the English version of a text is updated – which may take about two minutes in the original text – we go through each language team's copy of the text, make the changes as needed in the English copy, highlight what was changed, and reset the status in our internal task tracker so that it can be reassigned to a translator. This way the changed part is clearly visible to the translator, so they can quickly pinpoint what they need to do and make the corresponding changes in the translated text.
For both the author of the original English text and the translator, this is a very quick task. On the admin side, on the other hand, it's the same two-minute process of updating our documents repeated over and over, about 15 times on the low end for frequent news post series that we only assign to teams that consistently have some buffer to absorb the extra workload, and almost 50 times on the high end for some of our staple static pages that (almost) all teams have worked on, meaning it's something that takes somewhere between 30 minutes to almost two hours even when it's a tiny change and you're familiar with the workflow.
(And that's before getting to very last-minute changes and emergency news post translations with less than two days' turnaround time, where we manually track everything across around thirty teams, usually. Each time that has happened, everyone's dedication has blown me away. Thank you so much to everyone who answers those calls, you know who you are!)
What fannish things do you like to do?
I like to read, especially if it's something that plays around with worldbuilding or other things that were left unsaid in canon. I wish there were more hours in the day so that I can pick up some of my creative projects again. I suppose some of my coding projects like my AO3 userscripts and my AO3 Saved Filters bookmarklet also count as fannish?
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 earlier 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.
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The Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) is responsible for enforcing the AO3 Terms of Service (TOS). To help users better understand the TOS, we're posting a weekly spotlight series about the TOS and our policies. We'll also be reading comments and answering questions on this and our other spotlight posts.
For our last post in this series, we'll be talking about our non-commercialization policy. AO3 doesn't allow users to engage in commercial promotion of any type, which includes everything from paywalls to tip jars, and quite a lot in between. In this post, we'll discuss why AO3 doesn't allow commercialization, what kinds of activities are considered to be commercial promotion, and what to do if you see commercial promotion on AO3.
Please do not start searching for works to report after reading this post. We know that commercial promotion frequently appears on AO3. However, when people deliberately search for works to report, we end up getting a lot of duplicate tickets about works that have already been reported. Every ticket we receive is reviewed by a PAC volunteer, so we only need one report in order to investigate an issue. We know it seems like sites only respond to mass reports, but on AO3, duplicate and mass reports increase the time it takes our volunteers to investigate.
Commercial promotion covers all references or links to commercial sites, monetized features of non-commercial sites, and anything else that makes it clear someone is asking for or has received financial contributions.
On AO3, you can't encourage anyone to give other people money, or talk about anyone having given people money in the past. This applies whether you are promoting yourself or a friend, or even if you're collecting donations for other people or causes. If there is money changing hands, then it likely violates AO3's TOS.
AO3 was created and is managed by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a nonprofit organization committed to the defense and protection of fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenges. The OTW is entirely staffed by unpaid volunteers, and AO3 is itself entirely non-commercial. No one involved in AO3's creation or management profits from it. The site is made available free of charge to all fans who wish to share their works with other fans and fan communities.
We understand that many people today choose to monetize their creative activities. However, in order to keep AO3 as the non-commercial space it was designed to be, users are not permitted to engage in any commercial activity on the site.
When you use AO3, you agree to follow our Terms of Service, which includes the non-commercialization policy. This applies to all parts of the site, whether you're posting a work based on an existing source or creating content entirely original to you.
Real-world commercialization is banned everywhere on AO3. This includes:
It's okay for fictional characters in fanworks to talk about fictional monetization. For example, it's fine if a character has a fictional OnlyFans or Patreon within the story, as long as that commercial reference doesn't direct the reader to a real-world OnlyFans or Patreon account for the work creator or anyone else.
There is a wide variety of things that are not allowed under AO3's non-commercialization rules.
Links or references to any commercial site or service. A "commercial site" is any site whose primary purpose is to facilitate the transfer of money. This includes, but is not limited to:
Links or references to the monetized features of non-commercial sites. This covers any site that has features you can enable or opt-in to earn revenue, but the primary purpose of the site is social media, sharing artwork, or anything else that isn't inherently payment-focused. This includes, but is not limited to:
Previews and other promotions for paid content. This covers situations like excerpts or teasers shared in an attempt to entice people to purchase a book or become a paying subscriber. It also includes references to paywalled or early-access content (e.g. "Patreon subscribers get the new chapter one week early before I post it on AO3").
Advertising content or services involving an exchange of money, such as buying merchandise, collecting donations, offering paid commissions, or selling published works.
Any other language which one might interpret as requesting or having requested financial contributions, whether for yourself or others. This covers indirect references, euphemisms, or other language intended to get around the TOS. Some examples of this include:
Commercial activity is not permitted on AO3. It doesn't matter if you're promoting yourself or a friend, or even if you're collecting donations for other people or causes.
This means that if you paid an artist to create artwork for your fanfic, you're not allowed to mention that they have a Patreon or use any other language that suggests people should also commission or donate to them. If you like a book by a particular author, you are certainly welcome to gush about what a great book it is, but you can't link to the Amazon page where it's for sale or encourage others to buy it.
As mentioned above, a commercial site is a platform that is first and foremost intended to facilitate the exchange of money. For example, while you can use Ko-Fi as a blog, the site's primary purpose is to encourage people to give each other money. Ko-Fi's social features are secondary to its purpose as a donation and paid membership platform. This means you cannot link to or mention your or anyone else's actual Ko-Fi on AO3 whatsoever.
An example of a non-commercial site that has monetization features is DeviantArt, an art gallery that is mainly intended as a place to share artworks. DeviantArt also allows its users to opt-in to additional monetization features, such as the DeviantArt Shop. Because DeviantArt's paid features are both optional and not the primary reason people use the site, you can talk about or link to DeviantArt on AO3 – as long as you aren't directing anyone to a paywalled post or referencing DeviantArt's paid features in any way.
You're allowed to link or mention social media like Tumblr or personal websites like WordPress, even if you sometimes post about commercial activities on those sites. However, you cannot reference commercial promotion on AO3 itself, nor may you link, mention, or give instructions for finding an account, page, or post that is solely promoting paid content.
Statements such as "Follow me on social media" or "Check out my Linktree" are fine. Directing people to an Amazon author page or to the Ko-fi link in your Twitter bio would not be allowed. This includes things like "Check out my Linktree to learn how you can support me" in cases where you are clearly referring to monetary support.
While you cannot promote, solicit, or otherwise ask for donations on AO3, you are allowed to add your work to a collection or otherwise briefly mention why you created a fanwork, as long as you do so in a non-commercial manner. This means you can say "This was created for [Event]" or "Originally Written for [Name of Person/Zine]" as long as you do not directly link to a donation page or ask others to donate to them.
Keep in mind we also do not permit mentions of monetary transactions, regardless of when they occurred. A note such as "This was a $100 bid for Fandom Trumps Hate" would still be considered commercialization.
You are allowed to gift your work to someone else or otherwise briefly mention why you created a fanwork, as long as you do so in a non-commercial manner. Because not all commissioned fanworks were created for pay, we do permit usage of the word "commission" as long as there is no indication that a monetary transaction was involved in the creation of the work or that you are available to create other paid commissions.
For example, phrasing like "This is a commission for X" is acceptable, but "Commission for my Gold Tier Patron, Julie" or "My client agreed to let me post the first chapter of their commission" isn't. The context makes it clear that both "patron" and "client" are references to a paying sponsor.
As our TOS FAQ explains, we don't review content until it's reported to us. You may have seen somebody else mentioning their paywalled content or otherwise engaging in commercial activities on AO3, but that doesn't mean that it's allowed. All it means is that nobody has reported that content to us yet, or that we haven't finished processing the report.
First, we'll review the reported work to confirm that you violated our TOS by engaging in commercial activities on AO3. If we determine that you did, we'll send you an email telling you to remove the violating material.
If your work can be edited to fix the issue, you'll be asked to edit the work. Your work may be hidden from other users until you do. If you choose not to edit the work, or if your work cannot be edited into compliance with the TOS, it will be deleted.
PAC will only ever contact you by email, and only after we've determined that your work violates our Terms of Service. We will never comment on your work or contact you through social media. Please make sure to keep your account's email address up to date and check it regularly (including your spam folder), or else you may miss our warning email.
If you repeatedly post works that violate our commercial promotion policies, you may be temporarily suspended. Continuing to violate the TOS will result in your being permanently banned from AO3. You can learn more about warnings and suspensions in our TOS FAQ.
You can give the creator a heads up by politely commenting on their work and linking to the TOS FAQ or this post. Alternatively, you can report the work to us.
The best way to deal with spam comments, commercial or otherwise, depends on whether the comments are from registered accounts or guests.
Although we ask that you do not deliberately seek out commercial promotion to report, if you come across commercial activity while browsing, you can report it using the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form, which is linked at the bottom of every page on AO3.
Please don't report more than one user at a time or submit multiple reports about the same user. When reporting multiple works by the same user, please submit only one report with links to each work you're reporting, so that all information about that user is in the same place.
Please tell us exactly where in the work the commercialization is. The best way to do this is to give us a description or short quote that we can search for in order to immediately find the content. If you are reporting multiple works by the same creator, please group all the works into one report and provide this information for each work.
Link to the page you are reporting: https://archiveofourown.org/works/00000000
Brief summary of Terms of Service violation: Commercial promotion
Description of the content you are reporting:
This work by USERNAME advertises a ko-fi in the end notes of chapter 3.
If you are reporting additional works, please include all relevant links and other information in your report description:
Description of the content you are reporting:
This work by USERNAME advertises a ko-fi in the end notes of chapter 3.Some of their other works also contain commercial promotion:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/23456789 encourages readers to purchase their book on Amazon: "If you're curious what else I've been working on or want to support me elsewhere, check out my new short story on Kindle Unlimited!"
https://archiveofourown.org/works/34567890 contains an embedded image with a Patreon watermark. Underneath, the sentence "If you want more like this, click here" takes you to their commissions price sheet.
You can add more details if you like, but this example provides the basic information we need:
You'll receive an automatic email confirming that we received your report, and our volunteers will investigate when they get a chance. Please be patient and do not submit another report about the same work. While PAC investigates every report we receive, it can take several months for us to process a report, and not every report will receive a reply.
PAC follows a strict confidentiality policy. Therefore, while you are welcome to ask general questions in the comments of this post, we will not give information on specific cases, publicly rule on a work, or update you on the status of a report you have already submitted. Comments on this post that discuss specific works or users will be removed.
If you think you've found commercial promotion on AO3, or if you want to know whether a particular work contains commercial promotion, please report the work to us as described above. For more information, you can read our TOS FAQ on Commercial Promotion.
If you are still uncertain, you can comment below or submit a question through the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form.
beccaelizabeth - (no subject)ao3_news_feed - June 2025 Newsletter, Volume 201shadowkat - Believe it or not? There's some good news happeningshadowkat - July Question A Day Meme.elisi - Independence Day?kazzy_cee - A Medieval visit to Londonbeccaelizabeth - (no subject)beccaelizabeth - (no subject)beccaelizabeth - (no subject)shadowkat - (no subject)lylith_st in fandom_icons - [ 200 icons of Murderbot — Episodes 1 to 8 ]beccaelizabeth - (no subject)slaymesoftly - memeinkcharm in fandom_icons - joaquin torres. mcu. captain america: brave new world.shadowkat - Everything you wanted to know about the Big Ugly Bill and were afraid to ask?anne_d - Bracelets New and Oldao3_news_feed - Five Things Rhine Saidbeccaelizabeth - (no subject)alierak in dw_maintenance - Rebuilding journal search againao3_news_feed - TOS Spotlight: Commercial Promotiontimeasmymeasure
