Thank you for all your work! I'm sorry you ended up working during a time when users feel entirely too comfortable harassing the volunteers about literally everything. I hope things go well for you!
It's definitely going to be a problem for the organization going forward if they can't take a strong stance against harassment of their volunteers by outside activists.
I can't explain because I can only speculate. There has been lot of activism targeting OTW over the last week or two making various demands. It's already become personal in at least one other case, so it wouldn't surprise me if the situation played a role in this.
Nothing has happened. At least not anything anyone has any knowledge on. Anonymous here is going around spreading their own speculations as facts. There has been controversy regarding the AO3's policies on AI and data scraping, as well as the End OTW Racism thing, but that's a far cry from the organized campaign of harrasment and terror orchestrated against AO3 volunteers by outside agents that's being insinuated by the conspiratorially-minded
Ao3 volunteers have already been harassed by malicious groups, has everyone forgotten how they were sent actual child pornography to protest the fact that Ao3 allowed underage content? The Ao3 had to completely update their security policies and disabled comments for a while to try and make sure it wouldn't happen again.
While this was a pretty easy example, other more recent actions by users cross into a grey area.
If you read through the comments on the AI post, many users have admitted to reporting AI work multiple times, despite knowing that AI work is not banned and that such reportig is only causing more work for the volunteers. Can this be considered harassment?
And if you read the End OTW Racism post, they encourage users to change the titles of their works, leave comments on fics and send messages to Ao3, all about the policy changes they want to happen. Can this be considered harassment?
The line between trying to raise awareness and harassment is pretty thin online, and many people disagree on what that line is. No one agrees, but there have been examples and claiming that nothing has happened is incorrect.
"And if you read the End OTW Racism post, they encourage users to change the titles of their works, leave comments on fics and send messages to Ao3, all about the policy changes they want to happen. Can this be considered harassment?"
No? Who in God's name is getting harrassed by a change in a work title? That's literally the most innocuos form of protest I can imagine. Aas for "leaving comments on fics", this bit omits so much info as to be outright misleading: they are encouraging those in support of the protest to seek out works with the protest name in the title and leave comments in support of the initiative. They're not telling anyone to harrass anyone in the comments - quite the opposite! And AO3 has open communications channels for the explicit purpose of receiving community feedback. Have we perhaps forgotten that this place is literally financed, staffed and generally kept afloat by its users? Some of the changes EndOTWRacism is advocating for are things that the OTW has already promised years back. It's hardly surprising that people donating their money and effort would like to see it go to a good cause.
Besides, you're being disingenuous. The user I was specifically talking about is going around trying to insinuate that Heather's resignation is a direct result of a harrassment campaign. There's no proof of that being true, which they themself readily admitted when pressed for actual substantial info. This is what I was referring to. Anyone claiming that is just trying very hard to poison the well. I'm not saying nothing bad has ever happened in the history of AO3 ever, I'm talking about a specific case, to which, for example, the underage content protesting you mention is completely irrelevant
Harassment isn't about the message itself, but how the message is delivered. The obsessiveness. The inability to take any other answer than the one people want. Sometimes things are more complicated than people see, and the fact that people refuse to accept that and hammer away as if it's somehow life and death rather than an archive of fanfiction is, well, interesting to see, and I have no doubt horrific to be on the receiving end of. It is harassment. And it is bad.
Are people contacting volunteers (Board or otherwise) outside of org channels, or are you talking about things like changing fic titles and commenting (without getting abusive or personal) on news posts? Because the latter two are not harassment.
Comment on Resignation of OTW Director
VulcansDarkest Mon 22 May 2023 02:42AM UTC
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MalcontentCatboy Mon 22 May 2023 03:19AM UTC
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ShotOfStress Mon 22 May 2023 07:37AM UTC
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weshouldfondue Mon 22 May 2023 02:49PM UTC
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MintGreen_and_NeonPink Mon 22 May 2023 11:24AM UTC
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Guinevak Mon 22 May 2023 12:48PM UTC
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