hey imp! what’s going on with OTW/AO3? I’ve been really busy and haven’t been following it closely and i’m just REALLy confused with everything

stopthatimp:

 as far as I know, the following:

1) the OTW has no budget and at least for a few years has never had a budget. In addition to this, they have refused to state whether or not they have any mechanism for stuff like vetting expenses, which is basically required for proving compliance with not-for-profit regulations, which require being able to demonstrate org funds are not used for personal gains

2) they held an election where an incumbent board member, Andrea Horbinski, came in 5th (for 2 open seats)

3) they held a membership drive before said election, but ALSO before the main october funding drive – which began the day yearly membership eligibility ended (so ppl who donated couldn’t then vote a month later, this november

4) during the election, one of the running members, the current treasurer – Sanders – was speciously ousted

5) before the election, the OTW’s bylaws were changed to allow for removing a Board member for no reason, and also to limit the number of seats so that the 2015 election would only have 2 members elected

6) also during the election, the treasurer MJ MacRae – who replaced Sanders, the speciously ousted member – sockpuppeted during an election chat to pretend to be a non-OTW staffer/board member in order to ask candidates leading questions

7) ALSO during the election, the OTW swore they’d post a 2016 budget in “mid-November”; it has yet to materialize

8) the election happened; 2 people were voted in; neither was Horbinski, the incumbent who was running for another Board term

9) the Board in its present iteration voted to keep Horbinski in until December 2016; Horbinski voted for herself

I think that’s most of it, but anyone who has other info can reblog/message me/etc. Most of this info is from http://otwelections-unofficial.tumblr.com/ OR the OTW funding drive posts, which I was heavily involved in.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an OTW member. I’m not a member for 2 reasons: as a professional programmer, I hesitate to give to an org whose primary funding source, the AO3, is very badly designed; I also hesitate to give to an org that treats legal nonprofit requirements casually or totally disregards them. However, as a person with over 1 million words of fic posted to the AO3, I consider myself a stakeholder in the OTW and a concerned party.