Tippetarius

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34111

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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34111

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34081

Are you a current or former Digital Humanities or Library and Information Science student? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

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

• Open Doors Digital Collections Intern - closing 29 January 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications

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.

Open Doors Digital Collections Intern

Open Doors is a committee dedicated to preserving fanworks in their many formats, and we’re looking for a temporary intern 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.

Open Doors is seeking a current or former Digital Humanities or Library and Information Science student to join us for approximately 8-12 weeks (start date is flexible between 1 April and 1 July 2026). The intern should be able to commit at least 10-15 hours per week for the duration of the position. This internship will provide the intern with a temporary position on Open Doors during which they will complete at least one of several available relevant projects while learning more about the committee’s work. The primary project available is to scope and gather requirements for a digital asset management system for archives/zines. However, time permitting, there may be additional projects available, such as investigating options for automating metadata cleanup.

Applicants should be studying toward (or have completed) a Library and Information Science or related degree (in the US or elsewhere in the world), and they should be fluent in written English. The position will be unpaid and entirely virtual/remote. (We may be able to work with university programs that provide compensation or credit for nonprofit work, but we cannot provide in-person supervision.) We will need your assistance connecting us to any university program that may need documentation to provide credit for you.

The intern might be offered a continuing (unpaid, not for credit) volunteer position upon completion of this internship. However, Open Doors cannot guarantee that completing this internship will result in a continuing volunteer role, and the intern will not be required to accept a continuing role if one is offered.

If you're interested, please click through to the application form! Please note you will be required to provide an unofficial college/university transcript as well as a resume/CV as part of your application. 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 January 2026 or after 40 applications

Apply for Open Doors Digital Collections Intern 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, 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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34081

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34051

We spent the end of October and whole of November rolling out improvements across the site—from multiple fixes to the Download and Chapter Index menus on small screens to refreshing our footer and error pages to link to the status page. We also made an important security change: password resets can now only be requested using an email address when logged out. For some exciting news, we also finished our work making AO3 emails translatable! We're now going to target other areas of AO3 for internationalization.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Danaël / Rever, Daniel Haven, Edgar San Martin, Jr, Jennifer He, Kiyazz, Lisa Huang, mgettytehan, ProtonDev, quen, ryeleap, Snehal Mane, and TangkoNoAi!

Credits

• Coders: alien, anna, Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Cubostar, Danaël / Rever, Daniel Haven, EchoEkhi, Edgar San Martin, Jr, Jennifer He, Kiyazz, Lisa Huang, marcus8448, mgettytehan, ProtonDev, quen, ryeleap, sarken, Scott, slavalamp, Snehal Mane, TangkoNoAi, weeklies, Yanpei Wang
• Code reviewers: anna, Bilka, bingeling, Brian Austin, ceithir, Hamham6, lydia-theda, marcus8448, ömer faruk, sarken, weeklies
• Testers: Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Deniz, hvalrann, Irina, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, ömer faruk, pk2317, Sam Johnsson, sarken, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.440

On October 28, we made some small changes to a variety of areas of the site, including updating our footer and error pages to link to the status page.

• [AO3-7129] - Bluesky blocks AO3's attempts to check whether a URL on the site is active, so we're now skipping the check when you try to create an external bookmark of a Bluesky URL or try to mark a work as inspired by something hosted on Bluesky.
• [AO3-7149] - We removed some unused code for formatting text.
• [AO3-7175] - We updated cache-apt-pkgs-action from 1.5.3 to 1.6.0.
• [AO3-7178] - We updated the gems for Sentry, our error tracking and performance monitoring service.
• [AO3-6167] - When logged in as admin, restricted series are now included on a user's series page and counted in their dashboard sidebar.
• [AO3-7027] - We've been posting status updates on our status page and Bluesky account for a while now, so we've updated a number of pages to reflect that.
• [AO3-7040] - We restricted the ability to search through invitations to admins with certain roles, instead of allowing all admins access to the search.
• [AO3-7104] - We updated the page used for claiming your works if they were imported by Open Doors.
• [AO3-7167] - When someone reports a comment to our Policy & Abuse committee (PAC), the report now automatically includes the user ID of the person who left the comment.
• [AO3-6484] - We made a small change to the code that generates the HTML class names we use for hiding work blurbs by muted users. We were hoping this tweak would improve performance, but unfortunately it made it worse. So we reverted it later.

0.9.441

On November 5, we made some improvements to the admin side of AO3 and deployed the first of what would be several changes to fix issues with the Chapter Index and Download menus on small screens.

• [AO3-6484] - We reverted the change to the blurb code that worsened performance (it's later).
• [AO3-4519] - If two of your pseuds are set as owners of a collection, the collection will no longer be counted twice in your dashboard sidebar.
• [AO3-7142] - Under certain circumstances, the number of collections in a user's sidebar was different than the number of collections on the user's collections page. The number on the collections page was right, so we updated the one in the sidebar to match.
• [AO3-7166] - We upgraded the will_paginate gem to version 4.0.1 to fix a deprecation warning.
• [AO3-7183] - We upgraded the version of actions/upload-artifact from 4 to 5.
• [AO3-4629] - On small screens, the Download and Chapter Index menus could overlap the buttons, making them impossible to close. We made them narrower and adjusted their position to make sure you can always close them.
• [AO3-6542] - We gave specific admins the ability to access user Preference pages.
• [AO3-6833] - When you submit a ticket to PAC or Support, the submission to their ticket trackers will now automatically include information about which form you submitted.
• [AO3-6931] - We split the "Assignments sent" and the "Challenge default by USER" into two separate emails and updated the text while we were at it.
• [AO3-7071] - We made the emails you get when you reply to a comment translatable.
• [AO3-7171] - We will now include the user ID of a profile page when it is reported to PAC.

0.9.442

On November 8, we deployed a single-issue release to fix menus having problems on multi-chapter works.

• [AO3-7195] - Following our last release to update Download and Chapter Index menus, we fixed a bug from that update which was causing Chapter and Download menus to be cut off on small screens.

0.9.443

On November 17, we deployed a grab bag release targeting bugs and improvements in a variety of areas. We also made a change to improve account security by only allowing password resets using an email address (as compared to a username) if you're logged out. We announced this change on social media as well to get the word out.

• [AO3-3976] - Series links in subscription emails will now show up in red and be stylized like all other email links.
• [AO3-6054] - Works marked as inspired by or a translation of an existing work would show on your Related Works page even if you hadn't approved the relationship—now they won't do that!
• [AO3-7134] - The tips for new users linked in the new user help banner will once again open in a pop-up instead of as an ugly, unstyled page.
• [AO3-7159] - You'll no longer get an empty message if you press Accept or Reject on the Co-Creator Requests page with nothing selected.
• [AO3-7180] - The pseud name field is now marked as required on the page for creating a new pseud.
• [AO3-7202] - We fixed a issue that was causing the Chapter Index menu to be cut off in the Low Vision Default skin.
• [AO3-7061] - To reduce unsolicited password reset emails, logged out users who want to reset their password must now enter the email address associated with their account, not their username.
• [AO3-7204] - We upgraded appleboy/ssh-action from one version to another.
• [AO3-7037] - If you request a password reset and it fails, it will now redirect you to the Reset Password page instead of the homepage.
• [AO3-7039] - We've restricted which admin accounts have the ability to grant invitations to people waiting in the queue.
• [AO3-7070] - We prepared the emails you get when you leave a comment on a work, admin post, or tag (if you're a tag wrangler) for translation.
• [AO3-7115] - We updated the error messages you may get when you request a password reset while logged-in and something goes wrong.

0.9.445

Our November 25 release was a big milestone: all existing AO3 emails have been internationalized and are ready to be translated!

(Our deploy script accidentally bumped us ahead, so this ended up being released as 0.9.445 instead of 0.9.444.)

• [AO3-5542] - If a gift exchange didn't use tags, its Sign-up Summary page used to have a permanent and misleading message saying the summary was being generated. We've updated it to display the correct message: "Tags were not used in this Challenge, so there is no summary to display here."
• [AO3-5668] - When determining whether to display the "Fandom" sort button, the challenge request summary sometimes ended up loading all prompts in the collection—now it won't!
• [AO3-7187] - If you try to create a skin with a title that's more than 255 characters long, we'll now tell you the title is too long instead of giving you a 500 error.
• [AO3-7190] - Trying to create skins that included a ^ used to result in error messages missing part of the text. We've fixed that, which should make the error message far more helpful.
• [AO3-7201] - We made one more change to the Chapter Index menu, which was still too narrow in some browsers on Android devices.
• [AO3-7205] - You can add private bookmarks to collections even though they won't be listed on the collections' Bookmarked Items page. We've now added a warning to the success banner to let you know to expect this.
• [AO3-6941] - We've added more information to the browser titles of many of our comment-related pages.
• [AO3-7056] - The emails you get when someone replies to or edits a reply to a comment you've left are now ready to be translated.
• [AO3-7116] - We updated the wording of the reset password link on the login form.
• [AO3-7168] - When a series is reported to PAC, the report now automatically includes the IDs of the series creators.

0.9.446

Our November 30 release focused on changes submitted by first-time contributors to our project!

• [AO3-7121] - We fixed a bug that was causing bookmarks of unrevealed works to link to the work's Bookmark page even if you weren't the work creator.
• [AO3-7133] - The "Flat View" button on your Statistics page wasn't styled correctly when selected—but now it is!
• [AO3-7181] - For tracking purposes, admins have to enter a valid ticket ID in order to edit a user's pseud or profile. We've made sure the field for the ticket ID is clearly marked as required.
• [AO3-7185] - We've removed the comment form on draft works and replaced it with a message saying you can't comment on draft works.
• [AO3-7138] - We standardized the way the code displays participants in Collections so that site skins with CSS distinguishing them will correctly see participants displayed on both People and Membership pages.
• [AO3-7212] - We updated the version of actions/checkout from version 5 to version 6.
• [AO3-7198] - When logged in with some admin roles, admins can now more easily search for all invitations sent to specific email addresses.
• [AO3-7199] - Some admins have access to a page that provides an overview of a user's works and comments, but the link was only available on User Administration pages. To make things more convenient, we've also added the link to user dashboard and profile pages.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34051