Archive of Our Own

Manacles Press, publisher of various fanzines including Nudge Nudge Wink Wink (Professionals), McPikus Interruptus (Wiseguy), and Consupiscence (multifandom), is importing the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Manacles Press was run by Megan Kent and Charlotte C. Hill in the 1990’s, publishing both anthology and novel zines. Megan and Charlotte are happy to archive these works in an effort to preserve fannish history and to keep the fanworks available and free.

The fanzines to be imported are:

• Arabian Nights: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Chains of Being: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Concupiscence: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• McPikus Interruptus: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Never Let Me Down: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Nudge Nudge Wink Wink: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Outrider: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Professional Dreamer: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Walking Distance: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• What If…: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Whisper of a Kill: Fanlore page and AO3 collection

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Manacles Press to import the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW's servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Manacles Press’s fanzines to the AO3 after June 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) in Manacles Press’s fanzines?

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.

Please contact Open Doors with your creator 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 the publisher has a record of.
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 fanzine collections.
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 publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, 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 Manacles Press 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 collections listed above

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 Manacles Press and its fanzines 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 Manacles Press’s fanzines!

- The Open Doors team, Megan and Charlotte

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, 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 OTW Elections committee is pleased to announce that the timeline for the 2026 election for new members of the Board of Directors has been posted!

As previously announced, Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm stepped down from their positions on the Board. Anh Pham and Qiao Chu are also stepping down from the Board as they have reached the end of their terms. There are seven Directors on the OTW's Board and this year OTW members will elect four new Directors - three Directors to serve a full-term (3 years) and one Director to serve a partial term (1 year).

This year's election will be held August 14-17. This means that the deadline for volunteers to declare their candidacy is June 19.

As usual, the election membership deadline is June 30. If you're interested in voting, please make sure your membership is active as of that date. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?".

You can find out how to become a member on the Elections website, or if you're familiar with the process, you can donate here!

If you want to know more about the election process in general, you can check out the Elections Policies.

We're looking forward to an active election season with ample communication between candidates and voters, and we hope you'll be a part of it. Don't forget to follow the Elections committee on Bluesky and Tumblr to keep up to date with the latest news!

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact Elections.

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.

Our releases in March included a slew of collection, bookmark, and history bug fixes, as well as several improvements for site admins.

Special thanks to first-time contributors charliewhiskee, Dobe, goose, Lubczi, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), and Xiang Rassul Li!

Credits

• Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, calm, charliewhiskee, Cubostar, Daniel Haven, Danaël / Rever, Dobe, EchoEkhi, FlyingFalcon, goose, Lubczi, Mae Light, Marianna, mellowmarsach, Nathan Cunningham, nghz, ömer faruk, Oyon Ganguli (0ce10tsgit), Richard Hajek, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, varram, Yi Fang, Xiang Rassul Li
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Daniel Haven, marcus8448, redsummernight, sarken, Scott Venkataraman, slavalamp
• Testers: Berix, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, EchoEkhi, hvalrann, Lute, lydia-theda, marcus8448, pk2317, therealmorticia, Ven, wichard

Details

0.9.462

On March 2, we deployed a patch for the gem we use to manage authentication (to address a performance issue related to the March 2026 Downtime).

• [AO3-7306] - Devise patch to prevent an excessive amount of strain on the database.

0.9.463

Our March 6 deploy included a few gem updates.

• [AO3-6916] - Migrated from Gitpod/Ona to devcontainers for our development needs, as Gitpod was no longer suitable.
• [AO3-7271] - Updated which data is included when comments are sent to our spam checker for evaluation.
• [AO3-7305] - We updated the internationalization of some emails based on feedback from translators.
• [AO3-7227], [AO3-7304], [AO3-7308] - Code cleanup and gem updates.

0.9.464

On March 12, we released a whole bunch of bug fixes.

• [AO3-6359] - In some rare cases it was possible to delete the pseud that corresponds with your username. We fixed this edge case.
• [AO3-6688] - In order to prevent tragic accidents, we've made it harder to delete your entire History. Instead of a small "Are you sure?" popup, you are now directed to a confirmation page that requires another button click.
• [AO3-7214], [AO3-7215] - On a page with several bookmarks, closing and opening the "Edit" or "Save" functions on several bookmarks would get the popup form all confused which bookmark you wanted to edit or save. Or, in some cases, the buttons would just disappear on you! We've now sorted out the underlying JavaScript to let you save, or indeed edit, the bookmark you clicked on last.
• [AO3-7273] - When an account is banned for posting spam, we now also automatically delete all its profile contents, including any icons and alt text.
• [AO3-7285] - The user ID was missing from a page accessible to Policy & Abuse volunteers; we've added it now.
• [AO3-7290] - When you access AO3 without being logged in, you might be able to scroll down the page a bit, but then a popup will inevitably ask you to agree to our Terms of Service before you can continue. We now take you back to your scroll position once you click the button.
• [AO3-7314] - We've fixed the draft deletion to make sure it adheres to the correct deletion dates even for drafts created in the short month of February.
• [AO3-5683] - We fixed some security warnings pointed out by the helpful Brakeman tool.
• [AO3-7302] - We changed the code for displaying work meta-information so it accesses the work in one unified way.

0.9.465

On March 18, we released a bunch of bookmark, admin, and accessibility fixes.

• [AO3-5937] - On some pages, the "Save" button on bookmarks was visible to logged-out users, not that clicking it would do anything. Now it's only there when you're logged into your account.
• [AO3-6203] - On tag pages, we display a list of tags associated with the one you're browsing, e.g. the characters or relationships for a fandom (with a limit of 300 tags per type). For large fandoms, for example, that would put a considerable strain on the database. We have now moved to getting this data from our search engine, so retrieving the associated tags doesn't hammer the database servers anymore.
• [AO3-7030] - When we introduced Archive skins, we envisioned a system where users could create custom CSS to change the appearance of AO3, and then apply to make the code available to other users with a button click. This was never a sustainable idea, so we've been working on phasing it out. Now only official accounts, e.g. those belonging to the AO3 development team, can apply to have their skin reviewed for general usage. (All users can still create skins for themselves and make the code available in other ways, e.g. on GitHub or Tumblr or as a fanwork on AO3.)
• [AO3-7131] - The text used by screen readers to announce a help link was confusing, reading out the question mark we use to indicate the availability of the help popup. We've cleaned up the way we generate the text, which should be easier to follow now.
• [AO3-7256] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific bookmark can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
• [AO3-7272] - When accessing a comment via the "Reply to this comment" link, some buttons would be gone for site admins or logged-out users that they'd normally be able to use, e.g. if viewing a single comment thread. Now the buttons are always there!
• [AO3-7303] - On your Statistics page, the tool-tip you get when hovering over a graph would flicker if it popped up right under your cursor. That's fixed now, so it should be easier to read.
• [AO3-7317], [AO3-7318] - We removed an incorrect ARIA attribute from some HTML.
• [AO3-7319] - If a site admin bans an account for posting spam, they are now redirected to the admin dashboard for that account (after the successful deletion of all the spam).
• [AO3-7335] - We fixed that running all the tests in one sitting would leave extra files and models behind.

0.9.466

We upgraded to Rails 8.1 on March 20.

• [AO3-7328] - We updated Rails, the framework the AO3 runs on, to the next major version.
• [AO3-7346] - Updated a gem used by our search engine to address a security issue.

0.9.467

For our penultimate March release, we deployed several display fixes and small site improvements on March 25.

• [AO3-5866] - The links to work creators in our RSS feeds were broken; now they're fixed!
• [AO3-6138] - Leaving kudos on a work with JavaScript disabled would previously knock you back to the top of the page. You can now see the success message (or the friendly hint that you've already left kudos) without having to scroll down to it.
• [AO3-6385] - On the page displaying all prompts in a prompt meme, or all requests in a gift exchange, the page content would overlap the sorting buttons at the top if viewed on a small screen. Now everything looks tidy.
• [AO3-6498] - To assist in abuse cases involving our gifting feature, members of the Policy & Abuse team can now access a user's refused gifts page.
• [AO3-7059] - We will now display a warning message if the password you're using to log into AO3 was found in a data breach documented on HaveIBeenPwned.
• [AO3-7255] - We've added a limit to how many times a specific series can be submitted to the Policy & Abuse team for review.
• [AO3-7268] - If you try to navigate to the inbox for a nonexistent user, you will now get an Error 404, since, like the user, the inbox does not exist.
• [AO3-7280] - Creating a multi-chapter draft and then hitting "Post" on the first chapter would indeed post that chapter, but treat the work as a whole still as a draft. It now publishes the work, with the first chapter, leaving any other chapters alone so you can post them later.
• [AO3-7315] - Members of the Policy & Abuse team can now edit and save a work's tags, e.g. to change the selected language, even if it has more than 75 tags. (As a regular user, you'd be prompted to remove tags from your work until you're below the limit.)
• [AO3-7323] - We updated the introductory text on our homepage.
• [AO3-7352] - Our previous fix making help text links more accessible for screen readers unfortunately prevented some content in work blurbs (e.g. warnings and ratings) from being read out loud. This has now been fixed!
• [AO3-7329], [AO3-7330] - Your History page and the page listing your blocked users now have your username in the browser's page title, as they always should have.
• [AO3-6906] - Updating the autocomplete for users and pseuds no longer depends on an unmaintained library!
• [AO3-7120] - In the rare case that the admin search results for a user are outdated, admins can now manually mark the search to be updated.
• [AO3-7338] - We recently changed how we cache bylines, and now all that new code is organized neatly in its own file.
• [AO3-7354] - We updated Rails to 8.1.2.1 for some security fixes.

0.9.468

On March 31, we deployed another batch of miscellaneous fixes and performance improvements.

• [AO3-6998] - Trying to search all signups in a gift exchange by pseud would cause an Error 500; now it returns the signup you were looking for!
• [AO3-7062] - AO3 site admins can now view all work blurbs on a user's "Works in Collections" page.
• [AO3-7223] - We prepared the help pop-ups on the Preferences page for translation.
• [AO3-7284] - When we rebuild our Elasticsearch indexes, we batch multiple objects together into one reindexing operation. We can now easily configure how large those batches are.
• [AO3-7292] - On the page for managing wranglers assigned to fandoms, the button to remove a wrangler only had a small clickable area around the X. Now the whole button does what it's supposed to do.
• [AO3-7311] - When a collection's settings were changed, e.g. from moderated to unmoderated, that information wasn't fully reflected everywhere. Now we make sure that listings and search results are updated immediately.
• [AO3-7321] - If you subscribe to a work that is then added to an unrevealed collection, we now display a "Mystery Work" placeholder on your subscriptions page until and unless the work is revealed again.
• [AO3-7332] - The page listing your muted users now has your username in the browser's page title!
• [AO3-7341] - If old jobs are still running on the development environment when a coder pushes changes to their branch of the Archive software, those jobs will now be stopped to save resources.
• [AO3-7347] - We cleaned up an unused method related to prompts.
• [AO3-7350] - We improved the performance of the History page by reducing the number of queries required to show each page.

Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you a frequent Bluesky, Twitter | X, or RedNote user who enjoys helping others? Are you interested in the rescue and preservation of fanworks? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

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

• Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer - closing 20 May 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• Communications Social Media Moderator - closing 20 May 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applicants
• Communications Social Media Moderator (Chinese) - closing 20 May 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applicants
• Open Doors Import Assistant - closing 20 May 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.

Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer

Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you an organizational wizard? Do you have an interest in preserving fannish history or experience in wiki editing? The Fanlore committee is looking for new Chair Track Volunteers to join our team!

Fanlore is the committee responsible for maintaining and promoting the Fanlore wiki. We promote Fanlore on social media, run Fanlore editing challenges, support Fanlore editors, write the wiki's policy and help pages, and respond to emails from editors and readers. The Chair Track Volunteer position is for people who have the time and dedication to learn all about our operations so that they can be considered for the role of committee Chair.

We're looking for someone who has experience in wiki editing and an understanding of social media, who is comfortable with personnel management and training new recruits, and who is experienced in leadership or management whether in a business or nonprofit environment. Candidates also need strong time management skills and the ability to work on and track multiple tasks at a time. If that's you, please apply!

For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within one week of submitting your application.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role.

Applications are due 20 May 2026 or after 40 applications

Apply to be a Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Communications Social Media Moderator

Are you familiar with Bluesky and Twitter | X? Do you want to help connect the public with the OTW?

The Communications committee is recruiting for Social Media Moderators to help us manage our Bluesky and Twitter | X. Social Media Moderators will help the OTW maintain an active presence on their platform, creating or reblogging a range of posts of relevance and interest to the OTW's userbase, and doing outreach to fan groups and individuals on the site. Moderators are also responsible for handling user questions and managing responses to the OTW's news content. You will be working as part of a team, and you must be able to dedicate at least 3-4 hours each week to the OTW.

For this position, we are seeking people who are familiar with both platforms as they are managed jointly by the same team of people and who ideally have experience moderating a social media page. We are also interested in hearing from those with customer service experience, especially in an online environment. We expect you to have an interest in fandom at large and an understanding of the concerns and activities of the OTW (although we will, of course, provide you with training once you start).

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. If you're a frequent Bluesky or Twitter | X user who enjoys helping others, have a wide-ranging interests across the fandom space, and are curious and willing to learn, we'd love to hear from you!

Applications are due 20 May 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply to be a Communications Social Media Moderator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Communications Social Media Moderator (Chinese)

Do you use RedNote? Do you want to connect Chinese fans with the OTW?

The Communications committee is recruiting for RedNote Moderators to help start up and oversee the OTW's presence on RedNote, the Chinese social networking site.

RedNote Moderators will be part of a team creating content for the OTW RedNote, posting regularly about topics related to the OTW. Moderators will also respond to user questions and comments to help them find answers to their questions about the OTW's projects. Additionally, they will act as a link between the OTW and the RedNote community, providing updates to the rest of the OTW on trends and events within Chinese fan communities.

You are required to be fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese and must be over 18 to apply for this role.

We are looking for volunteers familiar with RedNote and passionate about outreach on the platform. They should be able to maintain a consistent level of work, collaborate inside the team and with other committees, ask for help when needed, and be proactive about suggesting ways the OTW can better connect with its users. If you're interested in doing outreach to Chinese-language fandom communities, this is the position for you!

Applications are due 20 May 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply to be a Communications Social Media Moderator (Chinese) 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 20 May 2026 or after 40 applications

Apply to be an Open Doors Import Assistant 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.

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 Whatsit, who volunteers as a Chair in training for the Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) and a tag wrangler.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
As a tag wrangler, I make sure that the fandoms I wrangle have properly canonized tags, which helps users find works that have the characters, relationships, tropes, and themes they're looking for. I fully and completely believe that the tagging system on AO3 is practically one of the modern wonders of the world, and I'm really pleased to be able to do my small part in contributing to it.

My other role is working for the Policy & Abuse committee, where we respond to reports of Terms of Service violations. Anyone who's ever spent time on an unmoderated comments section somewhere knows the importance of moderation in keeping a site usable and enjoyable, and PAC works (mostly) behind the scenes to make sure that's the case for AO3.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
I try to spend at least an hour or so per day on PAC work, since some of it is time-sensitive and has deadlines attached. This often involves working with tickets that have been sent in about violations, but sometimes it means working on documentation updates or helping to train new volunteers on the committee.

I usually also do at least one big tag wrangling session per week, during which I get caught up with wrangling the tags in my fandoms. I really like putting music on and settling in for a few hours (or more) of wrangling, so this setup works really well for me.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I have a background in book indexing and a particular interest in categorization and taxonomy, so as soon as I found out that tag wranglers were a thing on AO3, I definitely wanted to be one! It sounded like the kind of thing that would be right up my alley (and it was). On a broader level, I think AO3 is one of the best things going on the Internet, in terms of creating a space where people can freely share their fanworks without fear of the content purges that have plagued many other sites. With censorship encroaching on so many other spaces, I think what AO3 stands for is more important than ever. I really believe in the philosophy of the site and I'm glad to be a part of it.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Time management! I'm on two separate committees and I also have a day job and a fairly active family life, which is a lot to juggle. But I've had success setting boundaries for myself that keep me from over-committing or burning out. I find that setting specific times during which I'll do specific tasks not only keeps that task from eating up my entire day (which either wrangling or PAC work could otherwise easily do) but also allows me to really focus on that task during the allotted time.

What fannish things do you like to do?
I'm an active fic writer and I participate in quite a few multi-fandom fic exchanges. I find that having an external deadline is great for motivating me to actually finish a fic, something I was historically not great at before doing exchanges. I also hang out on a couple of fandom discords and have been known to go to the occasional convention. And, of course, I spend entirely too much of my free time reading vast amounts of fic.

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, 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. APRIL'S MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

April's Membership Drive ran from April 24-27 and raised $362,171.85 USD across 9,702 people in 87 countries, with 8,035 donors choosing to become OTW members. Thank you so much for your support!

This year, the April Drive spotlighted Accessibility, Design, & Technology (AD&T) and their behind-the-scenes work in developing, updating, and maintaining the AO3’s software and infrastructure. If you're familiar with coding and would like to help improve AO3, contributions from the community are welcome; for details, check out AO3's Software Contributing Guidelines and other documentation at our GitHub repository. All contributors are credited in AO3's release notes which detail recent code updates and fixes.

Development & Membership worked with Communications on drafting and publishing Drive-related news posts, which Translation made available in 23 languages. Finance posted an update on the 2026 budget prior to the Drive.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In April, AD&T worked on security updates, quality-of-life bug fixes, and making more parts of AO3 translatable. They also welcomed their first long-term contractor who has already begun submitting pull requests and reviewing code. AD&T previously engaged with contractors for specific projects, but this is their first time hiring someone to work on the AO3 code with a broader scope.

AO3 Documentation completed their biannual review of user-facing documentation.

Open Doors announced the import of SlasHeaven and received enormous support from the Spanish-speaking community on AO3. They also began importing the works from the Watchmen Kinkmeme to AO3, which has been in progress for several years due to pre-import complications.

Policy & Abuse continued work on some major updates to the Terms of Service FAQ and coordinated with Communications on a news post about spambots. Going forward, this post will be updated as new spam behaviors get reported. In March, Policy & Abuse received 4,560 tickets, while Support received 3,466 tickets. User Response Translation completed 71 translation and beta tasks for Policy & Abuse and Support.

Tag Wrangling wrangled over 613,000 tags, or approximately 1,400 tags per volunteer. They also announced 27 new "No Fandom" tags.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Communications started the month with a lighthearted April Fool's post spotlighting omegas and coordinated with AD&T for the site's temporary logo change. This was then followed by a more serious announcement about AO3 exiting beta. Across both posts, Communications' News Post Moderation subcommittee helped moderate over 5,600 comments, most of which were positive and joining the celebration.

Communications also coordinated the OTW's attendance at Supanova, a fan convention in Melbourne, Australia. Thank you to everyone who came to see us! Fanwork recommendations from those who attended have been collected in the Supanova 2026 AO3 Collection.

Fanlore prepared a public domain-themed month for May. Check out their Bluesky, Tumblr, and Twitter/X for featured articles, and join their Discord server for a themed editing chat!

Legal continues to answer questions from fans and internally, especially around new laws restricting internet freedom.

In March, TWC released their special issue on Gaming Fandom and are currently in production for their June special issue on Disability and Fandom. Their editorial sections are working on the general issue for September and the 2027 special issues on Music Fandom and Latin American Fandoms.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections is preparing for this year's election, which will fill four seats on the Board: three full-term seats (3 years) and one partial term seat (1 year). The election will open on August 14, and members need to make a donation of at least $10 USD before July 1 if they'd like to vote.

Organizational Culture Roadmap's Code of Conduct draft has been reviewed for legal compliance, clarity, and other factors by an external nonprofit HR firm they partnered with on this project. They have incorporated their feedback and the updated draft will soon be available for review by all volunteers.

Board collaborated with Board Assistants Team to hold the second-quarter public Board meeting with 51 attendees. Thank you to everyone who attended! Meeting minutes are available on the OTW website. Board Assistants Team also continued progress on ongoing projects, including investigating mental health resources for volunteers, investigating volunteer retention within the committee, and supporting AD&T with documentation work.

In April, Board consulted with Legal and Volunteers & Recruiting to approve changes to the OTW's recruitment policies. The OTW will now require all applicants confirm they're 18 years old or older when applying for positions. Previously, some positions were open to volunteers aged 16 or 17. This change will only affect applicants moving forward and will not impact current volunteers.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In April, Volunteers & Recruiting opened recruitment for three roles for Legal and Policy & Abuse.

From March 23 to April 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 201 new requests, and completed 295, leaving them with 45 open requests. As of April 22, 2026, the OTW has 1,051 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs/Leads: Rhine (Translation Chair)
New Communications Volunteers: Jo Foderingham Brown (Social Media Moderator)
New Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: anzie, Cocoa, GGLadybug, and 1 other News Post Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Gardener
New Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: Orla Maeve, Bre Hartfiel, and 3 other Volunteers
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: AAAthea, Agata, AlexTheTwin12, Amalaa, Aza, BerryBlue, Cait B, CherryAmaretto, Chien, Cid, Elistanel, Em L, Fujirope, hen, Hershel, inezblue, Insidia, Izhi, Kirave, Kvalli, Lacosta Seren, Liz27, Lua, Marieta, Marilianne, Milo, mina, moonjelly, Nootmeg, Novace, Pingj, Pinkie, Potato, principalityofmusicalchairs, PurplePurl003, rexmachina, Sachet, Sambuca, sequencefairy, Shira, Snowy, SophiaSun, Stephenie, Tets, Toni, ValerieM00ny, Vandali, vinnawis, Wesley, Winnie, Xiaohe, and 3 other Volunteers
New User Response Translation Volunteers: AifasInTheSky, Cadira, Lacuna, ­Matilda, mocong, shilight, and 6 other Translators

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Fiona M (AO3 Documentation Chair)
Departing AD&T Volunteers: Bilka (QA Supervisor)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing BAT Volunteers: Deniz (Volunteer)
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Chair Track Volunteer and 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Technical Volunteer
Departing Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Ember J, Lost_for_good, and 3 other Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Shubhi Tandon and 2 other Translators

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, 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.

Today is World Password Day, and we'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of some best practices to keep your accounts secure.

Last year, AO3 saw a rise in users who lost access to their AO3 accounts due to reused or insecure passwords that were found in data breaches from other sites. In response, our Policy & Abuse committee alongside our Accessibility, Design, & Technology, and Systems committees took steps to recover, secure, and notify the owners of over 10,000 at-risk accounts.

Over the past year, we released many new features to proactively make AO3 accounts more secure, including:

• Automatic confirmation emails notifying you when your username, password, or email has been changed
• Adding a verification step to the process for changing the email associated with your account
• Notifying you if your current or new password matches a password that was discovered in a data breach from another site
• Preventing users from choosing new passwords that are extremely short
• Increasing the maximum password length from 40 to 72 characters
• Requiring you to provide the email address associated with your account in order to reset your password
• Updating the layout and wording of how you change or reset your password

How To Protect Your AO3 Account

The best thing you can do to protect yourself on AO3 and other sites is ensure your passwords are strong, unique, and secure. In general, for both AO3 and elsewhere, we recommend that you:

• Regularly check haveibeenpwned.com to see if your emails, passwords, or other information has been exposed in data breaches or whether your passwords have appeared in known data breaches.
• Change your passwords for any breached websites and any accounts on other sites where you may have used the same password.
• Set a unique, secure password for each and every one of your accounts on all platforms.
• Use a password manager. This will help you to set unique, secure passwords for each of your accounts without worrying about forgetting them. Many browsers have a free, built-in password manager if you would prefer to avoid third-party software.
• Make sure to check your email regularly. Don't use a temporary, school, or work email for any personal accounts. (If you need to update the email associated with your AO3 account, go to your Preferences page and click on the "Change Email" button in the top right. Follow the instructions on that page to update your email address.)
• Keep your antivirus software and operating system up to date, and set them to scan for malware regularly.
• Log out when you've finished using devices that others have access to, and don't share your personal devices with other people.
• Never reuse passwords or share your passwords with anyone for any reason.

Future Changes

Keeping AO3 safe for all our users is one of our highest priorities. We continue to remain on the lookout for other ways we can help you protect your account.

We encourage you to follow us on our official platforms and sign up for OTW News by Email to keep track of important announcements and updates to AO3. If you're specifically interested in learning about new features, security updates, and bug fixes, we recommend that you pay attention to our release notes.

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.

Mediafans, a multifandom fanfiction archive, and Futures Without End, a Duncan/Methos zine it hosted, are being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on Mediafans or in Futures Without End
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Mediafans was a personal fanworks archive for creators Rachael Sabotini and Melina, as well as several other creators. It also hosted the Highlander zine Futures Without End, which was started by Melina and Maygra de Rhema and ran for four issues. Mediafans went offline in 2013, taking digital access to Futures Without End with it.

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 Melina to import Mediafans and Futures Without End into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archives in their entirety, all fanfiction and fanart currently in the archive and zine will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Mediafans and Futures Without End to AO3 after May. 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 had work(s) on Mediafans or in Futures Without End?

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 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.

Please contact Open Doors with your Mediafans or Futures Without End 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 archives.
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 AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on 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 Mediafans or Futures Without End, 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 Melina to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to AO3
• adding your works to the new collections Mediafans or Futures Without End

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 Mediafans and Futures Without End 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 Mediafans and Futures Without End!

- The Open Doors team and Melina

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.