Archive of Our Own ^beta

Homosapien Press, publisher of multi-fandom fanzines including Samurai Errant, Homosapien, and Pure Maple Syrup, 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 Homosapien Press’s fanzines
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Homosapien Press was based in Australia and run by Julie Bozza, publishing various fanzines from 1988 to 2004. Julie is keen to preserve this part of fandom history, with the explicit permission of the creators.

Please contact us if you had works in these zines and would like them to be imported!

The fanzines to be imported are:

• Samurai Errant: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Homosapien: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Espresso: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Pure Maple Syrup: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• The Deal/Juliet is Bleeding: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Westering Boundaries: Fanlore page and AO3 collection
• Horatio Hornblower & the Prix d'Amor: 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 Homosapien 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 Homosapien Press’s fanzines to the AO3 after May 2025, where we have explicit permission from the creators. 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 Homosapien 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!
2. 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.
3. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
4. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
5. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the fanzine collections.
6. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
7. 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 Homosapien 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 Homosapien 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 Homosapien Press’s fanzines!

- The Open Doors team and Julie Bozza

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.

We are incredibly excited to announce that AO3 now has over 15 million fanworks! Last year in May we celebrated 13 million works on the site. Two million new works in one year is an incredible achievement. And to think it took more than four years to reach one million works when AO3 was first founded!

We would not be here without your love for fandom, your dedication, and your ceaseless enthusiasm and creativity. Kudos to all of you! However you choose to contribute to fandom, you are invaluable to our community.

In keeping with the spirit of the occasion, comment below your favourite ways of engaging with fandom. Are you a creator? Do you translate works? Create podfics? Run exchanges? Are you an avid commenter on other people's works? What do you enjoy most about how you engage with fandom?

Thank you for 15 million fanworks, and here's to many more to come!

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.

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.

PAC handles both major and minor policy infractions. We get tens of thousands of reports each year about a lot of different types of TOS violations, but approximately half of all reports are about one specific thing: the violations we call "non-fanworks". In this post, you'll learn about some of the most common types of non-fanworks, why we don't allow them, where to put this type of content instead, and what you can do if you see a non-fanwork on AO3.

Don't go looking for things to report.

Please do not start searching for non-fanworks to report after reading this post. We know that non-fanworks are a problem 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.

AO3 is an archive for fanworks, not other kinds of content.

AO3 has a very specific purpose: to host fanworks, and only fanworks. Our definition of "fanwork" is broad: fanworks can take many shapes and forms, including fanfiction, fanart, podfics, fanvids, fancrafts, fannish non-fiction, original works, and more.

What are some examples of non-fanworks?

Works that are not fanworks should not be posted to AO3. These include (but are not limited to):

• Fic searches or requests for recommendations
• Advertisements for roleplay partners or servers
• Personal messages to other users
• Updates, polls, or announcements
• Reaction, blog, or vent posts
• Spam, shitposts, or memes
• Reposted novels or other published works
• Placeholders and other empty works
• Links to or lists of works you've read or created
• Ideas or prompts for fanworks
• Requests for other users to provide you with ideas or prompts for fanworks

AO3 has many features that you can use instead of posting a non-fanwork.

There are many AO3 tools and features that are designed to assist you with finding, recommending, and creating fanworks. Please use these features instead of posting a non-fanwork.

• Tags and Search: AO3 has an extensive tagging and searching system, which you can use to browse for works you might be interested in or find a specific work.

• Bookmarks: You can use bookmarks to save or share fanworks hosted on AO3 or other sites. AO3 bookmarks can be organized using tags, notes, and collections.

• Series and Collections: You can make a series to organize your fanworks so that other users know what order to read them in, or a collection to group similar kinds of fanworks together. Fanworks can be placed in multiple series or collections at the same time.

• Prompt Memes: Prompts or ideas for fanworks that you would like to see (or requests for others to give you ideas for fanworks to create) are not themselves fanworks. Instead, you can request or post prompts using a prompt meme, which is a specialized type of collection that lets multiple users share and fulfill each other's ideas.

• Drafts: All works on AO3 must be fanworks; empty placeholder works aren't fanworks. You shouldn't post a placeholder work that has no content, nor should you remove all the content from your work while you're editing it. If you have a work in progress that you aren't ready to post yet, please save your work as an unpublished draft instead.

• Profile and Notes: You can share links to your accounts on other sites or provide updates on your writing progress by editing your profile or adding notes to your fanworks.

If you need help using any of AO3's features, please contact Support.

I've seen others post these "non-fanworks". Why can't I?

As our TOS FAQ explains, we don't review content until it's reported to us. You may have seen somebody else post a fic search or a prompt as a work on AO3, but that doesn't mean it's allowed. All it means is that nobody has reported that non-fanwork to us yet, or that we haven't finished processing the report.

What if I plan to delete it as soon as possible?

Works on AO3 must be fanworks. By posting a non-fanwork, you're violating our TOS. If someone reports your work to us, we may still take action even if you've already deleted the work.

What will happen if I get reported for posting a non-fanwork?

First, we'll review the reported work to confirm that you violated our TOS by posting a non-fanwork. If we determine that your work is a non-fanwork, we'll hide the work and send you an email telling you to delete the non-fanwork. In some cases, we may offer you the chance to edit your work instead.

We'll only ever contact you by email, and only after we've determined that your work is a non-fanwork. 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 non-fanworks, you may be temporarily suspended. Continuing to violate the TOS will result in you being permanently banned from AO3. You can learn more about warnings and suspensions in our TOS FAQ.

What should I do if I encounter a non-fanwork?

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.

How do I report a non-fanwork?

Although we ask that you do not deliberately seek out non-fanworks to report, if you come across a non-fanwork 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.

For example, a non-fanwork report might look like this:

Link to the page you are reporting: https://archiveofourown.info/works/00000000

Brief summary of Terms of Service violation: Non-fanwork

Description of the content you are reporting:
This work by USERNAME is a search for a fanfic.

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 is a search for a fanfic.

Some of their other works are also not fanworks:

https://archiveofourown.info/works/23456789 is a request for roleplaying partners.

https://archiveofourown.info/works/34567890 is a list of prompts.

You can add more details if you like, but this example provides the basic information we need:

• Who posted the non-fanwork(s): Tell us their username or if the work is anonymous or orphaned.
• Where we can find the work(s): Enter one URL in the "Link to the page you are reporting" field, and (if applicable) include links to any other violating works in the description of your report.
• What violates the TOS: Explain why you think each work you're reporting is not a fanwork. A brief description of the work is fine; you don't need to be very detailed or quote an entire TOS or FAQ section.

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.

What if I have more questions about non-fanworks?

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 a non-fanwork on AO3, or if you want to know whether a particular work is a fanwork, please report the work to us as described above. For more information, you can read our TOS FAQ for examples of fanworks and non-fanworks.

If you are still uncertain, you can comment below or submit a question through the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports form.

ETA: As mentioned earlier in the post, original works are a type of fanwork allowed on AO3. For more information, please refer to our TOS FAQ: Can I post original fiction?.

The OTW Elections committee is pleased to announce that the timeline for the 2025 election for new members of the Board of Directors has been posted!

As previously announced, Zixin Zhang stepped down from her position on the Board. Jennifer Haynes is also stepping down from the Board as she has reached the end of her term. There are 7 Directors on the OTW's Board and this year OTW members will elect 2 new Directors to serve 3 year terms on the Board.

This year's election will be held August 15-18. This means that the deadline for volunteers to declare their candidacy is June 20.

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.

April came with a lot of smaller changes and fixes to AO3. We also made a few bigger improvements, such as fixing gif icons that weren't animating and updating the way we send invitations to new users. On top of that, we added a confirmation email to the email change process and created a button to delete all your subscriptions. We also made a number of changes to make the work of our Policy & Abuse committee easier as they continue to tackle a wave of spam.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors Emily Wiegand, Hamham6, Laura, melo, Michelle Tanoto, niic, and Tom Li!

Credits

• Coders: Amy Lee, Bilka, Brian Austin, EchoEkhi, Emily Wiegand, Hamham6, irrationalpie, Isabel Nunes, Laura, lydia-theda, marcus8448, melo, Metallicity, Michelle Tanoto, niic, sarken, slavalamp, Tom Li, unsafe-deref
• Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, EchoEkhi, Hamham6, lydia-theda, redsummernight, sarken
• Testers: Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, calamario, choux, Deniz, Jennifer D2, Lute, lydia-theda, megidola, Rachel Linton, Ridicully, Runt, Sanity, sarken, Scott, Teyris, therealmorticia, wichard

Details

0.9.404

On April 2, we fixed gif icons which weren't animating and deployed a number of small changes all around the site.

• [AO3-5596] - When the boxes on the All Fandoms page were of unequal heights, we'd sometimes end up with a box jumping over to the wrong side of the page and creating a big empty space where it should've been. We've fixed it so the boxes should now stack up in the correct columns no matter how tall they are.
• [AO3-6751] - When a fandom tag had a period in its name, the "Relationships by Character" link on its tag landing page would give a 404 error. We've fixed that by properly escaping the periods in the link.
• [AO3-6939] - We've added more information to the browser page title for various collection pages, so now they include which page you're on in addition to the collection title (e.g., "Collection Title - Profile" or "Collection Title - Fandoms").
• [AO3-6942] - The page where a Policy & Abuse admin confirms the deletion of a spammer's works and comments had the browser page title "Confirm Delete User Creations Admin User." This was computer-generated gobbledygook, so we changed it to "Confirm Deletion of User Creations," which is at least marginally better.
• [AO3-6955] - When we changed the code library we use for icons across the site, animated gif icons stopped being animated. We've fixed this so gif icons, including icons uploaded before this release, are now animated again.
• [AO3-6799] - Our Support and Policy & Abuse committees needed to move some things around in their ticket trackers, so we moved some things around in the code to make sure ticket information still ends up in the right place.
• [AO3-5744] - If the URL you entered when importing a work redirected you to a different URL, you'd get a 500 error. We've fixed it so the work will still get imported.
• [AO3-6949] - We bumped our version of the nokogiri gem from 1.18.3 to 1.18.4.

0.9.405

On April 11, we deployed some improvements for the Policy & Abuse committee. We also made a number of display fixes and increased the reliability of sending invitations from the invitation queue.

• [AO3-5573] - If you tried to change the sort order on your Works in Collections page, the works stubbornly remained sorted by their updated date no matter which option you chose. We've fixed it so now they'll actually be sorted in the desired order.
• [AO3-6597] - We were making some changes around invitation pages, so we took the opportunity to prepare those pages for future translation.
• [AO3-6877] - When you fill a prompt in a prompt meme, we automatically add some text to the work notes linking back to the prompt meme. We've updated this text so it will now use the collection's display title rather than its name, which is primarily intended for the URL. (Please note that this will not affect notes on existing works.)
• [AO3-6957] - We improved the look of the error highlighting when you try to leave an invalid comment, such as an exact duplicate of a comment you previously left in the same place.
• [AO3-6961] - We made caution notices, such as the text informing you what will happen if you change your username, more readable in the Reversi skin.
• [AO3-6672] - When a Policy & Abuse admin needed to change someone's username to a generic one, they used to need help from someone with database access. Now they can press a button and the username will be automatically changed.
• [AO3-6830] - When someone reports a work to our Policy & Abuse committee, we now automatically add a list of the work's creators to the ticket PAC receives.
• [AO3-6913] - Admins can now control how often invitations are sent by specifying the frequency in hours instead of days. This helps improve the stability of sending emails by letting us spread the load out over the course of a day instead of doing all the work at once.
• [AO3-6952] - When a Policy & Abuse admin bans a spammer, we no longer submit comments that are marked as deleted to our spam checker.

0.9.406

On April 17, we added an option to delete all your subscriptions to the Subscriptions page. Additionally, we improved error messages all around the site to be more informative and made some other small changes.

• [AO3-6578] - If you marked a work as inspired by a work not hosted on AO3, the ratings in the blurb for the inspiration would overlap the text informing you that the work is not posted on the Archive. We've moved the text so it's now completely readable.
• [AO3-6896] - We've made it so long usernames in the kudos section of a work will wrap across lines instead of running off the side of the page on small screens.
• [AO3-6935] - Trying to create a skin with a title that matched an existing skin's title in every way but capitalization used to result in a 500 error, but now it will give a nicer error telling you the skin title must be unique.
• [AO3-6956] - We reworded the error message you get when you try to make duplicate comments in the exact same spot (for example, submitting the same comment twice in a row on the same work).
• [AO3-6965] - We optimized some of our automated tests by spending less time on posting works.
• [AO3-3524] - We adjusted our HTML parser so you can now use media embeds from 4shared.com in your works.
• [AO3-6401] - If an OTW volunteer tries to leave kudos while logged in to their committee's official account, they'll get an error message telling them to log in with their personal account instead.
• [AO3-6711] - Your subscriptions page now has an option to delete all of your subscriptions. (You can also delete all subscriptions of a certain type, such as work subscriptions, by going to the page listing that kind of subscription.) Don't worry, all of these buttons come with a separate confirmation page.
• [AO3-6849] - To make testing and translation easier, we made a preview of the email users receive when they are gifted a work.
• [AO3-6911] - When a page takes too long to respond, you will now be redirected to a more informative error page.
• [AO3-6945] - When you were entering a tag with a pipe (|) in a field, the autocomplete would return unexpected results if you didn't surround the pipe with spaces. We've fixed that and also sped up the autocomplete search for tags with pipes.

0.9.407

In our deploy from April 24, we improved account security by adding a confirmation email that will be sent to your new email address when you attempt to change the email address of your account.

• [AO3-6113] - Previously, the autocomplete dropdown for tag fields would sometimes stay open after you selected a result from it. It should now always close as expected.
• [AO3-6938] - We updated the browser page title on the Related Works page to include the username of the page's owner.
• [AO3-6962] - When reviewing nominated tags for tag sets, the tags were unreadable in the Reversi skin. We fixed this and also adjusted the Snow Blue skin to address an issue with hover styles on that page.
• [AO3-6972] - Our dependency updater bumped our code style checker from version 2.21.2 to 2.21.3.
• [AO3-5350] - We updated the email that is sent to you when your work is hidden as spam, so that the email can be translated in the future.
• [AO3-6388] - To help keep your AO3 account secure, we've changed the process for updating your account's email address. We already made you enter your new email address twice to reduce the risk of typos, but now you'll need to confirm the new address is correct one more time before we start processing the request. You'll still receive a notification at your old email address, but now we'll also send a confirmation link to your new email address. Your email address will officially be changed only if you log in and use the confirmation link within seven days.

0.9.408

On April 29, we deployed some improvements to our automated tests and fixed a few bugs on the archive.

• [AO3-5053] - When you updated your username or pseud, the blurbs for your bookmarks would continue to show the old name for some time. We've changed this so they will now update immediately.
• [AO3-6136] - Admins can now see the timestamp when a user successfully reset their password in the user's account history.
• [AO3-6813] - When translated emails were enabled but an admin disabled translations for a specific locale, emails would continue to be sent in that locale. Since that's not what the admin intended when disabling the translations, we've fixed this behavior.
• [AO3-6845] - When an admin searched for invitations sent to a particular email, the result would be displayed in a different format if there was only one invitation. That format was inconvenient, so we've changed it to display the same way as a search result of multiple invitations.
• [AO3-6963] - Some normally invisible line breaks in the page title would result in awkward AO3 link previews on other sites. We removed the extra whitespace, so the title in the link preview now looks nicer.
• [AO3-5862] - Back in 2018, we created a migration to remove a column from the database, and then promptly forgot to run it. We've updated the migration and didn't forget about it this time.
• [AO3-6982] - We fixed some automated tests that were randomly failing.
• [AO3-6031] - The file for our automated comment tests was getting quite large and unmanageable, so we split it up into several smaller files.
• [AO3-6980] - One of our automated tests started failing because it was accessing a website that no longer exists. We changed the test to use a mock website instead.
• [AO3-6974] - We bumped our version of the nokogiri gem again, this time to 1.18.8.

I. APRIL'S MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

Development & Membership ran April's Membership Drive, which ended with just over US$269,000 raised from over 8,000 donors. Communications helped distribute news posts, while Translation made Drive information available in 24 languages.

In anticipation of the April drive, Finance posted the 2025 budget.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Although AO3 has not experienced a data breach, malware and reused passwords can still put accounts at risk. On World Password Day, Policy & Abuse published a reminder about how to keep your AO3 account secure and other internet security best practices.

In April, Open Doors announced the import of Garlic Press and Poison Pen Press, a collection of fanzines for Star Trek: The Original Series. This is the first of their Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) publisher imports.

Also in April, Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed a number of bug fixes and improvements to AO3, including performance improvements to the invitation queue and fixing the bug that made animated gifs not animate when uploaded as pseud icons. They also published release notes covering changes made in March.

In March, Policy & Abuse received 2,988 tickets, while Support received 2,909 – less than Support received in the previous two months, but still above their usual average.

Tag Wrangling announced some new "No Fandom" additional tags, or tags not specific to particular fandoms. This update included tags related to Pregnancy and Reader-Insert. In March, the committee wrangled over 460,000 tags, or approximately 1,150 tags per wrangling volunteer!

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore is running a themed month for May, focusing on monsters and creatures in fandom. Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Tumblr, or Twitter/X for featured articles, and join their Discord server for a themed editing chat in May!

In April, Legal continued responding to user queries, tracking legislation, and preparing to respond to events as they unfold.

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) has announced their second annual Fans of Color Research Prize! The award recognizes the best peer-reviewed article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC in the preceding three years (for 2025, no earlier than 2022) and furthers the journal’s goal to support scholars whose work fills critical gaps in fan studies literature about racially marginalized and/or non-Western fans. The winner will receive a US$500 cash prize. Submissions are due to [email protected] no later than May 15, 2025 (Anywhere on Earth).

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board ran their second public meeting on April 26 in the Board Discord server. Their agenda was announced beforehand, and meeting minutes will be available on the OTW website soon.

The Board Assistants Team continued work on ongoing projects, including revamping the Board Discord and investigating non-profit training. In conjunction with Board and the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap team, they also devoted a lot of focus to working on the OTW Crisis Procedures and making related edits to the Procurement Policy draft.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for four committees in March: Policy & Abuse, Strategic Planning, Translation, and TWC.

From March 19 to April 20, Volunteers & Recruiting received 200 new requests, and completed 208, leaving them with 45 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of April 20, 2025, the OTW has 918 volunteers. \o/

New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: chocolatedreams, Evolcahra, and 3 other Documentation Editors
New Open Doors Volunteers: bubble-sort, Maciej, and 1 other Technical Volunteer
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Ana, Murus, Yuca, and 1 other Policy & Abuse Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Alpha, amihan, Andrea T, ari v., Ata Māhina, Aurum, Azure Guest, blossomshed, Canoe, Catrain, Cesario, Corbin, CrystalM, Dalmuri, ECS, Ellie-Bee, Executie, Fyodor, Gialla, greenribbon, Hai, Hima, iri, Ishmael, Jesse Reno, kaijuboyy, Knight, Krchov, Lillie, Luke, Mária_Waluigi, Mayonayys, midoriC, midwinter, Paxsky, PinkBrain, Rain, Ratty, Sarah Wallenfelsz, Shinji, skeleton-kai, Spit, Sunny1, TheDragonflyBox, tomurai, Ushio, Vip, Wicked, Xanya V, and 3 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
New Translation Volunteers: Ailín and 5 other Translators
New User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Liaison from Policy & Abuse

Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Site Moderator and 1 Graphics Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Jennifer D2
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Policy & Abuse Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Strategic Planning Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: 1 Tag Wrangling Supervisor and 4 Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Eilean and 4 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Frost The Fox (Senior Volunteer) and 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.

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 corr, who volunteers in the Volunteers and Recruiting Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

As a Volunteers & Recruiting (VolCom) volunteer, I help keep the OTW running from an organisational point of view. We run recruitment, offering many recruitment rounds each year so every committee has enough volunteers for their work, while managing onboarding, departures, and tool access for all volunteers. Behind those tasks is a lot of documentation that we need to keep up to date, so document reviews are a huge part of what we do. We also have various projects: one example is that we do something to show our appreciation to all our volunteers on International Volunteer Day in December each year. Other examples are the development of a Volunteer Handbook for new volunteers, the development of a Chair Training Plan, or the implementation of new tools to help the organisation run smoothly.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
It depends. I mainly focus on cases, document reviews, and projects. Some weeks, I'll be up to my knees in document reviews or planning/implementing a project, other weeks I'll mostly work on cases. Cases can be about so many different things—assistance with tools, role onboardings or departures, name changes, updating our volunteer database to account for changes in a volunteer's record, and all other questions our volunteers or interested not-yet-volunteers might have that are about the volunteering experience in general and not specific to one of the other committees.

When we have new Volcom volunteers, I help show them how everything works—I love training people, so that's a lot of fun for me. We also have regular working parties within our committee and all try to attend at least one each week, and I look at our committee chats at least two to three times a day and keep an eye on all the incoming requests.

What made you decide to volunteer?
I've been a user of the Archive for about a decade. I'm not a native English speaker and was mostly active in my native language’s fandom corner in the 00s and early 10s, so I only learned about the Archive’s existence after becoming fluent enough to enjoy writing and reading in English. Since then, I've been an avid fan: I firmly believe in the mission behind protecting all transformative works, and fanfic has kept me company through many stages of my life.

I also wanted to get more in contact with fandom-loving people who share my opinion about maximum inclusiveness of content, and I am a very curious person who likes to peek behind the scenes and understand how things work, so it was honestly just a matter of time until I applied. The last part is, apart from our committee's work involving many to-do lists and my passionate love for to-do lists, also the reason why I love volunteering for Volcom specifically: we interact with every part of the OTW, so I get to see and learn a lot about the organisation and how it works.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Last summer, I tabled at a convention for the OTW. It was incredibly fun, and the mix of people who got excited about meeting "the AO3 people" and people who I got to explain our mission to was amazing. On a few noteworthy occasions, I even got to explain to people what fanfiction is, and I know of at least two people who googled it and got excited about reading more stories for books they enjoyed! It was a very big challenge for me, because I’m not a particularly talkative person, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Getting to talk about the OTW and especially being able to tell people about all of our other projects aside from the Archive was so much fun and incredibly rewarding.

What fannish things do you like to do?
I'm a writer and a reader. My main fandom is All For The Game, but if a hook is compelling, I'm willing to read almost any fandom. I love dark stuff - I'm one of those people who actively search for the Major Character Death warning and who find Dead Doves very intriguing! I'm active on a few fandom-related Discord servers, and I often sign up for exchanges or challenges (I keep telling myself that this time, there will be a prompt that matches a story that already lives in my head, and then completely unexpectedly get too excited about an entirely unrelated prompt. I have hundreds of half-written stories, snippets, or prompts that all wait to see the light of day).

Also, I have developed a special interest in the Omegaverse. I can talk for hours about why I think it's an incredibly interesting genre to write in and why there is sooo much interesting worldbuilding cooked into the premise. This has gotten to the point where people listened to me hold a presentation about it for over an hour, and I have become the resident Omegaverse expert in at least one Discord server and two friend groups. Recently, I was tagged with "i need your omegaverse PowerPoint, it’s an emergency" and I am pretty proud of that. Let it be known that I am always ready to help with an Omegaverse emergency!

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.

This year, in recognition of World Password Day, we’re asking all fans to spend a few minutes ensuring that their passwords – and their AO3 accounts – are secure.

Recently, the Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) has seen an increasing number of users who have lost access to their AO3 accounts because they used an insecure password. We'd like to reassure our users that there is no indication that AO3 has experienced a data breach. PAC has been able to determine that all of the affected users' login information had been compromised in other ways, such as by accidentally downloading malware to their devices and/or by re-using the same password on AO3 that they had also used on a compromised website.

In early 2025, several large datasets were posted online, containing hundreds of millions of email/password pairs obtained from malware and compromised websites. It's common practice for scammers to test these compromised email/password pairs on other websites, in case the affected passwords were reused elsewhere. This allows the scammer to access accounts on websites that have never experienced a data breach, such as AO3. After gaining access to an account, the scammer may then change the account's email, password, and/or username, or sell the account information to other people.

AO3 is always free to use, but some people might not understand how to create their own AO3 account. There are many reasons for this, such as language barriers and unfamiliarity with our site. These people may purchase AO3 account information in the mistaken belief that AO3 accounts can be sold legitimately. They only discover they have been scammed once PAC re-acquires the account to give it back to the original owner.

PAC has been working diligently to identify compromised accounts and restore them to their original owners. We have also been working with the victims of the account-selling scam to help them create their own free AO3 accounts. Unfortunately, sometimes these victims, thinking the account they purchased legitimately belongs to them, may delete works or other content posted by the original account owner. While PAC can restore ownership of an account, we are unable to restore deleted content.

Ensure Your Password is Secure

You can reduce your vulnerability to this kind of incident by following internet security best practices:

• Set a unique, secure password for each and every one of your accounts on all platforms.
• Don't ever reuse passwords or share your passwords with anyone else for any reason.
• 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 not to download third-party software.
• Keep your antivirus software and operating system up to date, and set them to scan for malware regularly.
• Check the website haveibeenpwned.com to see if your emails, passwords, and other information may have been exposed in data breaches. Change your passwords for any breached websites and any accounts on other sites where you may have used the same password.

If you are ever worried that your AO3 account is at risk of being compromised, you should do the following:

• Change your password immediately. This will automatically log you – and anyone else accessing your account – out of all sessions on all devices.
  • If you’ve forgotten your password, but you have access to the email address currently associated with your AO3 account, you can log out and reset your password instead.
  • If you’ve forgotten your password, and you no longer have access to the email address you used for your account, please contact Support.
• Make sure the email address associated with your AO3 account is one that you check regularly, as this is where all notifications about your account will be sent. If you need to update your email address, please refer to our FAQ about changing your email.

If you've received an email from @archiveofourown.org saying that the email associated with your account has been changed to one you don’t recognize, and you can't log in to your account, please contact Policy & Abuse. PAC treats compromised accounts as a matter of high priority, and will work with you via email to restore your account. If it's been over a week and you have not heard back from a PAC volunteer about the status of your account, check your email (including any spam, social, or other folders) before replying to our email or submitting a new Abuse report.

Again, we emphasize that there has not been any breach of AO3's servers. We are also developing and implementing additional measures to help prevent unauthorized access to AO3 accounts. However, your account is only as secure as your password and email. We encourage all users to take a few minutes today to ensure that your AO3 password is unique and your email address is up to date.