#board leadership

[bellcza]

[fiercynn]

otw july 2 board meeting: what the hell was that

so the otw (@transformativeworks) board had their Q2 meeting yesterday, which was highly anticipated given everything that's gone down in the past months:

the @end-otw-racism campaign demanding action from otw on their own commitments made three years ago to better address racist harassment in otw and on ao3 (btw, support end otw racism's current campaign #Vote To End OTW Racism!)

recent revelations about how otw has mistreated its volunteers, regarding azarias and how the org reacted after the CSEM attacks on volunteers last year, as well as how the policy & abuse committee (PAC) is overworked and treated by the legal commitee overall (documented here)...

...and ongoing mistreatment of chinese, chinese diaspora, and chinese-speaking volunteers, particularly regarding an incident last year that put volunteers in mainland china at risk, and the board's recent unilateral decision to close the otw weibo account without input from the weibo account leads or any chinese-speaking volunteers

the AI shit

and probably more that i've missed, honestly. so! this is my summary of the meeting, focusing mostly on the issues related to racism; i have screenshots of the whole meeting but will at this point only share those i find most relevant/interesting! alt text will be included for every screenshot in the image, not below it.

and hold on, because this is going to be LONG!

pre-meeting ableism in #help channel so shit actually started going down the previous day in the otw board discord's help channel where there was a pretty ableist resposne to a person who asked if the board could consider adding the pluralkit bot to the server. i wasn't there, but hojarasca on dreamwidth posted about it, and i believe some other folks who were there will post screenshots soon too.

all of that conversation was deleted from the help channel by today, which is not unusual but did mean that a majority of people at today's meeting might not know what went down.

board meeting starts; immediate chaos the board meeting started at 8pm UTC, and it was clear almost immediately that the board was unprepared. what you have to understand about otw board meetings is that they are not really meetings where the board members discuss anything with each other. basically otw board members show up, share an agenda , give written updates on the items on the agenda, take votes on board decisions (but without any discussion publicly), and take questions. none of the materials like the agenda or relevant documents were shared ahead of time, and the board did not offer a way to submit questions ahead of time specific to the board meeting. (otw does have a contact us form to email their board or committee chairs, but i've never gotten a response lol.)

another weird thing that happened before the meeting started was that board member alex tischer was active answering questions in the help channel up to five minutes before the meeting, but didn't stay for the meeting. i don't think a reason was shared for this. this is relevant because alex has been criticized for racist responses to chinese volunteers, particularly those that ran & interacted with otw's weibo account, both in the past & last month when they closed their weibo account without any notice to the volunteers. this will also come up again later in the q&a section...

anyway. the meeting starts. all of the discussion directly about the meeting is supposed to happen in one discord channel called #public-board-meetings; the #help channel is supposed to be for tech issues etc. there is no separate channel for asking questions to the board - those are supposed to be posted in the main board meeting channel. and as far as we can tell, there are no mods of either of these channels apart from board members.

at the start of the meeting there are at least 209 attendees. for context, the last board meeting in march had 31. i've heard from people who have attended board meetings for the past couple years that there are usually 10-40 attendees per meeting. but again, given what's been going down, it's not surprising that so many people showed up!

and because there are a lot of people who haven't attended these meetings before, attendees immediately start asking questions, both process questions about the meeting and actual questions they want to ask the board. which again is understandable because there haven't been many answers given in the #help channel, and the board immediately muddies things further by giving confusing instructions about when to ask questions. they first say this - that they are going to proceed through their agenda, so people should hold questions that are NOT about any agenda items until the end. they imply that questions that are about agenda items are okay as they go through the agenda, but there will be conflicting instructions about this later...

agenda is posted & actual meeting content begins...kind of here's the meeting agenda that was shared. not...terribly descriptive lol

- Decisions taken since the previous meeting - Strategic Plan vote - Update on OTW's Diversity Work - AOB (Any Other Business) - Time for questions

people immediately start asking questions about various agenda items & also procedure questions. very few of these are answered. the first agenda item is posted - decisions taken since the previous meeting.

the board gives us "a couple minutes to read the above". everything's getting a little muddled already because people keep asking questions (reasonably!) about agenda items. there are several questions about the specific agenda item of "decisions taken since the previous meeting". some of the questions are getting answered by otw volunteers but none by board members at this point.

the board moves on to the next agenda item without answering questions about the "decisions" item. people are asking for a separate channel for questions but none is created. board members tell us they will try to get to all the answers at the end, but that we should send any additional answers to the board through the otw contact us form. many people point out that they've rarely gotten responses that way.

board gives a brief update (that was NOT on the agenda) from the finance committee chair, who was not at the meeting, to say that the 2023 budget was posted earlier this year, and that people can send questions via the contact us form. i'll note here that i sent a message to the finance committee with a question about the 2023 budget two months ago and have not gotten a response.

strategic plan update + question procedure still unclear the board then starts to give an update on the strategic plan, which board members are to vote on today. attendees ask if the full strategic plan draft was shared publicly before this meeting and we are told it was only shared with volunteers, not with members or the public.

they do share an infographic summarizing the strategic plan. hilariously, the first version they upload is so blurry that it's unreadable. they then share a gdoc with alt text. if you are new-ish to otw stuff, this infographic and the jargon in it are probably pretty confusing.

the board keeps giving us "a few minutes to check things out". people ask them to not do that and proceed because we can read while they are typing. questions to the board keep going unanswered and various other people say that we're supposed to hold questions until the end. we again get told conflicting things about how to ask questions. a board member asks us to hold ALL questions until the end, but an otw volunteer points to an earlier statement from a different board member & says that questions on the current agenda item are allowed.

at 45 minutes into the meeting, when most questions are going unanswered (and a lot of only being answered by otw volunteers, not board members), the board disables messages in the main channel so that they can proceed with the agenda. this is not usual board meeting procedure and was unannounced until they did it. people start getting really creative with emoji reactions because they can't ask questions. the board admits that they were unprepared for the number of attendees at this meeting.

attendees then start asking questions in the help channel, which has been put on "slow mode", which means each user can only post every thirty minutes. multiple otw volunteers share in the help channel that they warned the board about preparing for the meeting, and the only change the board made in response was to make it 30 minutes longer than usual.

in the main channel, the board does not have any public discussion on the strategic plan (which has not been shared, only the infographic has), and votes unanimously to approve it.

diversity work update, aka a glorified otw news post the board moves on to the "diversity work update", which is now a standard section of every board meeting. they share two updates - firstly, that caste has been added as a protected class in the code of conduct, and secondly that they've heard the concerns coming from @end-otw-racism supporters and others. both of which were already shared a month ago in this OTW news post from a month ago, which they link to.

seriously, nothing new is shared in this part of the meeting that wasn't in that post. some update!

q&a part one the board asks for emoji reactions again to see how many people are in attendance. unclear why they do this unless they were hoping people might have left? but alas for them, there are still 182 people that emoji react saying they are in the meeting!

the board FINALLY starts answering questions, but they do not yet re-enable messages so that users can ask more questions. they start by addressing the pluralkit issue from yesterday, but they don't give any response about the ableism that was allowed to go unchecked in the channel.

then, BAFFLINGLY, they start with answering questions from someone who wasn't able to make the meeting. how did this person submit those questions beforehand? NO ONE KNOWS. fortunately this person had (imo) good questions, but again, why were their questions given preference? unclear.

okay there were a LOT of questions and responses, so i'm going to stick to sharing the ones that were most important to me, which were about addressing racism within the otw and on ao3. hopefully someone else will summarize other issues!

we finally get our FIRST REAL NEW RESPONSE on a diversity/racism issue! the board says they plan to hire a diversity consultant by the end of the year.

we also hear that changes to otw's terms of service are being proposed to give the policy & abuse committee more tools to address harassment, including "racially-motivated" harassment.

board says the best way for people other than otw volunteers to get involved with anti-racism issues is...to stay up to date on what otw is doing, attend public meetings, and send questions through the comment form. what.

the board does not answer how they have reached out to fans of color in their work to address racism, which i assume means they haven't; they instead say that fans of color are free to provide input/feedback via the contact us form. emoji reactions explode

the board says that the strategic plan has initiatives to combat racism including improving diversity in recruitment (of...who? volunteers, board members? potential future paid staff?), hiring a diversity consultant, & forming "volunteer coalitions"

slight digression from my focus on racism issues because of how many times the board has told us to submit questions via their contact us form: very little clarity on how long it will take for answers to be questions, or how long people spend on responses

the goals for the future diversity consultant are to do an audit of the organization and offer recommendations on how to proceed. couldn't be vaguer lol

otw does not currently have plans to have an internal committee for diversity, equity, and inclusion work, since they're relying on the external consultant, but if the consultant recommends it they'll consider

by the time they've gotten through these responses, there are only five minutes left in the meeting! remember, messaging by attendees has been disabled for the past 40 minutes, so everything the board has answered so far is from people who got their questions in during the first 45 minutes (or, apparently, one person who managed to get in questions before the meeting).

q&a part two at this point, the board FINALLY re-enables messaging for new questions, but clarifies that they will only take them until 9:30pm UTC. which means anyone who did actually wait to ask their questions now only has five minutes to ask them! questions start rolling in immediately. again, going to focus on the ones about racism.

i'm listing questions in chronological order that they are asked, but please note that the corresponding answers from the board are coming WAY later than the questions. the board took until 10:20pm UTC (almost an hour after the meeting was supposed to end) to answer all the questions. mostly i'm telling you this because the emoji reactions on the answers by the board get more limited as people understandably have to leave the meeting lol

the first question of round two is about how chinese & chinese diaspora volunteers have been treated re: the weibo account closure, & board member alex tischer's role in this.

board response is horrifyingly empty, only promising the creation of a new "anonymous form" to receive feedback from chinese and chinese diaspora volunteers on the situation.

an attendee asks for better prioritization of racism & equity issues in the meetings, and better preparation from the board. (note that the addition of "diversity work update" to the agenda is not new, i believe it was instituted late last year)

in response, board admits they were unprepared despite volunteers warning them, says they will take advice from this meeting forward. emoji reactions are out in full force

an attendee asks more details about how the diversity consultant research officer (who is NOT a hired diversity consultant, but an otw volunteer in charge of the hiring process for a consultant) engages with the board & what goals they have for the future consultant

response from board is that they meet weekly, and that the research officer is herself in charge of identifying goals for the future consultant

an attendee points out that "curate your space" tools are not enough to protect users from targeted abuse, including racist abuse, and that asking fans of color to reach out to the board instead of the other way around is bullshit (my words haha)

the board's response to this is to offload that onto the future diversity consultant. SERIOUSLY.

an otw member asks if the diversity consultant will also look at accessibility for disabled users across the otw

board essentially says "yeah, sure" lol

an otw member asks how otw will remove barriers to becoming a voting member and diversifying membership & committee leadership

board's response is that they don't know the demographics of their members or volunteers, which...somehow means they can't remove barriers that would help fans of color or non-western fans from becoming members and volunteers? lmaoooooooo

an attendee asks for accountability in ensuring that the incoming board keeps the current board's promises re: DEI, pointing to improvements made by the 2015 board that were later reversed by a new board make-up

board does not seem to understand this question so answers an entirely different one! (seriously, i double-checked which question they were responding to.)

an otw volunteer asks what the plans are to deal with the "ongoing exclusion and alienation of chinese-speaking volunteers"?

the board repeats that they have opened a feedback form for chinese-speaking volunteers. that's it.

so those are all the questions i saw on racism; as i mentioned, there were TONS more good questions on board transparency and communications, protection of volunteers, moderating board meetings better, lack of feedback collection on the strategic plan, etc.

at PRECISELY 9:30pm UTC, messages are disabled again so that no more questions can be asked. all of the otw board responses that i shared above are from after messages were disabled again.

takeaways this meeting was a complete mess. the process was extremely unclear and made things inaccessible; while the board did (from what i can tell) answer all the questions posted, people were not able to ask all the questions that they'd planned because of the unannounced disabling of messaging.

and then, of course, there's the fact that the majority of the answers are bullshit, which is probably the least surprising thing about this meeting.

it's just ridiculous that they weren't prepared for this. given everything that's gone down in the past months, why on earth wouldn't they assume that people would show up with hard questions? the mismanagement and incompetence is frankly astounding. which i guess is the story of the last few months re: OTW anyway!

so...see you at the next one in a few months, i guess? 🤷🏾‍♀️

[burstingsunrise]

Hey, is this molly burstingsunrise? I heard you were the president of the lhafc, and I was wondering where I could sign up. Is there a membership fee? A card I should carry? I want to make sure I'm doing your cause justice, and I swear I won't let you down! I'll get you neck photos, too - this needs to be appreciated! Thank you for championing such a noble undertaking. Can I request a luke monologue? Happy april fools!

Calum

well firstly i am in fact co-president, sharing my responsibilities with meg @kaleidoscopeminds, so normally she would need to review this request as well. but here's the thing calum - luckily for you, you are already a member of the lhafc even if you don't know it! you were officially inducted on july 31, 2022, although i suspect you've been a member in spirit for much longer.

and great news, you've already paid your membership fee by providing the club with services such as vicarious ass groping:

and also this very important photo, which you could actually print out and use as your membership card:

[gardenerian]

can you write more about baby ian and/or his siblings when they were younger?? do you have any more hcs about him when he was really little??? i need to know

baby....... little baby. little boy 😭 okay. okay 😭😭😭😭 i am thinking about how frank tells ian that he's been a drama queen since the day he was born which is genuinely hilarious to me but it also has me THINKING....

when we meet ian he holds his cards pretty close to his chest, right? he still feels HUGE emotions and they burst out in pretty intense ways, but from day to day he just kinda moves through the world rolling his eyes at people sfkldj

now, we gotta take this with a grain of salt bc i feel like ian or any of the kids just saying "hi" would count as dramatic to frank lol but! let's think about baby drama queen ian.

thinking about ian dropping his popsicle in the grass by that above ground pool and losing his absolute mind over it when fiona tells him there aren't any more..... thinking about him seeing a dog in the neighborhood and pitching a fit in the middle of the sidewalk when he learns that no, he can't have this dog because it does in fact have someone walking him..... thinking about lip always beating him at battleship and ian flipping the little board over every time, stamping his little feet all the way up the stairs asklfd

[nando161mando]

The whole gravy train needs to be derailed. MPs should never receive payments from vested interests.

#greed #Labour #ukpolitics

[vampirerodeo779]

Please I am NOT an “over achiever” i am an autistic dumbass who was built for running around all day and hunting. i need smth to do all day im understimulated 😭

[maiteo]

Wait how is even becoming the president like is he even qualified enough? Or are they going down the route of oh he played and managed teams so he knows his way around football and that’s good enough? Cus that’s a big ass risk to take if so 😬

I feel it’s more about the incompetence of our current president (pinto da costa) like fans are most likely sick of the money problems, losing good players, etc and they finally saw someone running against him and would rather take the chance than continue where we’re going now

im worried he isn’t qualified either…he’s still young and jumping from manager to president is crazy to me😭 he promised good things…all I can do is hope he follows thru now that he won

(this article sums it up if that’s of any interest)

[arolesbianism]

Thinks oh so hard abt the spiraling upwards clan founders, especially the birchclan founders. Silly lil kitties who's pasts are drenched in blood with the primary regret of not drawing it sooner

[nyehilismwriting]

hey author! :) just curious:

when rohan sleeps with the MC, (the writing on that scene btw *chef kiss*) they did so just for IVI and they didn’t actually think anything of the MC, right? because i know i fell for them in that one scene- LMAO. you can’t say our name like that, and look at us like that, and expect us not to fall in love 🙄

thank you hehe <33 and as for what was going through xir head during that scene... 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️you'll just have to wait and find out 👀

[appleciders]

antiope!mary and yelle!shannon send post

MMM!!

em i love this. antiope!mary, with her quiver of exploding arrows, absolutely begging shannon to have a single emotionally intelligent non-self sacrificial bone in her body. literally grabbing her by the shoulders trying to get her to have a reaction to serious things that isn’t closed-off stoicism (bc shannon isn’t superficially yelle, she’s not an outwardly groovy stoner funguy, but it's a different expression of the same thing, of throwing herself so hard into a Cause, and into the protection of her friends, to the point where she has accepted she has no worth beyond it). mary!antiope pleading please care about your own life, your own life, your own life—the world is better with you in it, the best thing that you can do for the world isn't die.

(please. i love you. i don't want you to fucking die.)

[drumlincountry]

The job I just quit asked me to join their board of management. Why do people want me on their board of management so bad. One time an organisation rejected my job application in the same email as asking if i'd serve on their board. Pay me, motherfuckers.

[asummersday]

local author is absolutely obsessed with raph and leo's relationship following the end of season 2 and is making it everyone's problem, more at 11!

[fiercynn]

two more otw board directors, natalia gruber and antonius melisse, have resigned from the otw board.

while not mentioned in otw's post, the context for this appears to be that because both natalia and antonius were on hiatus at the moment, the board would not be able take action on the demands surfaced by otw volunteer dhobikikutti, and supported by other otw volunteers, calling for the suspension of otw board director alex tischer for a history of racist behavior.

(it's worth nothing that kutti, who is a person of color and a volunteer with the otw tag wrangling committee, was officially reprimanded for speaking out about racism in the org, which was not only limited to critique of alex, and included kutti being told kutti was making other volunteers uncomfortable by asking for action on racism in the org. yup. super fucked up!!!!)

according to fail_fandomanon, vounteers asked natalia and antonius to either return from hiatus so the board could potentially convene on this topic, or resign, and they appear to have chosen the latter option.

a few takeaways from this:

there are now three remaining board directors: president kari dayton, secretary alex tischer (the board member with a history of racism), and michelle schroeder. kari and michelle would both have to vote for alex's removal, unless alex resigns

it's unclear to me if people expect kari and michelle to take up the matter of alex's suspension or not; alex is also leaving the board after elections, but a suspension would still matter in the time left in alex's term and because alex would otherwise likely continue as an otw volunteer

the otw board elections are now uncontested because there are five candidates and five seats. the seats are for different term lengths, so the election will still happen to determine which directors get which seats

the broader context for all of this too is that a lot of the conversations that got us to this point were catalyzed by the @end-otw-racism campaign launching in may. @end-otw-racism is currently running a #VoteToEndOTWRacism action to advocate for incoming board members to uphold the otw's 2020 commitments.

we'll see what else happens before the elections, which will take place in just a few weeks, from august 11 to 14!!!

[earthstellar]

How Cybertronian Sparks are Created via Matrix - MTMTE, Issue 19 

now, I had a whole other post I was gonna write here

but my partner just leaned over my shoulder, read these panels, and asked:

“wait, the Matrix is a “Primal Conduit” which holds the ability to create life, or like, unborn sparks? and Rodimus carries half of a Matrix or something, right?” 

to which I said, very carefully, “yes...”.

and my partner followed up with an extremely powerful question: 

“so, if the Matrix carries sparks, does that mean anyone who carries a Matrix-- like, a whole one? or would a part of one be enough?--would that mean Matrix carriers are pregnant by default?” 

now, listen

I can’t recall anything canonical at the moment that would explicitly confirm otherwise, certainly not by the time (in universe) in which the discussion in the above panels occurs 

so it is POSSIBLE. 

canonically, that’s a POSSIBILITY. 

whether Cybertronians would view this in the same way is another question entirely. 

if you think about it on a technical level, since a legitimate Matrix holds within it the potential for the generation of sparks, then yes, technically a Matrix holder by human definition would be “pregnant”, as they would be carrying (literally, holding inside their body) sparks which have not yet sprung forth from the Matrix core (not yet “born”) but are known to exist within the Matrix itself. 

whether the sparks generated by the Matrix are held within the energy core of the Matrix perpetually/always and come forth as needed in specific circumstances, or if the sparks are produced and ejected only under certain influences or under certain conditions, is not 100% clear. it could be both, or either; 

we see that the Matrix does produce sparks when manipulated manually to do so, but we don’t know for sure if these sparks were actually generated at that time, or if they may have existed in a sort of subspace within the core of the Matrix beforehand and were only brought forth once manipulation drew them out.

but “pregnancy” is just how humans might view it. nothing in IDW 1 canon suggests Cybertronians view it the same way, as overwhelmingly the emphasis on “new life” as a concept is placed primarily on hot spots and the generation of new sparks from their concentrated wells of energy (more in line with the classic Well of All Sparks approach) 

in MTMTE, Rodimus is carrying half of an ”empty” Matrix by this point in the story (Rodimus describes it himself as being empty in an earlier issue, there’s also other stuff going on with the Matrix in IDW1 which I will get into eventually in another post I want to make about Matrix stuff once I get the time for that) 

HOWEVER, this is a series written by JRO, a man who sure did write some things about a lot of stuff! 

also, if your brain, like mine, has been poisoned by fanfiction, then you are almost certainly aware of the shit our poisoned brains might be able to generate with this concept in mind whenever we get dialogue regarding “carrying” the Matrix, as shown in the panel below from Lost Light Issue 5: 

it sure isn’t, Rodimus!!! 

there is also periodically alternating terminology in universe regarding the Matrix;

sometimes a bot in possession of a Matrix is described as “holding” the Matrix, sometimes this is called “wielding” the Matrix, then in other contexts it is described as “carrying” the Matrix, like in the panel above.

“holding” suggests ownership (obviously, no shit, I know lol) 

“wielding” potentially suggests an innate defensive/offensive power, for example, as in “wielding a sword” (interesting because Rodimus explicitly states above that the Matrix is not a weapon, so this term may instead be an implication of the social/political/spiritual power brought to any who obtain the Matrix, which would make sense)

“carrying” suggests maybe some other things that might possibly be relevant to this discussion (fanfiction has destroyed my brain but also this series is written by JRO, so I consider this to be at least plausible in the context of MTME/Lost Light) 

further research and analysis is needed to determine if there may be any potential specific reasoning for which terms are used and in what contexts a certain term may be preferred over another...I’m gonna end up making a Matrix plot timeline/lore map or some shit lmao 

anyway!!!

the fact that my partner is now googling “Transformers pregnant is this possible?” on their phone while sitting right next to me while I am writing this is making me lose my fucking mind

this is so funny to me, I need to explain SO MUCH to them over the next like several hours, this is going to take forever 

my partner now firmly believes the Matrix is a literal baby making machine and it is very hard for me to explain or contextualise any of the surrounding info about the Matrix as it appears in MTMTE because they are mostly only familiar with TFP and G1 

and this situation has completely derailed my original train of thought and I no longer remember why I spent so long digging up this issue so I could take these screenshots in the first place lol 

but I thought I would share anyway because I can’t believe this is how my partner is finding out about the concept of Transformers sparklings 

on the upside I now get to do an IRL long post LOL so honestly this works for me, lmaoooooo 

(if I remember what the hell I was originally going to talk about, I’ll make another post about it later LOL)

[katierosefun]

never skips class, finished with papers a week before the deadline to skipping class to finish a paper due tomorrow at 8 am pipeline

[dulcesia]

Me when I'm in my overachiever arc again and I'm balancing three extracurriculars, three grad classes and trying to graduate early and trying to hook up a part time job on top of it :thumbs up: