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I. AO3 STATISTICS ROUND-UP
2025 was a busy year for AO3! The site continued to see rising traffic, with Communications publishing an update on AO3 statistics from 2020-2025. In December, Support received 3,589 tickets, totaling to over 40,000 tickets received in 2025, an all-time high. Meanwhile, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 6,357 tickets in December, totaling approximately 47,500 tickets in 2025. Check out PAC's pie chart for more details.
In the first half of January, User Response Translation translated or betaed 32 ticket requests from Support and PAC.
Open Doors finished importing three archives in December: Absolution - The Inugrrrl Memorial Archive about the manga InuYasha, InDeath.net Fan Fiction about the In Death book series by J.D. Robb, and The Pinky and the Brain Page about the cartoon Pinky and the Brain. In total, Open Doors completed the imports of nine archives in 2025! They also announced the import of the Randall Morgan Memorial Archive, a Queer as Folk (US) fanfiction archive by the creator Randall Morgan.
In December, Tag Wrangling wrangled approximately 598,000 tags, or around 1,300 tags per volunteer. In total, they wrangled approximately 4,944,000 tags in 2025. They also continued work on handling "No Fandom" additional tags, publishing December and January news posts detailing recent changes. In total, Tag Wrangling published nine "No Fandom"-related news posts in 2025 covering around 399 new canonical "No Fandom" additional tags.
II. ELSEWHERE AT AO3
Accessibility, Design & Technology coordinated improvements to bookmark searches in the latter half of January, including the ability to filter bookmarks by word count. They also continue their work on performance improvements, bug fixes, and working with PAC and AO3's spam detection service to address spam comments. In conjunction with Communications, they posted a December 2025 update on how to recognize and report AO3 spambots.
In January, Tag Wrangling updated their Fandom Tag Metatag guidelines, including clarifying when a fandom metatag should be made and when to merge closely related fandoms into one fandom tag. Check out the news post detailing the new policy.
As part of International Volunteers Day (IVD) 2025, Communications collected and batched answers to the IVD Q&A by committee, resulting in five committee-specific news posts highlighting Communications, Support, Tag Wrangling, Translation, and Volunteers & Recruiting. Answers across committees, along with additional responses not featured in the news posts, have been compiled in a separate AO3 work.
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
Fanlore ran an editing chat to close out 2025, and it was a lot of fun! They also began preparing for their annual IFD Fanlore Challenge and Femslash February event! Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr for announcements.
Legal answered many internal and external questions this month.
TWC is readying the publication of the two 2026 special issues: "Disability and Fandom" and "Gaming Fandom". They also continue work on the two 2027 special issues: "Music Fandom" and "Latin American Fandoms", and there continues to be a rolling deadline for submitting to TWC’s next general issue.
In January, Communications' Fanhackers wrote about the Transformative Approaches to Fan Identity, and they began a multi-post survey of acafannish research and publishing resources.
IV. GOVERNANCE
In December, Board announced the resignations of two directors: Kathryn Solderholm and Erica Frank. We would like to thank Erica and Kathryn for their service as members of the Board, and wish them all the best in their future endeavours with the OTW.
In January, Board finalized and approved the OTW Procurement & Purchasing Policy. They and the Board Assistants Team (BAT) organised the first quarter of 2026 public Board meeting on January 18 which had 54 attendees. Minutes of this meeting will be available soon on the OTW website. Elsewhere, Board and BAT continued work on document review and archiving board statements, Code of Conduct tasks in conjunction with Organizational Culture Roadmap, and ongoing projects for mental health resources for volunteers, scheduling tools, public meeting best practices and volunteer retention in BAT. BAT also updated their OTW website committee page.
Organizational Culture Roadmap finalized a confidentiality policy in preparation for upcoming external recruitment.
V. OUR VOLUNTEERS
In December, Volunteers & Recruiting thanked all OTW volunteers on International Volunteer Day with their organization-wide email and graphics campaign. In January, they ran recruitment for Open Doors.
From November 22 to January 23, Volunteers & Recruiting received 355 new requests, and completed 378, leaving them with 52 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of January 23, 2025, the OTW has 1,013 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Subcommittee Leads/Workgroup Heads: Eevee (Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Lead) and megidola (Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Head)
New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Lulu S (Chair Trainee)
New Fanlore Volunteers: Elfie, Konsta Morales, Watts, and 1 other Graphic Designer
New Open Doors Volunteers: Addiebees, AviLine, feelyx, LeighR, Marie K, meservey66, MetaKass, miffmiff, Mort, pinkconstellations, SleepyJane, Spit, StormySea, Truendz, Vail, and 11 other Import Assistants
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: megidola (Supervisor) and 1 Chair Track Volunteer
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Chelsea Cheyanne, inspiredstork, Sanity, will, and Yrindor (Supervisors)
New Translation Volunteers: Rhine and 1 other Chair Trainee; Arushi, athursdayschild, Eirinar, Linarii, Mira8, Niki K, Phoebe B, Pi, Rita P, and 12 other Translators
New TWC Volunteers: Fiona M, Yumi, and 3 other Layout Editors; and 2 Outreach and Communications Editors
New User Response Translation Volunteers: Eki, f0f8ff, HARRitte, Jules R, Laus, PanPan, rosings, zoy zauce, and 3 other Translators
Departing Directors: Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm
Departing Committee Chairs: 1 Communications Chair and 1 Elections Chair
Departing BAT Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Communications Volunteers: KW Ukuku (TikTok Moderator), Lori P (Graphics Volunteer), 1 Fanhacker Volunteer, and 1 Social Media Moderator
Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Graphic Designer, 2 Membership Data Specialists, and 2 Volunteers
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Discord Moderator, 1 Outreach Analyst, and 1 Policy & Admin
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Pelagia and 1 other Administrative Volunteer, Wynne (Import Assistant), and 1 FCPP Intern
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Nary and 22 other Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Nary and 1 other Supervisor; Asas Carmesins, Bruno, Eevee, lianneder, Lily_Haydee_Lohdisse, McBangle, Sayornis, Tea Huimyni, and 10 other Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Teelee (Task Assistant); Illiterations and 4 Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: Melanie Kohnen (Review Editor); Courtney Lazore and 1 other Proofreader; and 1 Symposium Editor
Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Senior Volunteer and 2 Volunteers
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.