I'm not saying we need to have open elections like for the Board, but don't the volunteers at least get to vote on who leads their committees? Damn. But with no term limits, even if they were to vote for the chairs, there's no way to make the chairs accountable if once they're in, they're in for however long they want to be. And I imagine that that can be very discouraging to new volunteers who go in hoping to make a difference or take on more leadership roles themselves eventually. With no democratic process, I imagine that the process for training a successor is that the most outspoken voice or the favorite of the departing chair or whoever's been around longest is chosen for training to take on the position. Which, in an organization with demonstrated racism issues, can lead to fewer opportunities for volunteers of color to make their voices heard or speak up, or step into those leadership roles.
I'm beginning to understand better the issues with knowledge retention, institutional memory, and information silos raised by various candidates and commenters. It truly sounds, to this outsider looking in (with the caveat that I'm just a writer and fic enjoyer and have never volunteered with OTW), like a byzantine clusterfuck that favors the old guard who are used to doing things this way, and disadvantages new people who want to change things for the better. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" only works if the thing ain't actually broke. I don't think they set out to make it so inefficient and convoluted but at this point, "we've always done it this way" is not a good reason to continue as is
I can't imagine why there wasn't a democratic process in the first place, at least for internal positions - probably when AO3 was first developed it wasn't much of an issue, but it does make me wonder if the critical point for doing an internal re-work to reflect how large AO3 has become was seen, because it doesn't seem to have been acted upon in a tangible manner.
It's not democratic for most committees because there often aren't a pool of qualified people who have the time and energy to chair a committee. You get only voting when you have multiple reasonably-qualified volunteers for a role, and for unpaid positions that need specific skills (and hours to donate), that's rare.
Forcing elections and term limits into roles where there aren't enough people willing & able to do the job is pointless. And the biggest stumbling block is probably not "are there other people who have these skills" but "which of those people has the spare time available?"
Chair selection & other committee management roles could be improved, but "current committee members vote for their leader (based on who's most popular or friendly)" or "board appoints a leader (based on what they know about what the committee does, and who speaks out best in public internal discussions)" are not the best ways to approach the problems.
This is part of the "needs a big administrative overhaul" problem set.
Yes, I think this also comes down to when the OTW is fully going to finish researching and setting the stage for paid employees. Until that happens we will be scrambling for someone who is willing to "donate" their time and efforts for free, while still having enough experience to run as a chair. Some committees will elect the chairs but there are simply not enough people willing to work as chairs for no pay, especially with the current workplace climate. A lot of other nonprofits struggle with this, and that's when THEY PAY their chairs, but it's exacerbated because the OTW isn't paying its nonprofit workers unless they're contract.
Part of the issue as far as Ive read is that (correct me if I'm wrong) only Legal logs their volunteer hours, so an estimate of work needed and work done isn't readily available? Like it would be easier to manage all this if we knew what people were actually doing in a quantifiable way. Am I phrasing this right? Not sure if I'm being clear my b
Yes - Legal logs their hours because that's a legal-tax-etc requirement (they are donating hours to a nonprofit); there is no other formal logging of time/activities. There is not, afaik, even informal-casual records, although that may not be true across all committees.
Changing that is going to be a real hurdle, because if there were an easy, simple, non-intrusive way to track the work being done (whether or not we tracked who was doing what), we'd be using it, because yes, it really would be useful to know how many hours are needed in each committee, what counts as a busy vs slow month, and so on.
One of the (many) problems with implementing time-tracking is that a lot of people do their work as a little bit here, a little bit there. Sometimes it's "I've been spending all weekend looking at the tag wrangulator" or "what do you mean it's 3am? I'm not done editing this Fanlore page and I need to fix six categories now." And sometimes it's "I'm on a 10-minute break at work so I will go check for double-redirects and fix one." (Or fix none, because there aren't any... do we count that time?)
It's not impossible and we really do need to figure out the logistics, but it'll mean a big shift for some committees, and there'll be fallout and very likely some resignations - some because they don't want extra admin hassles, and some likely because of accessibility, because there is no such thing as a perfect tool or system that isn't a barrier for anyone. So with all that in mind... I can see why nobody's pushed for time-tracking so far. It's hard to be the one saying "Let's add MORE BUREAUCRACY and make some of the work LESS FUN and also DRIVE AWAY SOME PEOPLE and I promise that, in two years once we're all used to the new system, it will be better!"
(We kinda need it. But wow I do understand why that hasn't been anyone's high-priority agenda.)
I agree, and it does feel a bit "chicken or egg" - does the small pool of qualified people come from the organizational disarray, or does the disarray come from the small pool of qualified people? There has been a noted history of steep learning curve to certain positions (i.e. programming, a backbone to the organization that ended up requiring paid personnel for certain updates), and having a lack of structure for delegating work into more reasonable chunks is contributing heavily to burn-out.
The administrative structure most certainly did not grow as the sites did, and the recalcitrance of, overall, the Board to adapt is contributing to the amount and scale of problems now. I don't think at this point there's going to be an easy way out of this, and it's going to take more than a few elections and shuffling of people to accomplish that.
I mean I can think of why there wasn't a democratic process within committees for chairs, but term limits and a set way to train successors would be a good way to cycle the positions and lessen burnout, overwork, etc.
From what other commenters have said about the culture of toxic overwork and other ways volunteering is a pain, some structural changes and cultural changes may make it so more people ARE willing to volunteer for chairs and learn the responsibilities of the roles. It sounds like the problem of "no one wants to run for/volunteer for chair" and "chairs have no term limits, are hard to remove, and become entrenched as the only people who know how things work because volunteer burnout and turnover are so high, plus they have enormous workload and feel responsible not to quit" are just, the same problem. It's an exploitative way to run things
Agreed on both counts. I also feel like the average volunteer (and also the average AO3 user) knowing what each grade of position entails in terms of work and responsibilities would go a long way toward ensuring resiliency in the system, as well as drawing all that institutional knowledge out where it can be of use.
Some committees do elect their chairs. The method of selecting chairs varies by committee. A large problem is that being an OTW Chair is an awful job that few people want to do and even fewer people can do successfully, because the OTW is so toxic and dysfunctional. So often the person who becomes chair is the only person willing to do it. As you can imagine, the people willing to do that job -- and I do not mean this in an insulting way, when I want to insult someone I will tell them -- tend towards martyrdom, and the Org's toxic work culture encourages that attitude. Volunteers being burned out, overworked, and without the time or energy to rethink how things are done is status quo in the Org, and especially among chairs. Being monstrously busy is a virtue, and nevermind if what you're busy doing could be done more easily some other way.
You'll notice that when any criticism is leveled at the org, the inevitable defense will be, "We're just volunteers, and there's so much work, you can't reasonably expect us to do more." Every time.
This is an excellent comment and is at the heart of volunteer run, non-profit boards. The people willing to do the (often thankless) and unending work required for free are people willing to do this for a reason. Account for people willing and highly capable, that reason multiples.
This work absolutely draws a certain sort of person - and right, not an insult! - the martyrdom and valuation / boundary issues and passion and dedication to the cause equates to a real fast crash and burn.
The constant struggle to put out ever increasing fires takes away from the ability and willingness to address structural failings. The more this “rot” sets in, the harder it is to remove.
Bringing paid positions in, even as temporary fixers or advisors, is a whole other can of worms. But. Around and around it goes.
*Not involved with OTW, just someone who served as a director on a non-profit board and has the sanity damage to show for it.
As Azarias said, finding people willing to do the Committee Chair job at all is often incredibly difficult. (Another thing I futilely hoped had changed since my time.)
One of the (many) mistakes we made was allowing some bad behaviour to continue for too long because the people involved were Committee Chairs and we knew there was nobody to replace them.
I've just figured out what about this situation is getting under my skin, which is funny in a way, but I've never been great at identifying my own emotions lol. It's reminding me of a situation where I once worked where despite multiple witnesses, complaints, documentation, informal and formal warnings, and the person themselves literally bragging about it, their attitude was "what are they gonna do, fire me?" This person was accused of significant abuse, and it took literally over a year before they were fired because we were so short-staffed. And because people were too afraid of confrontation and cleaning house to do anything, and the problem person was aware that they brought in enough money to be a loss nobody wanted to deal with. They even got the Church treatment of being moved to a different position to see if that would change anything, but it just got worse. People should never feel like they are irreplaceable enough that they can freely abuse their position.
The person was removed, and it was a scramble at first to cover all their duties among like 3 different people, but it was a relief. And we did end up training someone on staff to help replace them. We all survived. The thing is though, this was a paying job, and I 1000% understand volunteers not wanting to go through all that, when they have a lot of work to deal with as it is. How would OTW properly support volunteers if that happened? How to prevent someone else from being saddled with all the work? I don't really know.
At least OTW has receipts in the form of writing and messages, should they choose to take action in removing people from their positions. Or should volunteers need to prove their side of the story. It's frustrating to be told by evasive leadership "well there were no cameras so we can't do anything," like pics or it didn't happen. That doesn't apply here and I'm glad. It's mostly in writing. I can't believe they've been headassed enough to put some of the shit in writing that they have, frankly. The CCAP in particular.
Comment on Resignation of OTW Directors
switchwitchbitch Fri 28 Jul 2023 12:39AM UTC
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FairestCat Fri 28 Jul 2023 01:07AM UTC
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switchwitchbitch Fri 28 Jul 2023 02:49AM UTC
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TexasDreamer01 Fri 28 Jul 2023 03:11AM UTC
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Elf (Elf_Herself) Fri 28 Jul 2023 05:05PM UTC
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pretty_weird_ideas Fri 28 Jul 2023 05:34PM UTC
Last Edited Fri 28 Jul 2023 05:40PM UTC
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switchwitchbitch Fri 28 Jul 2023 10:40PM UTC
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Elf (Elf_Herself) Sat 29 Jul 2023 12:50AM UTC
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(26 more comments in this thread)
TexasDreamer01 Sat 29 Jul 2023 07:41AM UTC
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switchwitchbitch Fri 28 Jul 2023 10:35PM UTC
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TexasDreamer01 Sat 29 Jul 2023 07:32AM UTC
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azarias Fri 28 Jul 2023 03:14AM UTC
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switchwitchbitch Fri 28 Jul 2023 10:40AM UTC
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TheCalamity Tue 01 Aug 2023 04:32AM UTC
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FairestCat Fri 28 Jul 2023 11:54AM UTC
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switchwitchbitch Sat 29 Jul 2023 03:41AM UTC
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