because (original) (raw)

The OTW board election has become really contentious. Which sucks for the people involved, is turning up some issues that sound like they'd be really good to address, and seems to be getting some bystanders excited about servings of Schadenfreude pie.

Whatever happens during the remainder of this election season and after it, I (yes, very biased perspective here) hope that everyone involved and the majority of bystanders, including ones who didn't know much about the OTW before, will continue or start to support the OTW and its projects -- whether by using its projects like the AO3 and Fanlore, or working on them, or by sending in a few bucks if they can -- as I think they're really valuable and important to fandom.

The idea of an organization that is not-for-profit, for fans, and done/run by fans, and is committed to advocacy about fandom, fanworks, and their importance -- it's hard for me to see how that mission could be a bad thing for any part of fandom.

Even if the execution is -- as is normal -- imperfect.

And even if the, in my mind, excellent side effect of getting more women involved in technology and software development may be having, well, as I said above, some issues. (Of interest: the last three links are all to posts by the same person.)

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My somewhat off-the-cuff thoughts on what in practical terms it would be good for the OTW board to look like: ( Read more...Collapse )

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Last and on a tangent: one other thing I'd like to see the next board, no matter who's elected, work on or make a plan for: streamlining.

It sounds as though over the years of the OTW's existence, some of the procedures for onboarding (and offboarding) volunteers of all kinds and the tools in use and the number of meetings in various parts of the org have undergone a lot of creep and not enough winnowing.

Tightening this up so the tools and procedures and meetings deemed the most useful by the most people get saved and used and newly adopted if they aren't in use yet, and the ones deemed rather less useful by more people (no matter how loved by some) get streamlined away from use seems like a good idea for much of the org. Especially if repeated every other year or so.

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I hope/think I'm done vastly teal deer writing about this topic.

OTW members who are eligible to vote in this election who happen to see this, please do vote for four candidates of your choice.

As for me, I've offered to volunteer and hope I'll hear back sometime after the election, I'll be sending in $ to become a Real Voting Member for next time (and to help support projects I love and admire), and I anticipate that the org will come out of this contentious election with renewed strength and resolution to work on its goals as effectively as possible.

This entry also posted at http://skaredykat.dreamwidth.org/10231.html, where there are comments.