ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32801

September 5 is the OTW's birthday and this year, we are turning 18 years old! To celebrate this event, let's look back at some of the milestones the OTW's projects - AO3, TWC, Open Doors, Fanlore, and Legal Advocacy - have achieved over the years:

• As the first OTW Project, Legal Advocacy was launched in 2007, the same year as the organization itself.
• In February of 2008, TWC released its first call for papers! Shortly after, in June, Fanlore was launched.
• In late 2009, AO3 first went live. Roughly one year later, AO3 reached 10,000 users, with growth of the community accelerating ever since.
• In 2011, Open Doors was launched, and began importing archives in 2012.
• In 2015, the first ever International Fanworks Day was observed.

Since then, our projects have only continued to flourish and grow. AO3 has more than 9 million users and 15,730,000 works. Fanlore has nearly 80,000 pages and has seen over 1,657,000 edits. TWC is on its 45th issue. Open Doors has imported more than 100 archives, containing over 164,000 fanworks. Legal Advocacy fights hard for the rights of fans each and every day, responding to dozens of questions every year, filing Amicus Curiae briefs, joining coalitions, and more. All this and more is thanks to the support of fans worldwide; it wouldn't be possible without you!

If you're interested in how you can help, there are many ways for you to support us and our fannish community, and you can learn about some of them today by participating in our 18th Anniversary Bingo! On the card below you can see sixteen ways to contribute to the OTW or one of its projects. Some of these you might already have done, or are doing. You can cross those off!

Once you have a Bingo, we'd love for you to tell us what you did to get it! Tag us on social media using #18YearsOTW or comment below, and let us know. We're excited to hear from you!

If you're looking for other ways you can support the OTW, check out How You Can Help for more ideas!

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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32801

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32796

I. 2025 BOARD ELECTION

Elections successfully closed the 2025 OTW Board Director election. Congratulations to the OTW's new Directors: Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg! Elizabeth and Harlan will be replacing the seats of outgoing Board members Jennifer Haynes and Zixin Zhang.

Many committees collaborated on Board Election work, with Communications helping distribute announcements, Development & Membership coordinating with OTW members, and Translation making Elections material available in multiple languages.

Elections would like to thank all the candidates who ran, the volunteers from across the OTW who assisted Elections in their work, and everyone who engaged with the election by asking questions or turning out to vote.

Statistics from this year’s election were made available on September 1: out of 15,138 eligible voters, 2,197 cast a ballot, representing 14.5% of potential voters.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In August, AO3 celebrated both one million Mandarin Chinese works and nine million users. Thank you to everyone who's helped us reach these milestones!

Also in August, Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) deployed a couple releases that included bug fixes and security improvements, and Systems continued their routine tasks, such as improving performance and auditing Archive traffic for malicious bots. User Response Translation began completing ticket translation requests, and Open Doors announced the import of Faerie, a Tolkien fanfiction archive.

In July, Policy & Abuse received 3,570 tickets, while Support received 3,999 tickets. Tag Wrangling wrangled just over 636,000 tags, or over 1,400 per wrangling volunteer!

Elsewhere, Tag Wrangling coordinated with AD&T and announced changes to fandom tag policies for fangames and fanmade web series in a series of three posts on the @ao3org Tumblr. The first post outlined the general policy, while the second post focused on Undertale and the third post focused on Fangans from Dangan Ronpa. Lastly, Tag Wrangling also coordinated with Communications to announce 20 new "No Fandom" canonical tags on AO3 News.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Legal is continuing to answer user queries and monitor legal developments. Although there are many concerning legal developments around freedom of speech and expression online, they are not directly affecting AO3. Legal also dealt with some unauthorized app who’ve used OTW and AO3 trademarks in confusing ways.

Transformative Works and Cultures has two active calls for papers, both due by January 1, 2026. The first is a special issue on Latin American Fandoms, and the next is a special issue on Music Fandom.

Communications' Con Outreach division wrapped up Worldcon 2025 in Seattle, Washington, USA - thank you to everyone who tabled and who said hi to us! You can check out con goers' recommendations in the con's AO3 collection.

Fanlore's themed month for July, Fandom in Color, was a big success! Their next editing challenge, Stub September will run from September 14-28, and graphics will have an animals with swords theme. Check their Bluesky, Twitter/X and Tumblr for announcements.

IV. GOVERNANCE

In August, Board, Board Assistants Team (BAT), Organizational Culture Roadmap, and Volunteers & Recruiting began a cross-committee review of the OTW's Code of Conduct. This review aims to ensure the Code of Conduct still serves both the OTW as an organization as well as its many volunteers.

Elsewhere, Board collaborated with other committees on Crisis Communication Guidelines, began their biennial review of the Board Confidentiality Policy, had their quarterly check-in with Legal, and approved the 2024 Annual Report. Minutes from July's public Board meeting are now available on the OTW website. Board also started preparations for the upcoming Board turnover after receiving the 2025 OTW Board election results.

BAT continued work on several projects, including collaborations with the Organizational Culture Roadmap and a report on nonprofit training. Lastly, Strategic Planning continued work on their two-year progress report on the implementation of the current strategic plan.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In addition to the aforementioned Code of Conduct Review, Volunteers & Recruiting also began a project focused on workgroups, aiming to increase the OTW’s ability to support projects that might not fit within the purview of a single committee.

This month, Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for two committees: BAT and Development & Membership.

From July 23 to August 20, Volunteers & Recruiting received 203 new requests, and completed 252, leaving them with 51 open requests. As of August 20, 2025, the OTW has 982 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: GrayIsNotEmo, KW Ukuku, Magda19, and 1 other TikTok Moderator
New Fanlore Volunteers: Becca Bun, Jules Moon, Tiff, Zoe Bird, and 2 other Social Media & Outreach Volunteers
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Ain, embobem, Gail, Rissi, and 2 other Policy & Abuse Volunteers
New Support Volunteers: ChangYan, Clarice Strand, Jennifer Elliott, llianne, John Pork, Louie, Maycix, melon8, Mily, nayogn, Stevie, TinaOe, viewofsilence, Wtchmn23, Ziting, and 8 other Support Volunteers
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: amphob, Bec, Berix, Bettelort, bingus, Bismuth, bluejello, Clarissa, Daisya, dila, Draconic, Drakoshig, firstestly, genitus6, grexigone, Hazelwyrm, heliolatry, Jas, KD, Lace, Lau, Leo M, Leuconoen, Maris, Mary, Nerva, nekojoo, null_ice, Nyxia, Pandasaurio, pickledragon, radiance, Ravenna, rikka, RJ, Sabrina_Tangerina, sarkastic, Sayornis, SCEnt Hope, shrikes, Soyash, Talixa, Tea Huimyni, Thunder, twistingsands, Zee, and 1 other Tag Wrangling Volunteer
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Ana Niccals, Bekyro, PerpetuallyPurple, and 2 other Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: 1 Communications Chair
Departing BAT Volunteers: 2 Board Assistant Team Volunteers
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Event Coordinator, 1 Media Outreach Volunteer, 1 Report Writer, and 2 TikTok Moderators
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Esin and 9 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Janka (Translator)

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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32796

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32791

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 ladydragona, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler.

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

As a Tag Wrangler my job is to make sure the tags users use on their works are connected (‘synned’ or made a synonym) to the Canonical (Official) tag they most closely relate to, which allows users browsing the Archive to filter for and search for these tags! I also create new Canonical tags when specific concepts have been tagged repeatedly enough and move tags that can’t be synned anywhere, either because too many concepts are in one tag or there just isn’t one to syn it to, to their appropriate fandom.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I work a lot of hours at my irl job so most of my volunteer work has to happen around that. I try to wrangle tags for at least an hour every day after work while Wrangling parties are hosted some weekends so I'll usually try to attend those which means I'll spend more time wrangling then.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I've always loved fanfiction and, having experienced a handful of archive purges, I wanted to be involved and help maintain this site that I love so much. When I saw a Wrangler Q&A on Tumblr I realized it was possible for normal fans like myself to volunteer and help and that Q&A really made wrangling seem to be a fun thing to do.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

My biggest challenge would probably be time-management. I'm prone to getting very focused on what I'm doing and not realizing just how much time has passed, as well as wanting to do more than I realistically have the time for. I often have to set timers to remind myself to go eat or go do something else.

What fannish things do you like to do?

My main fannish activity is writing fic! In fact, I've posted over two million words on the archive in the last 6 years and don't see myself stopping any time soon! When not writing fic or volunteering I also share fanart and metas on social media as well as help my fellow fans brainstorm their own fics in various discord servers. I like being involved in my fandom's community and have made some of my bestest friends that way.

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 previous 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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32791

ao3_news_feed

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32666

Now that the 2025 election is over, we're happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2025 Election, we had 15138 total eligible voters. Of those, 2197 voters cast a ballot, which represents 14.5% of the potential voters.

Our voter turnout is lower than that of last year, which had a turnout of 22.8%.

We also saw a decrease in the number of ballots cast, from 3415 to 2197, which represents a 35.6% decrease.

Elections is committed to continuing to reach out to our eligible members to encourage them to vote in elections. Whoever is elected to the Board of Directors can have an important influence on the long-term health of the OTW's projects, and we want our members to have a say in that.

For those who might be interested in the number of votes each candidate received, please note that our election process is designed to elect an equal cohort of Board members in order to allow them to work well together, so we do not release that information. As a general rule, we also won’t disclose which of our unsuccessful candidates received the fewest votes, since we don’t want to discourage them from running again in the future when circumstances and member interest might be different. However, as there were only 3 candidates this year, revealing that information is unavoidable.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated at every stage of the election! We hope to see you at the virtual polls again next year.

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.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32666

ao3_news_feed

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32576

Faerie, a Tolkien fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on Faerie
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Faerie: Tolkien fanfiction was an archive founded by Esteliel in 2011 and run with the help of mods Narya and Spiced_Wine. The site welcomed all sorts of stories, poetry and non-fiction writing, regardless of genre, rating or pairing. Due to unforeseen circumstances the site owner could no longer maintain it and the site was taken offline sometime in 2021. As a result and in order to keep the stories available to the fandom, the mods Narya and Spiced_Wine decided to move the archive to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Narya and Spiced_Wine to import Faerie into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fanfictions currently in Faerie will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Faerie to the AO3 after September 2025. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on Faerie?

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. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your Faerie pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Faerie account, 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 the Faerie mods 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 collection Faerie: Tolkien fanfiction

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 Faerie 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 Faerie!

- The Open Doors team, Narya and Spiced_Wine

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.

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.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32576

ao3_news_feed

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32571

We are pleased to publish the OTW's 2024 Annual Report, available in PDF and HTML formats. The report provides a letter from our Board of Directors, a summary of our activities during the past year, and our financial statements for 2024. Some highlights from 2024 include finishing the update to AO3's Terms of Service, creating a new committee (and 2 new subcommittees!), as well as starting work on the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap.

You can access the 2024 report, and all earlier years, on the Reports and Governing Documents page of the OTW website. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

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.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32571

ao3_news_feed

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32441

What is better than having eight million passionate, dedicated users? Having nine million, of course! That's right, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) has recently reached nine million registered users! Thanks a million (or rather, nine million!) to every member of our community for making this success possible.

Some of you have likely noticed that AO3 is occasionally—and temporarily— unavailable due to site maintenance. However, if you prepare yourself in advance, you don't need to be deprived of content!

The best way to prepare yourself for maintenance (both scheduled and unscheduled) is to download works in advance to tide you over until the site is accessible again. You can find instructions on how to download content from AO3 in our FAQs! Works are downloadable in several formats — AZW3, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and HTML — letting you enjoy reading across devices: desktop, mobile devices, or even eReaders. Whether the site is temporarily down or you're offline, having works downloaded means that you can always enjoy your favorite works!

Once again, thank you for your continued support of AO3 and for helping us grow each and every day. We look forward to celebrating many more achievements with you in the future!

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.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32441

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32666

Now that the 2025 election is over, we're happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2025 Election, we had 15138 total eligible voters. Of those, 2197 voters cast a ballot, which represents 14.5% of the potential voters.

Our voter turnout is lower than that of last year, which had a turnout of 22.8%.

We also saw a decrease in the number of ballots cast, from 3415 to 2197, which represents a 35.6% decrease.

Elections is committed to continuing to reach out to our eligible members to encourage them to vote in elections. Whoever is elected to the Board of Directors can have an important influence on the long-term health of the OTW's projects, and we want our members to have a say in that.

For those who might be interested in the number of votes each candidate received, please note that our election process is designed to elect an equal cohort of Board members in order to allow them to work well together, so we do not release that information. As a general rule, we also won’t disclose which of our unsuccessful candidates received the fewest votes, since we don’t want to discourage them from running again in the future when circumstances and member interest might be different. However, as there were only 3 candidates this year, revealing that information is unavoidable.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated at every stage of the election! We hope to see you at the virtual polls again next year.

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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32666

kareila
changelog_digest

[dreamwidth]

02dc705: Commit 02dc705: Fixes, thanks AI Removes a stray automatically generated code comment.

62af744: Commit 62af744: Fix locale errors Some locale-related config tweaks for the Github Codespace feature.

d08023a: Commit d08023a: Checkpoint for devcontainer Further progress: use memcached, speed up update-db.pl.

a49617f: Commit a49617f: Devcontainer works?! Uses Apache and seems to work as expected; requires Ruby 3.1 which is only in 22.04.

d8273ca: Issue #3495: Add TN state age logic Ask new users if they're in Tennessee and explain why they have to be 18 or older if so.

mark
dw_maintenance

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise
dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32576

Faerie, a Tolkien fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on Faerie
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Faerie: Tolkien fanfiction was an archive founded by Esteliel in 2011 and run with the help of mods Narya and Spiced_Wine. The site welcomed all sorts of stories, poetry and non-fiction writing, regardless of genre, rating or pairing. Due to unforeseen circumstances the site owner could no longer maintain it and the site was taken offline sometime in 2021. As a result and in order to keep the stories available to the fandom, the mods Narya and Spiced_Wine decided to move the archive to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Narya and Spiced_Wine to import Faerie into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fanfictions currently in Faerie will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Faerie to the AO3 after September 2025. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on Faerie?

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. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your Faerie pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3, or would NOT like your works added to the archive collection.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Faerie account, 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 the Faerie mods 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 collection Faerie: Tolkien fanfiction

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 Faerie 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 Faerie!

- The Open Doors team, Narya and Spiced_Wine

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.

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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32576

denise
dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.