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hojarascaI’m writing this post to memorialize[derogatory] an occurrence which happened late last night, in the #help channel of the official O·T·W Board discord server.1 (This is probably a good time to remind that this Dreamwidth is not intended as a permanent record either, and that if you care about the things I write about here, it is best that you find some way to capture them for yourself.) I think this issue deserves at least a few moments of consideration—at least more than it has been given officially in O·T·W‐related channels—and especially given the impact it wound up having on the O·T·W Board meeting today.
To recap my recollection of the episode2 :—
An interested person (I forgot to check if they had yet indicated whether they were an O·T·W member) came into the O·T·W Board
#helpchannel to ask if PluralKit support could be added to the server, as they were (part of) a plural system and considered it an important accessibility need.Multiple other people in the channel responded that PluralKit had the potential to be used for block evasion and should not be supported, and that plural systems should simply juggle multiple Discord accounts if they needed this sort of functionality. (This recommendation, I’m pretty sure, is against Discord terms of service, and regardless is equally capable of enabling block evasion).
Very soon after this, a Board member responded that they would consider the issue, but they were not planning on adding PluralKit at this time due to the aforementioned concerns.
The original petitioner said (paraphrased) “thanks for the consideration, although know that without this feature I will not be able to participate in this space” and left.
Another user, who witnessed this exchange, responded that they were disappointed that the O·T·W board found the initial arguments against PluralKit so compelling so quickly, considering its utility to plural systems and the fact that block evasion can already happen by different means. They emphasized that these are board meetings and not a social club and expessed hope that the Board would reconsider in the future.
The conversation then devolved into a lengthy argument on the matter, in which at least one user repeatedly trivialized / dismissed / hated on plural systems. A common refrain was that issues of accessibility were not relevant to the server, since Board meetings were mostly just board members talking with maybe “one or two others” asking questions3—a wilful ignorance of the fact that lack of accessibility was one of the major reasons why engagement with the Board during these meetings is so low. Thru·out this (3 hour long?4) conversation, no attempts at official moderation were made, and no further communication came from the Board.
A·O·3 member f⸺5 later described it during the O·T·W Board meeting :—
one thing that was not addressed in the response to yesterday's pluralkit discussion is that there was blatant ableism from a user in the server, t⸺, who repeatedly accused the original poster (who asked the board to consider adding pluralkit) of not having DID/OSDD. fortunately for op they had left the server at that point and didn't have to see it directly, but obviously any other plural folks still here would have to see it. but it's ridiculous that the board did not respond with a public apology to for that. i don't know if t⸺ was kicked from the server6 or not but if they weren't, they should be for creating a hostile environment
It is important to note that the contents of the #help channel are “periodically deleted”, and despite the general air of hostility, by this point it was clear that the O·T·W was not planning on moderating the channel and was planning on instead waiting for a convenient moment after discussion had died down to delete everything and pretend like the conversation had never happened. This is, in fact, exactly what happened.7 It is also important to note that while only a handful of people actually participated in the original discussion, the O·T·W Board discord has over 800 members, and at least 150 of them were online at the time that this all went down. As I remember it, there were at least two plural systems involved in the conversation, and of course it is impossible to say how many saw the conversation and decided not to get involved.
To be painfully clear on this point, this sequence of events was a huge embarrassment for the O·T·W, and anybody who cares about the organization ought to be ashamed of it. Everybody was aware that today’s Board meeting was likely to be better‐attended than most—thanks not only to the End O·T·W Racism folks planning on showing up, but also to the long series of controversies that the O·T·W has been subject to over the past weeks. Many people were probably joining the Discord server for the first time. The fact that this was their first impression of O·T·W meetings and process ought to be horrifying. The fact that a plural system might join the server, looking to get involved, and be immediately be confronted with statements questioning their very existence ought to be seen as a grave harm in need of immediate redress. I joined the conversation after it had simmered down to stress these points: that I was disappointed that the O·T·W hadn’t moderated the conversation better, that I thought it was embarrassing, and that I thought an apology from the O·T·W was necessary and important for making amends.
The O·T·W volunteers in the room, however, did not seem embarrassed. They dismissed the concerns regarding the lack of moderation in the space with claims like “people probably just weren’t online” and “it has never needed moderation before”, and they did their best to silence discussion rather than provide any acknowledgment of harm which was caused. One person attempted to end the discussion by pointing out that this was the #help channel, its purpose was limited to people needing help with role selection in the server, and other discussions were offtopic and best had else·where. I pointed out that a help channel serves no purpose if people do not feel comfortable using it to ask for help, stressed again the need for a formal apology from the O·T·W, and remarked that in lieu of such an apology, letting plural fans know that there were others who had their back was indeed absolutely necessary for the channel to serve its purpose.8
I don’t know how or if the discussion continued after that point, because at that time it was after 1 A·M and I closed Discord to go to bed. By the time I woke up, all of the conversation had been deleted, and a slowmode of 30 minutes was implemented on the channel, something which would seriously constrain discussion during the board meeting to come.9 During the Board meeting, board member kcdayton alluded to the moderation issues with the following statement :—
The board consists of a small body of volunteers, and we're not, at this point, able to moderate multiple spaces on an ongoing basis. We are actively looking into moderation alternatives, but in the meantime, questions can always be asked via email at any point and shares however fans want to: (https://www.transformativeworks.org/contact_us/?who=OTW%20Board%20of%20Directors)
Questions as to why the Board was not relying on the Communications committee to help with communications or the Policy & Abuse committee to help with moderation went unanswered.
In closing, I would like to emphasize the following points :—
- The O·T·W has still not acknowledged that any of this occurred or apologized that it happened in an official O·T·W forum.
There is not presently any Code of Conduct governing these spaces. During the Board meeting today, O·T·W member v⸺ asked :—
Why is there only a code of conduct for volunteers, and not for all AO3 posters?
I think this question is equally relevant to other O·T·W spaces, including the O·T·W Board discord server. As this question was raised in the
#helpchannel and not the public board channel, it went unanswered.This lack of moderation is entirely typical and matches what we have come to expect from other O·T·W‐controlled fora, for example the comments sections of A·O·3 newsposts.
I realize that in light of how the actual O·T·W Board meeting wound up going down (badly), this squabble between a handful of people the night before hardly seems worthy of note. But it really underscored to me the fact that ⓐ the Board and many O·T·W volunteers are, in fact, not embarrassed when official O·T·W spaces are made inaccessible or unwelcoming, ⓑ that they are annoyed, rather than apologetic, when others bring this up or attempt to address the issue, and ⓒ as far as the particularities of this case, that they do not actually care about plural fans or their needs, or at least not enough to actually say as much in any explicit fashion. I think many of these themes played out again on a grander scale today.
1 I’m not planning on talking much about the board meeting itself, as I imagine others are already planning on covering it fairly comprehensively. But I will mention a few things which came up during that meeting over the course of this post.
2 I didn’t bother keeping receipts for any of this, since I knew anything I saved would be impossible to verify. Maybe I should have? But I really don’t think the particulars are important in this case.
3 This would be handily disproven in the actual Board meeting which followed.
4 Somebody in the channel gave this timeframe and I didn’t bother checking for accuacy. Based on when my partner started subtooting it, it was at least an hour and a half before I joined the conversation, but it may not have been much more than that.
5 I’ll be censoring the names of anybody who is not an O·T·W volunteer in this post as a matter of policy.
6 The user in question appears to still be in the server at the time of my writing this post.
7 Technically, they did mention a request for PluralKit support during the meeting, but not any of the ensuing conversation. The full statement, posted by board member kcdayton, was :—
First, there was some questions before the meeting about Pluralkit and other accessibility options. In the wake of the conversation yesterday / earlier today about a particular bot used for accessibility purposes, we wanted to talk about ways to make Board meetings more accessible. While we're still researching the bot that was mentioned, we also will be looking at and considering other bots as needed.
Thank you to all of the fans who took the time to bring these accessibility options to our attention.
8 I will add that, speaking personally, I absolutely did not feel comfortable asking for help in that channel at that time, considering how the previous person to do so had been treated.
9 As the actual board meeting channel was closed for comment partway through the meeting, the help channel was the only remaining place meeting attendees could provide feedback. It would eventually also be closed, and the feedback made there was largely not addressed during the meeting. Instead, people were given five minutes to repost their questions in the public board channel.
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Date: 3 Jul 2023 02:19 (UTC)Also, at 08:34 AM EDT, someone on fedi replied to my comments about the issue with a screenshot of the channel being completely hidden from view, so that's probably around when they deleted everything (no idea how long it had been hidden for before then though)
f⸺ & your summaries are, if anything, overly generous re: the tenor of the chat. Prior to t---- accusing Q---- of being a "roleplayer" (they were asked to clarify this point by someone who assumed they were being less awful than they were only to clarify that no they weren't comparing plurality and roleplaying they literally thought they were the same thing except 'roleplayers are better because you can make them stop sometimes'), another user had implied that Q---- had essentially made up their access needs because they wanted an excuse to "flounce." I'm not plural, but being told that leaving in response to an unmet access need counts as starting drama was....p fucking alienating as a disabled fan. Waking up to see it wiped with no statement re:whether the OTW is okay with that kind of behavior and t---- still in the server with seemingly no repercussions was moreso
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Date: 3 Jul 2023 03:39 (UTC)i was “overly generous” re: t⸺ only because i could hardly bring myself to read their comments at the time, much less try to reproduce them in a post on my own account. i absolutely felt like they should have been kicked from the server. but i also think the focus should be on the O·T·W, not some random arsehole, as it was their space and their responsibility to maintain. although the behaviour of the Board and volunteers wasn’t as overtly hostile, i found their behaviour equally disappointing (and no less able·ist, just politer about it)