Otw news

otw_news is a LiveJournal community for disseminating news about the Organization for Transformative Works. It is the OTW's earliest social media account; it was created three days after astolat's original post, An Archive Of One's Own.
==Account History==
The community was originally named "fanarchive", dreamwidth copy of astolat's livejournal post, 20 May 2007. and described as "the account for the Archive Of Our Own project to build a major multifandom non-profit archive for fanfic." Initially all members of the community seem to have had posting access and the main rule was "no flames"Wayback Machine copy of fanarchive community profile, 15 June 2007., though posting access and rules appear to have changed by December.
Early posts involved a lot of brainstorming and are a good resource for the history of the organization and the original rationale for various AO3 features and policies.
The community was renamed otw_news in September 2007, when a name for the nonprofit was made official. by 2007-09-21. (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
Use of the otw_news account for the OTW newsletter began in December 2007; volume 1 was posted December 11., dreamwidth copy of a livejournal post by femmequixotic in otw_news, 2007-12-11. (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
Other venues were created over time to share OTW's news, but most items were cross-posted to multiple venues. As fandom migrated away from LiveJournal, comments on the OTW's LiveJournal community evaporated, but posting continued regularly until June 2023, when the community was closed and replaced with automated RSS feeds.
===Community Statistics===
As of June 2007, the mods were amireal, bethbethbeth, fanarchiveowner, and xenacryst. The community had 909 members, 1260 watchers, and was a paid account. By December 2007, the mods were bethbethbeth, ciderpress, femmequixotic, mirabile_dictu, otw_owner, shrift, and svmadelyn. The community had 1183 members and 1767 watchers.Wayback Machine copy of otw_news community profile, 22 December 2007. As of July 2023, the mods are otw_staff and otw_webmasters, and the community has 2,563 posts; 5,309 comments; 1,156 members; and 1,639 watchers. (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
A Dreamwidth mirror community was created in April 2009, and the same posts were cross-posted to both communities. Around April 2017, when LiveJournal updated its terms of service to comply with Russian law and many LiveJournal users deleted their accounts, the contents of the otw_news LiveJournal community were imported into the dreamwidth community, resulting in many duplicated posts. As of July 2023, the dreamwidth community has 4,229 posts; 6,474 comments; 436 members; and 1221 subscribers. (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
==Closure==
The Communications committee, who runs the OTW's various news accounts, decided to close both the LiveJournal and Dreamwidth communities in May/June 2023, presumably to decrease their workload. An OTW News Reader Comment Period was posted on LiveJournal on May 27 asking for input on whether to stop posting to LiveJournal. No one commented, so the account was closed on June 10. Also on June 10, the committee posed the same question to the Dreamwidth community, OTW News Reader Comment Period, where they received a number of comments in favor of keeping the community open. On June 25, the committee posted its decision to the close the Dreamwidth community, Comment Period Closure and Results. Dreamwidth fans were very critical of the decision and the way it was communicated, arguing that the committee had deceived them into thinking that their input mattered and that if the committee had always intended to close the community anyway, they could have said so instead of wasting everyone's time. When the OTW's June newsletter, posted in July, described the incident as "We have dropped manual posting to two little-used accounts—LiveJournal and Dreamwidth—in favor of automated feeds available at those sites.", Dreamwidth users got angry all over again.
The timing of the closures coincided with the End OTW Racism campaign, the 2023 OTW Management Controversy, and AI and data scraping controversy, so emotions were already running high and AO3 users were not inclined to assume good faith. Notably, both the AI controversy and the otw_news closure controversy were instigated by decisions made by the Communications committee, and Dreamwidth is owned by one of the most vocal critics of the OTW in the management controversy.
The dreamwidth community was officially closed on July 10, but due to the AO3 DDOS Attack the Communications Committee posted again the next day to let fans know that the OTW website and donation form were down and that someone was impersonating them on Twitter.
===Links===
*Dreamwidth otw_news: (2023-06-10)
*Dreamwidth otw_news: (2023-06-17)
*Dreamwidth otw_news: (2023-06-25)
*fail_fandomanon: (2023-06-25)
*Dreamwidth otw_news: (2023-06-27)
*muccamukk: (2023-06-27)
*fail_fandomanon: (2023-06-27)
*AO3 News: (2023-07-07)
*OTW website: (2023-07-07)
*fail_fandomanon: (2023-07-08)
*Dreamwidth otw_news: (2023-07-10)
*Dreamwidth otw_news: (2023-07-11)
*synonymous: (Jul. 16th, 2023)
==Other "OTW News" Accounts==
*otw_news on Twitter (created November 2007)
*OTW's website news (earliest post July 2008)
*transformativeworks on Facebook (created February 21, 2009)
*otw_news on dreamwidth (created April 2009)
*transformativeworks on Tumblr (created 2011)
*LinkedIn (created 2016?)
*transformativeworks on Instagram (created June 2019)
*Weibo (created ?)
See also Where to Find Us on the OTW's website.
==References==
Category:Organization for Transformative Works
Category:2007 Communities 
Category:2000s Communities
Category:2010s Communities
Category:2020s Communities