synonymous

ETA 31/07/2023 3:40AM UTC: fandomantiracism has a post politically contextualizing and outlining the sequence of events specifically surrounding the mismanagement of Chinese volunteers. I am not affiliated with this blog.

For context, see also:

• Attempted cancellation of the OTW Weibo Account
• Alex Tischer's pervasive racism, and a call by volunteers for Tischer's suspension
• Controversy surrounding a targeted question during a candidate Q&A

Any additional testimonies or commentary about the mistreatment of Chinese volunteers will be added into this post, and the timestamp will be updated accordingly.

azarias, 2023-07-29 18:22: (link)

This is Azarias. I'm signing so that this story can be fact-checked.

What happened with Zixin this week is the SECOND time I know of a volunteer trying or threatening to get mainland Chinese volunteers arrested and the Org responding with "Meh."

Several years ago, there was a PAC volunteer who lived outside of China. They spoke Chinese as a first language themself, but did not like mainlanders. Being on PAC, they had access to AO3 user records in addition to all the info on volunteers anyone with Slack access can get. By design, the OTW doesn't collect much information on users or volunteers, but there's still more information than you want an authoritarian government to have.

Another volunteer who spoke Chinese looked at their Twitter and saw that they were complaining about mainlanders in the OTW and "joking" about how they should let the CCP know about what those folks were doing. They also used ethnic slurs to describe mainlanders. The volunteer who saw this let another East Asian volunteer know (sorry I'm being vague here but I don't want to drag people into this without permission) and reported the tweets to OTW leadership. They were told someone would look into it but the process is really long and difficult so be patient.

Weeks later this was still going on. The two volunteers who had reported this happened to mention it to me. I was alarmed, so I DMed some Org leaders on Slack and made my own report, reiterating what the original reporters had said.

Within 24 hours of a complaint from me, a white woman, this person was fired from the OTW. After weeks of the East Asian volunteers' identical complaints not being addressed. I don't even read Chinese, y'all. I had to use Google translate to get the gist and ask a literate person what the idioms meant. The first complaint was made by someone who could read exactly what was happening, but the Org didn't consider it important when they said it.

/azarias