Mediating Conflicting Values in a Community Archive Setting

This report examines conflicts within the user community of the online fanwork repository Archive of Our Own (AO3). The site is a nonprofit venture with the ambitious goal of serving the large heterogeneous community of fandom writ large. Tensions among subsets of the Archive's user group have flared up at various points in its ten-year history, forcing its volunteer-based staff into the position of arbiter of community values. These conflicting values have influenced, sometimes asymmetrically, the functionality of the Archive and are now embedded in its design. Focusing on tensions in three broad categories delineated by the user groups in conflict, this report explores the effect the compromises have had on AO3's goals of inclusivity, preservation, and access.