Ryan is clearly running as a backup candidate, but I wouldn't say anything bad about him because of that - it IS important to make sure the election is an election. There was a AO3 board candidate a couple of years ago who it turned out had run for political office as a Republican in the U.S., and another one from a couple years before that who expressed some pro-censorship stuff. So if there were only two candidates running for the two open seats, then both of them would be guaranteed to get on the Board even if it turned out that one of them was really bad for some reason. By having a backup candidate like Ryan run, it means that if it turns out that one of the other two candidates is unacceptable for whatever reason, voters will have the option to make sure the unacceptable person doesn't get in.
So basically: don't vote for Ryan, because Ryan doesn't WANT anybody to vote for him, which is why his candidacy statement is intentionally mid; he thinks he's doing more useful things in his current role at AO3 than he would be on the Board...unless, at some point between now and the election, one of the other two candidates says or does something that makes them an unacceptable choice, in which case he's available as an adequate fallback option.
☝🏼☝🏼 This is my general feeling. We need contested elections in the otw even if we have Ryans in them. Hopefully we could have contested elections with no backup candidate... but. I'll take this.
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katriesque Wed 25 Jun 2025 05:18PM UTC
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