The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is currently being discussed and critiqued in some fannish circles for how the organization is governed and has handled important concerns, such as harassment and volunteer safety. Governance! Policy! Bureaucracy! These are not words that fill most people with excitement. However, in light of the discussions raised about the OTW, it seems important to consider questions of how we, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild, are governed. We will also work to get this information permanently and more readily available on our website in the coming weeks.

Our leadership: Dawn Felagund (Hi! That's me! I'm writing this!) founded the SWG in 2005 and has remained at the helm of the group since. That means I (Dawn) do have ultimate decision-making power. However, my preference is to always make decisions in collaboration with my co-moderators and the members we serve.

SWG policies, how to interpret them, and issues with or raised by members are discussed collaboratively among the SWG moderators. This applies to both our website and our socials, including Discord. When making decisions, we generally go for a majority rule, though we may suspend this in time-sensitive situations. For example, if a moderator needs to address a non-urgent issue with a member, she may run the message she plans to send past other mods who are online at the time. If this is time-sensitive and we want to reply to members as quickly as possible, responses from a few mods giving the go-ahead (or suggesting changes) would green-light the response. In urgent situations, moderators act with their best judgment to respond immediately as needed.

Member involvement: The SWG is not a democracy because we do not hold formal elections and there are matters that are not open to change (either for practical or philosophical reasons) no matter how strong the support for them. However, we do try to involve member input on matters that are important to them or where we believe that member input will strengthen the end product. For example, we recently held an open discussion period about our AI policy because we knew this was a controversial issue and wanted to make sure our policy reflected our values as a group. Furthermore, we knew that our members would be able to contribute insights that we, as moderators, did not have.

We also have two formal member groups for assisting with the SWG: our inclusivity focus group and our newsletter focus group. Our Volunteers page has more information on both.

Finances: The SWG is not expensive to run. Our current costs are $255.74 per year, which includes our hosting fees, domain registrations for our primary domain and test site, and extra spam protection for our site email account. I (Dawn) have paid all site costs for the entirety of its existence. We do not fundraise, and I do not accept donations. Multiple moderators have access to the account that includes both billing and the web server so that if I'm hit by a meteorite, operations of the site can continue.

Contacting Us: You can reach all of the site mods via email at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org or via our contact form. This is the best way to get the fastest response, and we aim to answer all communications within twenty-four hours. You can also contact individual mods via the contact form on their user page on the SWG site or by DMing them on social media used by the SWG. However, be aware that individual mods may not be able to respond within twenty-four hours or may be away or on hiatus.

If you have questions or want to get more involved by volunteering with the SWG, hit Reply on this email and let me know