Archive of Our Own

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Silarona, who volunteers for our Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I’m a translator and team-coordinator in Team Hungarian and a graphics volunteer for the Translation committee. Our team translates all content you can find in Hungarian on the site: the FAQs, Tutorials, News Posts. (Those three are my favourites. Who needs a normal, regular-length post with nice sentences? It’s either 30 pages of interface talk or announcements with untranslatable fandom terms.) We are also the ones who will help Support, Abuse and Tag Wrangling if needed, so you can contact the OTW or tag stuff in Hungarian and it’ll be answered / wrangled to the right place.

As a team-coordinator I’m responsible for (hopefully) remembering if we as a team have a task or a decision to make—this is usually things like keeping our internal cheatsheet up-to-date, being ready with the texts we use for recruitment and checking translated graphics.

The graphics are edited by a separate team from the committee based on the translations the language teams put together. Sometimes it’s easy, like when I can snatch up the Hungarian graphics, and sometimes I butcher stuff, like when I tried to make my Photoshop handle Bengali and it firmly refused.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I usually work in bursts, because I’m a procrastinator. Translators get week-long deadlines (depending on the length and urgency of the task) and we get helpful little reminders the day before our deadline, which is wonderful because then I finally remember that I have a task. This worked much better before I asked for the long documents—with more than 4 years at the OTW, I still can’t translate 16 pages in one sitting. (My comfortable limit is 5, with our two column view.)

This gets faster during Drives and Elections, when there is a lot of time-sensitive content and graphics to do, while I sometimes sit on a longer task for weeks when I’m busy with other stuff.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I saw Hungarian in the list of contact languages for the OTW, and I sent them a (very mistyped) message saying I’d love to help out if they need more people, because I could not get over the fact that my little language was available here. Does the OTW have recruitment periods and proper channels for this? Yes. Did I check anything about this? No. (Don’t do this. Check the recruitment notices!) I was lucky that the Hungarian team was relatively small then, so they allowed me to apply even though I trampled all over the procedure.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Maybe setting my limits. I adore volunteering for the OTW — it pulled me out of some darker spots during the years and it’s very important to me. I also have a very chaotic offline schedule, with sometimes basically nothing but free time for months, during which I almost applied to other, more demanding roles so many times. Later I could give thanks to all the deities that I did not apply when my work started up again and I was unable to keep up with even current Translation tasks for months. I still haven’t grown out of this, so I’m just waiting for the day when my good judgement slips.

What fannish things do you like to do?

Besides spending an unhealthy amount of time on AO3 (don’t we all), I’m a fanartist. It’s also my pet peeve that the archive should have more fanart. I know it can be complicated compared to text, but upload your fanart and videos and all kinds of other creations to it! There are tutorials for this. All the pros of AO3 (tags, filtering, collections, easy search and archiving, etc) apply to every kind of fannish work, not just fic [commercial over].

I usually paint traditionally, sometimes on odd things like fans or notebooks (I bind custom-made notebooks too). I’m trying to draw a comic with questionable speed. I also beta-read, mostly for my fandom spouse. I have Moments when I sign up to four different fandom events in a week, then spend the next half a year in Bangs and Secret Santas, just to spend the next half a year remembering I can paint random stuff too.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The 9 Forum, a message board for fans of the film "9", is importing its fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work on The 9 Forum
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The close-knit microfandom for "9" began creating and compiling fanworks a few months before the film's release in September 2009. There is now over a decade of fanfiction and fanart posted to The 9 Forum as a result of our passion for this fandom. We wanted to take steps to preserve these fanworks now, anticipating that the message board software will not last forever.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Patchlamb, with the agreement of forum moderator Anna Desu, to import The 9 Forum's fanworks into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive's fanworks in their entirety, all fanfiction and fanart currently in The 9 Forum will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from The 9 Forum to the AO3 after December.

What does this mean for creators who have work on The 9 Forum?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your The 9 Forum pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your The 9 Forum account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with The 9 Forum mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection The 9 Forum

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of The 9 Forum on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve The 9 Forum!

- The Open Doors team and Patchlamb

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on 22 December. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

I. OPEN DOORS IMPORTS

In November, Open Doors completed the imports of By Your Command, a Battlestar Galactica archive, and The Pony Fiction Archive, a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfic archive. It also announced the upcoming imports of Slashknot, a Slipknot (band) LiveJournal community, and The LeBeau Library, an X-Men fanfiction archive. Stay tuned at the beginning of 2023 for a roundup of all the imports Open Doors has completed in the past calendar year!

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology posted release notes detailing a whopping 55 issues resolved over four deploys from August through November. Meanwhile, Support worked on refreshing its internal documentation and procedures, while Policy & Abuse (which received over 1,400 tickets in November, a slight increase from October) began transitioning to several new tools.

In October, tag wranglers handled more than 440,000 tags across more than 53,000 fandoms—about 950 tags per wrangler.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

November was a busy month for Communications, who published the 2021 Annual Report and began investigating alternatives to Pinboard to use to bookmark OTW news posts. Communications also released a post reminding users about official vs. unofficial OTW social media accounts, particularly in light of the recent issues with Twitter.

Finance filed the OTW’s 2021 tax return and began wrapping up the last details of the 2021 audit report, which will be issued soon. Both will be uploaded to the OTW website when everything has been finalized!

Systems continued to work on some hardware issues (the servers are extra needy recently, but we still love them regardless), SQL-related changes, and cross-committee work with Fanlore and others.

To provide all OTW volunteers with a low-pressure opportunity to drop any roles they wish to leave before the next calendar year, Volunteers & Recruiting conducted the annual Still Willing To Serve check in for a number of committees and worked with committees like Tag Wrangling and Translation who were conducting their own. Volunteers & Recruiting also continued to work on implementing several new tools for cross-committee usage.

IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 23 October to 25 November, Volunteers & Recruiting received 241 new requests, and completed 268, leaving us with 32 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 25 November 2022, the OTW has 945 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Jacks, Michelle Artbear, Polynya, Synnie, 2 other Editors
New Open Doors Volunteers: Alecto Gaia & 2 other Import Assistants
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Aceto_Shiobana, Alix, Allíster, Amanda Triplett, Anisha, Art, Bagel, Cabbage, Calico, CCocito, Charls, copacet, Cthulu, Derpinaz, Divia, ElleC, ginkgofan, Glitch, hematophage, hheyhalley, itsoverfeeling, Ity, Itze, Lixia, Luhba, Lyf, LyzS, Maven Morozov, Miru, Nandor, Nataliya, Noelia, Novae, Rook, Sanctuaria, Selly, Sijing, Slumber, Spri, Suji, Synth, Tay'haai, Toriceratops, Vyslanté, Zero, Ziskandra and 1 other
New Translation Volunteers: J_Choi, Kristina Lihan, Sheherezade
New TWC Volunteers: 1 Copyeditor
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Natalia Gruber (Tool Implementation Lead)

Departing Directors: Jess White
Departing Committee Chairs: VSSAKJ (Tag Wrangling), Matty (PAC), Lady Oscar (QA&T Lead)
Departing AD&T Volunteers: 1 Senior Coding Volunteer
Departing AD&T QA&T Volunteers: 1
Departing Communications Volunteers: Jess White (Chair Track and Event Coordinator Volunteer), 1 Graphics Volunteer, 1 Fanhackers Volunteer, 1 Site Moderator
Departing Elections Volunteers: 1 Team Coordinator, 4 Communications Specialists, 1 Public Relations Specialist
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Kairen (Policy & Admin), 1 Policy & Admin, 2 Graphic Designers
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: eliotjay (Admin Volunteer), 1 Import Assistant
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Azarias & 1 other
Departing Support Volunteers: Belen & 6 others
Departing Systems Volunteers: 1
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Giles, Jody, serkestic & 11 others
Departing Translation Volunteers: Dan L, Mallorn, Mohini, Prerna A. Popat, Rhea, Sammi Lee, Shivani Kadam, Sofia, & 6 others
Departing TWC Volunteers: Katherine E. Morrissey (Review Editor), Louisa Stein (Review Editor)
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1
Departing Webs Volunteers: 1

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

We are pleased to publish the OTW's 2021 Annual Report, available in PDF or html formats. The report provides a letter from our Board of Directors, a summary of our activities during the past financial and calendar year, and our financial statements for 2021. Some highlights from 2021 include Fanlore's one millionth edit, Transformative Works and Cultures' new editor team, and comment freezing deployed on AO3 works and news posts.

You can also access reports from all earlier years at the Reports and Governing Documents page of the OTW website. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

The LeBeau Library of the Gambit Guild forum, an X-Men fanfiction archive focusing on the character Remy LeBeau or "Gambit", is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work(s) on the LeBeau Library
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The LeBeau Library, as part of The Gambit Guild, was active between 2007 and 2010. While it is still online for now, the archivist Neko was concerned about the stories being lost if she is no longer able to maintain the website.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Neko to import the LeBeau Library into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fiction currently in the LeBeau Library will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from the LeBeau Library to the AO3 no sooner than January. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on the LeBeau Library?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your LeBeau Library or Gambit Guild pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your LeBeau Library or Gambit Guild account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the LeBeau Library mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection LeBeau Library

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of the LeBeau Library or Gambit Guild on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve the LeBeau Library!

- The Open Doors team and Neko

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on 4 December. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with V Snow, who volunteers on our Support Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I volunteer for AO3 Support. We are the team users can contact if they are having technical issues with the Archive. We deal with a very wide range of issues, but a lot of it is helping users when they are having a hard time activating accounts, changing passwords, etc. Our work helps users get back to using the site when they have a problem. This fits in with the OTW’s goals because, well, without Support a lot of users wouldn’t be able to access the Archive at all.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

We have no set schedule or required workload in Support so it varies. Mostly it's keeping an eye on the reports coming in and grabbing ones I can answer. When I have some spare minutes I will write responses and approve others' responses so they can be sent.

One of the things I appreciate about Support is that there is a lot of flexibility in the workload. If I’m feeling especially motivated I can grab a more complicated ticket, which may require internal consultation and multiple back and forths with the user. But if I am not up to a lot of work, I can pick out some easier tickets and/or beta other responses.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I was trying and failing to find work at the time and people kept telling me to volunteer to add to my resume. Nowhere in person worked for my situation or wanted my help. I'd been a fan and user of the Archive for years and the work Support does interested me. So when Support applications opened up, I figured why not!

Of course, I ended up getting a job before I even settled in with Support or had a chance to put this on my resume. But it wasn’t even a question of continuing to volunteer because I realised how much I enjoyed it.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Probably the technical aspects. Because Support deals with bug reports we often work with the Accessibility, Design & Technology Committee (AD&T) to discuss reports. My coding knowledge is minimal and a lot of the technical details go over my head, but just through osmosis I have learned a whole bunch about how the site works from a technical perspective.

The other main challenge was the sheer amount of knowledge. Knowledge of how the site works (and the issues people encounter) was one thing, but also learning how the organization works and who to ask for what was also a challenge. The OTW is a huge and complicated place with a long history. It took a bit to figure it all out and start to feel like I belong.

With all these challenges I am glad I took the time to get through them, as the work is all the more rewarding now.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I would say my main fannish activity is beta reading/editing for various fandoms. I do also do some writing myself, but betaing is what I love. I participate in and help run a variety of Big Bangs. This brings me a lot of joy, to get to plan and organize things and watch the fandom come together to create content. Of course, I also read fic and spend inordinate amounts of time discussing headcanons with my friends.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I. FANLORE NEWS

Fanlore has had a busy month! It started off in style with its long-awaited MediaWiki upgrade, which was capably overseen by Systems. One of the big additions in the upgrade has been the introduction of a Visual Editor that makes formatting really easy - if you haven't yet, give it a whirl on Fanlore by using the "edit" tab! If you need a guide to which button does what, Fanlore’s Editing Pages Help page has got you covered!

Right after this, Fanlore kicked off its anime & manga themed month, Fanimangalore! It’s been highlighting ships, terminology (lemon, anyone?) and tropes on our Tumblr and Twitter and held an editing chat on Discord. Thanks to everyone who came along!

II. OCTOBER DRIVE

The October Drive coordinated by Development & Membership was a huge success, with 6,147 memberships and a total of US$282,261.69 raised from 7,822 donors. Thank you to everyone who donated this year! Translation translated and posted content for the drive into 30 languages, while Communications also assisted with posting - and celebrated the AO3 reaching 10 million posted fanworks in the same week!

III. AT THE AO3

Support would like to remind users to check their email listed on their AO3 account and update it to an account you have consistent access to. If an OTW committee needs to contact you, we have to contact you at the email on your account. Be especially cautious about using school (.edu), government (.gov), or business accounts: you will frequently lose access to these if you graduate or change jobs, and it will make account recovery extremely difficult!

Open Doors completed the import of the Harry Potter FanFic Archive and announced the import of The Bureau of Time and Space, an archive of Flint the Time Detective fanworks. Meanwhile, Accessibility, Design & Technology has been fielding database requests from various committees and testing a change to the wrangling code.

Policy & Abuse received 1,300 tickets in October, which is a nice, small breather from what its normal numbers are, enabling volunteers to keep chugging away at their backlog. Support’s volunteers are also keeping the ticket queue moving right along. With over 1,500 tickets a month on average, this is no mean feat.

In October, Tag Wrangling handled more than 390,000 tags, more than 840 tags per wrangler.

IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

The Board of Directors has said goodbye to outgoing directors this month. Thank you so much for your service, Rebecca, Kirsten, Anna, and Jess!

In October, Legal participated in sessions with the U.S. Copyright Office as part of the Copyright Office’s continued consultation regarding technical protection measures. It also joined allies in filing an amicus brief in the case of Hunley v. Instagram, which concerns linking and embedding on the Internet. Legal’s brief supports the rights of users to link across the internet and embed files and images in web pages and the rights of platforms to allow linking and embedding without facing potential copyright liability.

While Finance was busy finalising the 2021 audit and tax filing, Systems dealt with an issue that required it to move our domain to a new registrar. With Volunteers & Recruiting, Systems also started the process of transitioning to a new project management platform. Finally, Systems continues to work on fixing various hardware issues and working towards upgrades for our SQL servers.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 23 September to 22 October, Volunteers & Recruiting received 195 new requests, and completed 217, leaving us with 51 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 22 October 2022, the OTW has 960 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Heather McGuire, Michelle Schroeder, and Natalia Gruber (all Directors), Kari Dayton (President)
New Committee Chairs: bhri (Tag Wrangling)
New Fanlore Volunteers: hheyhalley, Jamie K, Shiou, syrren, Starry (Graphic Designers), and 4 other Graphic Designers, CaitlynW (Social Media & Outreach, 10 other Social Media & Outreach
New Open Doors Volunteers: Keladry (Import Assistant), 1 Import Assistant
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Judas & Kitarin (Tag Wranglers)
New Translation Volunteers: Demeter, majorhtom, Jelena and 12 other News Translators, Hookedonthesky (Volunteer Manager)
New TWC Volunteers: Karen Hellekson (Copyeditor, Layout Editor & Proofreader) and 1 other Layout Editor & Proofreader

Departing Directors: Antonius Melisse (President role only)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Rebecca Sentance (Editor)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Eskici (Policy & Admin Volunteer)
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: LilianaMelo16, eliadan and 7 others
Departing Translation Volunteers: Amalia Blondet, Anastasia Dumarque, Tanyarin Karuchit (all Translators) and 1 other Translator
Departing TWC Volunteers: Karen Hellekson (Journal Editor role only) and 1 other Journal Editor
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Natalia Gruber (Volunteer)

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Slashknot, a Slipknot (band) LiveJournal community focussing on slash fanfiction and fanart, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work on Slashknot
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The Slashknot community is being imported for archiving purposes and to allow more people to have access to the works. The archivist feels that AO3's terms of service are more adapted than LiveJournal's for this type of content.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with zort to import Slashknot into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fanfic and fanart currently in Slashknot will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from Slashknot to the AO3 after November.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on Slashknot?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose.

Please contact Open Doors with your Slashknot pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Slashknot account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the Slashknot mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection Slashknot

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Slashknot on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Slashknot!

- The Open Doors team and zort

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on 20 November. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board of Directors is saddened to announce that Jess White has resigned from her role as a Director for personal reasons. Jess was elected to her seat in 2020 and her resignation is effective as of the 5th of November 2022. As her term was set to end in a few months, her seat will be left open until next year's OTW elections.

We would like to thank Jess for her service as a member of the Board and for her many years as an OTW volunteer. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

In our most recent releases, we focused on two things: restricting which admins can access which admin features, and getting in code changes from as many contributors as we could. We'd like to give special thanks to first-time code contributors Bilka, Cesium-Ice, ellieyhc, Nia Neyna, salt, and warlockmel!

Credits

• Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, Ceithir, Cesium-Ice, EchoEkhi, ellieyhc, Elz, Nia Neyna, potpotkettle, redsummernight, salt, Sarken, Tara Rosenthal, ticking instant, tlee911, warlockmel, weeklies
• Code reviewers: Brian Austin, Enigel, james_, redsummernight, Sarken, ticking instant
• Testers: bingeling, Brian Austin, Claire Baker, Dre, james_, Jennifer D2, lydia-theda, Maine, mumble, Natalia Gruber, petricores, Priscilla, Qem, redsummernight, Runt, Sammie Louise, Sarken, Taylor Clossin, Teyke, ticking instant, VSnow

Details

0.9.323

Deployed on August 31. This release contained an eclectic selection of bug fixes and improvements, including some new tools our Policy & Abuse team can use to protect users.

• [AO3-6335] - Comments are cached, supposedly for a week. But they kept hanging around longer. We made them stick to the schedule.
• [AO3-6307] - We ended up translating some wrong things in our prep work for localized emails, but it's fixed now.
• [AO3-5989] - Link rot came to our Site Skin Wizard. We had a link to a list of colors, but that page no longer existed, so we switched to a list on a different site.
• [AO3-5962] - We improved the performance of the code that sends out invitation emails.
• [AO3-5635] - To many, our "You have already left kudos here. :)" message is already an unpleasant sight, and in some cases it was made worse by erroneous extra text. We cleaned that up. :)
• [AO3-4603] - You can now use keyboard shortcuts to copy text from help pop-ups and other modals, as you should have been able to all along.
• [AO3-6332] - We bumped our Elasticsearch version to 7.17.
• [AO3-6264] - We gave our invitation emails a much-needed rewrite.
• [AO3-6144] - Protected users should not be able to have their works cited as related works.
• [AO3-6127] - For a long time, admins with database access could hide specific comments anywhere on the site, but regular site admins couldn't. We've reworked the code and added a button so site admins can now do it.
• [AO3-5601] - When you delete one of your works, the HTML copy that is emailed to you will no longer be a barebones version, but rather match the HTML file you'd get by using the work's Download function.
• [AO3-2197] - We cleaned up code and moved things around in the database to remove the last remnants of a time when one could leave kudos on a chapter.
• [AO3-6363] - We bumped the rails-html-sanitizer gem from version 1.4.2 to 1.4.3.
• [AO3-6208] - We removed some Tag Wrangling functionality with performance so bad that nobody was using it anyway. 😅
• [AO3-6371] - We've given our Policy & Abuse team the ability to prevent certain users from resetting their passwords. They were technically already able to do this, but we separated it from their ability to protect accounts in other ways.
• [AO3-6374] - Our handy dependency-updating bot updated the TZInfo gem for us.

0.9.324

Deployed on September 11. We added access restrictions to some admin features, cleaned up some old code, and spruced up a few other small things.

• [AO3-6384] - There was an automated test that sometimes failed, but not always. We fixed it, that was only for us, it changed nothing for you.
• [AO3-6370] - In some cases, when trying to sign-up with an already registered email address, the user would see an ugly error (500), instead of a nice error ("Email has already been taken."). Now users always get the nice, helpful error.
• [AO3-6361] - Some user-related actions by admins were not recorded in the user's history (visible to admins). They now show up there.
• [AO3-6311] - We erroneously sent too many emails, it turned out. If you deleted a comment of yours, you would still receive notifications about edits or deletions for replies to it. Now you get silence, as intended.
• [AO3-6280] - We cleaned up the text of the New Invitations email because it was causing issues for our Translation team.
• [AO3-6077] - The phrasing around series was inconsistent across our site, so we gave it a do-over to get them all in line.
• [AO3-6364] - We restricted which types of admins have access to the invitation queue.
• [AO3-6349] - We improved the performance of the code that makes works and bookmarks show up in their respective listings.
• [AO3-6344] - If someone or something accesses too many pages in a short time, we give them a timeout. We now include the duration of the timeout in our response -- not written on the error page, but in a format that's usable for bots and scripts.
• [AO3-6343] - We limited which admins have the ability to manage and modify skins.
• [AO3-5122] - We rewrote the code for the Share option on works and bookmarks so it's easier for coders to work with but still behaves the same for site users.
• [AO3-3357] - You can now clear out the filters on any filterable page with the press of a single button! Well, link. Whatever.
• [AO3-6369] - Getting rid of some unused code: Pseuds edition
• [AO3-6360] - Getting rid of some unused code: Miscellaneous edition.
• [AO3-6389] - Our automated tests related to External Works no longer fail when URLs aren't reachable.

0.9.325

Deployed on September 24. We made further changes to admin access, cleaned up even more code, fixed some unreliable automated tests, and made a few other small changes here and there.

• [AO3-6160] - We made sure to use grammatically correct pluralizations on the Delete Pseud page.
• [AO3-5677] - We cleaned up some code that was never noticeable to users, but bothered our error logs.
• [AO3-2426] - The Language metadata for External Works is now editable by certain site admins.
• [AO3-6394] - We further restricted which admins have the power to ban emails from leaving and receiving replies to guest comments.
• [AO3-6380] - We also further restricted which admins can see the activities of other admins.
• [AO3-6326] - The "Close" button on the reply form in your inbox was actually a "Cancel" button, so we adjusted the label to reflect reality.
• [AO3-5779] - Large numbers on the Statistics page were hard to parse. We added thousands separators to make them more readable. (When the interface is translated, each language will use an appropriate delimiter.)
• [AO3-5719] - The links to chapter end notes could pull you out of chapter by chapter mode. They now let you stay where you are, only transporting you to the end notes.
• [AO3-6013] - We're now recording the last time Tag Wranglers performed certain actions related to their duties.
• [AO3-6367] - We did a minor update to get Ruby on Rails to version 6.0.5.1.
• [AO3-6201] - We said good-bye to some unused code related to our autocomplete fields.
• [AO3-6041] - We also bid farewell to unused code related to user registration.
• [AO3-6381] - We limited which admins can access the page for reviewing works marked as spam by our spam detection service.
• [AO3-6397], [AO3-6398], [AO3-6399], [AO3-6400] - We fixed some test failures that would occasionally happen when the test suite ran too quickly.
• [AO3-6403] - One of our automated tests assumed September 20, 2022 was in the future, which meant it started to fail on September 20. We did a little time travel and fixed that.

0.9.326

Deployed on November 3. We started using ActiveJob to handle asynchronous jobs from tag wrangling.

• [AO3-6356] - We changed the way we process asynchronous jobs from tag wrangling so we'll hopefully have fewer errors caused by two similar changes happening at once.
• [AO3-6406] - Yet another fix for a test failure that occurred when our tests ran too quickly! This one was related to co-creators on chapters.
• [AO3-6411] - We used a handy dependency-updating bot to update some of our GitHub Workflow Actions... and then promptly had to take the bot out of commission due to one of its bugs, but that's a whole other story.
• [AO3-6412] - One of the servers needed to be kicked by Systems every time we deployed new code to staging. The server's configuration now gets updated, saving Systems the trouble of kicking it.
• [AO3-6413] - Our dependency-updating bot came through again, this time bumping the nokogiri gem from 1.13.6 to 1.13.9.

Dragonfayth, a Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work(s) on Dragonfayth
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Dragonfayth is an archive dedicated to the Yu-Gi-Oh! pairing of Anzu Mazaki/Seto Kaiba. Due to other commitments and ongoing software issues, the moderator cannot keep the site open, and has decided to move Dragonfayth to AO3 to preserve the stories for the future.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Azurite to import Dragonfayth into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fanfiction currently in the Dragonfayth archive will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages. Eventually links to the old site will redirect to the collection on AO3, which can be searched and filtered in order to locate individual imported works.

We will begin importing works from Dragonfayth to the AO3 after December.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on Dragonfayth?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your Dragonfayth pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Dragonfayth account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the Dragonfayth mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection Dragonfayth

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Dragonfayth on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve Dragonfayth!

- The Open Doors team and Azurite

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on November 6. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Alicia, who volunteers as a Social Media & Outreach volunteer on our Fanlore Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I’m a member of Fanlore’s Social Media and Outreach team! Our team drafts posts and makes graphics for our social media pages to promote Fanlore, the OTW’s fan-run and fan-authored wiki.

Being on the social outreach team fits into the OTW’s mission of “preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms,” which is something I’m super proud of! Since all of Fanlore’s pages are written and maintained by fans, we’re always looking for ways to welcome newcomers and invite a variety of perspectives. I like to think of us as the wiki’s megaphone, especially for newer fandoms whose fans might not know we exist, or that they can contribute their own experiences.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I try to write at least one post a week, sometimes more if we’re doing a themed month (like this year’s Femslash February). I also attend one of our bi-weekly meetings, either with the rest of the outreach team or with the larger Fanlore committee. I tend to be a lurker in the meetings, but it’s always interesting to see how the discussions unfold.

I also help out with some of the organizational tasks, like delivering feedback to our graphic designers and moving things around on our virtual corkboard. I’m a big fan of checking boxes and making things nice and tidy, so I enjoy the behind-the-scenes work as much as I do writing posts!

What made you decide to volunteer?

I think how I got started at the OTW is similar to how a lot of other volunteers did—I’d been an AO3 user for a while before I somehow found my way to the OTW’s main page. There, I learned about the archive’s purpose, as well as why it and OTW existed—not just to share fic, but to preserve and protect fandom at large.

After some digging into why the OTW was established, I realized how fragile online fandom spaces really were. It blew my mind that if I’d gotten into online fandom pre-OTW, there was a good chance all the work I’d done—like posting my fics or building relationships with other fans in comments sections—might’ve gotten swept away by time, corporate buyouts, purges, etc. The OTW strives to give fans the resources and infrastructure to preserve their work/communities/histories, and I wanted to be a part of their mission.

Finally, and for a much simpler reason—I wanted to give back to the organization that has been such a bright spot in my life all these years! Fandom has pulled me through some rough times, especially more recently with the pandemic, and I’m so grateful for it. And much like writing fic or any other fannish activity, volunteering is also a fun way to meet new people and do work I feel good about doing.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

My biggest challenge has probably been understanding that the organization is always learning and growing. There are almost a thousand volunteers now (woot!), and millions of fans worldwide who contribute to the OTW’s many projects. This means that there are a lot of different perspectives to take into consideration when it comes to policy making, and that it’s not always easy to find solutions.

But regardless of the difficulties, I’ve found that others are usually willing to sit down and talk things out. It helps me to remember that the OTW and fandom at large are just groups of people coming together over things we love—and that at the end of the day, we’re all here to help each other out.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I’ve dabbled in drawing fanart and writing meta, but ultimately fic is the name of the game for me! I read, write, and bookbind fic. I’m an avid commenter—since I know how happy I feel when someone comments on one of my own fics, I try to do it for others as often as possible. I also tend to leave long, rambling comments about what parts of the story I liked, what I was doing while I was reading, which lines made me laugh/cry, and so on. The AO3 comments section is one of my favorite places to connect with other fans, and I’ve met some of my best fandom friends there.

I also bookmark nearly everything I read! I’ve found some of my favorite fics in other users’ bookmarks and consider an extensive bookmark collection to be one of the greatest gifts one can bestow upon a reader (especially a reader who, say, just got into a new pairing and spent several consecutive nights exhausting all the available rec lists they could find and still needs more. Not that I would, ahem, know anything about that).

Finally, I’m also a member of Renegade Publishing, a collective of fannish bookbinders! Since most of my primary fandoms are animanga fandoms, I tend to read and bind a lot of animanga fics. Folks in Renegade bind for a variety of reasons, but for me personally it’s about building community, preserving fannish works and history, and making authors feel as loved as possible. (As well as hoarding pretty paper like a dragon.)

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Our October Membership Drive has ended, and we could not be more grateful for your generosity. We are glad to announce that thanks to 7683 donors in 78 countries, we have raised a total of US$276,467.69! We're particularly pleased that 6147 of you chose to begin or renew your OTW membership with your donation.

Although the membership drive has ended for now, we do accept donations year-round. You can become a voting member at any time of the year—you just have to join by June 30 at 23:59 UTC to be eligible to vote in our annual OTW Board of Directors elections in August.

While our Development and Membership team is hard at work mailing out your gifts, we want to take a moment to say thanks. We wouldn't be here without your support in its myriad forms: your financial contributions, Fanlore articles, Transformative Works and Cultures citations, comments and kudos on AO3, and fanworks both old and new. It means the world to us and we are incredibly grateful! Thank you so much for your participation in this drive, and for making the OTW what it is today.

The OTW is delighted to announce that the Archive of Our Own has reached ten million fanworks! After hitting nine million fanworks in March of this year, it’s taken only seven months for our users to post the most recent million works. By contrast, it took just under four and a half years after going into open beta for users to post the first million works to AO3.

It’s been a year of milestones for AO3 and the OTW. In 2022 alone, we’ve reached not only ten million works but also five million registered AO3 users, 50,000 canonized AO3 fandom tags, and the OTW’s fifteenth anniversary. We are forever grateful to our dedicated creators and users for the support and enthusiasm you’ve given us over the years.

Thank you to everyone who’s helped us grow to this point. We can’t wait to see what you continue to create and share!

It’s that time of year again: the Organization for Transformative Works is holding our October Membership Drive, and we would appreciate your support! The OTW and all our projects are 100% volunteer-run and funded by your donations. Every dollar raised goes into maintaining our servers, supporting our work, and furthering our mission of protecting and advocating for fanworks and fan culture. Check out our most recent budget post for more information on how our funds are spent.

In addition to supporting our work, donations above a certain amount are also eligible for some neat OTW thank-you gifts! You can find the full range of what's available at our donations page but we'll pick out some highlights here.

• The Archive of Our Own is now thirteen years old - old enough to get its own account on AO3! To celebrate that, we have new 13th Anniversary pins available.
• You may also have noticed our celebrations last month when the OTW as a whole turned fifteen. We also have 15th Anniversary magnets to celebrate this occasion! These are bundled together with stickers celebrating both anniversaries. All the anniversary items are limited edition, so if you like the look of them, make sure to get yours while they're here!
• We also want to mention the fandom trope playing cards, which debuted in April and have proven very popular with our donors. Each card contains unique word art depicting the kinds of fannish terms and tropes that can be found in AO3 tags. This item is still available to those donating US$100 or more.

If you are interested in the thank-you gifts but aren't able to make a donation of this size all at once, don't worry! We've got you. You can set up a recurring donation for a smaller amount, and fill out the form in your donation receipt to let our Development and Membership team know which gift you'd like to save up for. They'll set it aside and will send it out to you once your cumulative total reaches the level needed for your chosen gift.

The other major benefit of donating to the Organization for Transformative Works is that any donation of US$10 or above makes you eligible to vote in next year's elections for the Board of Directors that oversees the OTW's activities. You can read more about our electoral process at the OTW elections website. If you would like to vote in the next election in August 2023, you can become a member today by making a single donation of US$10 or more and selecting "become a member" on the donation form. Membership will last for one calendar year from the date of your qualifying donation.

If you aren't able to donate to the OTW this time around, that's absolutely okay! And if you happen to have a moment to spare, we'd appreciate your help in sharing news of this membership drive with others. As always, we are so grateful for everything you do to support the OTW and its many projects. Thank you for being part of our community!

Throughout the year, the OTW Finance team has continued its work of ensuring that the organization's bills are paid, tax returns filed, and standard accounting procedures met. The team also revamped the accounting structure to better reflect the OTW's financial activity. Preparation for the audit of 2021 financial statements continues!

The team has also been diligently working on the 2022 budget update and are happy to present it here (access the 2022 budget spreadsheet for more detailed information):

2022 Expenses

Archive of Our Own (AO3)

• US$290,688.25 spent so far out of US$376,186.44 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• 66.7% of the OTW's expenses go towards maintaining the AO3. This includes the bulk of our server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance—website performance monitoring tools, and various systems-related licenses, as well as costs highlighted below (access all program expenses).
• This year's updated estimated AO3 expenses include a planned US$42,000 for a modest expansion of server capacity to continue to handle site traffic growth efficiently, as well as to replace existing equipment.

Open Doors

• US$1,234.42 spent so far out of US$3,459.98 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• Open Doors' expenses include hosting, backup, and domain costs for imported fanwork archives, shipping costs associated with preserving fanworks, and ticketing software (access all program expenses).

Transformative Works and Cultures

• US$275.00 spent so far out of US$2,349.00 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• Transformative Works and Cultures' expenses are the journal's website hosting, publishing, and storage fees (access all program expenses).

Fanlore

• US$14,564.40 spent so far out of US$19,276.90 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• Fanlore's expenses are a citation tool for the wiki, as well as its share of allocated server hardware, maintenance and colocation costs (access all program expenses).

Legal Advocacy

• US$0.00 spent so far out of US$4,000.00 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• Legal's expenses consist of filing fees and other costs associated with conferences and hearings (access all program expenses).

Con Outreach

• US$0.00 spent so far out of US$780.00 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• Budgeted expenses include WorldCon memberships for volunteers to attend and represent the OTW at ChiCon (access all program expenses).

Grant for F. Coppa book on the History of Fanvidding

• US$660.00 spent so far out of US$660.00 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• The money for this grant comes from a donation made to the OTW in 2020 for the specific purpose of covering costs related to the production of Francesca Coppa's book on the history of fanvidding. The University of Michigan has published the book and it is freely accessible online now. Since the full amount of the grant has been spent and its purpose has been accomplished, the grant is now closed.
• Remaining expenses were spent on the final proofreading and creating a table of contents for the book (access all program expenses).

Fundraising and Development

• US$48,796.15 spent so far out of US$80,962.15 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• Our fundraising and development expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation, thank-you gift purchases and shipping, and the tools used to host the OTW's membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors (access fundraising expenses).

Administration

• US$27,985.04 spent so far out of US$76,147.32 total this year, as of July 31, 2022.
• The OTW’s administrative expenses include hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, and annual financial statement audits, as well as communication, management, encrypted document storage, and accounting tools (access all admin expenses).

2022 Revenue

• The OTW is entirely supported by your donations—thank you for your generosity!
• We receive a significant portion of our donations each year in the April and October fundraising drives, which together should account for about 55% of our income in 2022. We also receive donations via employer matching programs, royalties, Amazon Smile, and PayPal Giving Fund, which administers donations from programs like Humble Bundle and eBay for Charity. If you'd like to support us while making purchases on those websites, please select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice!
• US$512,358.90 received so far (as of July 31, 2022) and US$600,118.51 is projected to be received by the end of the year.

Got questions?

If you have any questions about the budget or the OTW's finances, please contact the Finance committee. We will also be hosting an open chat to answer any questions you may have. This chat will take place in our public chatroom on October 15 at 8pm UTC (what time is that in my timezone?).

To download the OTW's 2022 budget in spreadsheet format, please follow this link.

I. THE OTW TURNS 15

In September, Communications celebrated the OTW's 15th anniversary with a trivia game, a fanworks challenge, and special interviews with Francesca Coppa and Constance Penley. Congratulations to our trivia and challenge winners, with thanks to Development & Membership for providing prizes!

Communications also reenabled comments on AO3 news posts in time for the anniversary. And at the end of the festivities, we also announced that AO3 reached 5 million registered users during the festivities--incidentally, on September 15!

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors announced the import of By Your Command, a Battlestar Galactica fanfiction archive. It also completed the import of Of Elves and Men, a Lord of the Rings archive, and All Things Rat, an X-Files archive.

Since August, Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed releases 0.9.323 and 0.9.324 and started testing the next release (which will probably be deployed as well by the time of this posting). These three releases include code from six new code contributors!

Policy & Abuse received 1700 tickets in September, which is a bit more than before, but they are still making good progress at eating into that number. Also in September, Tag Wrangling made progress on some general changes to the tools it uses that should improve security and, with many thanks to AD&T, rolled out some updates to the wrangulator that will greatly aid their ability to effectively manage their team and workload. In August, wranglers handled more than 420,000 tags across more than 52,000 fandoms--more than a thousand tags per active wrangler!

III. FANLORE NEWS

Fanlore got an upgrade! On the 3rd October, the wiki was upgraded to the newest version of MediaWiki. Among other things, this upgrade added a "visual editor" mode to Fanlore that does a lot of the formatting heavy lifting for contributors -- meaning you won't need to master wiki markup to edit (but markup fans will still be able to use it)!

Also in October, Fanlore is celebrating its anime and manga themed month, Fanimangalore, on its social media platforms with help from its new Graphic Designers and Social Media & Outreach Volunteers.

IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

September 15 was a big day not only for the AO3 but for TWC, which released No. 38, a general issue. Meanwhile, Development & Membership hosted a table at this year’s WorldCon and is looking forward to participating in more conventions as it updates the OTW's convention outreach program.

Legal did some research and analysis regarding legal developments concerning online service providers and U.S. nonprofits, attended a U.S. Copyright Office oversight hearing, and responded to queries from users and other parts of the OTW.

Finally, Systems moved Fanlore and the AO3 to a new certificate provider. Systems is continuing to work on upgrading different parts of our infrastructure, such as Fanlore's MediaWiki and the Archive's SQL servers.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 26 August to 23 September, Volunteers & Recruiting received 88 new requests, and completed 80, leaving us with 130 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 23 September 2022, the OTW has 903 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Open Doors Volunteers: Beth B, Hookedonthesky, runt, & 7 other Import Assistants
New Strategic Planning Volunteers: Audrey Richards
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 2D Trash, allonsyechoes, AoiH, Asterism, Barnesarmed, Bellivision, Cactus, Chaya, CheddarMonk, Cheshire, ChuckyBlue, Connor, CorvusGrey, dazyndara, dingding, Eirinen, EllaW, elyyyna, Faye Z, Flamingo, flowermemory7, FourSparks, Howl, JanB, jeiroh, Jenn Casso, Jules F, Kaesa, ladydragona, Larrant, Lavender T, Lizbean, Lombyn, m0th3rw4r, Maria Foivi, Mierke, Nyde, Rayon, Reya, Roz, sunshine712, Tsumego, Ultramarine, Uneasy, Virin, Yi Luo, Ymir (all Tag Wranglers), Harlow, Tafadhali, and 1 other Supervisor
New Translation Volunteers: Dasha (Volunteer Manager) & 1 News Translator

Departing Communications Volunteers: Allegra (Fanhackers Volunteer)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Katherine Hoovestol (Social Media & Outreach Volunteer)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Beth B (Administrative Volunteer), 1 Technical Volunteer & 4 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Tei and 1 other Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: HurricanErin & 8 other Volunteers
Departing Systems Volunteers: 1 Volunteer & 1 Project Manager
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Singy
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ayati, farah and 2 other Translators

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Are you a writer with an eye for technical details? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Spanish to English? Do you have experience copyediting or proofreading academic journals? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• AO3 Documentation Editor - closing 12 October 2022 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer - closing 12 October 2022 at 23:59 UTC or after 115 applications
• Tag Wrangling (Spanish) Volunteer - closing 12 October 2022 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
• TWC Proofreaders - closing 12 October 2022 at 23:59 UTC
• TWC Copyeditors - closing 12 October 2022 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

AO3 Documentation Editor

Do you have a passion for good documentation? Are you a writer with an eye for technical details? If so, then consider joining Docs!

AO3 Documentation is the committee that writes and updates AO3 FAQs, tutorials, and more. We’re looking for people who love the Archive of Our Own and who have experience relevant to writing and proofreading user help documentation. If that sounds like you, then follow the link for more information and apply today!

Applications will close on 12 October 2022 or after 30 applications

Tag Wrangling Volunteer

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. (This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive, whether that’s Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán with ABO Dynamics, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark with angst, g-rated Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam fluff, or Jeon Jungkook & Kim Taehyung | V Are Childhood Friends.)

If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are in need.

Wranglers need to be fluent in English, but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially af Soomaali (Somali), Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Español (Spanish), Filipino, Italiano (Italian), Polski (Polish), Português, Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), ไทย (Thai) and 中文 (Chinese - we welcome all dialects) — but help with other languages would be much appreciated!

Applications will close on 12 October 2022 or after 115 applications

Tag Wrangling (Spanish) Volunteer

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. (This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive, whether that's Bakugou Katsuki/Todoroki Shouto romance, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter with angst, g-rated Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam fluff, or Jeon Jungkook & Kim Taehyung | V Are Childhood Friends.)

If you're a fluent Spanish speaker who likes organizing, working in teams, or excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. We’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Spanish (we welcome all dialects!). The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Spanish into English.

Applications will close on 12 October 2022 or after 40 applications

TWC Proofreaders

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international peer-reviewed Gold Open Access online publication about fan-related topics that seeks to promote dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. Proofreaders carefully proofread the final online HTML-tagged manuscripts for online publication according to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) 17, Merriam-Webster online, and the TWC style guide. Editorial standards are those of a university press. Applicants are required to pass a brief test. All returned tests will be assessed and the applicant provided with feedback.

Applications will close on 12 October 2022

TWC Copyeditors

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international peer-reviewed Gold Open Access online publication about fan-related topics that seeks to promote dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. Copyeditors professionally copyedit submissions for TWC according to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) 17, Merriam-Webster online, and the TWC style guide. Editorial standards are those of a university press. Applicants are required to pass a brief test. All returned tests will be assessed and the applicant provided with feedback.

Applications will close on 12 October 2022

Apply at the volunteering page!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Bureau of Time and Space, a Flint the Time Detective fanwork archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who had work(s) on The Bureau of Time and Space
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The Bureau of Time and Space has been offline since the early 2000s. Small as it was, moving it to AO3 will double the amount of fic available for the fandom.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Saoirse to import The Bureau of Time and Space into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all art files currently in The Bureau of Time and Space will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works from The Bureau of Time and Space to the AO3 after October.

What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on The Bureau of Time and Space?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your The Bureau of Time and Space pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive.
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your The Bureau of Time and Space account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with The Bureau of Time and Space mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on:

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection The Bureau of Time and Space

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of The Bureau of Time and Space on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve The Bureau of Time and Space!

- The Open Doors team and Saoirse

Thanks to everyone who participated in the festivities for the OTW’s 15th anniversary! We’re so inspired by your creativity and enthusiasm. We’d also like to recognize that the Archive of Our Own reached five million registered users on September 15th, which is a wonderful milestone to occur during a month celebrating the fan-made achievement that is the OTW.

Today, we’re pleased to announce the 15 winners of our anniversary trivia and fanworks challenge prize drawing. The following fans are the trivia winners:

Alex C
coprime
Emmerlie
FestiveFerret
ihni
Lumeleo
Moodle01
satbiym
Serpi
theirprofoundbond

We also randomly selected the following five fanworks on AO3 as winners of the fanworks prize drawing:

ThisFiniteLife - The Warden of the Sierra Madre
Boss_duck - Another 15 Minute Sketch
DaybreakOverRain - Birthdays
Helen_scram - For All Time
TheTimeTraveler24 - Dear Bianca

Later today, we’ll email all of our winners, who will have 72 hours to provide us with a mailing address to send their prize to. If you are a winner and do not see our email in your inbox or your spam folder within the next 24 hours, please contact the Communications Committee to let us know.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the OTW15 | OTW 15th Anniversary Fanwork Challenge tag on AO3, Francesca Coppa’s Five Things an OTW Volunteer Said post, Constance Penley’s Guest Post, and our newly updated OTW History infographics.

It’s also not too late to join the Stub September challenge on Fanlore, which is ongoing until September 25!

The answers to all 15 trivia questions are listed below.

• Who were the guests at the OTW’s “The Future of Fanworks” live chat with fan studies scholars held in March 2014? Dr. Paul Booth, Dr. Anne Jamison, Dr. Frenchy Lunning, or Dr. Lori Morimoto
• What was the title of Michael James Heron’s journal article listed in the May 29, 2017, edition of Fanhackers’s fan studies research post? “Pacman’s Canon in C#: A Quantum Interpretation of Video Game Canon”
• How many fanworks (rounded to the nearest thousand) and how many archives did the Open Doors project import to AO3 in 2018? 12,000 fanworks, 11 archives
• On what date in 2018 did AO3 announce that it now supports emojis and extended character sets for several languages? December 14
• The games OTW holds to celebrate International Fanworks Day have generally included writing filk. Which two songs were shared with AO3 news readers in 2016? “Hey Jude” and “Thriller”
• The OTW's journal Transformative Works and Cultures announced it was replacing two sections in 2022. What were they? “Theory” and “Praxis”
• What are the names of the two digital projects included in Open Doors’ Special Collections Gallery? The Foresmutters Project and Missed the Saturday Dance
• What was the title of the letter that Legal Advocacy submitted to the U.S. Congress in March 2015? Supporting a Pro-Innovation, Pro-Creator, Pro-Consumer Copyright Agenda
• In what year did Fanlore run its first ever Stub September challenge? 2012
• What was the name of the Hugo Award category that AO3 won in 2019? Best Related Work
• In 2021, the OTW reported that one of its social media outlets grew its following from 21,000 followers to 271,000 in 2020. Which one was it? Weibo
• What is the name of the group of Fanlore volunteers who monitor the wiki’s recent changes to ensure that content is coherent, appropriate, and properly organized? Gardeners
• What was the title of the Transformative Works and Cultures issue released in March 2019? Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color
• What did the OTW say happened in August 2008 in their annual report? The vidding documentary produced in collaboration with Henry Jenkins and MIT’s New Media Literacy project was unveiled at Vividcon.
• Which fanfiction exchange was used by AO3 to test out its new Collections and Challenges code at the end of 2009? Yuletide

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.