Post Header
I. TWC FANS OF COLOR RESEARCH PRIZE
TWC recently announced their new Fans of Color Research Prize. The award recognizes the best peer-reviewed article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in Transformative Works and Cultures in the preceding 3 years (currently no earlier than 2021) and furthers the journal’s goal to support scholars whose work fills critical gaps in fan studies literature about racially marginalized and/or non-western fans. The winner will receive a $500 cash prize. Please feel free to disseminate the prize widely and nominate qualifying articles!
In addition, TWC is putting the finishing touches on their upcoming special issue on Fandoms and Platforms, which will be published on March 15th.
II. AT THE AO3
Open Doors has recently finished importing works for The Common People Warehouse, an archive focusing on the ordinary people of the Marvel universe, inspired by The Common People (TCP) genre of Marvel Comics fanfiction. They have also imported both prompts and fills for The Disney Kink Meme, a prompt meme focusing on the Disney animated films.
In February, Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed updates to several dependencies, including preparation for the upgrade to Rails 7, as well as changes to the mass wrangling bin to make loading it snappier. The details of these changes are in release notes for the changes deployed from November through February. Systems also migrated their version control to a new location so that they will have less to manage in the near future.
In January, Policy & Abuse received 2,112 tickets, while Support received 2,106. During January, Tag Wrangling handled more than 437,347 tags across upwards of 63,400 fandoms, more than 1,000 tags per wrangler.
III. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY
Communications had a particularly successful IFD celebration – many thanks to all our participants! The IFD survey apparently led many fans to become more aware of our social media outlets and project websites, as we received more visits or followers to all of them.
Thanks too to everyone who took part in the IFD Fanlore Challenge, which has been a great success with 47 participants! Fanlore volunteers also worked hard on posts for Femslash February!
IV. GOVERNANCE
In the past month, Board successfully ran the first Board public meeting of 2024. They had 110 attendees and answered a total of 21 questions received from the participants, of which 14 questions were answered during the live meeting period. The OTW’s contracted culture firm also delivered their report, and Board is excited to share their findings with OTW volunteers soon.
Meanwhile, the Board Assistants Team has recruited a Board Cybersecurity Delegate to begin working on Strategic Planning's cybersecurity goals.
V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
Volunteers & Recruiting
From 19 January to 21 February, Volunteers & Recruiting received 111 new requests, and completed 118, leaving them with 42 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of 21 February 2024, the OTW has 867 volunteers. Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New BAT Volunteers: spacegandalf (Project Specialist) and 2 other Project Specialists
New Legal Volunteers: 1 Legal Committee Member
New Open Doors Volunteers: Eggy (Technical Volunteer), 1 Import Assistant and 2 Technical Volunteers
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Administrative Volunteer, 2 Import Assistants
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 Support Volunteer
Departing Systems Volunteers: 1 Technical Writer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: hmweasley (Supervisor), Kaysa, JoJo, mutedpiano (Tag Wranglers), and 10 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Fifi, Mana (Translators) and 4 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.