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Published:
2024-03-08 17:12:03 UTC
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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.

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Published:
2024-02-04 17:46:28 UTC
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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. IFD 2024

International Fanworks Day (IFD) is just around the corner! The Communications team has been hard at work preparing for this special occasion, and the Translation team is kicking off the new year by ensuring that we have content ready in 25 different languages for International Fanworks Day. Additionally, the Fanlore team is preparing for their annual International Fanworks Day Fanlore Challenge, which will take place the week of the event.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of IFD and we'll share our celebration plans in a few days!

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design and Technology spent most of December testing and tweaking code for a jumbo-sized release (over 20 issues!) that was deployed on January 6. This was followed by several releases consisting of only a few issues each.

Open Doors completed imports of LeBeau Library (of the Gambit Guild forum, an X-Men fanfiction archive focusing on the character Remy LeBeau or “Gambit”), Library of Moria (a Tolkien slash, femslash, gen, and RPF fanfiction and fanart archive), and Offpanel.net (a DC Comics and other fandom archive). They have also announced the import of 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) and Elysejský klíč (a Harry Potter fanfiction and fanart archive).

Tag Wrangling continued to make progress in testing the new procedures for wrangling tags not associated with specific fandoms, and began implementing some of the decisions made in early rounds of testing. In December, more than 390,000 tags were wrangled across more than 62,800 fandoms - more than 900 tags per wrangler.

Elsewhere, Policy and Abuse received approximately 23.6K tickets in 2023 (1,700 in December), and Support received 2,981 tickets in December, bringing their yearly total for 2023 to 24,814 tickets, an increase of nearly 36% over the previous year.

Pie chart of the nearly 23,600 Policy & Abuse tickets submitted in 2023, divided by type of complaint. Non-fanworks: 47%; Rejected complaints about offensive content: 18%; Plagiarism and Copyright infringement: 9%; Harassment: 8%; Commercial promotion: 7%; Policy questions: 3%; Other: 3%; Incorrect fandom tags: 3%; Insufficient ratings or warnings: 2%. These categories reflect the subject of the complaint, and (with the exception of Offensive Content), do not indicate whether the report was upheld or rejected.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

To close out 2023, Fanlore ran a fun editing chat focused on minor characters and rarepairs, and Systems kept an eye on the servers as they happily whirred along through December, serving everyone their wonderful AO3 works and Fanlore pages.

In December and January, Legal addressed quite a few user queries, dealt with an app that was violating the Archive Terms of Service by charging money for access to works on the Archive, and worked to address other situations where users were confused about sites that seemed to be connected OTW or AO3, but weren’t. One of their major projects in December and January involved handling some mistaken copyright takedown notices that had been sent to Microsoft that were blocking search access to some material on AO3.

Excitingly, Transformative Works and Cultures has been awarded a prize from the University of Amsterdam for their Diamond Open Access Journal! Additionally, they will soon be announcing the winner of the TWC Fans of Color Research Prize which will recognize the best peer-reviewed article about fans and/or fandoms of color published in TWC in the preceding 3 years. The next issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, a special issue focused on “Fandoms and Platforms” will be published on March 15, 2024.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board spent time preparing for its public meeting, which took place on January 28. Be on the lookout for the minutes which will be released soon. Meanwhile, Finance is working on finishing up 2023 bookkeeping to prepare for year end accounting adjustments and reconciliations.

Development and Membership had a blast at Arisia! Check out photos on Tumblr or Twitter, and add your #OTWThreeTropeDraw prompts if you drew one – or try at home if you have one of our spiffy card decks! The OTW will be at two events coming up: Ret-Con Outside Raleigh and Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 25 November to 19 January, Volunteers & Recruiting received 279 new requests, and completed 302, leaving us with 55 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 19 January 2023, the OTW has 886 volunteers. Recent personnel movements are listed below:

New Committee Chairs: Harley G. & Sveritas (Communications)
New AD&T Volunteers: Brian Austin (Senior Volunteer)
New BAT Volunteers: 1 Moderator
New Communications Volunteers: 1 Communications Technical Assistant
New Fanlore Volunteers: Iris Leona, kiminojellylove, scioardeo (Policy & Admin), 1 Gardener, and 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Achilles, Ailinen, Altein, Anastasia Clare, Aran R., Azrael, Ben Q, Camila Lopez, Ceez, Clara, Claudia M, Daniailís, Edai, Ella B., elphy, ErinOlivia, escapedramatica, Giu, Giulia F., Icarus, InsertSthMeaningful, inspiredstork, Iris Leona, Kenn, KT, Ky, Lucia Sinatra, Mare, Margaret H, Moran, nadir, Ninety, Noah A, Patrycja Zarzecka, Pidge, purple rae, Remu, Remy A., Ry-nines, sahar, Sammyamwich, stellarcatfish, Sturmlight, Sydders, Tabby, Theodore, Treehawk, victor h, ynkkie, Yuki G, Yun D. (all Tag Wranglers), and 2 other Tag Wranglers
New Translation Volunteers: Nadja (Translator), 1 Task Assistant, and 1 Translation Volunteer Manager
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

Departing Committee Chairs: Amy Lowell (Development & Membership)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Mo (Editor) and 2 other Editors
Departing Communications Volunteers: lee e (Posting Specialist and Event Coordinator), Meilinda Lopez (Site Moderator), 1 Fanhackers Volunteer, 1 Site Moderator, 1 Chair Assistant, and 1 Media Outreach Volunteer
Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: Chelsea Cheyanne (Membership Data Specialist) and 1 other Membership Data Specialist
Departing Elections Volunteers: 2 Communication Specialists
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Rebecca S (Policy & Admin Volunteer)
Departing Finance Volunteers: Kay L. (Financial Analyst)
Departing Legal Volunteers: 1 Committee Member and 1 Intern
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: blueshiftofdeath (Technical Volunteer), Joanna Pernick and 3 other Administrative Volunteers, 3 Import Assistants, and 1 FSHP Volunteer
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: memorizingthedigitsofpi, Wishopenastar, and 2 other Volunteers
Departing Support Volunteers: 13 Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: jmathieson (Tag Wrangling Supervisor), batcat229, Charls, Tyto, Megan Q, hanna_yuki, heartbreakordeath, Eonni (all Tag Wranglers), 1 Tag Wrangling Supervisor, and 5 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: lee e (Translator and Translation Volunteer Manager), Vesta (Translator) and 6 Translators
Departing TWC Volunteers: Cheng Shon (Proofreader), Sarah New (Layout Editor), 1 Layout Editor, 1 Proofreader, and 1 Symposium Editor

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.

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Published:
2023-12-09 16:39:30 UTC
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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The new Board members are settling in nicely and have held the first public meeting of this term. They've begun answering non-live questions in their public Discord, and minutes for this meeting will be available soon on the OTW website.

In addition, our organizational culture firm has completed its initial survey and is interviewing volunteers. Relatedly, Strategic Planning has been working with Volunteers & Recruiting on a guide to inclusive recruiting practices to share with committees as part of the Recruitment strategic goal.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors completed imports of What Makes the Desert Beautiful, a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fanfiction archive focused on the Nick and Greg slash pairing, and The ARC, a fanfiction archive for the TV series Primeval.

Accessibility, Design, & Technology deployed their latest release, which focused on improvements to downloads, including how PDFs are generated. Relatedly, Systems resolved some issues with download errors and made fixes to their internal monitoring. Systems' work towards Debian Bookworm continues; some internal systems are already running it, and some parts of AO3 are expected to be running it soon. Systems also introduced some new tooling to the OTW's Infrastructure as Code setup – the Archive's Cloudflare configuration is now maintained using Terraform, which makes it safer to test and deploy new rules!

In October, Policy & Abuse received 1965 tickets, while Support had a total of 1994 tickets. Support's monthly totals continue to decline slightly, but they are still getting quite a bit more messages monthly than the usual average. They continue to work on digging out from the backlog of tickets and appreciate your patience!

Elsewhere, Tag Wrangling began testing the new procedures for updating canonical tags that are not associated with any specific fandom, which hopefully will begin to reduce the backlog of support requests related to such tags. They wrangled more than 470,000 tags in more than 61,000 fandoms, which works out to more than 1,100 per active wrangler!

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

This month, Fanlore has been updating their Tumblr layout and reviewing engagement for the last year, while Translation brought their side of the membership drive to a close with 28 participating teams. Communications is testing an OTW News by email service, which we hope to provide in different languages.

November was a very full month for Legal! This month, Legal dealt with a large number of overreaching and invalid DMCA takedown notices that had been sent to Bing. These notices resulted in a number of pages being delisted from Bing without legal justification, which made it harder for Bing users to find material on the AO3. Legal is working on longer term solutions to keep this sort of thing from happening. Legal also responded to a number of user queries regarding copyright and trademark issues surrounding fanworks.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Finance filed the 2022 tax return and are in the process of finalizing the 2022 audit. Filing and reports will be available on the website soon.

Also, Development and Membership was at Y/Con in Paris in November! One Fanlore volunteer was there talking about fanfiction and online communities. Check out our social media accounts for photos – or tag us if you were there! Next up: getting ready for the 2024 event season.

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 23 October to 24 November, Volunteers & Recruiting received 183 new requests, and completed 164, leaving us with 75 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 November 2023, the OTW has 897 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Anh Pham (President) and Zixin Zhang (Secretary)
New Committee Chairs: Alex Johnson (Strategic Planning), cosette (Webs), dazyndara (Board Assistants Team), Paula (Support), and therealmorticia (Board Assistants Team)
New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Fiona (Chair Trainee) and telescopicpoems (Chair Trainee)
New Communications Volunteers: Eskici (Recruitment, Training & Documentation Assistant)
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Membership Data Specialist
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
New Systems Volunteers: Brian Austin (Systems Volunteer) and C. Ryan Smith (Systems Volunteer)
New Translation Volunteers: AndreaK, Joohee Lee, Junij, Marte Bergundhaugen, Nachali, Reilly, Sil, Teelee, Zara Miller, and 6 other Translators
New TWC Volunteers: Khaliah Reed, and 2 Symposium Editors

Departing Committee Chairs: Ridicully (Webs)
Departing Communications Volunteers: Eskici (Chair Assistant role only)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 5 Social Media & Outreach Volunteers
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Technical Volunteers and 2 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Birdie, El, equestrianstatue, Fern, Fu, Sanctuaria, and 19 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Åse, Cel, Dan Ph, Monica Gomez, Sara N, and 6 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.

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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATES

The new Board of Directors members have been hard at work! They’ve finalized a contract with an organizational culture firm who will be beginning work soon. This is the first major step to improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the OTW. Board has also selected the first chairs for the Board Assistants Team committee, a new group who will assist Board with administrative and scheduling tasks.

In addition, Board held a closed meeting to vote on officers for this term, so please welcome Anh Pham as President and Zixin Zhang as Secretary! Our Treasurer, Yuechiang Luo, will be continuing in her role. Finally, the next public meeting will be held Sunday, November 12th at 1:00-2:00 AM UTC (what time is that for me?). Board will be modifying the usual structure and rules to make this one go more smoothly; more info on that can be found in the Board Discord server.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors announced the new import of fanworks from print zines as part of the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP), in partnership with fan-run preservation project Zinedom. The FSHP is still finding its feet in many ways, but is making good progress, and it’s wonderful to see readers welcoming these older fanworks! Open Doors also completed the import of Echoes from the West, a digital archive for Saiyuki fanfiction. October has been a particularly busy month for Open Doors, which hopes to bring you news of more completed imports soon.

It was an exciting October for Tag Wrangling, which is completing preparations for the first few rounds of testing for No Fandom wrangling procedures. Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) provided an extremely welcome bug fix involving the autocomplete when fandoms were renamed—and an even more welcome update to the Tag Search, so now wranglers can sort by use count. In September, wranglers handled more than 449,000 tags across over 60,400 fandoms – an average of more than 1,100 tags per active wrangler!

Support received a total of 2,007 tickets in September—down from the previous two months but still quite a bit above its usual average. Meanwhile, Policy & Abuse received 2,560 tickets in September and is excited to welcome its new recruits, and Systems continued to work with Support and AD&T on resolving some lingering issues with user sessions.

III. MEMBERSHIP AND OUTREACH

Development & Membership held its semiannual membership drive in conjunction with Communications and Translation, who translated the news posts into 28 languages. We’re very grateful to the 6,773 donors from 74 countries who donated a total of US$192,743! Before the drive, Finance also released an update on the OTW’s 2023 budget.

Elsewhere, Development & Membership’s table at World Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu, China, was a success! Photos were shared on OTW's social media – tag us on your own photos!. We hope you grabbed some cute stickers or exchanged amazing fanwork recommendations. Stay tuned for our next adventure - it may be nearby 👀

Finally, Communications released a report on the OTW’s 16th anniversary survey, which got 78,258 responses! Make sure to check out the survey report if you haven’t read it yet.

IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore celebrated an audio-themed month, Podtober, highlighting fannish podcasts, podcast fandoms, and podfic! It held a fun and friendly Podtober-themed editing chat in its Discord server and continued to feature audio-themed articles on social media for the rest of the month.

Legal also has great news: in October, the Copyright Office approved OTW Legal’s petition to the U.S. Copyright Office to renew the “vidders’ exemption” to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. This exemption allows creators to rip material from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and streams in order to make high-quality fair uses of that material in noncommercial videos such as vids and OVAs. The exemption renewal process happens every three years, so let’s hear it for three more years of wonderful vids and OVAs! Also in October, Legal met with allies regarding pending copyright policy issues.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 26 September to 22 October, Volunteers & Recruiting received 133 new requests, and completed 162, leaving us with 54 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 22 October 2023, the OTW has 922 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Zixin Zhang, Qiao Chu, Kathryn Soderholm, Jennifer Haynes, Anh Pham
New Fanlore Volunteers: Megs Fretty and Silarona (Graphic Designers)
New Open Doors Volunteers: ArcadianMaggie, Belea, Hesandi, AuroraT, Amanda Hartley, Xochitl Kuu, Kayla G, Kira Q, and 4 other Administrative Volunteers
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Chrome, PS, Aster, Dae, JanB, xenosimp, Intyalote, and 2 other Volunteers
New Strategic Planning Volunteers: Adriftthen, powerchords, and 1 other Volunteer
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: peaandsea (Senior Volunteer) and 1 other Senior Volunteer
New Webs Volunteers: 2 Volunteers

Departing Committee Chairs: Kate Sanders (Strategic Planning)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: petricores (Social Media & Outreach)
Departing Finance Volunteers: Nikki Bird (Financial Analyst)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: alandwithnoname and 2 other Volunteers
Departing Support Volunteers: JR and Maine
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Alora, alandwithnoname, and 2 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: makepeacelovejoy (Volunteer Manager) and 3 Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Webs Volunteers: 1 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.

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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. MILESTONES!

The OTW got to celebrate its 16th anniversary month with a new milestone at its Archive of Our Own project! On September 18th the 60,000th fandom was canonized by Tag Wrangling. That fandom is Kołysanka | Lullaby (2010) which comes to us courtesy of Fandom Kombat. In August, more than 550,000 tags were wrangled, which works out to more than 1,250 per active Tag Wrangler.

OTW's anniversary was also marked by a survey which was accessed 90,607 times. The survey ran from September 5 - 21. The Communications Committee is at work creating a public report on the results, which should be released in October. The committee also completed work on the OTW's 2022 Annual Report.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors announced the import of Between the Lines a JAG fanfiction archive. They also completed the import of the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive, a fanfiction archive for the Stargate: Atlantis ship Rodney McKay/Elizabeth Weir.

Policy and Abuse received 1876 new tickets in August and Support tickets remain very high – 3198 tickets in August, which is nearly twice what they receive in an average month. We appreciate your patience as the Support team works on these!

III. MORE PROJECT NEWS

TWC released No. 40, a general issue, on September 15. The next issue of TWC, No. 41, is a special issue titled “Chinese Fandoms”. It will appear on December 15th, 2023.

Fanlore's Stub September editing challenge was a big success! 38 participants completed at least one task, and 23 completed all five. Join in to their audio fandom themed month, Podtober, this month!

Legal joined allies in opposing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the U.S. and urged users to do the same! In addition to the U.S. laws discussed above, Legal has also been paying close attention to the UK Online Safety Bill, which passed recently. The UK Online Safety Bill—under the interpretations of that bill that they believe are reasonable and likely—will not affect the AO3, but is likely to make life difficult for some other fan spaces when it goes into effect. Our Legal team will continue to watch enforcement actions and trends carefully to see how authorities interpret the bill.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has continued to be busy training incoming Board members! They have approved a few Finance requests this month, and are gearing up for an upcoming Board meeting. Board has also begun talking with a potential DEI consulting firm, and are excited to continue moving forward with this project.

Meanwhile Strategic Planning is in the process of contacting chairs and leads to check their progress as the OTW is getting close to the 3 month deadline in the current strategic plan.

Development and Membership is setting up for the October Drive. They have new gifts in the works and can’t wait to show everyone! While they did not have any events this past month, October is Worldcon: the World Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu, China! Our local volunteers will be representing the OTW there with a table, and have stickers based on Chinese Fandom slang. If you are attending, please tag the OTW in your photos!

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

In addition to recruiting externally for the Strategic Planning committee this month, Volunteers & Recruiting started work on the OTW's 2023 Still Willing To Serve campaign and finalised selection of a conflict management tool. The committee also contacted the first batch of external HR companies, and are currently scheduling the first round of meetings.

From 25 August to 25 September, Volunteers & Recruiting received 201 new requests, and completed 166, leaving us with 123 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 25 September 2023, the OTW has 924 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs: Joanna Pernick (Fanlore) and Noah A (Fanlore)
New Communications Volunteers: hheyhalley (Graphics Volunteer)
New Open Doors Volunteers: Bella Irvine (Import Assistant) and one Open Doors Chair Assistant
New Systems Volunteers: Albert Pedersen
New Translation Volunteers: Parul Hunnargikar, Veronika Kathi, Anna Zervos, Maria G., and 3 other Translators

Departing Committee Chairs: Rebecca Sentance (Fanlore)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Synnie
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach and 5 Graphic Designers
Departing Legal Volunteers: 1 Intern
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Bella Irvine (Administrative Volunteer)
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 12 Volunteers
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Systems Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Dhobi ki Kutti, Autumn, ladymarianor, Lisette, gecko, and 14 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ridicully (Volunteer Manager) and 4 Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 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.

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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. 2023 ELECTIONS CONCLUDED

Elections completed its work in August with the 2023 election successfully closed. Congratulations to our new Board members! They wrapped up with a statistics report on voting activity.

Board is excited to see the election conclude, and delighted to welcome its new members! The current directors are preparing to dive right into training them to take up their new roles.

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology has been focused on coding and testing bug fixes, infrastructure updates, and site improvements. They've had five deploys in August, ranging from single-issue updates to entire grab bags of fixes. The change log for all deploys between April and June was also posted. As always, they have been working with Support and the Policy & Abuse team on tickets requiring database insights.

Policy & Abuse received 1674 tickets and Support had a heavy ticket month in July, with 2362 tickets, mainly a lot of troubleshooting after the DDoS attacks and Cloudflare implementation. Please have patience with our volunteers as they work on digging out from under this influx!

Open Doors announced the import to AO3 of Snow Lands (a fanfiction and fan comic archive for The Lion King). They also posted about archivists now having the ability to automatically add a found work to the archive’s collection, following recent changes to the collection invitation process. Creators will be notified when this happens, and can withdraw their works from a collection at any time.

Tag Wrangling welcomed a new class of wranglers. This is an exciting time, as they are ramping up in preparation for testing new procedures for wrangling tags not associated with any fandoms. In July, more than 460,000 tags across over 59,000 fandoms were wrangled!

Systems has continued to monitor Cloudflare’s performance and make adjustments as necessary. The protection side of things is mostly tuned in at this point - we haven’t needed to touch it at all! They’re working with AD&T and Support to improve on some lingering errors from the switch over. Systems is continuing to look at getting the Archive upgraded to Debian Bookworm, and have received 2 new virtualization servers which they are in the process of getting up and running.

III. APPEARANCES AND ACTIVITIES

Webs has been keeping things updated and working on getting delivery of emails from several of our sites to work properly again after the DDoS protections threw them out of whack for a while.

Legal responded to user queries and worked to oppose U.S. legislative proposals that would be bad for fans. Otherwise, Legal’s August was full but largely internal, and included working with law enforcement concerning last month’s DDoS attack and ransom.

Communications welcomed its new site moderators Meilinda Lopez at Facebook and Abby at Instagram! If you use these platforms we encourage you to follow our accounts there.

Fanlore's themed month for July, Fandom in Color, was a big success! They're now in the midst of planning Stub September which will have a dinosaur theme this year! You can get more details about the challenge on their Twitter or Tumblr accounts.

Development & Membership – 今年OTW参加了在北京举办的GA05同人展!在展会上,我们带来了宣传材料与主题贴纸,并与大家分享了OTW志愿工作的体验。参展的大家非常热情地参与了推文活动,把喜欢的同人文写在便利贴上,贴满了整个推文箱。此外,我们使用了OTW捐款赠礼中的AO3标签主题扑克牌,和参展的大家玩了抽梗挑战的活动,静待大家用自己抽到的梗创作的同人作品(记得在微博上圈我们哦)!

On August 12 and 13, OTW participated in the GoldenAge Fan Convention in Beijing! Flyers and OTW-themed stickers were available at our con table, and OTW volunteers shared their experiences. Fans wrote down their favorite fics on sticky notes that were prepared by the volunteers, and the sticky notes we collected covered the entire rec board! Additionally, the OTW card deck (one of our thank-you gifts) was used for a prompt-creating challenge.

The OTW also appeared at several other conventions in August: Guangzhou’s ComicCup Convention, and LeakyCon and Fan Expo, both in Chicago.

IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting worked with a few committees to close out previously held recruitment drives and induct their new volunteers. From 24 July to 24 August, Volunteers & Recruiting received 244 new requests, and completed 214, leaving them with 86 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 August 2023, the OTW has 960 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Alma J., Alora, Aprilcake, Astraea, Beforeastorm, boop, c0ldspark, Ciara, Crafty, Daelyn, Doves, Gab, Gheyn, Haritika, heartbreakordeath, Indes, ise, Jamie B, Ju5t, JR, lasttai, leftsidedown, Lilith, Lisette, Lulu M, magma, Meg N., Miraii, Monnie, Morrow, Overlookedfile, President Hades, qkind, Rhonda H., Robyn Rose, sarajaksa, Tacky Tramp, Tammy, TashaK, and Yvelyn and 1 other Tag Wrangler
New Translation Volunteers: Laure (Volunteer Manager), Jaewon Choi, Vien, Alaia, Tatiana Cunha, Teodora M, Laura Sinele, Shubhi Tandon, MissLiterature, Belfrownys, and 8 other Translators
New TWC Volunteers: Tanya D. Zuk and 1 other Assistant Editor
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Allison Petrosino, Jessica Myers, Rachel B and 3 other Volunteers

Departing Directors: Alex Tischer (Director and Secretary), Antonius Melisse, and Natalia Gruber (both Directors)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Elections Volunteers: lee e (Public Relations Specialist)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Callmesalticidae (Policy & Admin), 1 Graphic Designer, and 3 Social Media & Outreach Volunteers
Departing Finance Volunteers: 1 Financial Analyst
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Evan, Laila, RowanFae, Saturnina, Teg, and 23 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: NataliaKamaeva 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.

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Published:
2023-08-09 14:50:10 UTC
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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. DOWNS AND UPS

Systems was hard at work getting the Archive back online after a large DDoS attack. After a period of downtime, the Archive was back up behind Cloudflare, and the committee has been spending some time fine tuning things to reduce the impact to good traffic, while still taking care of the bad stuff.

Huge kudos to Cloudflare for working to get us back up and running & continuing to help us refine things, to our datacenter for helping us work through the initial attacks & the move to Cloudflare, and to everyone who sent messages of support as our volunteers worked around the clock to get the site back online. It was certainly a stressful time, but your messages helped keep us going, and we appreciate it! <3

II. AT THE AO3

Despite the DDoS attempt to take AO3 offline, Accessibility, Design and Technology worked on new features and bug fixes to continue improvements to readability, stability and security.

Policy and Abuse received 1916 tickets in June. In July, they were forced to take their reporting form offline temporarily because of the DDoS attack that struck the Archive, which coincided with an influx of spam.

Support also took their form offline for a couple of days in July due to the DDoS attack and as a preventative measure in view of Policy & Abuse’s spam situation. Their form was working again on July 13 and they have been catching up, as well as dealing with new issues that have cropped up for some users since Cloudflare’s implementation.

In July, Tag Wrangling volunteers started the second level of the new tag wrangling training platform, marking another milestone in their work to completely overhaul and consolidate training procedures. They have also been holding a discussion, which should be drawing to a close soon, regarding updating the formatting for some of AO3's Alternate Universe tags. In June, more than 450,000 tags were wrangled across more than 59,000 fandoms – that's more than 1,050 tags per active wrangler!

Open Doors' import assistants have been busy compiling spreadsheets and importing works for three archives and helping with various tasks related to the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project.

III. ACROSS COMMITTEES

Fanlore's themed month for July, Fandom in Color, was in full swing across its social channels, with highlighted pages on its Tumblr. The Fandom in Color editing chat in their Discord server was a big success.

The DDoS attack caused a surge in subscribers to the OTW's social media accounts and Communications received a number of news media contacts as well. In the meantime, our Fanhackers team has been busy, and we urge everyone to check out their fan studies discussions.

Legal submitted the OTW’s request that the U.S. Copyright Office renew the vidding exemption to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, and joined allies including the ACLU in opposing U.S. legislative proposals that would seek to silence LGBTQ+ voices online. Legal is closely watching a number of overlapping pending proposals with such aims to oppose them in the most effective way.

In addition, Legal committee members connected with allies and monitored legislative developments announced at San Diego Comic Con. They also responded to several queries from users and worked with other OTW committees to address the DDoS attack and interact with law enforcement.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Strategic Planning released the 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, which was approved during the last public Board meeting. The plan’s implementation officially began on the 24th of July.

Last weekend, Elections held all four Candidate Chats — thank you to our candidates and all those who participated over on Discord! Transcripts have been posted to the Elections site.

Elections also announced the withdrawal of another one of our candidates, Audrey R. We wish her all the best.

Important info for the election:
The election will take place from 11-14 August. As there are now 5 open seats and 5 candidates, the election will be uncontested. However, your vote still counts — we will be voting to elect 3 candidates to serve full-term (3 years) and 2 candidates to serve partial terms (2 years).

Voting instructions have been emailed to all eligible members. If you have not received your voting instructions by email, or if you have a different query, you can contact the Elections Committee through our website. Reminder to all voters: Anyone who seeks to raise awareness of our election should not attempt to directly contact or harass candidates, their families, or employers. Elections has issued a statement on our stance.

Board met with various committees, including Systems and Legal, about the DDoS attack. In addition, three Board Directors have stepped down from their Board roles -- Antonius Melisse, Natalia Gruber and Alex Tischer. We thank them for all their work, and wish them the best in their future endeavours. Board has been working on updating some of their internal documentation in preparation for this month's election.

Development and Membership is working hard on the leadup to the October Drive, with many new graphic designs for stickers, donation gifts and the member icon. They are also collaborating with the Elections team as Board Elections approach and doing setup for tables at two conventions in August.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting has been making progress on the Human Resources Outsourcing project, having compiled a list of potential companies to interview.

From 24 June to 24 July, Volunteers & Recruiting received 133 new requests, and completed 122, leaving us with 52 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 July 2023, the OTW has 930 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: Abby (Site Moderator), Eskici (Chair Assistant), Harley G. (Chair Track Volunteer), Meilinda Lopez (Site Moderator), scrivea (Media Outreach Volunteer), 1 other Chair Track Volunteer, 1 Event Coordinator, 1 Posting Specialist, and 1 Site Moderator-Weibo
New Development & Membership Volunteers: rachaelly and slakemoth
New Open Doors Volunteers: A.Heidi (Import Assistant), Pips (Import Assistant), Scrivener (Technical Volunteer), SonoSvegliato (Import Assistant), Runekaster (Import Assistant), Zoë Elisabeth (Import Assistant) and 1 other Import Assistant
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translation Volunteer Manager, InsertSthMeaningful, and 3 other News Translators
New VolCom Volunteers: sam_sational & Slumber

Departing Committee Chairs: Eskici (Communications)
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Graphics Volunteer
Departing Elections Volunteers: 1 Election Candidate Liaison
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Fanlore Graphic Designer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: StableState and 2 other Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Ranowa
Departing Support Volunteers: Sammie Louise and 1 other Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Dessie, trashchancellor, Kaylyn, and 7 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ilona van der Vegt, solrosan, Katerina Valsamaki, and 3 other Translators

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

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Published:
2023-07-07 14:21:13 UTC
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Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works

I. BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATE

Board held a public meeting on 2 July; they’ve heard the feedback about needing to improve for the next meeting, and they are exploring options. Thanks to everyone who offered up ideas for making Board meetings run better in the future - they fully intend to make changes for next time and beyond.

During the meeting, they shared updates on diversity, including their recent post, and they also shared an update to our Code of Conduct to include caste as a protected class. Board hopes to have more updates, including additional progress in their search for a DEI consultant, by its next meeting.

As part of the diversity consultant process, Board asked their Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO) to help with requirements gathering and to survey volunteers for high-priority topics. The DCRO has finished this feedback period and are hoping to begin entering negotiations with specific consultants by September; they’ll be reaching out to consultants early in July.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors announced the import of Stayka’s Saint Seiya Archive, an archive dedicated to fanworks inspired by the manga Saint Seiya, and Smoochies, a multi-fandom fanfiction and fanart archive. Meanwhile, Support was on track to receive 1,600 tickets again in June at the time of this writing.

Accessibility, Design & Technology has been working with Policy & Abuse, Support, and the wonderful team at the OTW’s spam detection service to stay on top of some gnarly spam issues.

Finally, Tag Wrangling took some actions this month to update several canonical freeform tags related to the alpha/beta/omega-verse trope across a number of fandoms in order to remove an acronym that they learned was also an offensive slur. It would like to thank the volunteers and users who took the time to alert the committee to this issue. In May, wranglers handled more than 420,000 tags across more than 58,200 fandoms—more than 950 tags per wrangler!

III. FANLORE OUTREACH

Fanlore Bingo was a big success this year with 37 participants who completed at least one bingo and 26 who got a total blackout! Fanlore’s graphic designers created some lovely fruit and vegetable themed graphics while other volunteers pitched in to award badges.

Fanlore also geared up for its next themed month, Fandom in Color, running throughout July—so be sure to follow its social media (Twitter and Tumblr) for some awesome page spotlights!

IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Development & Membership’s table at Euro-Con in Sweden was a huge success! Its volunteers are continuing to work on updating their convention outreach materials and have been applying to table at more conventions this year.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been three years since the last one, but Legal is preparing its submission to the U.S. Copyright Office seeking renewal of the legal exemption that allows makers of vids and fan edits the ability to use material from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and streams. Legal also responded to a number of user queries about intellectual property law and proposed U.S. legislation and worked with a few other committees to write a post responding to user questions regarding AO3’s policies regarding, among other things, CSEM response and data retention. The committee is also thrilled to extend a huge welcome to two new interns.

Systems kept busy in June auditing the OS versions of its systems in preparation for upgrades to the recently released version of Debian.

Communications has been reviewing its news distribution practices to social media outlets which affects both our future staffing and training plans. We have dropped manual posting to two little-used accounts—LiveJournal and Dreamwidth—in favor of automated feeds available at those sites. You can find out where to receive OTW News by visiting our Where to Find Us page on our website.

V. GOVERNANCE

Election season is upon us! The candidates’ platforms and bios are on Elections’ website. (Sadly, one candidate has withdrawn—we wish them the best!) The election will take place August 11 – 14, and Development & Membership worked with Elections to hold a mini-drive at the end of June to register voters.

Looking ahead, Finance has been focused on prepping for the 2022 audit by making year end adjustments, reconciling accounts, and updating audit schedules, and Strategic Planning has been reviewing and incorporating final suggestions to the upcoming 2023-2026 Strategic Plan in preparation to post the complete version.

VI. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

From 25 May to 24 June, Volunteers & Recruiting received 110 new requests, and completed 107, leaving us with 40 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 24 June 2023, the OTW has 934 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: Claudia Rebaza (Media Outreach Lead), 1 Site Moderator, and 2 Chair Assistants
New Development & Membership Volunteers: dearjenna, 2 Graphic Designers, 4 Volunteers
New Elections Volunteers: Dae
New Legal Volunteers: Kate H. and 1 other Intern
New Support Volunteers: Apollo Cowan, Calliope, Conroy, CrypticKatt, DeeDee, Ekevka, Flocotillo, Hugh, Karlo, Kasi, katdusk, Marta Cardoso, Neutrino, theFleaDane, and 14 other Volunteers
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Chrome, Madi, Vio, and WhitedSepu (all Supervisors)
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator and 3 News Translators
New TWC Volunteers: M. Lisa, Robin F. (both Copyeditors)

Departing Directors: Heather McGuire
Departing Committee Chairs: Heleen (Translation)
Departing Communications Volunteers: Claudia Rebaza (Media Outreach Volunteer role only)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 2 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: Re_Tails and 4 other Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 9 Tag Wranglers, Christina L Simpson, Petrichorrr (Supervisor role only)
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager, Emyn Nefydd, Panwonderland, siobhrag and 3 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 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.

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