AO3 News

September 2015 Newsletter, Volume 95

Published: 2015-10-06 12:18:11 -0400

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

I. 8 and 20

Communications assisted Journal in celebrating the release of their 20th issue soon after the OTW as a whole turned 8 years old. Journal's editors extended kudos to production editor Rrain Prior for her stellar work handling all the production details and to Communications volunteer caitie~ for the fabulous artwork for Issue No. 20. Systems also updated the software TWC uses, OJS, to its latest version and Journal has been able to bring some new recruits on board for production work.

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology produced 5 code releases, which included resolution of a few issues created (and addressed!) in hopes of making the lives of their fellow volunteers in Systems and Abuse a little bit easier. They also created a budget proposal for 2016, and worked closely with Development & Membership to create an Accessibility, Design & Technology-focused post and finalize an email about the upcoming membership drive. They've also been working up a few news posts about some upcoming changes we're really excited about. Stay tuned!

Abuse received over 300 tickets in September. They sadly lost a few staffers recently, but are in the process of recruiting. The committee has been working on documentation and is trialing a chair training track with two lucky volunteers. They will be evaluating the training as they go along, and one volunteer may get to join as co-chair next year.

AO3 Documentation are working well towards their goal of having new versions of all AO3 FAQs up by the end of the year. In September they uploaded the new version of the About FAQ, and have completed new help text for the 'Tips & Tricks' that all AO3 users see after creating their account.

Support had another 700-ticket strong month; as such, they are a touch behind on tickets, but are trying to catch up. They will also be transitioning between ticket tracking software over the next month or so to a system that will better handle the capacity we're receiving. User alert: there will be bumps!

Open Doors has just about finished helping the Table for Three mod import that archive, and will be helping the Seamus/Dean Forever mod soon.

Tag Wrangling welcomed 3 new staff members and said goodbye to 2 staff members who we will be missed very much. For projects, they began a new system called AO3_Wrangling_Project, which should make it easier to regularly wrangle unassigned fandoms in need. They've also have 12 new guideline discussions; they'll begin exploring those topics as a team shortly. Tag Wrangling has also responded to several requests from the Support team, from wranglers, and from users on Twitter, and have hosted several tag wrangling parties.

III. SLOW BUT SUCCESSFUL

Legal celebrated a victory! In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in the case of Lenz v. Universal, agreeing with the OTW and its allies that "[f]air use is not just excused by the law, it is wholly authorized by the law." This is what we argued in our amicus brief in the case, which was submitted to the court all the way back in December 2013. Justice sometimes takes a long time! As Legal said in the OTW News post about the case, the Lenz ruling is good for fans and transformative creators, but our work is far from done—we will continue to fight for fair use in the U.S. and around the world.

For example, in September, Legal submitted a comment to the South African government in response to the government’s call for comments regarding possible copyright law reforms. Our comment urged South Africa to adopt a fair use standard to replace its narrow and outdated copyright exceptions.

Translation received 90 applications total in the August-September recruitment round. They accepted 40 new recruits, most of whom have already finished training and are hard at work, including two new language teams: Greek and Norwegian! This month, Translation is working closely with Development and Membership, translating the upcoming October drive posts, and with Elections, preparing content for the upcoming OTW elections and a few static pages on their website.

Wiki has been at work coordinating Stub September at Fanlore. Engagement has been good on Dreamwidth and Twitter, and significant additions have been made to many stubs!

IV. GOVERNANCE

Strategic Planning now has the 3rd and semi-final version of the OTW strategic plan under internal review. They will be presenting the strategic plan at the OTW Annual Meeting with the hopes of having it and the implementation support plan approved by Board. They will also be asking the Board for their strategic guidance on the focus, scope and reach of the next round of strategic planning.

Elections announced 8 candidates this year, and worked with them to provide individual Bios & Manifestos for OTW members to read. Voters will be able to choose who joins the Board during our election spanning November 6th to 9th. Eligible to vote are any members who joined between October 6th, 2014 and October 6th, 2015 (including both days!) For more information, please see the Eligibility and Voting Instructions posts. Other questions can be directed to the Elections Contact Form

Currently candidates are composing responses to the over 50 questions submitted. Thank you for the enthusiastic response! Candidates' answers will be posted in batches once they are completed by all candidates. On September 27th, it was announced that the Board had directed the Elections Committee to remove former Treasurer Nikisha Sanders from the ballot. Dan Lamson also withdrew his candidacy for the Board on September 27th.

Development & Membership continues to prepare for the October Drive and are looking at adding a second payment processor to the donation page called iATS, which specializes in nonprofits. They hope to have it up and running for the drive so that anyone not wanting to use Paypal will have another option. Development & Membership also sent some documents to Legal for review regarding the possible use of Cafe Press as an OTW Merchandise Store platform, and they hope to have a store up and running by the end of 2015.

Internationalization & Outreach worked on training new staff and updated their training and recruitment materials with the hope of recruiting again soon. Staff have been at work revising the committee's plan to make the OTW more inclusive, in response to internal feedback received.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting did a lot of recruiting in September, seeking staff for Abuse, Communications, Systems, and Volunteers & Recruiting and continued inductions from August. Thank you to everyone for volunteering, and those departing staff and volunteers for their work.

New Committee Staff: Kathryn Soderholm (Internationalization & Outreach), Phoenixacid (Tag Wrangling), Sass (Tag Wrangling), and 1 other Tag Wrangling
New Journal Volunteers: Sarah New, Latina Vidolova, Rebecca Sentence, Gabriel Simm and 2 others
New Translator Volunteers: wordsoftreason, halfslytherin, Ana Beatriz, theimprobable1, gallica, marrjoram, Hatoko, Ipek and 18 others

Departing Committee Staff: Matty Lynne (Support), Llwyden ferch Gyfrinach (Tag Wrangling), 2 Abuse, 1 AO3 Documentation, and 1 Communications
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 1
Departing Translator Volunteers: Nari, Chloe, Mary Tagus, and 1 other

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

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August 2015 Newsletter, Volume 94

Published: 2015-09-06 11:51:04 -0400

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

I. UP IN THE MILLIONS

Accessibility, Design & Technology celebrated the AO3's first 15 million page-view day in August. They also partied hard over their new web development environments and started preparing their move to new servers that can better handle all the visitors! None of this could have been done without the hard work and commitment of the Systems team, and their joint staffer james_ especially.

Accessibility, Design & Technology has also been working on moving to a new issue tracker, now that Google Code has entered read-only mode, with a shutdown date scheduled for later this year. After exploring a number of options and cleaning up their current collection of bug reports and to-dos, the committee settled on JIRA as the best fit for its needs. They have finished moving all their remaining issues and expect to get settled in and start updating their documentation.

Accessibility, Design & Technology has also been working with Tag Wrangling to address issues stemming from wrangling bugs and server hiccups, as tag wranglers migrated wrangling and tag-related items over to the new bug tracker and helped test how the servers handle heavy wrangling loads. Accessibility, Design & Technology will also be helping Abuse by providing better tools for their work. They hope to deploy new code very soon that is aimed at dealing with commercial spam and keeping harassment at bay.

II. PARTICIPATE!

Together with our partners in the Re:Create Coalition, Legal has proposed two panels for the 2016 South by Southwest conference. Find out more about them (and upvote us!) here: Copyright & Creators: 2026 (featuring Legal Chair Betsy) and Fair Use Awakens: Classrooms/Libraries/Communities (featuring Betsy and Legal Staffer Heidi). You can also find out more about Heidi’s other proposed panels and suggestions.

In August, Legal helped several fans, from several countries, with legal questions about copyright law, plagiarism, and fair use. They also successfully corresponded with the maker of an unauthorized Android app for reading on AO3. The app maker agreed to change the name of the app and make it clear in all promotions that it is unauthorized and unrelated to the OTW and that the OTW doesn’t provide support for it. Legal also took action regarding another unauthorized widget for Android that used the AO3 trademark in a confusing manner. Please be aware that the AO3 does not have an official app.

South Africa is considering adopting a fair use provision in its copyright law. Fair use supporters are trying to make sure that the law actually protects fair use, and Legal is preparing to file a supporting comment. We need your help signal-boosting our request for stories from South African fans about how they’ve benefited from making and/or consuming fanworks. Please send your stories to our Legal committee. The last time we did this, for the US, the stories were amazing.

Journal is currently in production for its No. 20 issue, and hopes to begin training new production personnel soon from August's recruitment. Communications' media outreach team has been soliciting and organising guest posts for coming months. It also continued its efforts for the upcoming 20th issue celebration for Transformative Works and Cultures. Help us spread the word!

Translation received several dozen applications from potential future translators, and committee members are working incredibly hard processing translation samples, wrangling timezones, and interviewing applicants. Two new language teams have started work this month—Marathi and Slovenian!

Wiki was busy preparing for the kickoff of Stub September, and hopes that everyone will join in to help flesh out entries on Fanlore.

III. AT THE AO3

Abuse had over 500 tickets in August. Please be patient if it takes a bit of time for them to get back to you on a ticket!

Support is on track to receive approximately 680 tickets in August. Overall they're averaging 724 tickets a month this year, compared to 495 last year. Support has been managing with only eight staffers, so they're very happy to have six new volunteers currently in training!

Open Doors has been chugging away on in-progress archive imports and announced plans to work with the Seamus/Dean Forever Archive to bring it to AO3.

Tag Wrangling held an informal training chat to welcome the newest class of wranglers to the fold after finishing another round of recruitment. Additionally, they began holding discussions to update and improve the wrangling guidelines. Wranglers also assisted one another with tag translations and responded to several requests from Support as well as their twitter feed.

AO3 Documentation has three documents in the external betaing phase, which were recently sent to other committees for comments and edits.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has been in consultation, primarily with Legal, regarding potential changes to the OTW bylaws. At the August 8th meeting, Board voted to approve a change which would make it easier for Board members to be removed from office, when appropriate. Board is also considering a further change to the bylaws surrounding elections. In addition, the Board is considering making changes to the size of the Board. A few years ago, the Board complement was increased to 9 members in order to assist in shouldering the workload that came with the committee liaison system. Now that the OTW is moving towards phasing out the liaison system, Board is proposing to reduce the size of the board to 7 members once again. It is hoped that this will lead to contested elections taking place for the first time since 2011.

Plans and logistics for the 2015 Annual Meeting are in the process of being finalized with Board responding to requests from various committees.

Strategic Planning will be publishing the 3rd and semi-final version of the OTW strategic plan for internal review in the first week of September. This was the result of in-depth work with Volunteers & Recruiting, Internationalization & Outreach and Board.

Internationalization & Outreach worked on processing the internal feedback received on a plan that it developed to promote inclusivity and internationalization within the OTW. They also interviewed candidates and welcomed three new staffers to their team.

Development & Membership is finalizing drive posts, so they can get them off to our hardworking Translation volunteers. The drive will be held on October 7–13 this year. They are also hoping to have some good news on the merchandise store to share with you soon!

Elections posted an internal call for candidacy, with a deadline of September 11. Interested members can check out the elections timeline for more information. They also posted their Confidentiality Policy. The Elections Twitter account is now actively tweeting links to various resources on the Elections website.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting recruited for three roles in August: Journal Staff - Production Assistant, Journal Volunteers - Layout Editor, and Translation volunteers. Among the three roles, the team received 100 total applications! The OTW will be recruiting three more times before the end of the year—twice in September and once in October.

The committee said goodbye to two of its staffers and published an internal report for the second quarter of 2015. The committee is finalizing the Still Willing to Serve survey, which is sent to all current staff and workgroup volunteers to check in and confirm that they would like to remain in their current roles. Volunteers & Recruiting is also continuing to refine their workflow processes with a tool to track requests from others in the organization.

New Committee Chairs: Trey C (Translation), Claire P. Baker (AO3 Documentation)
New Committee Staff: Zsuzsa Gábor (Translation), Seamus Johnston (Systems), Laura Hancock (Internationalization & Outreach) and 1 other Internationalization & Outreach
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Amariel, Apollonie, Arc, Asante Simons, ashto, Charlie Hale, Chelsea Eidbo, chrishuyen, dungbombs, Effy, Em S, Emily D, eternaldissident, Hannah Overstreet, Jane, Jay, Katiana, LeaneGenova, Lisa Stempel, mechanicaljewel, Merchant, mustachenow, Onyi, originally, P-Ys, pearwaldorf, regentzilla, Schrodingerscat, Suicix, TheAlternativeSource, Violet, Viva Hoh, Wond3rland, Yasemin Celebi, Yrindor and 1 other
New Translator Volunteers: Tina, Nele Noppe, Mel and 1 other

Departing Committee Staff: LokiMoriarty (Abuse), Kalli (Legal), C. Ryan Smith (Volunteers & Recruiting), Anna Maraya (Volunteers & Recruiting), 2 other Abuse, 1 Support, 1 Tag Wrangling, 1 other Volunteers & Recruiting
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: BlackParadise, Matty Lynne and 12 others
Departing Translator Volunteers: Celine, regenorakel, Charlotte, Agnieszka Barcik, Rizu and 6 others

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

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July 2015 Newsletter, Volume 93

Published: 2015-08-06 11:28:12 -0400

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

I. OTW JOINS COALITIONS

In July, the OTW was proud to join three new legal-focused coalitions. First, in early July we joined the Harry Potter Alliance's Fanworks Are Fair Use Project, a community of fan creators, readers, artists, and enthusiasts who are committed to the protection and preservation of fair use law.

Then, a few days later, we announced that we'd joined the Re:Create coalition—a group of organizations representing innovators, creators, and consumers united for balanced U.S. copyright policies, including robust fair use laws.

More recently, we've added our support to the Save The Link project, a global coalition opposed to policies that would allow governments to block hyperlinks or block sites based on where they link to—yet another set of ideas we've long believed in and are thrilled to support.

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed a variety of small bug fixes in releases 0.9.65-0.9.69; worked with the Legal, Support, and Communications teams to research and respond to the unofficial Archive app recently released into the Google Play store; and identified and began testing new issue trackers to replace Google Code, which will be shutting down in a few months.

AO3 Documentation completed and uploaded three documents this month: the Posting and Editing FAQ, the Statistics FAQ, and a tutorial on "Posting a Work on AO3. They've also welcomed five new members to the Docs team.

Abuse handled over 300 tickets in July. They are currently working with Accessibility, Design & Technology to make it easier to identify and deal with anon trolls and harassment. They are also in the process of updating their documentation, which should make it easier to help deal with tickets. Meanwhile, Support's ticket count is averaging, for 2015, around 725 tickets a month. They've also signed on seven new staffers to help with the increasing workload.

Systems has been interviewing potential new recruits and are working on documentation. They're installing and setting up lots of new servers and development systems, namely for Open Doors and the AO3 coders. They've also been working on our offsite backup solutions to better protect the OTW's data.

Tag Wrangling implemented a new procedure for revising the wrangling guidelines, which should smooth out the process of keeping everything up to date. They also assisted Open Doors with tag mapping for upcoming archive imports, and held several wrangling parties in chat so everyone could work together and give each other advice on tricky tags. Wranglers also continued to assist each other with translations, and responded to several Support requests.

III. INFORMING FANS

Legal corresponded with the creators of an unauthorized "AO3 App" for Android, whose product and promotion used the OTW's trademarks in a confusing manner. We are pleased that so many people love the AO3, but we don't want people to be confused! For more information about AO3's position on an app, please refer to this post.

Legal also responded to several queries from fans about fair use and fandom law and got help from Translation with a query in French.

At San Diego Comic-Con, Legal Chair Betsy was on a panel moderated by Legal staffer Heidi which discussed the evolution of fandom and fanworks and the laws that surround them. They were joined by panelists from Tumblr, Wattpad, Zefr, Supernatural Wiki, Chaotic Good, and the New Statesman. Video of the panel is now available.

Communications' Media Outreach subcommittee covered the San Diego Comic-Con "Fandom is my Fandom" panel. It also released a guest post with Donna Davies, creator of "Fanarchy," a documentary on fan films. Many more guest posts are being planned by the Media Outreach group, and they would welcome suggestions for future guest posts.

Communications has begun actively moderating the OTW News twitter account, and is still looking for suggestions for non-English-language fan accounts to follow. A moderator for the OTW's new Weibo account has been inducted and is currently completing training. The Weibo account should become active within the next six weeks. A new graphics volunteer has also been inducted and is currently completing training.

Communications is also working on the upcoming 20th issue celebration for Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC). A panel chat with contributors to TWC is planned for September 19th, focusing on the field of Fan Studies. If you have questions on the topic, please let us know!

Journal's next issue of TWC is on schedule. Editor Karen updated paperwork for TWC's listing in a compilation of Open Access journals.

Translation welcomed and trained several new volunteers as a result of June's Spotlight post, including two brand new teams: Japanese and Croatian!

IV. GOVERNANCE

Development & Membership welcomed one new staffer in July and said a fond farewell to four others as they continued work toward the upcoming October drive. They are currently developing a proposal to add a second payment processor (besides PayPal) to address international donor needs.

Elections came to a consensus regarding the extension of the voting period for OTW elections. The voting period will now be four days, spanning Friday to Monday. In addition the committee's confidentiality and neutrality policies were drafted, agreed upon, and sent to Legal for further review. They also finalized a social media policy and selected a Twitter team for their account.

Internationalization & Outreach has been taking internal feedback on a plan that it has developed to promote inclusivity and internationalization within the OTW. They also updated some internal documentation in preparation for their new recruits.

Strategic Planning will be publishing the final draft of our long-range plan for consideration and hopes to work out details of what implementation will look like at our October meeting with the Board. Strategic Planning has a few last-minute meetings with several committees regarding the timeline of certain goals.

V. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting has been continuing to work on implementation of their new task tracking system with plans to go live in early August. They recruited for Tag Wrangling volunteers and Internationalization & Outreach staff in July and are presently planning for August recruiting. They have also started discussions for the annual Still Willing to Serve campaign for current staff and a number of end-of-year tasks.

New Committee Staff: OutToGarden (AO3 Documentation), Rebecca Sentance (AO3 Documentation), Robin Gaitan (AO3 Documentation), Kaitlin (Support), Wes (Support), Genie Este (Support), kiki-eng (Development & Membership), sveritas (Communications), 1 other AO3 Documentation staff, and 4 other Support staff
New Communications Volunteers: ElenaWho
New Translator Volunteers: Hana Yu, Tanya Lokot, EmptyLot, tezzin, AndreyVas, and 7 others

Departing Committee Staff: 1 Systems, and 4 Development & Membership
Departing Tester Volunteers: erialeduab
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 1
Departing Translator Volunteers: Karagodina Elena and 4 other Translators


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

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June 2015 Newsletter, Volume 92

Published: 2015-07-06 12:34:42 -0400

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

I. OTW LEGAL IS EVERYWHERE IN JUNE

At the tail end of May, Rebecca Tushnet, Tisha Turk, and Francesca Coppa, together with partners from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and New Media Rights, presented our case at the U.S. Copyright Office’s hearings on renewal and expansion of the fan video exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions. They asked the Copyright Office to expand the current exemption by permitting non-commercial fan video makers to rip Blu-Ray discs. Following the hearing, the groups submitted a written response to the Copyright Office's follow-up questions.

Also, as part of Legal’s advocacy and education missions, the OTW has teamed with the Harry Potter Alliance’s Fanworks Are Fair Use project. This project brings together fans, creators, and fanwork appreciators to focus on U.S. copyright law and public perception of fanworks. Its aims are very much in line with the OTW’s mission to protect fanworks from legal challenge and support fans and fanworks. You can find out more about the project at FanworksAreFairUse.org.

Legal Chair Betsy Rosenblatt and staffer Heidi Tandy will be presenting at a San Diego Comic Con panel entitled “Fandom is Our Fandom,” talking about the evolution of fanworks’ relationship with law and public consciousness. The panel will be Thursday, July 9 from 5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. in Room 14A. Heidi will also be moderating the Harry Potter/Wizarding World Fandom panel on Sunday, July 12 and you can find out more about the Fanworks Are Fair Use project at both. For those who will be at San Diego Comic Con, we hope to see you there!

Legal also worked with fan group Whedonopolis to keep the term “Fandom” in the public domain, following Whedonopolis’s application to register the term “Fandom Charities Inc.” as a U.S. trademark. Whedonopolis agreed not to try to claim any exclusivity over the term “Fandom.” That’s a result all fans can be happy about.

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology had one small release in June and has been hard at work upgrading the Archive's programming language from Ruby 1.9.3 to Ruby 2.0 — a process which involves the awesome Quality Assurance & Testing subcommittee manually testing each of the Archive's many features.

Open Doors recruited in June and is extremely excited to welcome 4 new staffers. With help from Accessibility, Design & Technology, they’ve been wrapping up the import of the Henneth Annûn Story Archive, and will be working on helping other mods progress more quickly using their new import process.

Systems ordered the first of this year's new servers, to be installed soon to give the Archive a bit of breathing room. They are also looking forward to interviewing some prospective new Systems personnel from the recent recruitment opening.

AO3 Documentation is now a committee. The team continues to work steadily through their list of FAQs, with the extra-long Posting and Editing FAQ almost ready for uploading after a long review period. They've also been focused on recruitment and are looking forward to working with new additions to the group.

In Tag Wrangling news, wranglers helped each other by holding several chat sessions to share tech tips, giving some wranglers advanced training, and continuing to translate the ever-growing number of non-English tags on the AO3. On the technical side, the committee worked on testing the wrangulator for the upcoming upgrade of Ruby on Rails and turned the wrangulator off temporarily to wrangle some large, particularly server-intensive tags. Staff clarified the workflow for wranglers by adding a flowchart for wrangling original characters, and a wrangler created a very useful client-side browser script to make it easier for busy wranglers to see where they need to focus their efforts. Tag Wrangling also worked to make tagging information more public: Staff were interviewed by a journalist for an article on tagging, assisted the AO3 Documentation committee with suggestions for the tagging portion of the Posting and Editing FAQ, and responded to user queries via Support and the ao3_wranglers twitter account.

III. GET IN TOUCH WITH US!

Journal's 19th issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, a guest-edited issue on European fans and fandoms, came out right on time, and they are working on the next two issues right now. They recently asked fans to help with their requests for content, and they are also looking for suggestions about how to celebrate the release of their 20th issue in September!

Wiki held June Bloom, an event to encourage fans to start the pages they always wanted to see on Fanlore. To help new posters, they held an editing party on June 13th. June Bloom led to the creation of many new Fanlore accounts and pages, though the majority of changes continue to be made by a few core contributors. The Wiki team has moved their primary task tracking to Trello, and is continuing to trial a system of having two staff members on call to respond to new issues more quickly.

Communications wrapped work on the OTW's 2014 Annual Report, which was distributed on June 25. Communications is looking for fannish accounts to follow on social media, particularly on Twitter and Tumblr. If you know of a great account that shares fannish content, especially about non-English fandoms, leave a comment here or let us know through the Communications contact form.

Communications also worked with Translation to create a Spotlight on Translation post, which led to some great emails from fans to the committee. Translation is working with Accessibility, Design & Technology, Support, and Abuse on splitting the 'Portuguese' language listing for AO3 works into 'Brazilian Portuguese' and 'European Portuguese,' after several user requests to that effect. They've also started working on translating static content for the Elections website.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Due to various outside commitments by Board members at this time of year, Board has had to reschedule several meetings recently, and is in the process of working out its schedule for this quarter. Plans for the OTW 2015 Retreat are moving ahead. This year it will be held from October 2nd to October 4th in Vancouver, Canada. In addition to the Treasurer, Board has invited several committees to send two members each: Legal, Volunteers & Recruiting, Strategic Planning, Development & Membership, and Internationalization & Outreach. The focus of this year's retreat will be on making progress with implementation of the Strategic Plan, and improving the OTW's financial health, including setting the 2016 budget.

Strategic Planning is nearly finished with the third and final draft of the OTW 2016-2019 strategic plan. Their main focus has been on its structure and finalizing the timeline so large-scale goals don’t overlap one another. They are also working with the Board to determine an implementation date to best fit their needs.

Development & Membership is gearing up for the OTW's next membership drive. The fundraising goal will be US$175,000, which is US$5,000 more than the OTW made last October. They also met with Elections to discuss the dates of the drive and the elections and they how they will mesh.

Elections saw their committee size double with six new recruits who are currently completing their training. The newbies jumped right in during an important month where Elections ran a mock election to determine the viability of a potential software. It went splendidly, and the committee thanks all who participated, and offers a hearty handshake to those who sent them feedback! Translation also guided Elections staffers through making its website more international-user-friendly.

Internationalization & Outreach prepared a tentative plan for internal review to more thoroughly promote inclusivity and the internationalization of the OTW. They will be soliciting feedback from OTW volunteers soon as well as recruiting new ones for the committee.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting has continued to train their awesome new staffers, and are very close to implementing a new ticket tracking system to better streamline their workflow. They also wrapped up inductions from the last round of recruiting, and announced recruitment dates for the coming quarter.

New Committee Chairs: Janita Burgess (Communications), Amy Lowell (Development & Membership)
New Committee Staff: Amalia Blondet (AO3 Documentation & Translation), Claire P. Baker (AO3 Documentation), Jocelin Potash (AO3 Documentation), ltfoxyee (AO3 Documentation), Sammie Jarrett (AO3 Documentation), l1n (Elections), kaytrea (Elections), Noah Feeman (Open Doors), Kathleen Lietzau (Open Doors), Libby Camp (Open Doors), 6 other AO3 Documentation, 4 other Elections and 1 other Open Doors

Departing Committee Chairs: Claudia Rebaza (Communications)
Departing Committee Staff: Sparrow Rubin (Support), Cheyenne Bingham (Support), 1 other Translation
Departing Tester Volunteers: erialeduab
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Pslasher, Marie_L, Firefly_Ca, Animem and 3 others
Departing Translator Volunteers: 1


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

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May 2015 Newsletter, Volume 91

Published: 2015-06-06 12:59:07 -0400

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

 

I. FANLORE TO BE ARCHIVED BY U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Our Wiki Committee had an exciting announcement as May wound to a close. In a post made at their Dreamwidth community, they informed Fanlore users that the United States Library of Congress approached us for permission to preserve Fanlore as a part of their American Folklife Center's ongoing digital culture web archiving project.

"Fanlore's inclusion in the Library of Congress project emphasizes the fact that fan history is a significant part of folklore and culture in the United States and across the world. If you are a Fanlore contributor of any kind, there is absolutely no need to be concerned about attribution of your work. Fanlore's Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license will still be in effect, and displayed on the archived version of Fanlore available to researchers (and eventually to the public) through the Library of Congress."

Wiki spent the month testing Trello as a possible new committee workspace tool, planning for Fanlore's next month-long event in June, and working on outside requests.

II. START THE PRESSES

Journal received approval from the Board to create a press for monograph-length Open Access Gold works. They are brainstorming the infrastructure requirements right now, so while a timeline isn't yet available for considering manuscripts, stay tuned for further announcements! They continued to handle manuscripts for the September 2015 issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, No. 20, and things look good for the March 2016 issue.

Legal’s advocacy mission continues going strong! They filed our submissions to the U.S. Copyright Office and ended May by attending hearings and testifying in support of the fan video exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The news so far is good: our opponents have not opposed the renewal of the exemption the OTW attained three years ago for DVDs and streaming. However, there is still work to do, since they’ve opposed our petition to expand the exemption to cover Blu-ray.

The case of Garcia v. Google, in which the OTW filed an amicus brief, has also come to a positive resolution, which made some good law for free speech and the Internet and avoided some of the problems highlighted in the brief. In theory, the case can still go up to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in practice, that is not very likely to happen.

Legal also responded to a trademark-based cease & desist request; responded to several queries from fans; and responded to press requests for interviews as well as helping many OTW committees with legal questions.

Internationalization & Outreach worked on long-term planning. Their mission to promote inclusivity and the internationalization of the OTW is being developed into a plan to more thoroughly incorporate these goals into the OTW.

Communications is creating a subgroup for media outreach efforts, and has also completed work on a personnel evaluation process which will begin in August. Janita Burgess was approved by the OTW Board as the new co-chair for Communications. With help from Translation, Communications moved forward with plans to launch a Weibo account this year to engage with Chinese fandom. They will be recruiting for a fluent Mandarin speaker as Weibo account mod in June.

Translation had a hectic month with many contributions from across the committee in order to prepare for and distribute multilanguage posts in support of our May membership drive. After the drive, Translation started rounding up internal and cross-committee feedback in order to document the lessons they've learned this time and improve plans for the next drive. They've also been focusing on developing internal structures to help foster a more collaborative task environment.

III. AT THE AO3

Abuse received over 320 tickets in May. They have been seeing an uptick in spam works again, so please report any you find in your fandom so the team can deal with them quickly!

Accessibility, Design & Technology had a few tiny deploys this month (Releases 0.9.58 - 0.9.61), and a somewhat bigger one (Release 0.9.62) which will eventually enable us to translate AO3 email templates. There's still a long way to go to offer users a fully customized Archive experience in their own language, and Accessibility, Design & Technology want to thank them and the Translation committee for their patience and support as the AO3 team takes slow steps towards this goal.

Systems has begun this round of ordering bigger, faster servers! They are also excited to have a recruitment slot coming up. They have begun meetings with their documentation specialist to get information about the committee's processes into the OTW's internal wiki, and also fixed a mailing list issue that was affecting several committees.

AO3 Documentation wrapped two new FAQs this month—Invitations and Contacting the Staff—and is working on several other FAQs and tutorials. The workgroup has been officially approved to move from workgroup status to a permanent committee within the OTW.

Tag Wrangling held some training sessions on freeform tags for their new volunteers, who have hit the ground running. Wrangling staff worked with Accessibility, Design & Technology to try to track down some tag bugs. They also responded to several user questions on Twitter, and a number of Support requests. Wranglers continued their excellent work helping each other with translating the increasing numbers of non-English tags in each other's fandoms.

Open Doors has been working on in-progress imports with assistance from Accessibility, Design & Technology and is starting another archive import that will be announced soon. They also recently recruited for new staffers.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Development & Membership's May drive efforts were a huge success. Thanks to our generous supporters, we topped our US$100,000 goal on the last day, and checks continue to arrive. That makes our total for May 1-6 over US$104,000. All of May thus far has brought in over US$110,000 and looks to be our second highest grossing month ever (after October 2014). Our hard-working team in Development & Membership handled over a hundred emails and messages during the drive period, and learned a lot from the process. In non-drive related news, they have begun looking at alternative payment processors, as one of the major requests emerging during the drive was for an online alternative to PayPal. They hope to have something new set up by our next drive in October.

Elections ramped up in May by recruiting new staff and preparing for a voting software test. If you'd be willing to help them with the June test by participating in mock votes, please fill out the tester volunteer form!

The Board discussed various proposals and issues with Finance, Legal, and Development & Membership, and has begun planning for the 2015 Annual Retreat. More details regarding the latter will be forthcoming. Board would also like to thank Journal, the Treasurer, and others for coming together to address concerns and work out the details to permit the new monograph press project to move forward. They also extend congratulations to all committees and personnel involved with the recent drive.

Strategic Planning is hard at work compiling internal feedback and suggestions into the third and final draft of the OTW 2016-2019 goals document. Meanwhile, they are training four new staffers who are digesting the previous draft and helping with changes.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting ran campaigns for new staff for Elections and Open Doors, and continued working on internal requests as well as training their new staff members. They also made progress on the final documentation steps of a 2014 project to recognize the service of all OTW volunteers.

New Committee Chairs: Janita Burgess (Communications)
New Workgroup Members: Jessica Steiner (AO3 Documentation)
New Communications Volunteers: SoyAlex and 4 others
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: alterangirl, Loxaris, Leslie, Paopu-Blossom, BlackParadise, penguinbell, and Pokestine
New Translator Volunteers: 1

Departing Committee Staff: Curtis Jefferson (Open Doors), 1 Systems, 3 Development & Membership, 1 Communications, and 2 Translation
Departing Workgroup Members: Scott S (AO3 Documentation)
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 7
Departing Translator Volunteers: 3

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

Comment

April 2015 Newsletter, Volume 90

Published: 2015-05-07 12:29:29 -0400

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

I. MAKE SOME NOISE!

In late March and April, Legal continued its policy-making work in a few areas. They continued to work with Fan Video & Multimedia on the DMCA exemption request for vidders. The team has received the objections to our petitions and are coordinating with other petitioners. Legal will be submitting their responses soon but could use your help. Our Legal team is asking fans to add their voices and tell the U.S Copyright Office that they have a right to remix multimedia. The key exemption for the OTW is the third item on the comment list: "Remix your media (videos)". We're asking that fans write in about their need for high quality material from sources that are only available on Blu-Ray; or material from places such as iTunes or Amazon when obtaining media from them is necessary to make a timely vid to participate in an ongoing fannish conversation. Comments are due by May 29, and will be published on the U.S Copyright Office website.

Legal also sent a representative to attend a U.S. Department of Commerce public meeting on facilitating the development of the online licensing environment for copyrighted works. In addition, the results of the DMCA Working Group project that OTW participated in have been announced by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and are available online.

Legal responded to a number of queries from fans, educators, the press, and others. In addition to offering help and information, they were able to connect one fan with counsel who can help them fight for their fan game. They also worked intensively with other committees to provide information, and responded to a lot of fans about the Ebooks Tree site. (More on that below).

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology also responded to reports of AO3 content being reposted on ebooks-tree.com, which had many concerned users reaching out to us via Support tickets and social media. Once it turned out that the site was merely linking to files (instead of downloading them), the Accessibility, Design & Technology team took care of the problem by blocking their access to our servers, and updated users on the situation via Twitter and Tumblr.

Accessibility, Design & Technology had three small deploys in April: Releases 0.9.55 and 0.9.56 and Release 0.9.57 (which included a significant improvement for mobile users). Along with the Wiki Committee, they hosted the annual April Showers event, inviting people to add their works to the Archive or their information to Fanlore for a number of smaller and older fandoms.

Abuse tackled roughly 350 tickets in April. They're seeing a number of tickets come in from users who can't reset their passwords because they no longer have access to their old email accounts. Please do remember to update your email address on AO3 whenever you get a new one! This can be done by going to the following link: http://archiveofourown.org/users/(YOUR USER NAME)/change_email

Content Policy completed Terms of Service changes relating to Open Doors after a public period of comment. And AO3 Documentation uploaded two new FAQs to AO3 this month: Downloading Fanworks and History and Mark for Later.

The new Open Doors import tool, created by Accessibility, Design & Technology, was launched in time to be used for the Henneth Annûn Story Archive (HASA) import, which greatly sped up the process for volunteers working on it. They also continued work on the Boys in Chains import, worked with mods on other in-progress archives, and answered user claims and requests. Some of the claims and requests were for long completed archives, like the Smallville Slash Archive, which might have been helped by publicity with more recent imports--we hope to continue to help creators claim their works!

Support tickets continue to flood in, and they resolve them as fast as they can. For the number-inclined, 700 tickets each month appears to be the new normal. That's 200 more per month than the team used to get this time last year! Support is also planning their first open chat of the year with a switch from open Q&A to topic-focused chats.

Tag Wrangling helped Accessibility, Design & Technology address a tag import bug, and organized some wrangling parties so wranglers could help each other work through their unwrangled tags.

III. PAGES AND PLATFORMS

Translation was hard at work preparing for the membership drive. They also published a page about their committee on the OTW website, sent out a form to collect pronouns from OTW volunteers as a resource for the translation of texts that mention them, and revamped more procedures, documentation and glossaries.

Communications created and updated policies for all OTW News outlets in regards to spam comments and content sourcing and crediting. The OTW Tumblr account got a new layout for better accessibility, and the Google+ account is being moved in light of Google's recent changes to the service. In addition, new site mod thatwasjustadream began work at OTW News' Live Journal and Dreamwidth sites.

Journal's editorial team has upshifted the work on the March 2016 guest-edited issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, The Classical Canon and/as Transformative Work, as deadlines loom. Revisions are being processed for publication in the general September 2015 issue. Co-editor Karen Hellekson followed up with the publisher of The Fan Fiction Studies Reader regarding royalties to be paid to the OTW later in the year.

The Wiki Committee held an editing party as part of April Showers early in the month. The event has seen new pages added to Fanlore and many additions to existing pages. Some users have struggled to access certain pages on Fanlore, though there has been no concrete down-time and the cause is currently unknown. The vast majority of users should not experience issues.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Elections held their first Open Chat, where they invited all OTW members to come and ask them anything and everything about the elections process. In preparation for the upcoming 2015 Election, they'll also be conducting a wide-audience test of the software we hope to use. Elections would love assistance from the membership with this project. If you're interested in participating as a tester, please fill out this form. Anyone who missed the chat can send questions by contacting them directly or by visiting their new Twitter account.

Strategic Planning finished its feedback period for the second draft of the OTW 2016–2019 goals document. The next step is to incorporate all that feedback and finish the plan, and then send it on to the Board for approval. Meanwhile, they also recruited four new staffers who are going through training and will be put to work soon!

Development & Membership kicked off its fundraising drive on May 1 with a goal of US$100,000 and a games theme. Development & Membership completed making arrangements for their new CiviCRM setup, which should make both donating and backend management easier and more convenient.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting ran a recruiting round for 2 roles, and processed 63 applications. Induction and removal requests, internal tasks, and requested tasks from the rest of the organization took up the majority of staff time, although they continued to work on their 2014 Annual Report project and testing workflows for a ticketing system to help streamline our tasks.

New Committee Staff: Ellorgast (Communications), xDream (Communications), OTP221B (Communications), Ira Gladkova (Volunteers & Recruiting), Kate Sanders (Strategic Planning), Seamus Johnston (Strategic Planning), billiethepoet (Strategic Planning), Mandy Gooch (Strategic Planning), 2 other Communications staffers
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: stellal, Kuro, insidiousChaos, Solovei, JujYFru1T, savkweaver, aiyesha, Animem, VSSAKJ, Safara, flyrivaille, Val James, sarcasticchick, DestinedForHell, Sam K, AbstractSong101, tabris, Robin, sillyowl, Elysium Barnett, Yohaly, xcacophony, Elizabeth Zavodny, AParticularlyLargeBear, Inspector Caracal, artificiallifecreator, Tim Tyla and 2 others
New Translator Volunteers: lightofthewind, Patricia Sen Lloria, Oniondip, Susanne Møller, Melime, Neene, Lykke, Muriel Kalliokoski, Chloë C, Vénia, Carmen, claire89 and 6 others

Departing Committee Staff: Andrea Horbinski (Journal), mumble (Support), 2 Strategic Planning staffers, 2 Volunteers & Recruiting staffers, 1 Abuse staffer
Departing Workgroup Members: Blue_Meridian and 3 other AO3 Documentation volunteers
Departing Communications Volunteers: Bremo, dogtagsandsmut, & Lisa Shininger.
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 2 Tag Wranglers
Departing Translator Volunteers: 3 translators

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

Comment

March 2015 Newsletter, Volume 89

Published: 2015-04-06 13:14:43 -0400

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

I. SERVER MOVE!

In the past month, Systems performed a large scale server relocation—including the servers for the AO3 and Fanlore—to our own shiny new server rack. The downtime lasted a few hours with site indexing taking an additional day. Systems also worked with tech support at a large university to prevent further DDOS attacks to the Archive, and assisted with the OTW's acquisition of the fandom.org domain name which now mirrors "TransformativeWorks.org."

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design and Technology deployed some minor bug fixes (Release 0.9.51: Change Log) early in March, followed by a variety of background changes necessary for future upgrades of Ruby and Rails (Release 0.9.53: Change Log).

Abuse received roughly 450 tickets in March. They've also inducted eleven new staffers! \o/ The Abuse team is working with Accessibility, Design and Technology on creating several new tools that will help both Abuse and our users. Support ended up receiving 738 tickets in February, and are well on their way to a similar count for March with 467 tickets so far.

Open Doors has been working with Accessibility, Design and Technology on a new importing process that they will be trying out with an archive next month. They have also been working on other in-progress archives, particularly the manual import for Chains: The Powerfic Archive. Proposed changes to their policy documentation are available for user feedback until April 13th.

Tag Wrangling worked with Accessibility, Design and Technology to coordinate wrangling around the server migration, assisted Support in responding to user tickets, and responded to several questions on Twitter.

AO3 Documentation has recently welcomed five new members to the team, who are already hard at work on drafting and editing FAQs and tutorials.

III. WHAT'S COMING

Journal's guest edited March 15 issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, Performance and Performativity, came out right on time, thanks to the stellar work of our production volunteers under the able leadership of staffer Rrain. The also guest edited June 15 issue, European Fans and European Fan Objects, is ready to finish up closer to its release date. The Journal team is currently working with authors to complete manuscripts for the September 15 general issue of TWC.

In March Legal responded to a larger than usual number of fan queries, including helping one fan find counsel to fight an overreaching challenge to a fanwork. They also worked with Communications on an educational/informational post about Tumblr takedowns.

Wiki is currently inducting three new committee members. Together with Accessibility, Design and Technology they have kicked off the annual April Showers event. An editing party was held on April 4th to help newcomers to Fanlore with their questions about creating entries.

Translation opened recruitment for volunteers, and received 58 applications! They've inducted 20 new translators and counting—current teams Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, Dutch, European Portuguese, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, Polish and Swedish have grown, and have formed a new team for Kiswahili!

IV. GOVERNANCE

After the resignation of the Web Strategy, Design & Development Committee chair for personal reasons, Board has been primarily focused on addressing the issues which are continuing to cause instability in that committee and the OTW website. Eylul has been placed as temporary chair. With the support of the rest of the Board, Eylul has been working hard to address the backlog of tickets and stabilize the committee.

In the past month, Board has also approved new staffers for a number of committees, and has discussed and approved various proposals, including the purchase of graphics design software by Accessibility, Design and Technology and a migration of CiviCRM to external hosting in anticipation of the next membership drive.

Development & Membership has been working hard to get everything ready for the membership drive on May 1-6. Its theme will be games. Development & Membership will be highlighting the OTW's good work through the use of game themes including Go, Sudoku and chess! Their new staffers have all been trained and are being hugely helpful.

Strategic Planning successfully finished the second draft of the OTW 2016-2019 strategic goals document! A three-week internal feedback period is scheduled to end April 10th, but they are considering extending it to make sure everyone who wants to has a chance to give input. They will be holding a second chat with volunteers and staff and have also contacted committee chairs and workgroup leads for team-specific feedback. All of this collection of feedback is working towards publishing the final draft of the plan in time for a tentative June 2015 implementation date.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting organized recruiting for Abuse, Strategic Planning, and Translation and is pleased to welcome so many new volunteers!

New Committee Chairs: sarken (Accessibility, Design & Technology)
New Committee Staff: thatwasjustadream (Communications), Katarina Harju (Abuse), Paris Tuggle (Abuse), Astrid Clemons (Abuse), Amalia Blondet (Abuse), Sofia (Abuse), Highlander_II (Wiki), SoyAlex (Wiki), 1 other Wiki staffers, 2 other Communications staffers and 6 other Abuse staffers
New Workgroup Members: Chrissy Sky (AO3 Documentation), Jocelin Potash (AO3 Documentation), KM Ruiz (AO3 Documentation), Calescent and 2 other AO3 Documentation
New Translator Volunteers: Ilona van der Vegt, Marta Gil Almirón, Sofia, Roser Agnes, Eva Mignini, Oriontsuki, badhand, Dutchie848 and 8 others

Departing Committee Chairs: moonmagicks (Web Strategy, Design & Development)
Departing Committee Staff: 1 Abuse staffer and 1 Communications staffer
Departing Workgroup Members: Lucy Pearson (AO3 Documentation) and 1 AO3 Documentation volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Taine and 4 others
Departing Translator Volunteers: Daniela Kreimerman, bm1893 and 6 others

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

Comment

February 2015 Newsletter, Volume 88

Published: 2015-03-06 12:09:28 -0500

Banner by caitie of a newspaper with the name and logos of the OTW and its projects on the pages.

I. LEGAL MOVES

Legal submitted the comments in support of our Digital Millennium Copyright Act exemption petition with the U.S. Copyright Office. This submission contained 93 pages of supporting content in appendices, and was part of the every-three-year process of renewing the exemption that makes it legal for fan video makers to break encryption on DVDs to create their work. This process will continue in coming months and, as always, these documents are available for fans to view on the OTW website.

Around the same time, OTW Legal joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation in filing an amicus brief seeking rehearing in the case of Davis v. Electronic Arts, a case that deals with the relationship between free expression and right-of-publicity law.

Legal also had a few projects relating to the information part of our advocacy mission. They created two educational posts on fair use and misconceptions about it for Fair Use Week, as well as another about the recent phenomenon of Tumblr account deletions. Legal also responded to a few media requests for interviews.

Legal's working with a number of organizations to prepare a letter to the U.S. Congress regarding copyright policy. And besides helping several individual fans with queries about the law and their fan projects, they helped the OTW purchase the domain name "fandom.org".

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design and Technology started February with Release 0.9.46, which focused on resolving January's spam issues and allowed them to re-enable the Archive's invitation queue. They followed up with two more releases that included a variety of enhancements and bug fixes before finally wrapping up February releases with a brand new homepage and Favorite Tags feature, which were received with overwhelming positivity. 1,500 Favorite Tags were created in the first 12 hours alone!

The Archive also reached 17.5 million kudos during February and has now passed half a million registered users! If you don't have an account yet, here are some reasons you might want one. The @AO3_Status Twitter account also flew past the 25,000-follower mark with 27,000 and counting.

Support has been a little bit busy with 780 tickets in January, and received about 550 tickets in the first three weeks of February. Abuse received roughly 350 tickets in February. They have recruited for new members this month, and are currently in the process of sorting through their most recent applicants. Thanks to all that applied.

Tag Wrangling answered some questions from users on Twitter and helped Support respond to several tickets. Wranglers continued to help each other out by providing translations for tags in many different languages. Additionally, some new wrangling merit badges have been added to their just-for-fun collection on the OTW's internal documentation wiki.

III. PROJECT NEWS

Open Doors announced the moves to the AO3 of the Monaboyd.net and Table for Three archives. They also continued to work with moderators of pending and in progress archives. Content Policy finalized a proposal to revise the Open Doors terms of service with Open Doors.

Translation worked with Communications on International Fanworks Day, preparing several news post translations, and were happy to see the celebrations were a success! They have also been restructuring their glossaries and all language teams are working on discussing the new terms. Our team Portuguese has also split in two to better cover language variations, leading to new teams for European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. Translation also started testing a new committee-wide team chat tool, which has already provided improvements in their day-to-day communication.

Communications was hard at work last month preparing for International Fanworks Day events and publicity. Our staff has begun planning for April Showers so if you have any suggestions of older fandoms to highlight, please contact us.

Wiki is also planning for April Showers, and ideas for specific challenges were proposed in a chat held on February 21st. The Fanlore twitter account participated in International Fanworks Day by retweeting a number of IFDrabble submissions.

Fanhackers has been working to induct two new volunteers and is brainstorming ways to develop the fan studies bibliography into a more useful resource. Journal is hard at work on production for the March and June issues.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Development & Membership is excited to be training nine new staff members and are looking forward to the next drive which will happen on May 1-6. They are currently working on theme related issues and hope to have it nailed down soon.

Elections has been busy conducting a small-scale test for our preferred voting software option and writing reports about its functions and suitability. They’ve also started cleaning up the Elections website and writing instructions for how Elections team members can post there.

Strategic Planning just finished collating all feedback offered to them on the first draft of the OTW strategic plan, and are putting together a second draft. They plan to have a second review period, so once the new draft is released in March there will be another three-week discussion and feedback period.

Strategic Planning is in the process of training three new staffers and a new chair. They hope OTW volunteers and supporters alike feel able to come to them with any questions or feedback about the strategic planning process.

New board director Jessica Steiner began holding open office hours once a week. The OTW Board continues holding the open session of their weekly meeting in the OTW's Public Discussion chatroom although hours have been changing in the past month in an effort to accommodate the different timezones of its members. Board's meeting minutes are always available on the OTW website.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting prepared and opened recruitment for four roles this month, while inducting the new recruits from the previous round, including welcoming new staff of their own. They said farewell to departing personnel, answered questions about recruitment and volunteering, helped people with their access to tools, and provided feedback on proposals.

New Committee Staff: C. Ryan Smith (Volunteers & Recruiting, Development & Membership), 2 other Volunteers & Recruiting, Jillian Jacobs (Development & Membership), Nica Dobles (Development & Membership), DeeCharlotte (Development & Membership), Alex Carlin (Development & Membership) & Marian H. Dews (Development & Membership), 3 other Development & Membership, and 6 Translation staffers
New Communications Volunteers: Kat St Pete
New Translator Volunteers: Marta Cardoso, Noura, and 4 others

Departing Committee Staff: Meep (Support), Megan Cummings (Open Doors), Elliot Oberholtzer (Translation), Ehryn (Support), Jennifer Radecki (Communications)
Departing Workgroup Members: 1 AO3 Documentation volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Cassandra Chan
Departing Translator Volunteers: birggitt, Carpelia, Hirannis, DeeCharlotte, timetowakeup, and 5 others.

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

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