Below are the 17 most recent journal entries recorded in AO3 News' InsaneJournal:

Sunday, July 9th, 2023
3:15 pm	2023 Candidate Chats and Q&A Roundup https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26446 The Election season is in full swing! Chats with candidates are coming up soon. You can find links to the candidates' answers to your questions at the bottom of this post. Chats There will be four public chats, each lasting ninety minutes. All four chats will have three candidates in attendance. Chats will take place in our public chatroom. They are scheduled for: Saturday, July 29, from 01:00 UTC to 02:30 UTC  Anh P., Kathryn S. and Zixin Z. (What time is Chat 1 where I live?) Saturday, July 29, from 15:00 UTC to 16:30 UTC  Jennifer H, Qiao C. and Zixin Z. (What time is Chat 2 where I live?) Saturday, July 29, from 22:00 UTC to 23:30 UTC  Anh P., Audrey R. and Jennifer H. (What time is Chat 3 where I live?) Sunday, July 30, from 01:00 UTC to 02:30 UTC  Audrey R., Kathryn S. and Qiao C. (What time is Chat 4 where I live?) These chats will provide attendees the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted during the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to appropriately address them all. We hope you can join us for one or all of these chats! Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chats begin. Read on to learn more about using Discord. On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name. Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance, among other options. There will be four rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, open_chat and questions. General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms. Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate among themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room. Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion. Questions is where the moderator will compile a list of all questions. Only moderators will be able to chat in this room. Q&A When we posted the Board candidates' bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We have been posting groups of questions as the candidates finish their responses, and one has already been posted. For the categories that have not yet been posted, the dates they will be posted are listed in parentheses. To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below: Anh P. Audrey R. Jennifer H. Kathryn S. Qiao C. Zixin Z. The following is a list of the topics covered by the questions. Clicking on a topic will take you to the tag containing all the candidates' corresponding answers. Board Work Features and Content Policy (July 13) Recent Discussions (July 20) Board Work II (July 27) To read all the posts regarding Q&A, simply select the 2023 Q&A tag. 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. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 7th, 2023
2:21 pm	June 2023 Newsletter, Volume 179 https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26440 I. BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATE Board held a public meeting on 2 July; theyve 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; theyll be reaching out to consultants early in July. II. AT THE AO3 Open Doors announced the import of Staykas 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 OTWs 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 fandomsmore 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! Fanlores 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 Julyso be sure to follow its social media (Twitter and Tumblr) for some awesome page spotlights! IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW Development & Memberships 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. Its hard to believe that its 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 AO3s 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 accountsLiveJournal and Dreamwidthin 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 withdrawnwe 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. ITS 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. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
2:43 pm	The OTW is Recruiting for Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26434 Are you great at admin and enjoy the satisfaction of completing short tasks and ticking them off to-do lists? Or do you have experience in HR, volunteer management, data privacy and other related areas? Volunteers & Recruiting is looking for additional volunteers to help our busy team! We're excited to announce the opening of applications for: Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer - closing Wednesday 12 July 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available. All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us. If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ. Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteer Are you great at admin and enjoy the satisfaction of completing short tasks and ticking them off to-do lists? Or do you have experience in HR, volunteer management, data privacy and other related areas? Volunteers & Recruiting is looking for additional volunteers to help our busy team! Volunteers & Recruiting volunteers guide and manage services, policies, recruitment and volunteer management for the entire organization; compose and maintain organization policy and training documentation; and communicate with other committees and workgroups in the Organization for Transformative Works on matters related to organization tools and staffing needs. Volunteers & Recruiting volunteers also serve as a neutral party for personnel-related issues. Applications are due Wednesday 12 July 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications Apply at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us. 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. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 5th, 2023
4:21 pm	Five Things Marion McGowan Said http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26140 Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Marion McGowan, who volunteers as a Co-Chair and Team Coordinator for our Elections Committee. How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does? Im a Co-Chair and Team Coordinator for the Elections Committee. We run the annual election to decide who sits on the OTWs Board of Directors. Elections main goal is to hold a contested election every year, giving our membership an opportunity to elect candidates who will serve their interests on the Board. Weve held contested elections every year since 2015, but this is not something the Elections Committee takes for granted. Every year, we communicate internally to OTW volunteers about the election process. Once candidates are announced, we organize Q&As and candidate chats so the public have an opportunity to engage with the election process and ask the questions they want answered. And finally we run the election itself, sending ballots to members and monitoring the election throughout the weekend before finally announcing the results. What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer? Depends what time of year it is. Elections work can be very seasonal. From March to August, were focused on tasks directly related to that years election. After the election, we collect feedback from other committees and from the candidates to help us make our roadmap. From October to May, were working on our roadmap tasks, addressing any feedback we received and also reviewing and updating our policies, procedures and internal documentation. This year weve also adopted some new tools during the off-season which are going to be very helpful going forward. As one of four Chairs on the Elections Committee, I work very closely with my Co-Chairs. A Chairs job is to support the rest of our team, do administrative work, liaise with Board and other Committee Chairs as needed and help recruit new Elections Volunteers. Im definitely very happy to be on a Chair Team because I couldnt do it on my own. My Co-Chairs are amazing! And as a Team Coordinator, I work with colleagues to write documentation and procedures and keep track of our internal timelines to ensure were on track to meet our deadlines. What made you decide to volunteer? I wanted to contribute to the OTW because I agreed with their mission and was using their projects, and I wanted to give back. I was already a Fanlore editor and had been keeping an eye out for recruitment opportunities that might suit my skills. Before joining Elections, I actually applied to join the Tag Wrangling Committee, but I was unsuccessful. The rejection letter I received really did leave me with a positive impression of the organization and encouraged me to consider applying again. Funnily enough, the Tag Wrangling Chair who sent that rejection letter was also an Elections Chair and she ended up training me to be an Elections Chair. Dont let the rejections get you down; its just a very competitive process. What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW? Probably our deadlines. It can be challenging to get our off-season tasks completed before it's time to start preparing for the next election season. Then, during the election season, we have to constantly be aware of our internal schedule to ensure were fully prepared for upcoming events. In my experience, something always happens during each election cycle to upset our internal schedule. This might not be obvious to the public but behind the scenes, unexpected events do happen. A volunteer might be unavailable because of their personal circumstances; we might need to create an additional announcement post at short notice; or we may receive more Q&A questions or email queries than we expected. We have policies and procedures in place, but unexpected events can still result in additional pressures on our volunteers and candidates. Most of our work in the off-season is about preparing for these busy periods, ensuring that we have the tools, trained volunteers and agreed procedures in place to meet those challenges. What fannish things do you like to do? I spend too much time on AO3, mostly reading fanfiction. Im a terrible fanfic writer who has never been able to finish a multi-chapter work. I have a few unfinished WIPs on different archives, and Im sorry to anyone who is still waiting for updates. As well as new stories, I love rereading stories Ive enjoyed in the past, and my cloud storage is full of fics that are no longer available on the internet. I originally copied and pasted them into documents, but theyre now ebooks for easier reading. Im also still a Fanlore Gardener and really enjoy reading and editing the wiki. I had no wiki editing experience when I joined, but editors and Fanlore Committee members were lovely and really helped me learn so that I could contribute my perspective to the wiki too! Now that our volunteers said five things about what they do, its your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts. The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 8th, 2023
5:08 pm	Smoochies is Moving to the AO3 http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26161 Smoochies, a multi-fandom fanfiction and fanart archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3). In this post: A bit of background explanation What this means for creators who had work on Smoochies And what to do if you still have questions Background explanation Smoochies was a site dedicated to bishounen, shounen-ai and yaoi fanworks. It ran from late 1997 to early 2003. During its life, it hosted some amazing works that its moderator, Melanie, would hate to see lost. They need to be preserved and enjoyed by new fans, instead of living on an old submissions cd-r in the back of a drawer. The purpose of the Open Doors Committees Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Melanie to import Smoochies into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fanfiction and fanart currently in Smoochies will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages. We will begin importing works from Smoochies to the AO3 after July. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime. What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on Smoochies? We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work. All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site. Please contact Open Doors with your Smoochies pseud(s) and email address(es), if: You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself. Youd like to import your works yourself (including if you dont have an AO3 account yet). You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name. You have any other questions we can help you with. Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Smoochies account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the Smoochies mod to confirm your claims.) Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on importing your works to the AO3 adding your works to the new collection Smoochies If you still have questions... If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee. We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Smoochies on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips. We're excited to be able to help preserve Smoochies! - The Open Doors team and Melanie Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on June 22. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 12th, 2023
3:05 pm	An Update from the OTW Board of Directors and Chairs http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26218 In 2020, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) made a commitment to our users, members, and volunteers that we would work towards making our organization and our projects more welcoming and inclusive to fans of color, and preventing and combating racist harassment on our platforms. Today, we'd like to provide an update on what steps we have taken so far to accomplish those goals, and what still needs to be done. But first, we have a duty to acknowledge that this work hasn't been nearly as prompt as we had hoped, and that the main victims of our delayed progress are the people of color who continue to suffer due to harassment and slow action. In May, fans organized a campaign against racism in the OTW, and we want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated. We hear and appreciate the people who continue to reach out to us, to share their ideas and their concerns, and to hold us accountable. What We've Done So Far Since the posting of our original plan in 2020, we have completed or made significant progress on a series of goals to help protect our users and volunteers against harassment: We implemented the ability to freeze comment threads and turn off comments on your works entirely, giving you more control to moderate interactions on your AO3 fanworks. User muting was introduced to help you avoid encountering works, bookmarks, or comments from specific users when browsing the Archive. We have implemented comment blocking to prevent specific logged-in users from commenting on your works entirely. You can now opt out of receiving gifts on AO3, as well as opt out of allowing your works to be invited to collections. We have improved admin tools to facilitate investigations by our Policy & Abuse team. Internally, we have updated our Code of Conduct to make it explicit that discrimination based on caste is not tolerated in the OTW. We also implemented methods for volunteers to contact and submit feedback to the Board anonymously by introducing a separate feedback form. We are still committed to working towards giving you more control over how you experience the Archive going forward. To that end, we will be expanding blocking features to cover more user interactions, and further limiting how guest users can interact with you on the Archive. What We're Working On We have been reviewing the Archive's Terms of Service to help the Policy & Abuse team address different types of harassment. This review is still ongoing, but we hope to complete it soon. Once concluded, any planned changes to the Terms of Service will be made available for public comment in a dedicated news post. Alongside this review, the Policy & Abuse team continues to improve and calibrate their internal policies about harassment and hate speech in icons, user names, and other non-story elements. The team strives to remain vigilant and flexible in order to respond appropriately to new harassment vectors as needed. Internally, back in 2021 the OTW opened recruitment for a Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO). They began their work in 2022, contacting internal stakeholders and researching firms. The DCRO hopes to finish their internal studies by September, and has already begun to investigate potential contractors. We will keep you updated on how these projects are progressing. Please continue reading to learn more about how we plan to communicate these updates. Communications Improvements One of the areas the OTW has been working to improve in is transparency in communication. We know how important these topics are to our users, and we will be trying to better keep you informed about what we're doing to combat and prevent racism in the OTW and on AO3. One change we have already implemented is to provide quarterly updates on our diversity work during OTW Board of Directors public meetings. These meetings take place on Discord and can be attended by anyone. There are a few ways you can know when a meeting is coming up: Keep an eye on the OTW's Twitter accountevery meeting is announced at least one week in advance. Join our Discord serveras soon as a meeting is scheduled, a notification will appear in the meeting channel. Subscribe to the Board Calendar so that new meetings will show directly on your personal calendar. Additionally, we will be making an effort to include all information discussed in these meetings in the OTW's monthly newsletter. The newsletter will also provide smaller updates between meetings whenever possible. We understand how frustrating these delays have been, and we deeply apologize. We remain committed to making our spaces more welcoming and safe for all users. We sincerely thank you for sticking with us as we strive to improve. Your feedback on this and any other matters is welcome and valued, always. The OTW Board of Directors can be reached for direct feedback and further suggestions via email. 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. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 15th, 2023
5:54 pm	May 2023 Newsletter, Volume 178 http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26221 I. BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATES The Board knows that it needs to improve its internal and external communication about updates on ongoing work and we have published an update on the commitments we've made in 2020 to combat racism in our platforms. We completely understand that it's often frustrating for volunteers and fans alike when various discussions and projects take a long time to move forward. The Board will do its best to provide ongoing updates on these projects. We have also scheduled a public meeting on the 2nd of July at 20:00 UTC (What time is that for me?), where anyone present will be welcome to ask any questions you may have. The meetings are held in the OTW Board's Discord server. On the topic of AI, we've published a news post clarifying our current stance on AI and data scraping, as well as the actions we've taken regarding data scraping of AO3 works so far. At the moment, the Archive's Terms of Service do not forbid works created (fully or partly) with the use of AI tools. In December 2022, the AO3 development team deployed code disallowing Common Crawler, the scraper for datasets used to train ChatGPT and others, from collecting data on the Archive. Please access AI and Data Scraping on the Archive to read more about this topic. On the subject of efforts towards combating harassment, racism and bigotry on our website and organization, last year, the Board recruited a Diversity Consultant Research Officer, with the task of gathering information on the OTW's requirements for a Diversity Consultant, contacting prospective companies that are suitable for our characteristics as an organization, and presenting candidates for the Board to select. The officer is currently interviewing OTW volunteers and making a list of likely firms for the OTW to approach. Another ongoing process towards this same goal is a review of AO3's Terms of Service, which started in 2020. While the review is still in progress, the Policy & Abuse and Legal teams have agreed on some changes about harassment in general, and about works created with the clear intent of making AO3 unwelcoming, which we believe will be valuable in protecting fans of color against racist harassment in the future. II. AT THE AO3 In May, Open Doors completed the import of Viggorli Secret Santa, a Lord of the Rings RPS fanfiction gift exchange focused on the Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom pairing. Open Doors also announced the import of The Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive, a Stargate Atlantis fanfiction archive. Policy & Abuse received "just" 1999 tickets in April! We like nice, even numbers, but 1999 is a nice number, too. At the time of this writing, Support's tickets were trending a little bit lower in May, with a projected total of around 1500 seeming likely. Meanwhile, in April, Tag Wrangling wrangled more than 472,000 tags across more than 57,000 fandoms, more than a thousand tags per active wrangler! III. FANLORE OUTREACH May was a busy month for Fanlore. Its editing chat in its Discord server, focused on link archiving, was a big success. Thanks to everyone who took part! Also in May, Fanlore celebrated Comics Month across its social channels. Check out the pages highlighted on the Fanlore Tumblr page. It's not too late to join in Fanlore's recent activities! Its annual Fanlore Bingo Challenge is in full swing from Monday, June 5, to Sunday, June 18, and the theme is Fruits & Veggies! Any Fanlore visitors and editors, new and old alike, are invited to participate. Fanlore also has a brand new help page, Help:Professional_Fanworks. IV. BOARD OF DIRECTORS ELECTION Elections is busy preparing for the 2023 election season! The Board of Directors approved an update to Elections' eligibility requirements in May to specify that all candidates must be 18 at the time they declare their candidacy. If you'd like to vote this year, the deadline to become a member is June 30th. To be eligible for membership, you must make a donation of at least $10 USD between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, and check the Yes box to specify you want to become a member. If your donation receipt indicates you checked No to membership, you can still get in touch with the Development & Membership committee via our contact form and request your donation record be updated so you can vote this year! V. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW Development & Membership is starting convention outreach work. Its first outing this year was at Eurocon in Sweden on June 8-11. Legal worked with Communications to draft the June edition of the OTW Signal, focused on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the fair use case of Goldsmith v. Warhol. While the case did not come out the way that the OTW advocated for, its holding is limited and unlikely to have an impact on fanworks, especially noncommercial fanworks. Finally, TWC recently announced a new special issue on AI and Fandom  submissions close Jan 1, 2024. TWC is also still accepting submissions for its special issue on Centering Blackness in Fan Studies until July 1, 2023. VI. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS From 25 April to 24 May, Volunteers & Recruiting received 85 new requests, and completed 68, leaving us with 73 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of 24 May 2023, the OTW has 916 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below. New Committee Chairs: Claudia Rebaza & Eskici (Communications) New Development & Membership Volunteers: Elsinore (Convention Specialist) New Finance Volunteers: Monica Barraclough (Financial Analyst) New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Aletheran, Ali F, AlienOnTheRun, AllisonT, Ann-ul-Haq Leghari, B. Raven, daydreamorama, Evan, Felipe, Fir D, Grimsleigh, Isha, Izzy Wellert, juniverse, Jyka, Kanna, LadyOrpheus, lianneder, Lility, Linacs, Loth, lifeisyetfair, mblematic, Meep Linger, Mello, Montserrat, Monty, Morgan, OldScoil, PhaedraDB, Raiynn, Ranthy, RedRowan, Riella, Saturnina, Severyn, Skye, Solarium, Toffee, Wax and 1 other Tag Wrangler New Translation Volunteers: Eskici (Volunteer Manager) New TWC Volunteers: 1 Proofreader Departing Committee Chairs: Jess Hindes & Kirsten Korona (Communications) Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Francesca Coppa and 1 other Import Assistant Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Ohsodeluded and 4 other Tag Wranglers Departing Translation Volunteers: Mirissa 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. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 19th, 2023
12:20 am	2023 OTW Elections Candidates Announcement http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26251 Candidates Announcement The Organization for Transformative Works is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2023 Election (in alphabetical order by given name): Anh P. Audrey R. Emyn a. Jennifer H. Kathryn S. Qiao C. Zixin Z. Candidates' full legal names will not be publicly posted this year unless they are appointed or elected to the Board. As previously advised, Heather McGuire is stepping down from her position on the Board, and so there will be four open seats in this year's election, one of them a partial term of two years. The candidate who places fourth will be elected to this seat. We are grateful for Heather's service and thank her for her work and dedication. Because we have four seats to be filled and seven candidates, the 2023 election will be contested  that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats. The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a series of live chats  dates and times for those are to be announced based on candidate availability. Information on the voting period and how to vote will also be posted shortly. In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them! Platforms and Bios We asked each candidate to provide us with a bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions: Why did you decide to run for election to the Board? What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board? Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them? What is your experience with the OTW's projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with. How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work? You can read both the candidates' answers to these questions and their bios by following the links below. Anh P. Audrey R. Emyn a. Jennifer H. Kathryn S. Qiao C. Zixin Z. Question & Answer (Q&A) Candidates will also answer questions from the public. Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 25 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions: Questions can be a maximum of 50 words long. Questions must not be repeats of questions from the Platforms. This is to allow candidates to spend their time answering new questions. Similar questions will be grouped together so candidates don't have to repeat themselves. Elections volunteers will decide which questions are similar enough to group. If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention that it is a follow-up so it isn't treated as a repeat. The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for voters to read all the answers. 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. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 24th, 2023
12:02 am	Become a Member of the OTW and Vote for the 2023 Elections! http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26284 It's almost election time! Being a member of the Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW) means being able to vote for its Board of Directors. This helps affect how projects such as the Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, and Transformative Works and Cultures are run now and going forward. This year, our election for the Board of Directors will be held from August 11 to August 14. (Access the full Elections Timeline for 2023). In order to vote, you need to be a member of the OTW by midnight UTC on June 30, 2023 (What time is that for me?). Please note that your donation receipt will be dated in US Eastern Time, so if your donation is listed after 19:59 on June 30, 2023 on the receipt, you won't be eligible to vote. That means that you have to have made a donation of US$10 or more between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, AND have chosen to become a member when donating. In order to become a member, you need to select "Yes" in response to the question "Do you want to be an OTW member? ($10 minimum donation)" on the donation form. If you're unsure whether this applies to a donation you've made, please contact our Development & Membership team. If you participate in this voter registration drive, you will receive a specially designed icon, only available during this drive. Thank you for your support of the OTW! Register to vote and donate today! 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. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 26th, 2023
2:58 pm	Withdrawal of Candidate Emyn a. http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26368 Effective June 23, Emyn a. has withdrawn their candidacy for the 2023 Board election. The Elections Committee wishes Emyn all the best. 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. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 5th, 2023
4:21 pm	Five Things Marion McGowan Said https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26140 Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Marion McGowan, who volunteers as a Co-Chair and Team Coordinator for our Elections Committee. How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does? Im a Co-Chair and Team Coordinator for the Elections Committee. We run the annual election to decide who sits on the OTWs Board of Directors. Elections main goal is to hold a contested election every year, giving our membership an opportunity to elect candidates who will serve their interests on the Board. Weve held contested elections every year since 2015, but this is not something the Elections Committee takes for granted. Every year, we communicate internally to OTW volunteers about the election process. Once candidates are announced, we organize Q&As and candidate chats so the public have an opportunity to engage with the election process and ask the questions they want answered. And finally we run the election itself, sending ballots to members and monitoring the election throughout the weekend before finally announcing the results. What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer? Depends what time of year it is. Elections work can be very seasonal. From March to August, were focused on tasks directly related to that years election. After the election, we collect feedback from other committees and from the candidates to help us make our roadmap. From October to May, were working on our roadmap tasks, addressing any feedback we received and also reviewing and updating our policies, procedures and internal documentation. This year weve also adopted some new tools during the off-season which are going to be very helpful going forward. As one of four Chairs on the Elections Committee, I work very closely with my Co-Chairs. A Chairs job is to support the rest of our team, do administrative work, liaise with Board and other Committee Chairs as needed and help recruit new Elections Volunteers. Im definitely very happy to be on a Chair Team because I couldnt do it on my own. My Co-Chairs are amazing! And as a Team Coordinator, I work with colleagues to write documentation and procedures and keep track of our internal timelines to ensure were on track to meet our deadlines. What made you decide to volunteer? I wanted to contribute to the OTW because I agreed with their mission and was using their projects, and I wanted to give back. I was already a Fanlore editor and had been keeping an eye out for recruitment opportunities that might suit my skills. Before joining Elections, I actually applied to join the Tag Wrangling Committee, but I was unsuccessful. The rejection letter I received really did leave me with a positive impression of the organization and encouraged me to consider applying again. Funnily enough, the Tag Wrangling Chair who sent that rejection letter was also an Elections Chair and she ended up training me to be an Elections Chair. Dont let the rejections get you down; its just a very competitive process. What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW? Probably our deadlines. It can be challenging to get our off-season tasks completed before it's time to start preparing for the next election season. Then, during the election season, we have to constantly be aware of our internal schedule to ensure were fully prepared for upcoming events. In my experience, something always happens during each election cycle to upset our internal schedule. This might not be obvious to the public but behind the scenes, unexpected events do happen. A volunteer might be unavailable because of their personal circumstances; we might need to create an additional announcement post at short notice; or we may receive more Q&A questions or email queries than we expected. We have policies and procedures in place, but unexpected events can still result in additional pressures on our volunteers and candidates. Most of our work in the off-season is about preparing for these busy periods, ensuring that we have the tools, trained volunteers and agreed procedures in place to meet those challenges. What fannish things do you like to do? I spend too much time on AO3, mostly reading fanfiction. Im a terrible fanfic writer who has never been able to finish a multi-chapter work. I have a few unfinished WIPs on different archives, and Im sorry to anyone who is still waiting for updates. As well as new stories, I love rereading stories Ive enjoyed in the past, and my cloud storage is full of fics that are no longer available on the internet. I originally copied and pasted them into documents, but theyre now ebooks for easier reading. Im also still a Fanlore Gardener and really enjoy reading and editing the wiki. I had no wiki editing experience when I joined, but editors and Fanlore Committee members were lovely and really helped me learn so that I could contribute my perspective to the wiki too! Now that our volunteers said five things about what they do, its your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts. The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 8th, 2023
5:08 pm	Smoochies is Moving to the AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26161 Smoochies, a multi-fandom fanfiction and fanart archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3). In this post: A bit of background explanation What this means for creators who had work on Smoochies And what to do if you still have questions Background explanation Smoochies was a site dedicated to bishounen, shounen-ai and yaoi fanworks. It ran from late 1997 to early 2003. During its life, it hosted some amazing works that its moderator, Melanie, would hate to see lost. They need to be preserved and enjoyed by new fans, instead of living on an old submissions cd-r in the back of a drawer. The purpose of the Open Doors Committees Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Melanie to import Smoochies into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the archive in its entirety, all fanfiction and fanart currently in Smoochies will be hosted on the OTW's servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages. We will begin importing works from Smoochies to the AO3 after July. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime. What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on Smoochies? We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work. All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site. Please contact Open Doors with your Smoochies pseud(s) and email address(es), if: You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself. Youd like to import your works yourself (including if you dont have an AO3 account yet). You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name. You have any other questions we can help you with. Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Smoochies account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the Smoochies mod to confirm your claims.) Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on importing your works to the AO3 adding your works to the new collection Smoochies If you still have questions... If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee. We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Smoochies on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips. We're excited to be able to help preserve Smoochies! - The Open Doors team and Melanie Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on June 22. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 12th, 2023
3:05 pm	An Update from the OTW Board of Directors and Chairs https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26218 In 2020, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) made a commitment to our users, members, and volunteers that we would work towards making our organization and our projects more welcoming and inclusive to fans of color, and preventing and combating racist harassment on our platforms. Today, we'd like to provide an update on what steps we have taken so far to accomplish those goals, and what still needs to be done. But first, we have a duty to acknowledge that this work hasn't been nearly as prompt as we had hoped, and that the main victims of our delayed progress are the people of color who continue to suffer due to harassment and slow action. In May, fans organized a campaign against racism in the OTW, and we want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated. We hear and appreciate the people who continue to reach out to us, to share their ideas and their concerns, and to hold us accountable. What We've Done So Far Since the posting of our original plan in 2020, we have completed or made significant progress on a series of goals to help protect our users and volunteers against harassment: We implemented the ability to freeze comment threads and turn off comments on your works entirely, giving you more control to moderate interactions on your AO3 fanworks. User muting was introduced to help you avoid encountering works, bookmarks, or comments from specific users when browsing the Archive. We have implemented comment blocking to prevent specific logged-in users from commenting on your works entirely. You can now opt out of receiving gifts on AO3, as well as opt out of allowing your works to be invited to collections. We have improved admin tools to facilitate investigations by our Policy & Abuse team. Internally, we have updated our Code of Conduct to make it explicit that discrimination based on caste is not tolerated in the OTW. We also implemented methods for volunteers to contact and submit feedback to the Board anonymously by introducing a separate feedback form. We are still committed to working towards giving you more control over how you experience the Archive going forward. To that end, we will be expanding blocking features to cover more user interactions, and further limiting how guest users can interact with you on the Archive. What We're Working On We have been reviewing the Archive's Terms of Service to help the Policy & Abuse team address different types of harassment. This review is still ongoing, but we hope to complete it soon. Once concluded, any planned changes to the Terms of Service will be made available for public comment in a dedicated news post. Alongside this review, the Policy & Abuse team continues to improve and calibrate their internal policies about harassment and hate speech in icons, user names, and other non-story elements. The team strives to remain vigilant and flexible in order to respond appropriately to new harassment vectors as needed. Internally, back in 2021 the OTW opened recruitment for a Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO). They began their work in 2022, contacting internal stakeholders and researching firms. The DCRO hopes to finish their internal studies by September, and has already begun to investigate potential contractors. We will keep you updated on how these projects are progressing. Please continue reading to learn more about how we plan to communicate these updates. Communications Improvements One of the areas the OTW has been working to improve in is transparency in communication. We know how important these topics are to our users, and we will be trying to better keep you informed about what we're doing to combat and prevent racism in the OTW and on AO3. One change we have already implemented is to provide quarterly updates on our diversity work during OTW Board of Directors public meetings. These meetings take place on Discord and can be attended by anyone. There are a few ways you can know when a meeting is coming up: Keep an eye on the OTW's Twitter accountevery meeting is announced at least one week in advance. Join our Discord serveras soon as a meeting is scheduled, a notification will appear in the meeting channel. Subscribe to the Board Calendar so that new meetings will show directly on your personal calendar. Additionally, we will be making an effort to include all information discussed in these meetings in the OTW's monthly newsletter. The newsletter will also provide smaller updates between meetings whenever possible. We understand how frustrating these delays have been, and we deeply apologize. We remain committed to making our spaces more welcoming and safe for all users. We sincerely thank you for sticking with us as we strive to improve. Your feedback on this and any other matters is welcome and valued, always. The OTW Board of Directors can be reached for direct feedback and further suggestions via email. 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. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 19th, 2023
12:20 am	2023 OTW Elections Candidates Announcement https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26251 Candidates Announcement The Organization for Transformative Works is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2023 Election (in alphabetical order by given name): Anh P. Audrey R. Emyn a. Jennifer H. Kathryn S. Qiao C. Zixin Z. Candidates' full legal names will not be publicly posted this year unless they are appointed or elected to the Board. As previously advised, Heather McGuire is stepping down from her position on the Board, and so there will be four open seats in this year's election, one of them a partial term of two years. The candidate who places fourth will be elected to this seat. We are grateful for Heather's service and thank her for her work and dedication. Because we have four seats to be filled and seven candidates, the 2023 election will be contested  that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats. The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a series of live chats  dates and times for those are to be announced based on candidate availability. Information on the voting period and how to vote will also be posted shortly. In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them! Platforms and Bios We asked each candidate to provide us with a bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions: Why did you decide to run for election to the Board? What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board? Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them? What is your experience with the OTW's projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with. How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work? You can read both the candidates' answers to these questions and their bios by following the links below. Anh P. Audrey R. Emyn a. Jennifer H. Kathryn S. Qiao C. Zixin Z. Question & Answer (Q&A) Candidates will also answer questions from the public. Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 25 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions: Questions can be a maximum of 50 words long. Questions must not be repeats of questions from the Platforms. This is to allow candidates to spend their time answering new questions. Similar questions will be grouped together so candidates don't have to repeat themselves. Elections volunteers will decide which questions are similar enough to group. If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention that it is a follow-up so it isn't treated as a repeat. The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for voters to read all the answers. 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. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 15th, 2023
5:54 pm	May 2023 Newsletter, Volume 178 https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26221 I. BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATES The Board knows that it needs to improve its internal and external communication about updates on ongoing work and we have published an update on the commitments we've made in 2020 to combat racism in our platforms. We completely understand that it's often frustrating for volunteers and fans alike when various discussions and projects take a long time to move forward. The Board will do its best to provide ongoing updates on these projects. We have also scheduled a public meeting on the 2nd of July at 20:00 UTC (What time is that for me?), where anyone present will be welcome to ask any questions you may have. The meetings are held in the OTW Board's Discord server. On the topic of AI, we've published a news post clarifying our current stance on AI and data scraping, as well as the actions we've taken regarding data scraping of AO3 works so far. At the moment, the Archive's Terms of Service do not forbid works created (fully or partly) with the use of AI tools. In December 2022, the AO3 development team deployed code disallowing Common Crawler, the scraper for datasets used to train ChatGPT and others, from collecting data on the Archive. Please access AI and Data Scraping on the Archive to read more about this topic. On the subject of efforts towards combating harassment, racism and bigotry on our website and organization, last year, the Board recruited a Diversity Consultant Research Officer, with the task of gathering information on the OTW's requirements for a Diversity Consultant, contacting prospective companies that are suitable for our characteristics as an organization, and presenting candidates for the Board to select. The officer is currently interviewing OTW volunteers and making a list of likely firms for the OTW to approach. Another ongoing process towards this same goal is a review of AO3's Terms of Service, which started in 2020. While the review is still in progress, the Policy & Abuse and Legal teams have agreed on some changes about harassment in general, and about works created with the clear intent of making AO3 unwelcoming, which we believe will be valuable in protecting fans of color against racist harassment in the future. II. AT THE AO3 In May, Open Doors completed the import of Viggorli Secret Santa, a Lord of the Rings RPS fanfiction gift exchange focused on the Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom pairing. Open Doors also announced the import of The Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive, a Stargate Atlantis fanfiction archive. Policy & Abuse received "just" 1999 tickets in April! We like nice, even numbers, but 1999 is a nice number, too. At the time of this writing, Support's tickets were trending a little bit lower in May, with a projected total of around 1500 seeming likely. Meanwhile, in April, Tag Wrangling wrangled more than 472,000 tags across more than 57,000 fandoms, more than a thousand tags per active wrangler! III. FANLORE OUTREACH May was a busy month for Fanlore. Its editing chat in its Discord server, focused on link archiving, was a big success. Thanks to everyone who took part! Also in May, Fanlore celebrated Comics Month across its social channels. Check out the pages highlighted on the Fanlore Tumblr page. It's not too late to join in Fanlore's recent activities! Its annual Fanlore Bingo Challenge is in full swing from Monday, June 5, to Sunday, June 18, and the theme is Fruits & Veggies! Any Fanlore visitors and editors, new and old alike, are invited to participate. Fanlore also has a brand new help page, Help:Professional_Fanworks. IV. BOARD OF DIRECTORS ELECTION Elections is busy preparing for the 2023 election season! The Board of Directors approved an update to Elections' eligibility requirements in May to specify that all candidates must be 18 at the time they declare their candidacy. If you'd like to vote this year, the deadline to become a member is June 30th. To be eligible for membership, you must make a donation of at least $10 USD between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, and check the Yes box to specify you want to become a member. If your donation receipt indicates you checked No to membership, you can still get in touch with the Development & Membership committee via our contact form and request your donation record be updated so you can vote this year! V. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW Development & Membership is starting convention outreach work. Its first outing this year was at Eurocon in Sweden on June 8-11. Legal worked with Communications to draft the June edition of the OTW Signal, focused on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the fair use case of Goldsmith v. Warhol. While the case did not come out the way that the OTW advocated for, its holding is limited and unlikely to have an impact on fanworks, especially noncommercial fanworks. Finally, TWC recently announced a new special issue on AI and Fandom  submissions close Jan 1, 2024. TWC is also still accepting submissions for its special issue on Centering Blackness in Fan Studies until July 1, 2023. VI. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS From 25 April to 24 May, Volunteers & Recruiting received 85 new requests, and completed 68, leaving us with 73 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of 24 May 2023, the OTW has 916 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below. New Committee Chairs: Claudia Rebaza & Eskici (Communications) New Development & Membership Volunteers: Elsinore (Convention Specialist) New Finance Volunteers: Monica Barraclough (Financial Analyst) New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Aletheran, Ali F, AlienOnTheRun, AllisonT, Ann-ul-Haq Leghari, B. Raven, daydreamorama, Evan, Felipe, Fir D, Grimsleigh, Isha, Izzy Wellert, juniverse, Jyka, Kanna, LadyOrpheus, lianneder, Lility, Linacs, Loth, lifeisyetfair, mblematic, Meep Linger, Mello, Montserrat, Monty, Morgan, OldScoil, PhaedraDB, Raiynn, Ranthy, RedRowan, Riella, Saturnina, Severyn, Skye, Solarium, Toffee, Wax and 1 other Tag Wrangler New Translation Volunteers: Eskici (Volunteer Manager) New TWC Volunteers: 1 Proofreader Departing Committee Chairs: Jess Hindes & Kirsten Korona (Communications) Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Francesca Coppa and 1 other Import Assistant Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Ohsodeluded and 4 other Tag Wranglers Departing Translation Volunteers: Mirissa 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. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 24th, 2023
12:02 am	Become a Member of the OTW and Vote for the 2023 Elections! https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26284 It's almost election time! Being a member of the Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW) means being able to vote for its Board of Directors. This helps affect how projects such as the Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, and Transformative Works and Cultures are run now and going forward. This year, our election for the Board of Directors will be held from August 11 to August 14. (Access the full Elections Timeline for 2023). In order to vote, you need to be a member of the OTW by midnight UTC on June 30, 2023 (What time is that for me?). Please note that your donation receipt will be dated in US Eastern Time, so if your donation is listed after 19:59 on June 30, 2023 on the receipt, you won't be eligible to vote. That means that you have to have made a donation of US$10 or more between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, AND have chosen to become a member when donating. In order to become a member, you need to select "Yes" in response to the question "Do you want to be an OTW member? ($10 minimum donation)" on the donation form. If you're unsure whether this applies to a donation you've made, please contact our Development & Membership team. If you participate in this voter registration drive, you will receive a specially designed icon, only available during this drive. Thank you for your support of the OTW! Register to vote and donate today! 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. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 26th, 2023
2:58 pm	Withdrawal of Candidate Emyn a. https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26368 Effective June 23, Emyn a. has withdrawn their candidacy for the 2023 Board election. The Elections Committee wishes Emyn all the best. 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. (Comment on this)