I. CHANGES TO FAN CULTURE PRESERVATION PROJECT
In August, Open Doors announced two updates to its Fan Culture Preservation Project, which seeks to preserve physical fanworks such as fanzines. While continuing its partnership with the University of Iowa, Open Doors added several additional partners as part of an overhaul of its website, which now lists contact information for multiple institutions that donors can choose from when deciding where to donate their fannish memorabilia. Open Doors also announced a new subproject, the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project, which will involve importing scanned or transcribed zines to the AO3 with the permission of creators and/or zine publishers.
For more information about both of these updates, check out the announcement post.
II. AT THE AO3
In addition to its Fan Culture Preservation Project updates, Open Doors announced the import of All About Spike, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series archive for fanfiction and essays focusing on the character Spike. It also completed the imports of Weaver of Dreams (a fanfiction archive featuring the actor Oded Fehr and the characters he has played) and Animators Inc. (fanfiction in Italian set in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter universe).
Accessibility, Design & Technology spent the tail end of July and most of August testing release 0.9.323 and reviewing code for future releases. AD&T also posted its latest release notes detailing the work it did from April through early July. Meanwhile, AO3 Documentation has uploaded its updated Downloading FAQ and made a couple of other small updates across the FAQ suite.
August was a busy month for Tag Wrangling, which assisted Open Doors with several tag mapping projects and also opened recruitment for additional volunteers, who are much welcomed as the archive continues to grow. In July, more than 430,000 tags were wrangled across more than 51,000 fandoms — nearly a thousand tags per wrangler!
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
Communications spent most of August finalizing preparations for the OTW’s 15th anniversary. Check out the announcement post for more details on the celebrations, which are going on now! The festivities include a scavenger hunt being held on the OTW Twitter account, a fanworks challenge (using the tag #OTW15 on social media and OTW15 | OTW 15th Anniversary Fanwork Challenge on AO3), and upcoming interviews to be posted to AO3 News and the OTW website. Fanlore‘s Stub September challenge this year, happening September 12-25, is also anniversary party-themed in honor of the occasion.
In August, Legal responded to press inquiries regarding new U.S. litigation over The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and about ongoing litigation about copyright fair use that will soon be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court. Rebecca Tushnet and Betsy Rosenblatt presented in a webinar about fanworks and fair use law hosted by Library Futures. Legal also responded to several user queries about copyright and fanworks, conducted internal legal analysis regarding some recent legal developments around the world, and prevailed in a WIPO domain name dispute against a site that was confusingly imitating the AO3.
Systems continued to work with its data center folks on some hardware replacements, with Fanlore on its MediaWiki upgrade, and with Volunteers & Recruiting on transitioning OTW committees to a new project management platform. Systems also has made the first steps toward transitioning AO3’s security certificate.
IV. GOVERNANCE
August was the busiest month of the year for Elections, which held its annual Board of Directors election from August 12-15. Before the election, Translation translated all candidates’ bios and platforms into a whopping 30 languages. Meanwhile, during the election, Elections moderated hundreds of comments on its website and responded to approximately 600 membership queries with help from Development & Membership, who investigated the membership status of many of the people who reached out. Elections is continuing to respond to nonessential queries while investigating new tools to prepare itself to respond to a high volume of requests in the future.
Heather McGuire and Natalia Gruber were elected to replace outgoing directors Rebecca Sentance and Kirsten Wright, while Michelle Schroeder was elected to complete the remaining two years of the term for E. Anna Szegedi, who stepped down from the role. Elections and Board would like to thank all departing directors for their service, everyone who ran for making a contested election possible, and all users still waiting for responses to their queries for their patience and understanding!
Elections has also released its 2022 election statistics post. Some highlights: 39.3% of all eligible voters cast a ballot, with a 98.4% increase in the number of ballots cast compared to 2021.
Lastly, Strategic Planning released the OTW Vision Statement 2022-2025 at the start of the month.
V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
From 25 July to 25 August, Volunteers & Recruiting received 47 new requests, and completed 51, leaving us with 18 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of 25 August 2022, the OTW has 918 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Open Doors Volunteers: cinnamonandtea, Emily Cohen (both Import Assistants) and 1 more Import Assistant
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Srosh Hassan (Editor)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: antonomasia09 (Import Assistant)
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Muse and 6 other Policy & Abuse Volunteers
Departing Systems Volunteers: Rachel Bussert (Project Manager)
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: byeke, Emily Fowl, Moontyger, Tay and 21 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Beste Karataş, blondreader, Farah MA, Sho, Wermea (all Translators) and 1 other Translator, 1 Volunteer Manager
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.