I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY
Thanks to everyone who participated in our eighth annual International Fanworks Day this past February 15! Communications kicked off celebrations with a remix fanworks challenge, Feedback Fest, and Discord games and chat, and the festivities continued through the end of the week with Fanlore‘s IFD Fanlore Challenge, which involved different editing challenges every day. Thanks to the OTW volunteers who helped mod the chat! You can find the fan-written lyrics generated during Lyrics Round Robin on the OTWCommunications_IFD AO3 account.
II. AT THE AO3
Accessibility, Design & Technology introduced a new preference to disallow gift works from other users, as well as a host of bug fixes and performance improvements. AD&T has also been working closely with Translation on internationalization efforts and with Policy & Abuse on anti-harassment measures. Meanwhile, Open Doors completed the manual import of The Croft Codex, a Tomb Raider fanfiction archive.
Policy & Abuse received 3,100 tickets in January, a slight increase from the average, while Support‘s ticket numbers are about on par with those from 2021. Both teams look forward to starting recruitment again soon to help with these tickets.
In January, Tag Wrangling handled more than 540,000 new tags–a rate of more than 1,100 per active wrangler! In other news, in order to try to avoid potential confusion with an upcoming television show, wranglers had to take the very unusual step of turning off wrangling for several hours in order for Tag Wrangling Supervisors to rename the oldest — and one of the largest! — fandom tags in the Archive to a less ambiguous format. We hope all users enjoy the freshly disambiguated Supernatural (TV 2005) fandom tag.
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
February was a very busy month for Legal! Legal committee members submitted a comment to the Hong Kong Government in response to its call for input regarding changes to its Copyright Ordinance. Enormous thanks to the many Hongkongers who wrote with their stories in response to Legal’s invitation! Legal also worked with Communications to make a public post about three current U.S. legal issues to watch. On one of those issues—-the U.S. Copyright Office’s process for considering Technological Protection Measures—-Legal committee member Rebecca Tushnet participated directly in the Copyright Office roundtable on behalf of OTW, and Legal will be continuing to participate as things develop.
Systems has started its hardware purchasing for 2022, while TWC is readying No. 37, “Fandom Histories,” guest edited by Philipp Dominik Keidl and Abby Waysdorf, to be released on March 15, 2022. TWC’s new editors, Mel Stanfill & Poe Johnson, have updated article types and word-length guidelines. Communications has also updated the OTW’s press graphics, which you can find on the OTW website, to include statistics through the end of 2021.
IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
From 24 January to 24 February, Volunteers & Recruiting received 103 new requests, and completed 96, leaving us with 23 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
New Fanlore Volunteers: Dae, Joanna Pernick, shiningpaperclip, and 4 other Fanlore Policy & Admin Volunteers
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: ArianaR (Tag Wrangling Supervisor) and Roissy (Tag Wrangling Supervisor)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Administrative Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: 2 Support Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Ark, Ffwydriad, Luin, Megan S, MilenaDaniels and 12 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Eva P and 1 other Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Darcy Lindbergh
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.