I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY IS COMING
The eighth annual International Fanworks Day (IFD) is on February 15, and the OTW has been busy preparing for the festivities! Communications released a public post revealing this year’s theme–Classic Fanworks–and suggesting ways to participate, including a Feedback Fest, writing about what your favorite fanworks mean to you, and joining our short-form fanworks challenge. Behind the scenes, Translation prepared to translate IFD posts in time for the celebrations, and Fanlore began planning its own IFD Fanlore Challenge.
II. AT THE AO3
Open Doors announced the upcoming imports of Echoes from the West, HarryPotterFanfiction.com and My Mongoose Ezines. It also finished importing the Land of Dreams archive. This brings Open Doors to a total of 12 archives (4,096 fanworks) imported and 18 archive imports announced during 2021!
AO3 Documentation uploaded an updated version of the Series FAQ.
In December, Policy & Abuse received approximately 2,600 tickets, and its annual total number of tickets in 2021 reached approximately 29,500 (2020: 19,000). Support received approximately 1,200 tickets, and its annual total number of tickets in 2021 reached more than 16,000 (2020: 18,000). Tag Wrangling wrangled approximately 366,000 tags, or more than 750 tags per wrangler, bringing the annual total number of tags wrangled to approximately 5 million (2020: 4.1 million). Approximately 6,700 canonical fandoms were added in the year 2021.
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
The Board of Directors held a public meeting, its last of 2021. Board opened internal recruitment for a Diversity Consultant Research Officer, whose job it will be to find a consultant to contract with on issues of racial bias and inequality within the OTW and its projects.
Communications published the OTW’s 2020 Annual Report, which can be found on the OTW website along with all previous reports. Meanwhile Strategic Planning opened the OTW Vision Statement 2021-2024 to internal review, and Webs rolled out a new theme for the OTW’s website.
Legal thanks the many Hong Kongers who sent in their stories of why making and sharing fanworks has been valuable for them! OTW is a global organization with many members and volunteers in Hong Kong and we are excited to be able to participate in Hong Kong’s copyright consultation process. Our next steps are to continue working with a Hong Konger attorney and copyright expert to frame those wonderful stories in a way that will resonate with the unique law, copyright history, and political process of Hong Kong, and to submit our comments in late February. In particular, Hong Kong’s Public Consultation Paper specifically invites comments on whether to adopt a flexible “fair use” system in place of its current “fair dealing” system, and invites comments on how to adjust Hong Kong copyright law to account for activities such as mash-ups, altered pictures/videos, doujinshi, rewriting lyrics for songs, and other common fan activities. Currently, Hong Kong’s “fair dealing” system allows use of copyrighted works for particular purposes such as parody and satire, and OTW Legal plans to argue for a more flexible system that would suit common types of fan activity.
IV. ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
From 25 November to 23 January, Volunteers & Recruiting received 214 new requests, and completed 218, leaving us with 15 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of 23 January 2022, the OTW has 929 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Committee Chairs: Kirsten Wright (Communications)
New Communications Volunteers: Emily Rogan (Chair-Track), Frankie Krutsch (Tumblr mod), and 1 other volunteer
New Elections Volunteers: viggorlijah (Communications Specialist)
New Open Doors Volunteers: Julie Bozza (Chair Assistant)
New Systems Volunteers: 1 Project Manager, 1 Technical Writer
Departing Committee Chairs: Ori (Translation)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Chera Kee (Administrative), Scrivener (Technical) and 1 other Technical Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Ari, Arithanas, Cordz, Diana Sakharova, ereshai, IronLucario, Jacinta Klein, Qkat, Timpa, ValerieZA, Waywren Truesong, and 73 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Eimry, J4Y, Kat Mink, and 5 other Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Pebble Lee and 1 other volunteer
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.