I. NEW VOLUME OF TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS AND CULTURES
Transformative Works and Cultures published Volume Number 23: Sherlock Holmes, Fandom, Sherlockiana, and the Great Game, this month. It was guest edited by Roberta Pearson and Betsy Rosenblatt, it includes 19 articles, and it has special cover art by Laurie Fraser Manifold. Volume Number 24, Queer Female Fandom, will come out in June 2017.
II. AT THE AO3
Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed 6 batches of code this month, 5 of which were summed up in the Change Log for Releases 0.9.181 – 0.9.185. Following this release, the Translation committee began translating several automated user emails to make AO3 more internationally friendly!
While users were running into site slowness and issues with posting and editing works for a while before, things came to a head on March 17 with a few hours of unplanned downtime. Our incident report explained all the details on the underlying problems and what solutions were devised.
Also, AO3 was unblocked by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine this month! Archive pages will once again be stored for people to peruse.
AO3 Documentation uploaded a new Comments and Kudos FAQ this month, as well as a new question to the Bookmarks FAQ. There’s lots of great information in the FAQ, so if you’re having trouble figuring out how to do something on AO3, be sure to check it out!
Lastly, Abuse received about 500 tickets this month.
III. COMMUNICATIONS AND OUTREACH
Fanlore opened a brand new Tumblr blog! It joined our Fanlore Twitter account (one of our most popular social media accounts) just in time for April Showers. You can check out the full list of the OTW and AO3’s social media accounts and news mirrors on our Where to Find Us page.
In March, Legal helped a number of fans with legal questions, including several with queries about their rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you have questions about how you can use the DMCA if your fanwork is posted without your consent, or about what to do if your fanwork is taken down in response to a DMCA takedown notice, OTW Legal is here to help, so contact them today!
V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
As of the 27th of March, the OTW has 612 volunteers. ( We finally broke 600!) \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Committee Chairs: Lauren Hanna (Communications Co-Chair)
New Committee Staff: Genevieve Marshall (DevMem), 1 Abuse, 2 Fanlore
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Claire P. Baker, Morgan Drake, Mandy Gooch, Keri Klimchok, TC, Sarah Crocker, RebelRebel, SapphiraBlue, CharmPoint, Julianna, Emily Sherman, memorde, Gillian Webster, intheinterim, CaitieCat, EstelRaca, torisaurusrex, McBangle, Abigail Jyrkila, Tari, Noah Budgor, TamaraAnn, Newtype Kit, InterdictedKai, Nicky, Van W., Liselot, Slothful, and Jazz
New TWC Volunteers: 1
Departing Committee Chairs: Matty Bowers (Internationalization & Outreach Acting Chair)
Departing Committee Staff: Kathryn Soderholm (Internationalization & Outreach), Firey (AO3 Docs)
Departing AD&T Coder Volunteers: 3 volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 2 volunteers
Departing Translator Volunteers: Issay, 5 Volunteers
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.