Welcome to our May newsletter!
Archive of Our Own
The Accessibility, Design, and Technology committee (AD&T) has been working with the mods of Dark Agenda to develop new collections and challenges functionality for their Kaleidoscope multimedia fanwork exchange for rare chromatic source fandoms. Watch for exciting new nominations and tag set bundling features coming in the near future — this will offer more flexibility to challenge mods and users and ease the burden on our hard-working tag wranglers. AD&T is also working on prompt-based challenges, enhanced subscriptions features, and expanded CSS for public skins. For more information on these features, please see the latest admin post on the Archive.
The Support committee, which responds to support requests from AO3 users, is looking for volunteers. We’ve seen a massive expansion in user numbers during the last few months, and more users means lots more support tickets. Support is also working on updating the Archive FAQ. If you’re interested in volunteering, please contact the Volunteers committee.
The Tag Wrangling committee has been spending some time cleaning up tags in unclaimed fandoms. AD&T has created a really nifty public listing of wrangler-less fandoms — if you see something tempting on that list, please contact the Volunteers committee to inquire about becoming a tag wrangler. We’re always looking for a few good wranglers!
Tag Wrangling is also working on some intercommittee projects with AD&T, International Outreach, and Support, helping with FAQ updating, and clarifying tag-related issues to make tagging even easier.
Fanlore
The Wiki committee recently opened a conversation in Fanlore’s Dreamwidth community about the structure of anime, manga, and related categories on the wiki. This sparked a wider discussion about how fandom categories are structured.
Wiki co-chair aethel led a Fanlore training session on May 28 for current and new editors.
Wiki has also been continuing their outreach to fandom newsletters and offering new challenges in hopes of enticing Fanlore editors to add more content to the wiki on an ongoing basis.
Open Doors
Open Doors launched its new and improved website on May 16! The new site is the product of a long collaboration among the Open Doors, Webmasters, and Systems committees.
Around the OTW
The Financial committee is happy to report that our taxes are DONE! \o/
International Outreach is designing a survey (currently in the rough-draft stage) of OTW and AO3 supporters and users.
Several Journal staffers took time out of prepping for the next few issues to attend the Media in Transition 7 conference in Boston. Journal staffer Alex Jenkins posted about the conference in our Symposium Blog.
Volunteers and Recruiting (VolCom) has been working with Communications on spotlight blog posts to let people know about the wide variety of volunteer opportunities in the OTW. VolCom has also been coordinating monthly staff and volunteer training sessions (such as the recent Fanlore training), as well as carrying out the routine business of recruiting, orienting, and supporting staff and volunteers.
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to contact us anytime with questions or suggestions.