I. FANLORE BINGO CHALLENGE
In May, Fanlore ramped up the preparations for their June Bingo Challenge with some fun themed social media posts. The Bingo Challenge is an annual two-week challenge taking place in the first two weeks of June. Challenges are presented on 3×3 bingo cards, with each square containing a different editing challenge. Complete the editing tasks, achieve Bingo! or even Blackout, and win unique badges to show off and display on your Fanlore User page. There are both Beginner and Expert level challenges for newbie editors and seasoned pros. The Bingo Challenge is taking place until June 14: come and take part!
II. AT THE AO3
The Archive of Our Own hit a major milestone this past month, reaching a total of 6 million fanworks posted to the Archive on May 12! Communications commemorated this achievement with a public post which noted that it only took 10 months for the total posted fanworks on the AO3 to jump from 5 million to 6 million.
The speed with which we reached the 6 million mark can partly be attributed to the increased traffic to the Archive since many regions entered lockdown due to the current pandemic. Accessibility, Design, & Technology discussed the recent increases in traffic, posted fanworks, kudos, and comments in a statistics post.
Systems has been busy moving virtual machines onto our new VM hosts and bringing our new firewalls into service. They’re also in the process of replacing some of their older servers with newer ones that draw less power. Together with Accessibility, Design, & Technology, Systems changed the IP address the AO3 uses for outgoing mail. They expected this to cause mails from the archive to be delayed or even rejected by email providers, so account creation and invitations were temporarily disabled. That way, the respective emails didn’t get lost without ever reaching their recipient.
In May, Policy & Abuse received about 1,000 tickets, and Support received about 1,200 tickets. In April,Tag Wrangling wrangled approximately 343,000 tags — the largest number in any month since the Archive’s creation – keeping up with the substantial increase in tagging that accompanied the recent surge in traffic.
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
The 2020 Board of Directors election is fast approaching! Elections, Communications, and Translation collaborated to post the Elections Timeline and additional details about membership and the elections process. If you want to vote in this year’s election, the last date to become a member is June 30. The deadline for OTW volunteers to declare their candidacy is June 19, and candidates will be announced on June 21.
May brought some very public new developments in the terms of Disney’s apps and platforms. Legal wrote an educational post explaining what those terms of service mean for fans and why they don’t change anything about the AO3. Legal has also been hard at work on some copyright law advocacy projects for the coming months.
IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
From 15 April to 23 May, Volunteers & Recruiting received 124 new requests, and completed 118, leaving us with 23 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of 23 May the OTW has 886 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Committee Staff: Ace, Indigo, Kelli Randoja, Miss Sycamore, Pangxiuluojun, petricores, Re_Tails, TC, yufei, Zoey, Zurich Z and 9 other Support Staffers; Zoey (Communications); Erlkoenig (Policy & Abuse), 1 Fanlore staff
New Translation Volunteers: CelinaK, Ines, Sima Cass and 7 other volunteers
Departing Committee Staff: Kelly Gritten & Scylle (AO3 Documentation); 1 Elections staffer; Chai (Tag Wrangling);
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Dia, Elanya and 1 other volunteer
Departing Translation Volunteers: 2 volunteers
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.