Welcome to the second October issue of the OTW Newsletter! We’re constantly on the lookout for ways to keep fandom up-to-date and informed about what’s going on behind the scenes here at OTW, so twice a month, Community Relations compiles updates about what the various committees are working on and we share them here.
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
Academic Journal Update from Mafalda Stasi
The academic journal team is writing a FAQ for the OTW Web site.
Submissions are arriving for the academic journal’s second issue and are going through blind peer review. The editorial team is actively soliciting content.
The academic journal wrote up job descriptions to be posted for some more production personnel to augment those currently on board, including HTML layout and proofreaders. We are also looking for three people to comprise an Interview team, to solicit interviewers and interviewees. These jobs are being posted through OTW’s usual channels.
Accessibility, Design, and Technology Update from Black Samvara
We’re all limp with relief at the reception of the Beta Archive and doing some gentle tidying up of existing code before we launch into our next round of new functionality.
We’re also cautiously adding new users from the pool of fabulous people who gave feedback *adopts as Beta testers* and watching the server to see if it melts!
Board Update from KellyAnn Bessa
The Board is breathing a sigh of relief that so many things are finally out the door and launched, and making plans for the transition to our second term.
Community Relations Update from shrift
ComRel has been assisting DevMem and Elections, helping update FAQs, fielding questions from the internets (as always!), and documenting for the transition to a second term and the upcoming merger with PR to form an all new Communications team!
Content Policy Update from ainsley
Content Policy will be releasing some additional policy drafts within the week, so keep your eyes open!
Development and Membership Update from Ignaz
We recently wrapped up our second official donation/membership drive, and now we’re in the process of thanking those donors and evaluating the drive so we know what to do (and what not to do) next time. We were thrilled by the number of people who were able to get employer-matching donations for us. Thank you to everyone who contributed! In other news, we just launched a widget that will allow people to easily shop on Amazon (.com, .ca, and .co.uk) using the OTW’s referral code, which means the org gets a tiny donation with everything you purchase. Check it out!
Elections Update from Ellen Fremedon
The extended period to declare candidacy for the Board has now ended. Elections will be sending a letter about the outcome to all members soon.
Financials Update
No update at this time.
Legal Update
No update at this time.
Open Doors Update
No update at this time.
Public Relations Update from Laura
The Public Relations committee is very excited about the upcoming merger with ComRel, forming a new Communications team! We’ve been talking to ComRel and sorting through our files and documents, to make sure the new committee will have everything it needs.
Systems Update
No update at this time.
Translations Update from logovo
We’re in the process of adding the Portuguese translation to the website and fine tunning all translations. After the website and election documents, our attention now turns towards the Archive itself. We’re on standby, as the kinks get worked out, but totally excited about the future, where Archive Of Our Own will be going international.
Volunteers and Recruiting from KellyAnn Bessa
Volunteers is currently looking for people interested in being on a committee during our second term.
Webmasters Update from juniperphoenix
The Webmasters recently worked with DevMem to polish the donation and membership page in preparation for the fund drive. We are also working with Systems to set up a request tracking system for website updates. Our website documentation project is ongoing.
Wiki Update from ana
Fanlore launched with a big splash, and the site now boasts more than 1300 articles created by the active portion of over 350 users; two numbers that we hope will continue to grow. We’re working to make sure the site and its policies reflect the needs of our users and visitors, and we’re grateful to all those helping us refine Fanlore during this beta period.
For a look at some of the articles which are developing nicely, check out, for example, http://Fanlore.org/wiki/Stargate_Atlantis or http://fanlore.org/wiki/Popslash. While you’re there, feel free to explore… And if you have not joined us already, please consider doing so! We’ll be happy to welcome you.
What details would you like to know? Please give ComRel a helping hand and let us know at our contact page!
–Femme, Beth, Ciderpress, Mira, shrift, Madelyn
Community Relations Committee
“We’re also cautiously adding new users from the pool of fabulous people who gave feedback ”
? Did everyone who gave feedback receive the choice of signing up as a beta tester, or were only a few chosen?
Hello!
We will be inviting all of the people who gave the first round of feedback and we’re adding them in small amounts over time to monitor the effect on the servers. This is a highly sophisticated process involving me randomly picking six people from the list of feedback emails every few days until I run out of addresses.
Cheers, Samvara
(Accessibility, Design and Technology)
Ah, I see! And now I’m trying to wonder which/if I gave an email address when I provided feedback in the first round. If it’s not too much trouble, could you see if I did? I would’ve signed as bell and/or usomitai (and it’d have been identical to the content left here: http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/39776.html?thread=949600#t949600).
My questions aside, hurrah once more to the OTW team for their ever-growing accomplishments. 🙂
We didn’t get your email address but please do give it to me now – you’re on my list of potential people to recruit 🙂
… or, you know, email black_samvara at livejournal dot com 🙂
Must sleep, it’s 4am.
Whenever I follow a link from the IJ community to the original, I end up looking at the “Page not found” page. Just thought I’d tell you because it happens every time on both LJ and IJ.
Hi: I just tried both links and they worked for me — maybe I misunderstood which links you’re not having success with. I tried both the links (on IJ and LJ) in the mirrored post as well as from the side menu. Can you provide more information so I can pursue this problem? Thanks!
Hmm, maybe it’s because my language default is set to German.
Had the same problem, coming in from LJ. And normally, before signing in, I either get the English version or the Dutch version (depending what browser/computer I use). This time, I got the page not found with the German interface…
Once I chose a language, the site worked as it should.
It looks to be the same/similar to the problem mentioned in a news post earlier this month (?).
Okay, that gives us a great place to start! Thank you, and I’ll forward this to the techies.
When I’m not logged in, I get the ‘page not found’ message as well when I click on the link from the LJ feed, or the news posts on the front page (linking to transformativeworks.org/news/october-2008-newsletter-vol-20). But if I click on ‘Neuigkeiten’ (news) at the top and then select the post, it is there, although the link is then transformativeworks.org/de/node/484
I get the German version of the page too when I come here, and it doesn’t change even if I choose English at the menu on the left.
When I’m logged in, all pages work, and the language selection via the menu on the left works as well.
Oh, thank you for troubleshooting! I’ll forward this info to our techies.
In other news, we just launched a widget that will allow people to easily shop on Amazon (.com, .ca, and .co.uk) using the OTW’s referral code, which means the org gets a tiny donation with everything you purchase.
I’ve meaning to ask this, but is OTW’s referral code stated somewhere? If note, is it possible to publish it on Support the OTW with your Amazon.com purchases and How You Can Help page for those who don’t use Firefox as their main browser, but would like to help using the Amazon.com referral program?
Hi wistfuljane — I meant to reply to your comment, but just realized that I posted my response as a comment of its own, instead of as a “reply” to your comment. Sorry!
Our referral code is not currently stated anywhere, but that’s a great idea; we’ll work on adding it to the site in a place where people can find it. Anyway: on Amazon.com, the code is organifortran-20.
And in case you need the code for somewhere else, here are the other ones we’ve got right now:
organifortr02-20 : Amazon.ca
organifortran-21 : Amazon.uk
organifortr08-21 : Amazon.de
Thanks!
Hi wistfuljane! Kass from DevMem here.
I don’t actually know our referral code, but let me work on finding it out. The widget we’ve just released (I Heart OTW) won’t work in browsers other than Firefox, but if you know of another way to use our referral code so that your shopping supports the org, that would be awesome. 🙂
Hi!
I’m from the JA fandom, where in one of the sites someone asked to be referred to academic works about fandom. The journal was mentioned and linked, as this site. Thing is, the wiki was mentioned but not linked (an oversight on the part of the people linking, including me!) and the person came here to look for it, and couldn’t find it anywhere on this site. Is this an oversight? Perhaps it is somewhere but she couldn’t find it?
In the ‘Our Projects’ section, the journal is linked in its page, but not the archive and not the wiki, in their respective pages.
Perhaps there’s a reason I don’t know, but I just thought to let you know anyway.
Hmm. I just clicked to the Our Projects page (https://transformativeworks.org/projects) and all the projects were linked, including the archive and the wiki. Were you perhaps logged in using a language other than English? We’ve been having some problems along those lines. At any rate, when I went to the Our Projects page, the links to the archive and wiki take me to pages that describe them and also link to them. What OS and browser are you using?
I don’t find the link to the wiki in this page at all, only links to the glossary (which are a god thing!).
And no, I’m using firefox in English… but as I said, perhaps I’m not seeing it and it’s there? >_< ETA: the page you linked has links, yes, but they're, as far as I can see, to the extended explanations, an example of which is the page I linked.
Ah! I see! Thank you — I’ll let the web people know right away!