Welcome to our October, 2009 newsletter. Get news from all your favorite committees about all your favorite OTW projects…right beneath the cut!
Abuse:
Abuse has been hard at work getting ready for Open Beta. Committee members are finishing up boilerplate responses and walking through sample cases. We’re also coordinating with the website Testing Procedure folks to make sure that Abuse aspects of the website are up and running optimally.
ADT/Archive:
AD&T have moved the Archive to our lovely new servers and dropped a lot of new code in as well. Go look at the new improved Bookmarks and start thinking about what fields you’d like to see in cut-down views! Read our FAQ! Marvel at our News Posts!
We’re also planning for Open Beta, this is currently scheduled for mid November and is dependent on the code changes we need being ready in time 🙂
We want to run a competition to design the perfect AO3 logo and are looking for volunteers willing to coordinate it.
Board:
The Board has been busy keeping track of general org-wide goings-on.
Communications:
Communications is currently offering its support to the new Support team as we plan for the coming of Open Beta. Board Member Rachel Barenblat, ADT member Zooey Glass, Legal Comm member Casey Fiesler, and DevMem-ber Monica will also be offering Comm some backup assistance for the rest of this term: thank you, guys!
Content Policy:
No update at this time.
Development:
Development had a pretty busy month which included running our October donations drive. Thanks to all of you, it was our most successful drive yet: we raised a total of US$15,573, which will go into our coffers to support colocation and bandwidth costs, organizational expenses (including the occasional unpredictable ones), and the projects we hope to dive into in Year Three. Thanks to everyone for your generous support — it means the world to us!
Documentation:
Documentation added two new members this month – welcome JJ and groovekittie! We continue to move about behind the scenes, organizing everything in our path to help keep things running smoothly. The next couple of months will be busy ones for us as we prepare for the end of the current term and get things shipshape for next year.
Elections:
The Elections committee is proud to have announced that Elizabeth Yalkut and Allison Morris will be joining the OTW board in the next term. Although we didn’t get to hold a competitive election this year, we are delighted to have attracted two such marvelous new Board members. Welcome, Elizabeth and Allison!
Finance Update:
No update at this time.
Journal:
The academic journal has upgraded its software and moved to a new server. The move was a bumpy one, with a 2-week-long outage, but the shiny new results will make up for the inconvenience. TWC is on track for No. 4, a guest-edited issue about Supernatural. This issue is no longer accepting unsolicited content because we’re so close to print. No. 5, a general issue, is on track as well.
Legal:
The Legal Committee continues it role of supporting other OTW Committees as needed. Over recent weeks, we have advised Communications, assisted DevMem and Translation on phrasing, and reviewed more licenses for ADT. In addition, we continue to respond to numerous and varied queries from the public as they arise, and have this past month responded to a journalist seeking comment on Fairey v. AP, and to fan-centered organization on the 501c3 process, as well as providing advice to individual fans on fandom-corporate partnerships, and suggesting options for dealing with spam farmers.
Open Doors:
The Open Doors committee is continuing to work with Fanlore on the Geocities Rescue project. Archivists, if you can, back up as much as you can to your own HD and we’ll keep working with you to help these fan works find a stable, longterm online home with OTW.
Systems:
No update at this time.
Translations:
No update at this time.
Vidding History:
No report at this time.
Volunteers:
The Volunteers committee is keeping busy preparing for the end of this term and the beginning of the new one in January. Many committees are looking for volunteers or staffers. Do you have some bold new ideas? Want to contribute and learn new skills? Check out our Willing to Serve post and contact us. Volunteers & Recruiting is looking for people, too! Do you have a bit of a micro-manager in you? We want you! * bribes with cookies *
Webmasters:
Congratulations to our own Allison Morris, who will be joining the OTW Board next term! We’re all excited for her. <3 Besides celebrating the news, we've been working hard behind the scenes with Development & Membership to support the recent donation drive. Next up, we'll be working with Open Doors to move their Special Collections index, currently a standalone HTML site, into the Drupal content management system we use for the rest of transformativeworks.org.
Wiki:
No update at this time.