I. FANLORE NEWS
Fanlore has had a busy month! It started off in style with its long-awaited MediaWiki upgrade, which was capably overseen by Systems. One of the big additions in the upgrade has been the introduction of a Visual Editor that makes formatting really easy – if you haven’t yet, give it a whirl on Fanlore by using the “edit” tab! If you need a guide to which button does what, Fanlore’s Editing Pages Help page has got you covered!
Right after this, Fanlore kicked off its anime & manga themed month, Fanimangalore! It’s been highlighting ships, terminology (lemon, anyone?) and tropes on our Tumblr and Twitter and held an editing chat on Discord. Thanks to everyone who came along!
II. OCTOBER DRIVE
The October Drive coordinated by Development & Membership was a huge success, with 6,147 memberships and a total of US$282,261.69 raised from 7,822 donors. Thank you to everyone who donated this year! Translation translated and posted content for the drive into 30 languages, while Communications also assisted with posting – and celebrated the AO3 reaching 10 million posted fanworks in the same week!
III. AT THE AO3
Support would like to remind users to check their email listed on their AO3 account and update it to an account you have consistent access to. If an OTW committee needs to contact you, we have to contact you at the email on your account. Be especially cautious about using school (.edu), government (.gov), or business accounts: you will frequently lose access to these if you graduate or change jobs, and it will make account recovery extremely difficult!
Open Doors completed the import of the Harry Potter FanFic Archive and announced the import of The Bureau of Time and Space, an archive of Flint the Time Detective fanworks. Meanwhile, Accessibility, Design & Technology has been fielding database requests from various committees and testing a change to the wrangling code.
Policy & Abuse received 1,300 tickets in October, which is a nice, small breather from what its normal numbers are, enabling volunteers to keep chugging away at their backlog. Support’s volunteers are also keeping the ticket queue moving right along. With over 1,500 tickets a month on average, this is no mean feat.
In October, Tag Wrangling handled more than 390,000 tags, more than 840 tags per wrangler.
IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
The Board of Directors has said goodbye to outgoing directors this month. Thank you so much for your service, Rebecca, Kirsten, Anna, and Jess!
In October, Legal participated in sessions with the U.S. Copyright Office as part of the Copyright Office’s continued consultation regarding technical protection measures. It also joined allies in filing an amicus brief in the case of Hunley v. Instagram, which concerns linking and embedding on the Internet. Legal’s brief supports the rights of users to link across the internet and embed files and images in web pages and the rights of platforms to allow linking and embedding without facing potential copyright liability.
While Finance was busy finalising the 2021 audit and tax filing, Systems dealt with an issue that required it to move our domain to a new registrar. With Volunteers & Recruiting, Systems also started the process of transitioning to a new project management platform. Finally, Systems continues to work on fixing various hardware issues and working towards upgrades for our SQL servers.
V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
From 23 September to 22 October, Volunteers & Recruiting received 195 new requests, and completed 217, leaving us with 51 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of 22 October 2022, the OTW has 960 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Directors: Heather McGuire, Michelle Schroeder, and Natalia Gruber (all Directors), Kari Dayton (President)
New Committee Chairs: bhri (Tag Wrangling)
New Fanlore Volunteers: hheyhalley, Jamie K, Shiou, syrren, Starry (Graphic Designers), and 4 other Graphic Designers, CaitlynW (Social Media & Outreach, 10 other Social Media & Outreach
New Open Doors Volunteers: Keladry (Import Assistant), 1 Import Assistant
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Judas & Kitarin (Tag Wranglers)
New Translation Volunteers: Demeter, majorhtom, Jelena and 12 other News Translators, Hookedonthesky (Volunteer Manager)
New TWC Volunteers: Karen Hellekson (Copyeditor, Layout Editor & Proofreader) and 1 other Layout Editor & Proofreader
Departing Directors: Antonius Melisse (President role only)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Rebecca Sentance (Editor)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Eskici (Policy & Admin Volunteer)
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: LilianaMelo16, eliadan and 7 others
Departing Translation Volunteers: Amalia Blondet, Anastasia Dumarque, Tanyarin Karuchit (all Translators) and 1 other Translator
Departing TWC Volunteers: Karen Hellekson (Journal Editor role only) and 1 other Journal Editor
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Natalia Gruber (Volunteer)
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.