I. THE OTW TURNS 15
In September, Communications celebrated the OTW’s 15th anniversary with a trivia game, a fanworks challenge, and special interviews with Francesca Coppa and Constance Penley. Congratulations to our trivia and challenge winners, with thanks to Development & Membership for providing prizes!
Communications also reenabled comments on AO3 news posts in time for the anniversary. And at the end of the festivities, we also announced that AO3 reached 5 million registered users during the festivities–incidentally, on September 15!
II. AT THE AO3
Open Doors announced the import of By Your Command, a Battlestar Galactica fanfiction archive. It also completed the import of Of Elves and Men, a Lord of the Rings archive, and All Things Rat, an X-Files archive.
Since August, Accessibility, Design & Technology deployed releases 0.9.323 and 0.9.324 and started testing the next release (which will probably be deployed as well by the time of this posting). These three releases include code from six new code contributors!
Policy & Abuse received 1700 tickets in September, which is a bit more than before, but they are still making good progress at eating into that number. Also in September, Tag Wrangling made progress on some general changes to the tools it uses that should improve security and, with many thanks to AD&T, rolled out some updates to the wrangulator that will greatly aid their ability to effectively manage their team and workload. In August, wranglers handled more than 420,000 tags across more than 52,000 fandoms–more than a thousand tags per active wrangler!
III. FANLORE NEWS
Fanlore got an upgrade! On the 3rd October, the wiki was upgraded to the newest version of MediaWiki. Among other things, this upgrade added a “visual editor” mode to Fanlore that does a lot of the formatting heavy lifting for contributors — meaning you won’t need to master wiki markup to edit (but markup fans will still be able to use it)!
Also in October, Fanlore is celebrating its anime and manga themed month, Fanimangalore, on its social media platforms with help from its new Graphic Designers and Social Media & Outreach Volunteers.
IV. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
September 15 was a big day not only for the AO3 but for TWC, which released No. 38, a general issue. Meanwhile, Development & Membership hosted a table at this year’s WorldCon and is looking forward to participating in more conventions as it updates the OTW’s convention outreach program.
Legal did some research and analysis regarding legal developments concerning online service providers and U.S. nonprofits, attended a U.S. Copyright Office oversight hearing, and responded to queries from users and other parts of the OTW.
Finally, Systems moved Fanlore and the AO3 to a new certificate provider. Systems is continuing to work on upgrading different parts of our infrastructure, such as Fanlore’s MediaWiki and the Archive’s SQL servers.
V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
From 26 August to 23 September, Volunteers & Recruiting received 88 new requests, and completed 80, leaving us with 130 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).
As of 23 September 2022, the OTW has 903 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Open Doors Volunteers: Beth B, Hookedonthesky, runt, & 7 other Import Assistants
New Strategic Planning Volunteers: Audrey Richards
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 2D Trash, allonsyechoes, AoiH, Asterism, Barnesarmed, Bellivision, Cactus, Chaya, CheddarMonk, Cheshire, ChuckyBlue, Connor, CorvusGrey, dazyndara, dingding, Eirinen, EllaW, elyyyna, Faye Z, Flamingo, flowermemory7, FourSparks, Howl, JanB, jeiroh, Jenn Casso, Jules F, Kaesa, ladydragona, Larrant, Lavender T, Lizbean, Lombyn, m0th3rw4r, Maria Foivi, Mierke, Nyde, Rayon, Reya, Roz, sunshine712, Tsumego, Ultramarine, Uneasy, Virin, Yi Luo, Ymir (all Tag Wranglers), Harlow, Tafadhali, and 1 other Supervisor
New Translation Volunteers: Dasha (Volunteer Manager) & 1 News Translator
Departing Communications Volunteers: Allegra (Fanhackers Volunteer)
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Katherine Hoovestol (Social Media & Outreach Volunteer)
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Beth B (Administrative Volunteer), 1 Technical Volunteer & 4 Import Assistants
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Tei and 1 other Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: HurricanErin & 8 other Volunteers
Departing Systems Volunteers: 1 Volunteer & 1 Project Manager
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Singy
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ayati, farah and 2 other Translators
For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.