And you point to the sky and you don't know why

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8580

As we celebrate the past ten years of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), let's also take a moment to look towards the future. Thanks to your donations, there's a bright path ahead of us! Your continued support funds all our projects, from the Archive of Our Own (AO3) to the Fanlore wiki, from Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) to our Legal Advocacy team. Here's a taste of what you can expect from some of these projects soon:

The near future for AO3 includes continued expansion of site stability. Your donations have allowed us to hire contractors to help upgrade the Archive, and we will be continuing those infrastructure improvements. Keep an eye on our release notes for more information! The Archive will also continue to work with Open Doors to import and preserve at-risk fanwork archives, using a new and improved importing process.

Meanwhile, in addition to their everyday work helping fans with questions about fannish legal issues, Legal Advocacy is preparing once again to renew the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) exemption for vidders in 2018.

Also in 2018, TWC will publish its historic tenth anniversary issue, which will bring the journal's total number of published essays to nearly 500! As part of the OTW's ten-year retrospective celebration, that TWC issue will focus on The Future of Fandom, illustrating how our networks of communities have evolved and will continue to do so. Keep an eye out for announcements about this issue on TWC's Tumblr and their website.

As we look to the future, 2027 might seem very far away. Untold numbers of fandoms will emerge between now and then, and untold numbers of fanworks will be created within those fandoms. But 2017 once seemed far away too, and yet here we are! We hope that in the coming decade we will be able to serve not only those of you who have been with us all along, but also all of the creators who may not even have discovered their first fandom yet. Here's to another ten years of new fans, new fandoms, new goals and new achievements!

We hope that you will continue to support the OTW and its projects for years to come. We have many things in store for the future, and we can't wait to share them all with you!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8580

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8571

With our latest deploys, we've ensured that common audio and video players still work after our pending move to HTTPS, added parent links to comment threads, removed a whole bunch of unused code, and took steps to prevent users from adding other people's works to anonymous or unrevealed collections.

Note: We successfully made the switch to HTTPS for a few days; however, the extra strain from encrypting all traffic proved too much for our servers at peak times. Until we have installed additional frontend servers (coming soon!), HTTP will remain the default protocol. (Of course, you can still elect to use a secure connection, e.g. via a browser extension like HTTPS Everywhere.) Please follow @AO3_Status on Twitter for futher updates.

Credits

• Coders: Ariana, Cesy Avon, cyrilcee, Dense Lancer, Elz, james_, redsummernight, Sammie Louise, Sarken, tuff
• Code reviewers: Ariana, Elz, james_, redsummernight, Sarken
• Testers: Alison Watson, Lady Oscar, mumble, natalia gomes, Sarken

Details

Works & Comments

• [AO3-5192] - Common audio and video players that support HTTPS will still be accessible after our switch to secure browsing! We have adjusted the protocol in current embeds and added a step to our sanitizer that takes care of posts going forward.
• [AO3-5188] - When trying to download a work as an ePub, users would frequently be served .zip files or a page of gibberish instead. We found the cause for this (caching! it's always caching!) and rewrote part of our download code to address the issue. Downloads should be served more reliably now.
• [AO3-5159] - Some PDF files were also failing to generate, so we removed a line of code to see if that would help. Fingers crossed!
• [AO3-3704] - If a work was styled with a work skin, and a co-creator edited that work later, the skin would be stripped off (...gruesome), requiring another edit by the first creator to tack it back on. Now the work skin stays where it should be at all times.
• [AO3-5016] - It was previously possible to add other users' works to one's own anonymous and/or unrevealed collection, effectively hiding them from their creators (and everyone else) in the worst case scenario. We now prevent this, and display a helpful error message to the collection owner when they try.
• [AO3-5058] - When importing someone else's work (as an Open Doors archivist), the site would throw an ugly Error 500 if it couldn't detect the work creator's email address on the imported page. It now provides a helpful error message instead.
• [AO3-5131] - Trying to delete more than one comment from the same user, on the same work, when both had replies, was not possible for some reason. Turns out they would have both turned into identical "deleted comment" placeholders, and our validation code didn't like that. It's more lenient now.
• [AO3-5144] - In order to make comment navigation easier, comment replies now have a "Parent Thread" link that takes you to the first comment in the thread and allows you to see the whole thing. \o/

Misc. Issues

• [AO3-5015] - The location of the our backup Support form (used in case of serious site issues) had changed, so we edited the link on our Support form to save the OTW website a redirect.
• [AO3-5044] - When changing one's username, one first had to read a little warning message about the consequences of a name change. However, that warning was misleadingly worded and didn't provide enough information about the process. We have improved the message now.
• [AO3-4440] - In our efforts to make the AO3 interface translatable, we prepared the email that goes out to people with works in imported collections for eventual translation.
• [AO3-5165] - We added some cleanup when certain background tasks failed.
• [AO3-5189] - After running into an import test failure because an image URL in the relevant Dreamwidth post had changed, we rewrote the test in question to use the DW journal and community we manage ourselves to test imports.
• [AO3-5195] - Coveralls was giving us wildly erratic scores for our test coverage, so we switched to Codecov, which will hopefully analyze our coverage in a more reliable manner.
• [AO3-5055] - We have added a license to our code repository on GitHub.
• [AO3-5187] - When we moved the autocomplete to its own Redis instance in our last deploy, we forgot to change the config files we use for our development environments. They're now updated and our coders can code again!

Code Cleanup

• [AO3-4796] - When we deployed Rails 4, it broke filtering a little bit, so we had to use a hack-y workaround to fix it. Now that we're on Rails 5, we've removed the hack and filtering still works.
• [AO3-5012] - We found some old code for automatically generating tag sets for a challenge that was never actually fleshed out, so we just removed it, for neatness.
• [AO3-5093] - We simplified and tidied up part of our abuse report code.
• [AO3-5094] - We also removed an ancient hack for fixing an encoding issue with time zones. It had fixed itself over the years, apparently.
• [AO3-5096] - There was another bit of ancient unused code for bookmarks of external works, so we removed that too.
• [AO3-5087] - More ancient, unused code for importing works was squashed while we were at it.
• [AO3-5088] - Same for a security patch that had become irrelevant in the four years since we added it.
• [AO3-5085] - We also had some lingering code for locales, which is now gone as well.

Known Issues

See our Known Issues page for current issues.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8571

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8493

For ten years now, the Organization for Transformative Works' many projects have been pursuing our stated mission: "serv[ing] the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate." Your support over the past decade has allowed us to do some amazing work for you. Help us to continue, expand and improve our services by donating to the OTW today!

Our very first project, Legal Advocacy, was launched in 2007. The Legal team has spent the ten years since then working tirelessly on behalf of fandom by answering fans' legal questions, publishing informative posts, and adding the OTW's voice to major legal cases affecting fandom.

Next came Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), an open-source, peer-reviewed academic journal launched in September 2008 to showcase research and conversation about fannish topics. With essay topics ranging from digital fan labor to fanfiction in the 17th century, TWC has advanced the field of fan studies and expanded our understanding of fandom. In its lifetime, TWC has published nearly 200 articles, some of which have been cited dozens of times or more.

Launched in the same month as TWC, the Fanlore wiki aims to be a living history of fan traditions and communities, with articles dedicated to ships, works, zines, websites, and fan activities of all kinds. Check out Fanlore's new, completely redesigned front page, then try exploring the site—over 40,000 Fanlore articles have been created over the past decade, and more are added every day, so you never know what you might find!

In November 2009, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) opened to the public. It was created to be a place where fans could post their works without having to worry about censorship or financial constraints, and today it is home to over three million fanworks and counting! Running the Archive accounts for a significant portion of the OTW's budget, and it's your donations that make it possible.

Last but not least, Open Doors has been preserving at-risk fanworks and archives by bringing them to AO3 since 2009. To date, Open Doors has imported 47 fanwork archives from many different fandoms, safeguarding them for future fans to enjoy! Open Doors' Fan Culture Preservation Project (FCPP) also collaborates with the University of Iowa to save non-digital forms of fannish culture like zines, con materials, and letters between fans and studios or writers. The OTW has been working with the university's Special Collections department since June 2009, when the FCPP facilitated a donation of over 3,000 zines!

The OTW's projects have done some amazing work over the past ten years, and we need your help to continue, expand, and improve our efforts! We hope to be serving the interests of fans for the next decade and beyond. If you'd like to contribute and be a part of our mission, please make a donation today!

For more fun facts, here's a timeline of some major milestones in OTW's history:

Follow this link to access this infographic's contents in text form.

To find out more about the Organization for Transformative Works, visit the OTW's website.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8493

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8418

Earlier this year, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) published its budget for 2017. As December draws closer, we'd like to give you an update on our financial outlook for the rest of the year, and how our plans have progressed or changed since a few months ago.

Our Finance team is currently preparing for the OTW's first audit of financial statements, in what we expect will become a regular annual process going forward. Given the size of our organization and our donors' generosity, it's important for us to make sure that our bookkeeping and internal controls are as efficient and thorough as they can be. We're very grateful to have the stability and revenue required for this undertaking. Thanks to our donors for making this possible!

2017 Expenses

Archive of Our Own (AO3)

• US$89,207.44 spent so far out of US$224,045.79 total this year, as of August 31, 2017.
• As usual, the majority of the OTW's expenses—a projected 72% of this year's total—goes towards maintaining the AO3. This includes the bulk of our server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance fees—plus contractor work, website performance monitoring tools, various systems-related licences and training (access all program expenses).
• We continue to work with coding contractors on structural improvements for the AO3, and there's been a lot of progress throughout this year, such as our much-needed Rails upgrade! Check out the Archive's latest release notes for information on our most recent deploys.

Fanlore

• US$1,389.03 spent so far out of US$5,688.85 total this year, as of August 31, 2017.
• Fanlore expenses are mostly its allocation of server purchase, maintenance and colocation costs, in addition to related licenses and Fanlore web domains (access all program expenses).

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC)

• US$819.81 spent so far out of US$3,399.74 total this year, as of August 31, 2017.
• TWC's expenses are its allotment of server costs, as well as the journal’s publishing and storage fees (access all program expenses).

Open Doors

• US$402.25 spent so far out of US$1,685.78 total this year, as of August 31, 2017.
• This year’s expenses for Open Doors are hosting, backup and domain costs for archives imported by Open Doors (access all program expenses).

Legal Advocacy

• US$0 spent so far out of US$1,500.00 total this year.
• Legal’s expenses consist of filing fees (access all program expenses).

Con outreach

• US$713.50 spent so far out of US$2,013.50 total this year, as of August 31, 2017.
• Our convention outreach expenses consist of preparing and shipping promotional material related to the OTW and its projects for volunteers to share with other fans at conventions. This year we've done a meet-up during San Diego Comic-Con and a technical talk about the AO3's systems infrastructure at Nine Worlds (access all con outreach expenses).

Fundraising

• US$12,669.94 spent so far out of US$27,089.94 total this year, as of August 31, 2017.
• Our fundraising expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation; thank-you gifts purchase and shipping; and the tools used to host the OTW’s membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors (access all fundraising expenses).

Administration

• US$10,893.98 spent so far out of US$44,874.98 total this year, as of August 31, 2017.
• The OTW’s administrative expenses include hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, auditing services, as well as project management, communication and accounting tools (access all admin expenses).

2017 Revenue

• The OTW is entirely supported by your donations—thank you for your generosity!
• We receive most of our donations each year in the April and October fundraising drives, which together should account for about 81% of our income in 2017. We also receive donations via employer matching programs and Amazon Smile.
• The OTW Finance team is investigating options for a sustainable plan to invest the OTW's current reserves; our forecasted income should be enough to cover this year's expenses without requiring emergency withdrawals from our reserves.
• US$191,014.11 so far (as of August 31, 2017) and US$321,531.62 projected until the end of the year.

Got questions?

If you have any questions about the budget or the OTW's finances, please contact the Finance committee. We will also be hosting an open chat to answer any questions you may have. This chat will take place in our public chatroom on October 15 from 7PM to 9PM (what time is that in my timezone?). This post will be updated with a chatroom link a few hours before the appointed time. Come chat with us, and bring your questions!

To download the OTW’s updated budget for 2017 in spreadsheet format, please follow this link.

The OTW is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects, including AO3, Fanlore, Open Doors, TWC, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on the OTW website.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8418

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8379

MTAC, an NCIS fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3). In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work on MTAC
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

MTAC is an archive for NCIS fanfiction, accepting works focusing on any character or pairing, including crossover with other fandoms. The moderator, Jessi created it in June 2006 and it has since amassed over 1000 works. Due to activity slowing since the site’s early years, Open Doors will be working with Jessi to import MTAC into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. We will begin importing works from MTAC to the AO3 after October.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on MTAC?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work. All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. Please contact Open Doors with your MTAC pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your MTAC account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the MTAC mod to confirm your claims.) Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection MTAC

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, contact the Open Doors committee. We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of MTAC on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips. We're excited to be able to help preserve MTAC!

- The Open Doors team and Jessi

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8379

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8373

I. OTW'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY

On September 5th, the OTW celebrated ten years of successfully achieving our mission to support the creation and distribution of fanworks and preserve their past. During the month of September, our Communications Committee hosted online chats with authors Lev Grossman, Martha Wells, Seanan McGuire, Christina Lauren, and Tessa Gratton, along with Young Adult Library Services Association board member Kate McNair, and romance writer and professor of cultural and gender studies, Catherine Roach. We also hosted several open house chats with OTW volunteers, a trivia contest with prizes donated by author Tamora Pierce and First Second Books, a guest post from media scholar Henry Jenkins, and a retrospective post by OTW co-founder and author Naomi Novik.

A big thank you to all of our wonderful guests, staff, and volunteers who helped make our celebration (and the last decade) a success! We hope everyone enjoyed the events and posts this month. If you missed any of September's events, we have links and transcripts to many of the posts and chats available.

II. AT THE AO3

In September, Accessibility, Design & Technology completed the move of AO3 to Rails 5.1 and Ruby 2.3.4, capping off a long process. They also grappled with login issues, rewrote several bits of code to speed up tag sets and wrangling pages, and fixed a bunch of lingering bugs, as summed up in their most recent release notes.

In recent months, Open Doors has made a great deal of progress working through a large queue of archives to import to the AO3, with a new archive import announced nearly every two weeks! Open Doors was excited to complete the imports of The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive, and Hammer to Fall, and Bang and Blame in September and to publicly announce the upcoming imports of The Alpha Gate, and a little piece of gundam wing, and soul circuit. Special thanks to Communications, Translation, and Tag Wrangling for their help in this process.

Tag Wranglers assisted Open Doors' import of new archives by searching the AO3 for existing copies of works--a manual and time-intensive process--and helping with tag mapping for several new archive imports. In addition, Tag Wrangling volunteers assisted Accessibility, Design & Technology in testing the wrangling functions for the code upgrade to Rails 5.1. Wranglers continued to handle over 500,000 tags per month.

Lastly, Abuse received over 600 tickets, and Support received over 1,300 tickets in September.

III. LEGAL ADVOCACY

In September, Legal joined allies to submit two petitions to the Copyright Office seeking exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. These petitions follow and expand upon our petition to renew the vidders’ exemption, which allows people to rip DVDs, Blu-Rays, and digital files for the purpose of using clips in noncommercial fanvids. One of the new petitions seeks a more inclusive exemption that would permit ripping audiovisual works to use short portions for criticism or comment (not limited to vids). The other seeks an exemption that would permit ripping audiovisual works to include short portions in multimedia e-books.

As part of the 10th Anniversary celebrations, Legal also held two open house chats on and fielded questions about law, fanworks, and the OTW’s legal advocacy mission. Thanks to everyone who came and chatted!

In addition, Legal is also addressing some issues with app makers who are confusing people into believing that they are affiliated with the OTW. A reminder: OTW and AO3 have not authorized any apps.

IV. GOVERNANCE

In a public meeting on September 1, Board elected the following officers for the next year: Yuechiang Luo, the current Finance chair and Treasurer, as Treasurer; Priscilla Del Cima as the new President; and Jessie Camboulives as the new Secretary. All board meeting minutes can be found here on our website.

Board has also had a busy September integrating the new Board members prior to the changeover on October 1st.

VI. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

As of the 27th of September, the OTW has 697 volunteers. Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Claire P. Baker, Danielle Strong, Jessie Camboulives.
New Committee Staff: SarkaS and 1 other Translation staff, 1 Fanlore, 1 Support.
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Adie, AkaKarasu, cali, Charlotte Im, Desipio, Diana Horton, Ellie Burrell, falsteloj, Fevrier, FurryVille, Goodwin, Hando, hmweasley, Icey, idiosincrasy, Jeniouis, Jenny Lynne, lemoncave, Marta Cardoso, Millip, Natalia Gruber, NirCele, NovaNica, Okaykay, patron, Qkat, rdv, Ron Geromy, Ruby Davis, Sang Yun Kim, SavannahM, Shotenchu, SoVeryAverageMe, Tatapioca, Tsukiko, Zoë Renee.
New Translator Volunteers: Marika

Departing Committee Staff: Kellyn (Support) and RoseJackson (Abuse).
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: IShouldBeWriting, Andy D, 1 other volunteer
Departing Translation Volunteers: ayerenne, Rana Kamal, Ha Thi Ngoc Huyen and 5 other Translation Volunteers

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8373

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8370

Do you have graphic design skills and enjoy creating social media content? Or would you like to help translate OTW/AO3 news posts?

We would like to thank everyone who responded to our previous call for Abuse Staff, Communications Staff, Systems Staff and Tag Wrangler Volunteers.

Today, we're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Fanlore Graphics Designer Volunteers - closing 11 October 2017
• Translation Committee News Translation Volunteers - closing 11 October 2017

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist volunteers -(at)- transformativeworks -(dot)- org in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Fanlore Graphics Designer Volunteers

Would you like to help Fanlore reach more fans and get new editors? Do you have graphic design skills and enjoy creating social media content? If so, we need your help! The Fanlore team needs designers to create graphics and banners for Tumblr posts, tweets, and other Fanlore announcements, to help us reach more fans and potential editors. We have a lot of amazing fan history content, but we need your help to help others find out about it. If you think you might enjoy that, come and join us!

Applications will be accepted until 11 October 23:59 UTC.

Translation Committee News Translation Volunteers

Would you like to help translate OTW/AO3 news posts? We are looking for volunteers who can translate or beta news posts within five-day deadlines. If you enjoy working collaboratively, if you're fluent in a language other than English, if you’re passionate about the OTW and its projects, and want to help us reach more fans all around the world, working with Translation might be for you!

We particularly need people for Arabic, Bengali, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Filipino, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Kiswahili, Korean, Latvian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Welsh.

(Please note that our Czech, Dutch, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish teams are not accepting new members at this time.)

Applicants may be asked to translate and correct short text samples and will be invited to a chatroom interview as part of the selection process. More information about us can be found on the Translation committee page.

Applications will be accepted until 11 October 23:59 UTC.

Apply at the volunteering page!

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8370