Archive of Our Own ^beta

This was a landmark meeting for us - we got through the entire agenda! Several members of the committee were absent because it was a holiday weekend, and those who remained were slightly distracted by the Eurovision Song Contest, but apparently we were borne upwards on butterfly wings!

Highlights

• We discussed our volunteers process and ways of making it easier for more people to get involved. We have a lot of awesome and dedicated people on this project, but we would like to make it easier for new people to get involved and to spread the workload a bit! If you know of examples of good practice, we'd love to hear about them.


• We signed off on a whole bunch of small coding issues which have been waiting for a final bit of design. Coming soon - more control over visibility to search engines, a way of removing a co-author from a series, and a fix for the editing of some old and buggy bookmarks.

Recent updates

We deployed new code to the Archive at the end of May - see the exciting list of new features in the Release 0.7.5. This release includes our new advanced search and a revamp to the HTML parser - this stuff was tricky to test and we're proud that the small amount of support requests suggests our testers did a great job of catching all the bugs!

Archive Roadmap

We've just released an updated version of our Archive Roadmap, which gives an overview of all the amazing work which has been done so far and all the cool things we have planned in the future. We're really proud of what we've achieved - fandom power is awesome! Thanks to our brilliant translations team you can also read the Roadmap in Deutsch or Español.

If there are features you'd like to see in the Archive, then we'd love to hear about them! Please contribute your thoughts to our post on the future of the Archive!

News from our sub-committees and sister committees

• Coders are gearing up to work on a new round of projects. We're about to revamp our translations code so that it can be used, making improvements on advanced search, and thinking about priorities for new projects.


• Testers did a great job getting everything ready for the last release, and are now working through the new code on the Beta Archive to verify that it's still working well.


• Tag wranglers did an awesome job of keeping up with the wealth of new tags introduced onto the Archive during two big challenges - Final Fantasy Exchange and Remix.


• Support continue to do a great job keeping up with support requests - for one golden moment there were no unclaimed issues! They also did a great job of swinging into action when our Support form had a momentary hiccup. :D

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

A busy meeting - we stayed on an extra 45 minutes to get through as much as possible. The whole team has been working really hard lately - they are awesome. <3

Highlights

• We talked some more about multimedia on the Archive, and started figuring out ways of improving posting and browsing for non-text-based works. Actually hosting things other than text on the Archive is some way off, but in the meantime, we think we can make a much more inclusive interface!
• We started discussing requirements for server upgrades in a bit more depth - we're talking to a few people for expert advice. The Archive is hungry!
• We discussed strategies for improving accessibility and diversity on the Archive - see below more more info!

Forthcoming changes

We're currently testing a new release, which we hope to deploy to the Beta Archive this coming weekend. It includes some exciting stuff:

• The first version of our new Advanced Search! We're super-excited about this - it's something we've wanted for a long time, and with the combined efforts of Sidra and Cesy it's finally in sight! This will be version 0.1 - there are more enhancements planned - but it's already an awesome improvement on our existing search facility.
• A new HTML parser, which we hope will be faster and more efficient. The parser processes the text of the works you post to make sure that it displays properly - it's a very tricky piece of coding, but with the help of an existing code library and the ingenuity of the wonderful Elz, we think we're getting there!

Accessibility and Diversity

We've been thinking about accessibility and diversity, and ways of keeping these at the forefront of our development. We've been talking to the developers at Dreamwidth about their experience in this area, as we think this is something they do well - thanks very much to Denise for her awesome advice!

We're integrating a few new things into our testing process to make it easier for us to catch any issues which might have an impact on accessibility. We're improving our automated testing, which will help us check that things on the Archive are basically functioning, freeing up our testers to do more work on more nuanced things. One area which we could use more help with is in testing how the Archive works with assistive technology - if you are a user of assistive tech and you'd like to join our testing team, you'd be warmly welcomed!

This is an area that's really important to us, and we welcome feedback from users. We're currently working on an accessibility and diversity policy which will state our core ethos; the most important message we'd like to get out is that we are willing to listen! If there's an area you think we could improve on, then please let us know via the Support and Feedback form - we always do our best to learn from user feedback.

News from our sub-committees and sister committees

• Coders have been working hard on projects big and small. We've seen some great contributions from newer coders as well as some big projects from our senior coders - they are all fab!
• Testers are currently working their way through all the new code on our Test Archive. They're reading lots of works in order to spot any weirdnesses with our new HTML parser and working through the list of new code to see it's all working well.
• Tag wranglers have decided on a new tag format for book fandoms, based on popular demand from users. From now on, the canonical tags (the ones we show on the fandoms page) for specific series will take the format 'Poirot - Agatha Christie', while the metatag (which covers all works by a single author) will have the format 'CHRISTIE Agatha - Works'. This should make things easier to find in the fandoms list and filters - you can still enter whatever you like on your own works and it will be connected up to the canonical tags.
• Support have been doing a phenomenal amount of work - there are currently just 21 open support issues, only 3 of which have not yet been worked on!

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

This was another endurance meeting, with the all-org meeting coming immediately afterwards, but we worked valiantly through our list of old business!

Highlights

• We talked about the next steps for fanart on the Archive, and started looking into server capacity. In the coming weeks we'll be breaking tasks down into 'stuff we can do now' and 'long term plans'.
• We got very excited about the new Vidding Roadmap and started talking about some initial plans for embedding vids on the Archive.
• We reviewed some proposed improvements to the way chapters are managed and the way works are marked as 'in progress' or 'complete'. Coming soon - ways of marking sections in your work as prologues, epilogues, interludes, etc!

Upcoming cool stuff

• We're currently working on more improvements to our HTML parser (that helps control the way your work looks in the Archive) - we've deployed a new version to our Test Archive and are testing it extensively to work out any bugs.
• We have a team working hard on developing a new Advanced Search interface, and we're hoping to have the first part of that soon!

Vidding fundraiser!

Over on Dreamwidth, Collswan and a group of other vidding enthusiasts have launched the AO3 for vidders fundraiser. They're raising money for the OTW to help support our goal of establishing a home for fanvids! \0/ (Money raised will not be specifically dedicated to one project - OTW finances are managed as a whole - but additional money in our pot makes it a lot easier for us to move forward with confidence on resource-heavy projects like hosting vidding). We're really excited and pleased that people out there want to support our projects like this - drop by and check them out!

News from our sub-committees and sister committees

• Coders are taking advantage of a period without any urgent deadlines to work on some bigger projects, including the Advanced Search and new HTML parser. They're also working through lots of smaller bugs.
• Testers are reading lots of works on our Test Archive in order to spot anything weird the new HTML parser is doing. It's a hard job, reading awesome fic, but someone has to do it.
• Tag wranglers are working on a new policy for the names of book fandoms in response to user feedback. Our current system uses the author's family name and the series name, e.g. 'Rowling - Harry Potter'. Lots of users have told us they want to see the whole author name, and now we have longer tag limits this is possible, so we're contemplating a switch. A debate is currently raging about the merits of Family Name, Given Name vs Given Name, Family Name, and other format details! Stay tuned for more news.
• Support have been working incredibly hard on a reduced team, as illness and real life pressures have taken a few people out of action. Our skeleton staff have consistently managed to keep the number of open bugs below 100 (this includes bugs which they have responded to but which need more work) - we think that's pretty impressive!

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

My family claimed my attention this week (apparently there is a limit to how many times chairing a meeting can be used as a reason to be missing from Family Events) so the most awesome Enigel stepped up to chair in my stead. <3 Quite a few other people were claimed by Real Life, so it was a quiet meeting for once!

Highlights

• Bingeling did a heroic job of collating all the feedback about fanart on the Archive and we starting discussing what we'll need to do to make these dreams a reality. There's a lot of work that needs to be done first, but we're really excited to be moving forward on this.
• We talked about ways of making it easier to browse for works in a particular language - there are currently thirteen different languages represented on the Archive, but it's not too obvious how to find them (also, at the moment the languages page is a bit broken! We'll be fixing the layout in the next deploy). We'll be adding some more options for this soon.

Recent changes

We deployed Release 0.7.3.7. to the Archive with a couple of critical fixes - the option to hide warnings and tags by default should now be working properly (it was getting stuck in our cache) and you should be able to add other users as co-authors. Hurrah for Elz who coded and deployed these fixes.

Deploy schedule

• April 18th: We deployed a bunch more code to our Test Archive for our testers to bang on.
• May 2nd: If all goes well, we'll be deploying the new code to the Beta Archive in two weeks time! If our testers are feeling active and they don't discover any hideous bugs, it may even make it sooner.

Cool stuff coming up

There are loads of small enhancements in the new code we're testing now:

• A way of marking a work as a translation, and linking to the original work.
• A way of turning off admin messages so that people who aren't interested in getting our release notes can be left in peace.
• Comment notifications for admin posts (this is only really exciting to me, but I am VERY EXCITED).
• A basic bookmarklet for posting bookmarks of works not hosted on the Archive.
• A fix for a bug which makes the sort criteria on index pages invisible to screen-readers.

Public service announcement - problems importing from Fanfiction.net

We're experiencing an ongoing issue with importing works from Fanfiction.net. Unfortunately, the request from our server is getting 'stuck' on the way to theirs, which means that imports hang for a long time and then time out. We're looking into solutions, but because this is caused by a server routing issue and not by our code there's not much we can do. We're very sorry about the inconvenience! For more information on this and other bugs you can always check out our Known Issues page.

News from our sub- and sister committees

Everyone continues to work incredibly hard and to contribute in many awesome ways. Go team!

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

This was a shorter meeting than usual, because we moved some meetings about to allow for the holiday weekend without messing up our schedule for the rest of the month. However, this team is so keen that we overran our planned hour!

Highlights

• We're currently soliciting feedback from fanartists about what features they'd like to see on the Archive. If this is an issue you care about, please come and tell us about your dream Archive.
• We had a long and impassioned discussion about which things should be bookmarkable on the Archive, and decided that it should be possible to bookmark users and collections as well as works. (In the future, we'll also be introducing ways to subscribe to different things on the Archive, but we think there is still a use for bookmarks.)
• We looked at a preliminary design for a 'Light' style on the Archive, which will let users strip out styling on other users works. When we get this working right we'll be able to expand the styling options on the Archive, so people will be able to have their bright pink fonts without forcing them on other people.

Recent changes

We deployed Releases 0.7.3.5 and 0.7.3.6 on Sunday 11th April - check out the Release Notes for these. They included quite a few exciting things:

• First commits from coder Kendappa, who recently rejoined the project after a break.
• Lots more code for challenges - it's now possible to match up participants in a gift exchange challenge and have the Archive send out their assignments automatically! Anyone who has run a big challenge should be getting excited right about now! Remix Redux are trying out this code RIGHT NOW, and we'll soon be posting a tutorial to help other people use this awesome new feature.
• The ability to list a work not hosted on the Archive as an inspiration.

Deploy schedule

We are anticipating another deploy today or tomorrow to fix a couple of bugs: there are currently known issues with adding co-authors (it doesn't work!) and hiding/showing warnings (our caching is interfering with this feature).

We haven't set a date for our next real deploy to Beta, but we expect it to be within a few weeks, as our coders have been very busy! People who don't like getting email messages about our new releases will be happy to learn that one of the changes waiting to be tested is the ability to turn off admin messages - so you'll be able to enjoy regular batches of new code without us spamming you.

News from our subcommittees and sister committees!

• Coders have been crazily active - after a couple of weeks in commit freeze (where we limited new code to things that were urgently needed for the upcoming deploy) they are back in force! We're especially happy to be welcoming lots of new coders, who are already getting stuck in and tackling a few bugs.
• Testers put in some amazing work testing the massive amounts of new code relating to challenges. New testers Kylie and Tai pitched in to do lots of work on this, with the help of some awesome folk form other teams. Many fake challenges have been created, and many cracktastic assignments issued.
• Tag wranglers are still working on updating their policies, and working to keep up with the constant flow of new tags on the Archive. They are quiet but awesome!
• Support have been doing a great job responding to user problems and suggestions. They respond to all feedback submitted via our Support and Feedback form as quickly as possible. If you don't hear back from us within a few weeks, it probably means that something has gone astray - if you're concerned, please do contact us again.
• Systems do lots of work with a tiny amount of people! The lovely Sidra (who usually keeps the Archive running smoothly) couldn't make the last deploy, so Arrow stepped in to help out - thanks, Arrow!

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

This was a bit of a gruelling meeting, because it was held immediately after our All-Org meeting (two hours of hearing about the awesome things going on in other teams \0/). Because my team are totally insane extremely dedicated, we then had an extra-long meeting. We overwork because we care, people.

Highlights

• We're currently reviewing the Archive FAQ to ensure it's clear, accessible and comprehensive. The best people to tell us whether it does its job are the people who will use it - you, the Archive users! If you'd like to help us out, check out our post on how to help review the Archive FAQ.
• We are currently reviewing the Archive of Our Own roadmap and updating it. The roadmap maps out the main features which will be built into the Archive, and shows roughly where they fit into our plans. The version currently available to the public is a bit outdated, so once we finish revising it we'll post a shiny new copy for people to see and comment on. :D
• Archive user punk has created a Firefox search plugin for the Archive. (Thanks, punk!) We're planning to create a new page where we can feature cool stuff created by users \0/.
• We launched our new import from brain feature on the Archive - oh, how we wish it were real!

Recent changes

We just deployed a 'small' release of 50 issues to the main Archive - check out Release notes for Release 0.7.4.3. Highlights in this release include the new plain text skin (yeay Cesy \0/) and commits from new coders Amy, queenypolita and linbot. Many thanks to all the coders and testers for the increible hard work that went into this release.

If you'd like to help check that all this new code works, please check out our post on verifying new code.

Deploy schedule

• Sunday 4 April: We hope to deploy the next block of code for Collections and Challenges to our Test archive.
• Saturday 10 April: All being well, we will deploy the new Collections and Challenges code to the main Archive - this will include the ability to match compatible participants in exchange challenges.

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

We skipped a meeting update on account of being very busy! However, we've been getting through lots of stuff, and you may have noticed a *cough* small deploy and its associated documentation. I took a week off to prepare for my PhD viva, but my awesome team definitely did NOT slow down in my absence *loves*

Recent changes

We deployed lots of new things in Release 0.7.3, followed by a few crucial bugfixes in Release 0.7.3.1 and 0.7.3.2.

Our big deploy included a lot of front-end changes which should make the Archive much more stable and accessible. As always, if you notice a problem then please let us know via the support and feedback form. We're especially keen to deal with any issues which impact on accessibility - it's hard for us to test every possible scenario, especially where assistive technology is concerned, so please don't be shy about letting us know if something isn't working for you.

We're experiencing a known issue with our new HTML parser, which tidies up your HTML for display. The last update made it much faster and less memory-intensive, but it also inadvertantly introduced a couple of bugs in display, notably a problem with it 'eating' white space (OOPS). Our fabulous coders are working hard to fix this - please bear with us in the meantime!

Deploy schedule

We're hoping to deploy the code needed for matching participants in gift exchange challenges in the next two weeks - our stalwart team of testers are standing by waiting for the wonderful Naomi to finish coding!

Cool stuff coming up

• The new collections and challenges code which will (we hope) complete the functionality needed to run exchange-type challenges on the Archive! We're excited to be working with the mods of multi-fandom challenge Remix Redux who have bravely volunteered to be our test case for this part of the code.
• Once the exchange challenge code is in, we'll be turning our attention to building the necessary code for other types of challenges. Users who have been following us for a while may remember us collecting scenarios for different kinds of collection and challenge - we're using these to help us develop tools which will cater to a wide variety of fannish events.
• Skins! We've been promising them for a long while, and we finally signed off on a beautiful design for them. Now we just have to snare a couple of coders to implement them... we're hoping this will come soon!
• Advanced search and browse! This is a big job, so it will be a while before we can actually implement it, but the wonderful Sidra is pulling together all our design and planning on this and putting together a revamped search and browse functionality. When it comes it should improve performance as well as usability, so we're pretty excited to have someone who's able to tackle it!

New tutorials for the Archive!

You may have noticed that we posted a few tutorials recently offering guidance about new features on the Archive. This is something we're hoping to do more of in future, and to make them easier to find we've created a new Tutorials section on the Archive FAQ. If there's a topic you'd particularly like a tutorial for, please let us know! Likewise, if you have written a tutorial you'd like to share, send us a link and we'll consider adding it to the site.

News from our subcommittees and sister committee

I'm so proud of the dedication and hard work of everyone involved with the Archive. <3

• Coders are hard at work fixing bugs and beginning on the implementation of the next round of cool stuff! We're also working on improving training for new people.
• Testers have been working hard to get all the latest code tested and onto the live Archive. They'd love some help verifying the latest code to hit the Archive - if you think you could help then please check out our post on verifying new code.
• Tag wranglers have been running around in a very excited manner celebrating the introduction of metatags. They're now buckling down to rewrite policies taking into account the new code, and recategorising tags. \0/
• Support (our sister committee) deserve a big shout-out for their hard work keeping users informed and speedily responding to problems - they've answered a phenomenal amount of requests in the last month. AD&T are super-grateful for their work communicating with users and letting us know about priorities for bugfixes.

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

It's been a busy month, inside and outside the OTW, which is why this meeting report is *cough* a little belated. In AD&T we've been continuing to do lots of work on getting our house in order, liaising with other committees, and overseeing the CRAZY amounts of work done by our subcommittees \0/

Deploy schedule

Our deploy schedule has been shifting around due to the immense amounts of work done by our coders! However, we deployed lots and lots of new code to our Test archive on the 5th March \0/ More News about its progress to the main archive site in the next meeting report.

Cool admin stuff

An intrepid group of AD&T-ers met with Support and other interested people to talk about our process for managing our Google code issues and feature requests. This sounds dull as ditchwater, but in practice it should mean that we do a much better job of keeping track of bugs and features when they're being passed from one team to another, which means everything should run a lot faster (good news for our users). Even more excitingly, we started drafting out a plan for a more public feature requests interface, so that users can give us more input on what they want (you'll still be able to communicate privately if you prefer).

Coders

Our coders continue to do a phenomenal amount of work - although it's been a while since we dropped new code, this is because they have been engaged in massive feats of coding which affect huge swathes of the Archive and had to be bundled together. It's coming very soon - watch out for more news.

We've welcomed several new coders - Ronan, amc and Ira all committed their first new code - and we're looking at our training to see how we can make it easier for more people to get involved.

Tag wranglers

Our brilliant new tag wrangler leads, Renay and dizmo, have been working like crazy to manage their giant group of volunteers and improve the way tag wrangling works. They've also been gearing up for the exciting new tag wrangling code interface, which includes lots of things that will make for much better organisation - coming SOON to an archive near you!

Testers

Our testers have been conducting a massive regression test (where they check the whole Archive to see nothing hinky has crept in), while waiting for the new code to give them even more work to do!

Cool stuff on the way

• Tag only edit - Everyone has been wanting this for a LONG time and it's finally becoming a reality!
• User icons - Another thing we've been wanting for FOREVER and will finally be getting!
• Accessible code - The big front end changes which have been made by the lovely lim involved a lot of rewriting code to make it validate. This means it will be a lot more accessible, and if you're someone who's been frustrated by some of the oddities which had crept in to our front end code, the upcoming revisions should make you happy. Users of assistive technology will be especially benefited.

It's wonderful working with this amazing, dedicated team of people - even when it seems like we're being quiet, there's always a hive of activity underneath the surface.

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. As a trial, we're opening comments on the mirrored versions of these posts (although we may switch back if it turns out to hinder things). Everyone is welcome to this party!