Archive of Our Own ^beta

Throughout the year, the OTW Finance team has continued its work of ensuring that the organization's bills are paid, tax returns filed, and standard accounting procedures met. The team also revamped the accounting structure to better reflect the OTW's financial activity. Preparation for the audit of 2022 financial statements continues!

The team has also been diligently working on the 2023 budget update and are happy to present it here: (access the 2023 budget spreadsheet for more detailed information):

2023 Expenses

Archive of Our Own (AO3)

• US$237,279.97 spent so far out of US$336,514.21 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• 47.7% of the OTW's expenses go towards maintaining the AO3. This includes the bulk of our server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance—website performance monitoring tools, and various systems-related licenses, as well as costs highlighted below (access all program expenses).
• This year's projected AO3 expenses also include US$64,000 to purchase new servers to increase the capacity of existing servers to handle expected site traffic growth through the year.

Open Doors

• US$4,081.74 spent so far out of US$4,379.42 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• Open Doors' expenses consist of hosting, backup, and domain costs for imported fanwork archives, as well as an allocated share of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Transformative Works and Cultures

• US$4,151.48 spent so far out of US$4,279.48 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• Transformative Works and Cultures' expenses are the journal's website hosting, publishing, and storage fees, as well as an allocated share of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tool (access all program expenses).

Fanlore

• US$12,575.29 spent so far out of US$17,903.54 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• Fanlore's expenses are its share of allocated server hardware, maintenance and colocation costs, as well as its portion of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Legal Advocacy

• US$491.06 spent so far out of US$5,491.06 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• Legal's expenses consist of registration fees for conferences and hearings and funds set aside for legal filings if necessary, as well as an allocated share of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Con Outreach

• US$1,564.95 spent so far out of US$3,684.95 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• Budgeted expenses include convention outreach activities on behalf of the OTW, which include convention registration fees, tabling fees, and related presentation materials (access all program expenses).

Fundraising and Development

• US$68,285.08 spent so far out of US$121,509.38 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• Our fundraising and development expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation, thank-you gift purchases and shipping, and the tools used to host the OTW's membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors, as well as an allocated share of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access fundraising expenses).

Administration

• US$69,179.75 spent so far out of US$212,988.32 total this year, as of September 30, 2023.
• The OTW’s administrative expenses include hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, and annual financial statement audits, as well as productivity, management, and accounting tools (access all admin expenses).

2023 Revenue

• The OTW is entirely supported by your donations—thank you for your generosity!
• We receive a significant portion of our donations each year in the April and October fundraising drives, which together will account for about 47% of our income in 2023. We also receive donations via employer matching programs, royalties, and PayPal Giving Fund, which administers donations from programs like Humble Bundle and eBay for Charity. If you'd like to support us while making purchases on those websites, please select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice!
• Thanks to your generosity in previous years, we have a healthy amount of money in our reserves, which we can use to pay for larger than usual purchases and keep on hand for legal contingencies. As mentioned previously, we plan to continue to upgrade the capacity of the Archive's servers, which significantly increases server equipment and server hosting expenses. As the Archive and other projects of the OTW grow, we also spend more on tools and technology to support our volunteers, such as the tools used by Support and Policy & Abuse to communicate with and aid users, further increasing expenses.
• US$621,454.87 received so far (as of September 30, 2023) and US$693,989.51 projected to be received by 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'll get back to you as soon as possible!

To download the OTW's 2023 budget in spreadsheet format, please follow this link.

On September 5, 2023 the OTW launched a user survey to coincide with its 16th anniversary. The purpose was to identify locations used by fans for fandom activities so as to better understand where they might be encountering and sharing news. In compliance with our Strategic Plan's Vision Statement, we also used this survey to establish a baseline of fans' familiarity with the OTW and its projects.

The survey asked between 16 to 35 ticky box and radio button questions (depending on what answers were given) and was open for 16 days, closing on September 21. During that time the survey was accessed 90,607 times. This may indicate that some people visited the form several times, either to start and stop a survey response or to read the opening page.

Our survey platform designated the consent form as Q1, so survey questions began with Q2. Of the 79,222 respondents to the consent form, 78,258 said Yes (98.78%) they consented to take the survey and 965 (1.22%) said no, at which point those users did not continue with the survey.

The survey report covers the following:

1) How many responses there were to each question
2) What number and percentage of respondents chose each answer, and
3) How many people skipped the question.

Below are a few examples of responses from the report:

Q2: How long have you been active in online fandom spaces?

78,258 survey takers received this question.
77,358 answered it.
1,865 exited the survey at this point.

Less than a year - 1,964 (2.54%)
1-2 years - 6,563 (8.48%)
3-5 years - 20,369 (26.33%)
6-10 years - 25,105 (32.45)
11-15 years - 13,040 (16.86%)
16-25 years - 8,690 (11.23%)
26-30 years - 1,257 (1.62%)
Over 30 years - 370 (0.48%)

Q26: Have you ever downloaded a fanwork from Archive of Our Own/AO3?

67,544 survey takers received this question.
67,475 answered it
69 exited the survey at this point.

Yes - 46,574 (69.02%)
No - 20,901 (30.98%)

Visit this link to access the rest of the report.

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.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Anh, who recently became a member of our Board of Directors.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

Disclaimer: since being elected to the OTW Board in the summer of 2023, what I do now in September 2023 is quite different from what I did as an OTW volunteer previously. I imagine it will be an ever-evolving process, even after October.

I am a Fanlore Social Media & Outreach volunteer. Fanlore is an OTW project – a wiki with a mission of fannish history preservation that anyone can easily contribute to, run by fans and for fans. Our Social Media & Outreach team works with our in-house Graphic Designers to promote Fanlore on social media, particularly Tumblr and X/Twitter. I am also an Open Doors Import Assistant, whose tasks revolve around helping Open Doors volunteers with archive imports, such as searching AO3 for duplicate fanworks or manually posting fanworks from an archive backup to AO3.

As I've mentioned before, I'm also one of the newly elected OTW Board members; training for the Board is still ongoing so I'm learning the ropes. From what I've seen so far, Board members take turns handling email duty – making sure that incoming emails are properly categorised and labelled depending on content and urgency – and sometimes we need to vote on certain requests. We also have meetings with committee chairs. The Board typically holds public meetings on Discord four times per year, with one specifically being after the election for Board turnover. At the moment of writing this, we are in the process of setting a date for our October meeting. I'm looking forward to attending, this time as one of the sitting Board members *wink*!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

For Open Doors, depending on the period, we may receive both urgent and non-urgent tasks. On Sundays, my schedule is usually free enough for me to join one of our work parties – Open Doors folks agree to be online at the same time and chat while doing our tasks. During these parties, folks may ask for help with one thing or another; sometimes it's just all chatting. At other times, I may help with searching for duplicate fanworks on AO3 when I'm available, typically on Monday evenings.

For Fanlore, we have several different rosters and deadlines for dividing tasks amongst volunteers. I often collect all the tasks I need to finish in a week and tackle them all in one or two evenings. In contrast to Open Doors tasks – which I can do sporadically in my free time – I find myself tackling Fanlore tasks more productively if I have a clear objective and deadline.

My typical week as a volunteer since September looks kinda like this, in no particular order:

• Follow policy discussions on the internal chat tool
• "Chat" with my friends about the OTW 🐧
• If my schedule permits, attend the Fanlore meeting – complete some Fanlore tasks; attend one of the Open Doors work parties – complete some Open Doors tasks
• Continue Board training
• Socialise with my OTW friends, and help with tag translation on VoldeChat

What made you decide to volunteer?

I actually mentioned this in one of my candidate posts for the OTW 2023 election. I had wanted to volunteer for the Organisation since 2020, but the positions that interested me often caught me when I was in the middle of something. For example, I skipped at least 4 Tag Wrangling calls for volunteers because I was in the process of: being laid off, moving to the other side of the country, applying for new job(s), or more recently, running for Board!

Then, in 2022, Fanlore's call for volunteers went out, and I really wanted to add OTW volunteering to my resumé. Welp, it all started because I wanted to show off some internet hobbies and volunteering (for a nonprofit founded in 2007 that has always been remote-work-based) on my job application. I also had a vague idea about trying to join the OTW Board of Directors in the future, preferably after one to two years of volunteering, so that I could give back to the Organisation. A letter of reference written with the official OTW letterhead™ signed by committee chairs had sounded cool af for my down-to-earth job application package, because fandom is such a big part of my life. Adding the OTW Board of Directors would have made it certified BAMF.

But life seldom works the way we imagine. Never would I have predicted that my plans would come to fruition so soon, with my original timeline out of the window since May. If my life was a 'time travel ruin-it' fic, I'd go back in time and smack my-2022-naive-self for even thinking that running for the OTW Board of Directors election was 'cool'. Spoiler alert: it’s not, it’s not cool at all.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Nightmare. And I don't mean it metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically or theoretically or any other fancy way. I had a nightmare about/during the OTW election, no joke. People would tell you that this is just volunteering work: you can commit what you can, how you can, and you can leave whenever if it's too much, et cetera. But my lack of sleep is real, my exhaustion is real, my stressful weeks of watching something I've grown to love go up in flames – as long-standing problems within the Organisation reached a boiling point over the summer – is absolutely real. I've seen fellow volunteers, some of them my friends, share the same suffering. It baffles me that as a registered nonprofit for more than a decade, the OTW still lacks several necessary systems to protect our volunteers.

Again, I'm still learning the ropes around Board work, but I can sense the path to rebuild trust within the Organisation – between volunteers and people in leadership positions, as well as trust from outside user bases and members toward the OTW – is going to take time, effort, and be long and challenging. I also want to echo my previous discussion about Board work and how much a singular Board member can accomplish regarding structural changes within the OTW.

Fortunately, I'm not working alone; there are fellow volunteers and newly elected Board members who are trying to achieve change. I hope that, by being on the Board, I can help inspire and facilitate positive changes, plus maintain discussions and movements surrounding worthy causes, such as the racism issues within the OTW and improvements regarding transparency in both internal and external communication.

What fannish things do you like to do?

My friends often joke about me being a person who enjoys suffering creatively, several times over. I started drawing fanart in primary school, and I posted my first fanfic on a Manga-Anime forum when I was a teenager. I also dipped my toes in fan translation when I was in high school and started learning how to make fanvids/fansubs when I was a freshman in university.

Sadly, procrastination is my best-frenemy, so the only thing I can brag about nowadays is my privated-since-2015ish WordPress blog with nearly 1 million views, where I posted all my fan translations of C-novels and fanfic. I still translate fanworks on occasion, but I'm a byelingual – when you speak (more than) two languages but slowly lose vocabulary in all of them – so I either orphan-ed or anon-ed my translated fanworks on AO3.

I love crossover and crack/rarepairs, so I mostly create fanworks for these out-of-nowhere ships that nobody ships but me and two other people on [insert the social media platforms I use but stay between me and Cthulhu].

I love Fanlore though, especially the part about building and expanding Fanlore articles about my favourite characters and ships, or on very rare occasions – favourite fandoms. One thing I have to confess: I've 'spite-edited' certain article(s) on Fanlore 120+ times because it's about something I love and I want to prop it to the sky and back. Now, I just realised that apparently my flickering self-restraint and my spiteful energy are the two major forces behind my motivation, and sometimes obsession, with certain things, welp.

Also, in case I haven't made myself clear, I obviously love love LOVE reading fanfic. Please shower me with your crackiest crossover/rarepair fic recs, thank you. I and my Cthulhu bookmark keeper will be apocalyptically grateful.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

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.

Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Spanish or Portuguese to English? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Tag Wrangling Volunteer - closing 18 October 2023 at 23:59 UTC [or after 110 applications]
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Portuguese) - closing 18 October 2023 at 23:59 UTC [or after 30 applications]
• Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Spanish) - closing 18 October 2023 at 23:59 UTC [or after 30 applications]

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 our email address 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.

Tag Wrangling Volunteer

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive, whether that's Bakugou Katsuki/Todoroki Shouto romance, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter with angst, G-rated Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam fluff, or Jeon Jungkook & Kim Taehyung | V Are Childhood Friends.

If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are in need.

Wranglers need to be fluent in English but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially af Soomaali (Somali), Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Filipino, Italiano (Italian), Polski (Polish), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), Русский (Russian), Українська (Ukrainian),ไทย (Thai) and 中文 (Chinese - we welcome all dialects)—help with other languages would be much appreciated!

Applications are due 18 October 2023 [or after 110 applications]

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Portuguese)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive, whether that's Bakugou Katsuki/Todoroki Shouto romance, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter with angst, G-rated Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam fluff, or Jeon Jungkook & Kim Taehyung | V Are Childhood Friends.

If you're a fluent Portuguese speaker who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. We’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Portuguese (we welcome all dialects!). The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Portuguese into English.

Applications are due 18 October 2023 [or after 30 applications]

Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Spanish)

The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive, whether that's Bakugou Katsuki/Todoroki Shouto romance, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter with angst, G-rated Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam fluff, or Jeon Jungkook & Kim Taehyung | V Are Childhood Friends.

If you're a fluent Spanish speaker who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.

Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Spanish (we welcome all dialects!). The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Spanish into English.

Applications are due 18 October 2023 [or after 30 applications]

Apply at the volunteering page!

If you have further questions, please contact us.

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.

Last year, the OTW Open Doors Committee announced several changes to its Fan Culture Preservation Project, including the creation of the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP). The FSHP is a partnership with fan-run preservation project Zinedom through which fanfiction and fanart originally published in print fanzines is imported to the Archive of Our Own. Fanworks can be imported to AO3 with the consent of either the creators of the works or the publisher of the fanzine in which the fanworks were published.

Since unveiling the project, Open Doors has been hard at work streamlining its workflows for the FSHP and trialing them on zine fanworks. While Open Doors has not yet begun working with any publishers to import entire fanzines, its FSHP volunteers and import assistants have been busy scanning, transcribing, and importing fanworks whose creators had previously given permission to Zinedom to import them to AO3.

Today, Open Doors is pleased to announce a list of collections that it has created to house fanworks imported through the FSHP. A collection has been created for each fanzine from which one or more fanworks have been imported, but these collections do not contain every work from each of these zines, and many so far only include one work each in cases where Open Doors only has permission to import that particular work. For full transparency, Open Doors plans to continue to announce collections as they are created that may or may not grow with additional fanworks as additional permissions are obtained from more creators in the future.

As of September 2023, Open Doors has created the following collections to represent fanzines from which it has imported works:

• Alpha Continuum
• Archives
• As I Do Thee
• Before the Glory
• Computer Playback
• Energize!
• Enterprise Incidents
• Fantasia
• Fantazy
• Farthest Star
• Fesarius
• Final Frontier
• Folk Songs For Folk Who Ain't Even Been Yet
• Galactic Discourse
• Interphase
• It Takes Time on Impulse
• K/S Relay
• Kraith Collected
• Maine(ly) Trek
• Matter/Antimatter
• Menagerie
• Metamorphosis
• Neutral Zone Outpost
• Obsc'zine
• Off the Beaten Trek
• One Trek Mind
• Organia
• Pegasus
• Pure Maple Syrup
• R & R
• Relay
• Risk
• Stardate
• Syndizine
• Ten-Thirteen
• T'hy'la
• The Holmesian Federation
• The Other Side of Paradise
• Paladin
• The Paladins Affair
• The Price and the Prize
• The Sensuous Vulcan
• The Weight Collected
• Warped Space
• Zebra Three
For answers to frequently asked questions, please see the previous announcement post. If you'd like to give Open Doors permission to import any of your fanworks that have been previously published in print fanzines, or if you have any other FSHP-related queries, please contact the Open Doors Committee. We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of any fanzines in which they may have been published on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips. Thanks for your interest in preserving fannish history for future generations of readers! - The Open Doors team

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on October 23. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

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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.

I. MILESTONES!

The OTW got to celebrate its 16th anniversary month with a new milestone at its Archive of Our Own project! On September 18th the 60,000th fandom was canonized by Tag Wrangling. That fandom is Kołysanka | Lullaby (2010) which comes to us courtesy of Fandom Kombat. In August, more than 550,000 tags were wrangled, which works out to more than 1,250 per active Tag Wrangler.

OTW's anniversary was also marked by a survey which was accessed 90,607 times. The survey ran from September 5 - 21. The Communications Committee is at work creating a public report on the results, which should be released in October. The committee also completed work on the OTW's 2022 Annual Report.

II. AT THE AO3

Open Doors announced the import of Between the Lines a JAG fanfiction archive. They also completed the import of the Weir/McKay Fanfiction Archive, a fanfiction archive for the Stargate: Atlantis ship Rodney McKay/Elizabeth Weir.

Policy and Abuse received 1876 new tickets in August and Support tickets remain very high – 3198 tickets in August, which is nearly twice what they receive in an average month. We appreciate your patience as the Support team works on these!

III. MORE PROJECT NEWS

TWC released No. 40, a general issue, on September 15. The next issue of TWC, No. 41, is a special issue titled “Chinese Fandoms”. It will appear on December 15th, 2023.

Fanlore's Stub September editing challenge was a big success! 38 participants completed at least one task, and 23 completed all five. Join in to their audio fandom themed month, Podtober, this month!

Legal joined allies in opposing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the U.S. and urged users to do the same! In addition to the U.S. laws discussed above, Legal has also been paying close attention to the UK Online Safety Bill, which passed recently. The UK Online Safety Bill—under the interpretations of that bill that they believe are reasonable and likely—will not affect the AO3, but is likely to make life difficult for some other fan spaces when it goes into effect. Our Legal team will continue to watch enforcement actions and trends carefully to see how authorities interpret the bill.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has continued to be busy training incoming Board members! They have approved a few Finance requests this month, and are gearing up for an upcoming Board meeting. Board has also begun talking with a potential DEI consulting firm, and are excited to continue moving forward with this project.

Meanwhile Strategic Planning is in the process of contacting chairs and leads to check their progress as the OTW is getting close to the 3 month deadline in the current strategic plan.

Development and Membership is setting up for the October Drive. They have new gifts in the works and can’t wait to show everyone! While they did not have any events this past month, October is Worldcon: the World Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu, China! Our local volunteers will be representing the OTW there with a table, and have stickers based on Chinese Fandom slang. If you are attending, please tag the OTW in your photos!

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

In addition to recruiting externally for the Strategic Planning committee this month, Volunteers & Recruiting started work on the OTW's 2023 Still Willing To Serve campaign and finalised selection of a conflict management tool. The committee also contacted the first batch of external HR companies, and are currently scheduling the first round of meetings.

From 25 August to 25 September, Volunteers & Recruiting received 201 new requests, and completed 166, leaving us with 123 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below).

As of 25 September 2023, the OTW has 924 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs: Joanna Pernick (Fanlore) and Noah A (Fanlore)
New Communications Volunteers: hheyhalley (Graphics Volunteer)
New Open Doors Volunteers: Bella Irvine (Import Assistant) and one Open Doors Chair Assistant
New Systems Volunteers: Albert Pedersen
New Translation Volunteers: Parul Hunnargikar, Veronika Kathi, Anna Zervos, Maria G., and 3 other Translators

Departing Committee Chairs: Rebecca Sentance (Fanlore)
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Synnie
Departing Communications Volunteers: 1 Chair Assistant
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Social Media & Outreach and 5 Graphic Designers
Departing Legal Volunteers: 1 Intern
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Bella Irvine (Administrative Volunteer)
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 12 Volunteers
Departing Support Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Systems Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Dhobi ki Kutti, Autumn, ladymarianor, Lisette, gecko, and 14 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Ridicully (Volunteer Manager) and 4 Translators
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Volunteer

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.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Brian Austin, who volunteers as a coder for our Accessibility, Design & Technology committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I’m a coding volunteer with the AD&T (Accessibility, Design & Technology) committee. We’re responsible for writing the software that runs AO3, including adding new features and squashing pesky bugs. We also test changes to the Archive’s code before they go live to users to make sure what we’ve written does what we expect it to, and doesn’t have unexpected side-effects.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Most often, I will either be writing code or testing changes before they go out to the production version of the Archive.

When I write code, either to add new features or fix old bugs, I start by looking through the AO3 Jira backlog for issues that are high priority, involve familiar parts of the code, or just sound interesting. Once I’ve found something to work on, I’ll tinker around on my laptop until things are ready for another volunteer or community contributor to review and incorporate their feedback.

For testing, I start in the same place: Jira. I use a filter to find issues that need to be tested before they go out to the Archive and go through the steps issue writers have created to test the changes. Exactly what this looks like depends on the changes; one recent example involved creating a work with loads of pipes (|) to make sure the word count doesn’t include them.

I sometimes review code as well, both to help when the more senior folks are super busy and to learn more about how Rails (the web framework the AO3 uses) works.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I started out as a community contributor after a suggestion from a friend (the same one who got me into fanworks). At the time, I was looking to contribute to an open source project and do something a little bit different than the code I wrote at work.

After about a year of writing code as a community contributor – and submitting a design proposal for a feature I really wanted – Accessibility, Design & Technology co-chair sarken messaged me to ask if I would like to join in a more official capacity. I had been wanting to get more involved, so it was an easy decision!

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

In some ways, writing code for the AO3 is a bit different than in a corporate setting. For example, “spinning up a new service to do X” is not as easy when you can’t push a button in AWS and “magically” get more computing resources or another database. That has an impact on how some features get designed, but so far it’s been a fun way to push myself to think differently.

What fannish things do you like to do?

Read lots and lots of fanfic! I’ve bonded with several friends by sharing different fics, and I may have a slight problem with subscribing to many WIPs. I read works across several fandoms, but most consistently works that take Obi-Wan Kenobi and give him a big metaphorical hug because, wow, Legends is rough to that poor soul. Check, Please! also has a special place in my heart for getting me into fandom in the first place.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

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.

Between the Lines, a JAG 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(s) on Between the Lines
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Originally founded in 2002 by Lora_8664 as a home of JAG fanfiction, it was active for almost a decade before it went silent in 2008. In 2020, ivedonestranger resurrected it as the successor admin and has kept it preserved for future generations.

With the rising costs of hosting and lower traffic, the admin has decided that AO3 would be a better home and give new life to a historic part of the internet.

The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s Online Archive Rescue Project is to assist moderators of archives to incorporate the fanworks from those archives into the Archive of Our Own. Open Doors works with moderators to import their archives when the moderators lack the funds, time, or other resources to continue to maintain their archives independently. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with moderators who want to import their archives and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Ivedonestranger to import Between the Lines into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works from Between the Lines to the AO3 after September. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the archive. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collection in the meantime.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on Between the Lines?

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. We will then permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your Between the Lines 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 Between the Lines 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 Between the Lines 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 Between the Lines

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Between the Lines 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 Between the Lines!

- The Open Doors team and Ivedonestranger

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days, on October 8. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.