Archive of Our Own

As people get ready to celebrate the end of 2017 in one way or another, we'd like to thank our users for their patience and supportive comments as we navigated downtimes, spam problems, and bumpy infrastructure upgrades together. We accomplished a lot of what we had hoped to tackle this year, and added a lot more to the to-do list for next year. Thanks for sticking with us!

As you might know, we've had to disable invite requests for existing users (due to abuse by spammers) and decrease the number of invites we automatically send out from our queue (ditto). As a result, people have had to wait to create an AO3 account for longer than we'd like. So, for the holidays, we're giving 1 shareable invite to every existing account that:

• currently doesn't have any invites, and
• is older than half a year, and
• has left at least 10 comments, or posted at least 1 work

(Sorry, we had to ensure we don't accidentally let the spammers invite all their spammer friends, so some restrictions apply.)

Check out our FAQ (available in a whole lot of languages) to read up on how to send an invite. You can either email the invite code, or copy-paste the code to share it with people through other means. In that case, our FAQ contains some information on how to use an invite code to create an account.

Happy gifting!

All Things Rat, an archive focused on the X-Files character Alex Krycek, 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 works on All Things Rat
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

All Things Rat is an archive which includes fanfiction about Alex Krycek, a character from the X-FIles. The fanfiction on All Things Rat is moving to AO3 so that it can be available to the widest possible audience for the longest possible time, no longer reliant solely on one person to maintain the server and archive website.

Open Doors will be working with the moderator, alice ttlg, to import the fanfiction on All Things Rat into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. We will begin importing works from All Things Rat to the AO3 after January.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on All Things Rat?

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 All Things Rat 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 All Things Rat 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 All Things Rat 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 All Things Rat

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 All Things Rat 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 All Things Rat!

- The Open Doors team and alice ttlg

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 Mandy Gooch, who volunteers for the Strategic Planning Committee.

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

As a Strategic Planning (SP) committee member, I am involved in helping to grow and develop the OTW as an organization through implementation of its strategic planning goals. We do this work so that the OTW can keep focused on particular things we want to have happen in the future, and so that we'll have the guidelines and tools we need to help that happen.

Some of the ways we'll do this is to make sure volunteers understand their roles and how to do them, to make sure our board and the leaders of our committees can hand their roles on to others when they need to change their positions or move on, and to make it as easy and clear as possible to do the different tasks that the OTW, as a non-profit, needs to do to be accountable to its users and supporters. My committee doesn't come up with these plans so much as it helps all the different parts of the OTW come up with them. We help them decide what's truly important for both their committee and the OTW as a whole, and then help make sure that progress is getting made by all parts of the organization since some groups are farther along in some details than others. Because Strategic Planning's mission is about the future, we work most closely with the Board and the chairs of the OTW committees who will guide us there, and help them think about what's coming when they're usually busy dealing with today's problems.

I am also a Tag Wrangling volunteer, which is where I get to dabble in the fandom side of things a bit more. It's a lot of fun and is a way that I can be more connected to fandom without actually creating fanworks. It's also a really great way to find new authors in AO3, which is fantastic on the one hand...and also dangerous on the other since my To Read list keeps growing and growing!

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

I typically put in a few hours each week for Strategic Planning -- between 3 to 5 hours depending on what is happening in the committee. I usually meet for two hours each week with everyone in the committee to keep up-to-date on our current projects and discuss future goals. Right now SP Staffers are very involved in the implementation of the Strategic Plan. This involves at least two SP committee members signing up to be implementation monitors during a month; we call ourselves ImpMons (yep, just like the Digimon). As an ImpMon I am usually communicating with other committees about upcoming goals, tracking their progress, assisting committees in understanding a goal or meeting a deadline, and updating Board about the OTW's overall progress. ImpMons also host Open Office Hours for our staff/volunteers to attend each month in our internal chat channel. It is a great way for committees to learn more about upcoming or current goals and to get feedback.

Outside of ImpMon duties, my week may include meetings for projects the Strategic Planning committee might be working on -- we have to meet the goals of the Strategic Plan, too, so we work on our committee's goals at the same time as monitoring implementation. It might sound like a lot of meetings, but honestly it flies by since the work is rewarding and my other Strategic Planning staff are so much fun to work with on projects!

I also try to fit in a few hours each week for wrangling tags in my fandoms and working on a wrangling project for MCU.

January will mark the one-year anniversary of the Strategic Plan. What will that mean for the OTW?

I think it means we've hit a great milestone and made some real strides into completing our Strategic Plan. I'm so excited to see our one year mark coming up! The OTW is moving forward and growing even stronger as an organization and this is thanks to all of the hard work every committee has put into completing their goals.

I honestly have to say that when I first started in the Strategic Planning committee about 2.5 years ago, I was pretty intimidated when thinking about the implementation process for this plan. However, that was newbie!me being nervous. Working with everyone on this has been a great adventure and I've learned so much about strategic planning, volunteering, and working in an international organization. Everyone here is so dedicated and passionate about what they do in the OTW and it is really inspiring to see that level of commitment! Personally, I think reaching one year has been a great time to reflect on where we were, where we are, and where we are going. I am very glad I can take part in all of this.

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

Meeting new people and learning more about what everyone does in the OTW. It takes me a little while to open up in a group and I think volunteering for the OTW has really helped me grow in that area. I've made some great friends in my time here. It's also really interesting to learn about each committee and how they contribute to the organization. Strategic Planning has a very different process compared to, say, Tag Wrangling or Systems. Every committee contributes a lot to the functionality of the OTW and understanding how everyone works together has not only been important as an SP volunteer, but also as someone who appreciates and strives for collaboration.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read a lot of fanfiction in my spare time and years ago I used to write a little here and there. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or motivation to write fanfiction right now, so I consume a lot to make up for it. I also enjoy conventions and cosplay. Creating costumes has been a passion since I was a kid and I really enjoy making a costume and interacting with other fans at conventions.

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 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.

I. MORE WAYS TO SUPPORT THE OTW!

The OTW is excited to introduce an additional way to donate as of November 2017: We're now a Humble Store charity! Are you shopping for games, books, comics, or software? If so, shop at The Humble Store or purchase a Humble Bundle, select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice at checkout, and the OTW will get a portion of the proceeds.

Humble Bundle lets you pay what you want for a selection of games, books, comics, and software, while the Humble Store acts as a hub for users to purchase games for multiple platforms. In both cases, you can select an amount to go to the OTW in support of its projects. Content availability may vary depending on your country, but there’s an incredible selection to choose from. Just remember to select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice at checkout, and we will receive a portion of the proceeds. As always, your privacy is guaranteed!

(Donations the OTW receives as a result of Humble Bundle or Humble Store purchases will not make you a member of the OTW. If you wish to become a member, please donate via our donation form.)

Thank you so much for your support! And kudos to the Finance committee for launching this new relationship!

II. AT THE AO3

In November, Accessibility, Design and Technology and Abuse successfully combatted an avalanche of spam works through the deployment of several new anti-spam measures and improvements to the admin interface. This allowed the reopening of the AO3 invitation queue after a forced closing of several weeks. Using the spam detection tool to automatically hide works flagged as spam, with Abuse staffers monitoring the hidden works to unflag legitimate fanworks, has had a promising success rate so far. Users should start seeing less spam in their fandoms, and what does make it through should be dealt with in minutes instead of hours.

On a related note, the Webs committee has also (fortunately) seen a sharp dip in spam on the OTW website as of late.

At the end of November, Support received 1,686 tickets in one day when the old search engine went down. Accessibility, Design & Technology resolved the immediate problems and are working to deploy the new version of the search engine--which includes improvements to the filtering interface--as soon as possible, even while necessary server upgrades are ongoing.

The Open Doors committee continued to be busy during November, completing imports of The Alpha Gate and The Fandom Haven Story Archive! New import announcements were made for Glass Onion, The Boy / Michael Shanks, and the Dana Knight Memorial Archive.

Lastly, Systems have bought new servers and are working to set them up, and ticket numbers continue to rise, with Support receiving an unusually high 2,954 tickets in November, and Abuse receiving over 1,200 tickets.

III. LEGAL ADVOCACY

As part of the Legal committee's petition for clearer and more inclusive legal exemptions to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, they put out a call for stories to help the OTW fight for fair use. The stories collected will support Legal's petition seeking exemptions that would allow fans to rip clips from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and digital downloads, not only to make noncommercial remixes like fanvids, but also to include clips and stills in fanfiction. These expanded and clarified exemptions would build further on the successful renewal of the vidders’ exemption to the DMCA in October.

IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

As of the 27th of November, the OTW has 671 volunteers. \o/

Recent personnel movements handled by Volunteers & Recruiting are listed below:

New Committee Chairs: Rebecca Sentance (Fanlore)
New Committee Staff: 1 Communications staffer
New Fanlore Volunteers: Nat Bauer, fie, fictionforlife, and 3 other volunteers
New Translator Volunteers: Gaël, Carrochan, MJ Martinez, Poro, KeepCalmAndPlayDumb, Hanna Alexander, Halley, Adi M., Nilv, and 5 others
Departing Committee Staff: Atiya Hakeem (Lady Oscar) (Finance), and 2 other Finance staffers, Madoc Cage (Translation), Stephanie Godden (Elections), 1 Abuse staffer, Nemopedia (Legal), Morgan (Support), and 1 other Support staffer
Departing AD&T Coder Volunteers: dense.lancer, and 3 other volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: AParticularlyLargeBear, Chiralitivity, Amanda Triplett, MichelleMS, Llwyden ferch Gyfrinach, Tari, Avery, supergreak, pedanther and 39 other volunteers
Departing Translation 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.

InDeath.net Fan Fiction, an In Death 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 InDeath.net Fan Fiction
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

InDeath.net Fan Fiction is a forum and archive for fanfiction about the In Death book series by Nora Roberts (writing as J.D. Robb). The InDeath.net forum has closed, but the moderator wants to ensure that the fanfiction on the forum and archive will still be available.

Open Doors will be working with AJ to import InDeath.net Fan Fiction into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works from InDeath.net Fan Fiction to the AO3 after December 4th.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on InDeath.net Fan Fiction?

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 InDeath.net Fan Fiction 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 InDeath.net Fan Fiction 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 InDeath.net Fan Fiction 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 InDeath.net Fan Fiction

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 InDeath.net Fan Fiction 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 InDeath.net Fan Fiction!

- The Open Doors team and AJ

In recent weeks, OTW Legal has gotten some questions about net neutrality in the United States. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should treat all data on the Internet the same way, without discriminating or charging differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. There's been some recent activity surrounding net neutrality regulations that fans may want to know about.

Last week, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a proposal that would severely reduce net neutrality requirements in the United States. The FCC is currently in charge of regulating broadband internet access services in the U.S., and FCC rules currently forbid ISPs from, for example, blocking or "throttling" access to lawful content, prioritizing access to content based on payment, or requiring consumers to pay more for access to certain content or services. The new FCC proposal would retain existing transparency rules, but would roll back prohibitions--effectively permitting ISPs to engage in blocking, throttling, paid prioritization, and other interfering behaviors.

The FCC's proposed order has not gone into effect yet; the FCC Commissioners will discuss the proposal at their December meeting. Despite widespread and vocal opposition to the proposal, most expect that it will pass in mid-December.

What would this mean for fans?

It's difficult to predict exactly what these changes would mean, because it's difficult to predict what ISPs will do when the regulations change. Many major ISPs have pledged not to block or throttle content, but the law wouldn't prohibit them from changing their minds. Some ISPs may also decide to offer tiered pricing that would, for example, charge different amounts for access to different parts of the Internet, or create "fast lanes" and "slow lanes."

Essentially, the changes would allow ISPs to do whatever they think will be most profitable for them, which may mean (for example) giving preferred treatment to sites or services that are affiliated with the ISP or pay the ISP. This could make it more expensive for consumers to gain access to the full range of Internet services and content, and could make life harder for small sites or startups. ISPs would have to disclose when they do such things, but there would be little meaningful mechanism for preventing them, other than market forces.

Most of the effects would probably be for users in the U.S., although decisions about Internet in the United States tend to have a broad impact on access even for non-U.S. residents. Any law affecting internet access may also have an impact on works hosted by AO3, information available on Fanlore, and the OTW's day-to-day work of preserving fan works and supporting fan culture.

For these reasons, the OTW supports net neutrality and OTW Legal personnel have submitted comments to the FCC in support of net neutrality. We will continue to be involved as opportunities arise.

What can fans do about it?

Although it is likely that the FCC will adopt this proposal, the FCC is not the last word on the matter. The FCC must submit its rules to the U.S. Congress, which can overturn them. Therefore, one thing that fans can do--especially fans in the U.S.--is contact their Congresspeople to let them know that they should care about net neutrality. Knowing that net neutrality is important to their constituents, and having concrete examples about why constituents care about net neutrality, will make a difference in whether Congress decides to overturn the FCC's plan. A coalition of Internet-focused nonprofits led by Fight for the Future has created tools to make it easier to contact your Congresspeople about net neutrality, and has also planned some other actions. See their "Battle for the Net" site here.

In addition, many of the OTW's allies, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, are active in promoting net neutrality. Interested fans can follow their activities and get involved through them.

We at the Organization for Transformative Works are excited to introduce an additional way to support us: we're now one of the charities you can select when purchasing a Humble Bundle or through the Humble Store!

Humble Bundle lets you pay what you want for a selection of games, books, comics, and software, while the Humble Store acts as a hub for users to purchase games for multiple platforms. In both cases, you can select an amount to go to the OTW in support of its projects. Content availability may vary depending on your country, but there's an incredible selection to chose from! When you use the Humble Store to purchase games, or buy a Humble Bundle, select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice at checkout, and we will receive a portion of the proceeds. As always, your privacy is guaranteed!

(Donations the OTW receives as a result of Humble Bundle or Humble Store purchases will not make you a member of the OTW. If you wish to become a member, please donate via this form.)

Thank you so much for your support!

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.

Do you use screencaps or video clips in your fanfiction? If so, the OTW needs your help!

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") makes it illegal to rip from DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, and many other encrypted technologies. The OTW has won a legal exemption that makes it legal to rip DVDs, Blu-Rays, and digital downloads to make fair uses for the purpose of noncommercial remix videos, like fanvids.

But the DMCA still blocks fans’ ability to make fair uses of video in other contexts, such as fanfiction. Although fair use law would often allow fans to incorporate video clips or stills into their fanfiction (making it what the law calls a "multimedia e-book") the DMCA restricts fans’ ability to gain access to video material for that purpose.

What the OTW is Doing About This

Fortunately, the law provides for a rule-making process every three years where the Copyright Office can recommend exemptions for authors to access the works they need, which the OTW has participated in. There is currently an exemption for e-books, but it only applies to nonfiction multimedia e-books offering film analysis.

A group of allies led by the OTW and the Authors Alliance are fighting for a modified exemption that will allow all authors of e-books, including fanfiction creators, to gain access to the clips they need from DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and digital streaming services.

How You Can Help

Share your stories with us! If you're a fanwork creator who's needed to rip digital content for use in your fanfiction, or if you anticipate finding yourself in that situation in the future, you can help us demonstrate why there's a need for this exemption.

The Copyright Office places an emphasis on stories from authors who have been harmed by the DMCA in the past or are likely to be harmed by the DMCA in the future, so please take our 5-minute survey and share your experience!

The deadline for us to submit our evidence is soon, so please fill out the survey by December 4, 2017. And even if you have no story to contribute, please spread this message to others. Every story helps.

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.

In these releases, we implemented several anti-spam measures, fixed some problems with our invitation queue, and added clarifying text to the site when the invitation queue is temporarily suspended.

Credits

• Coders: Ariana, Elz, Naomi, redsummernight, Sarken, Tal Hayon
• Code reviewers: Ariana, james_, Sarken, redsummernight, tickinginstant
• Testers: james_, Elz, Lady Oscar, mumble, Sammie

Details

Invitations

• [AO3-4222] - When the invitation request queue was suspended it left no clear indication anywhere on the site of how the Archive invitation system works or that it was currently shut off. We have now added explanatory text to the appropriate places and separated the form to add yourself to the queue from the form that lets you check your place in the queue.
• [AO3-5235] - It was previously possible to add yourself to the invitation request queue by circumventing the user interface. We've now closed that tricksy loophole.
• [AO3-5205] - We have put in checks to prevent adding variations of the same email address (e.g. the same name with periods in different places) to the invitation request queue.
• [AO3-5243] - Deleting email addresses from the queue was a slow and annoying process, which we have now made less annoying and less slow for our Abuse personnel.
• [AO3-5249] - Admins can now search the email addresses in the queue.
• [AO3-4971] - If an admin tried to delete the same invitation request twice (e.g. with the help of browser tab shenanigans), they would get an unhelpful error 404. It now displays a more helpful message.

Spam

• [AO3-4331] - We have added improvements to our anti-spam tool, making it possible to train the algorithm and spot more spam works as they're posted (and leave non-spam works alone).
• [AO3-4200] - We now add the rel="nofollow" attribute to all links inside works and comments to discourage spammers from using the Archive to improve their search result standings.
• [AO3-5234] - Site admins can now toggle an option that will automatically hide works that our spam detector has classified as spam. Hidden spam works can then be reviewed and, if not spam, be unhidden. \o/
• [AO3-5251] - If a work gets hidden as spam, the creator will receive a notification in which we assure them that we review our software's decisions and will unhide the work if it turns out to be not actually spam. (If it is, it will be summarily deleted and GOOD RIDDANCE.)
• [AO3-5247] - Two kinds of notifications that were theoretically supposed to be triggered by declined invitation requests/spam works were not actually being sent (and instead cluttered up our error logs). They will now be sent in the appropriate cases.

Automated Tests

• [AO3-5240] - Completely unrelated to any spam concerns, one of our automated tests broke when daylight savings ended in the US, and we had to reapply a fix that had previously taken care of the problem. Excitement!
• [AO3-3848] - We've added a test to check that accounts block access after repeated password failures.
• [AO3-4855] - Our test coverage for gift exchanges has been improved by some rspec additions!

Known Issues

See our Known Issues page for current issues.

For the past several weeks, the Archive of Our Own has been dealing with an unusually high volume of spam works created to advertise live streams of sporting events. We've taken a number of steps to deal with these spam works, and in the next few days, we'll take one more: automatically hiding works that our spam detection service believes are spam.

We've been using this spam detector behind the scenes for a while now, and it has a 99.3% accuracy rate when it comes to identifying spam works and comments on the Archive. This means there is a small chance some non-spam works will be incorrectly marked as spam.

If your work is marked as spam, we'll send you an email to let you know. Our Abuse team will review your work as soon as possible and unhide it if it isn't a spam advertisement. Works will not be reviewed for other Terms of Service violations while in the spam queue.

We apologize to any users whose works are incorrectly marked as spam and to everyone who is currently waiting for us to review and fulfill their invitation request. We realize this situation is frustrating, but these steps are necessary to help us deliver a spam-free experience to all our users.

Thank you for bearing with us, and if you see any spam that has escaped our net, please report it to Abuse!

Update on November 24, 00:40 UTC: Automatic hiding of spam works is now enabled.

The Boy / Michael Shanks, an archive for fanfiction about any character portrayed by Michael Shanks, 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 The Boy / Michael Shanks
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

The Boy / Michael Shanks fanfiction archive is a multi-Michael website, for gen, het or slash fanfiction about any character Michael Shanks has portrayed. It is moving to AO3 so that it can be available to the widest possible audience for the longest possible time, no longer reliant solely on one person to maintain the server and archive website.

Open Doors will be working with alice ttlg to import The Boy / Michael Shanks into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works from The Boy / Michael Shanks to the AO3 after November.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on The Boy / Michael Shanks?

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. Open Doors will then set up the URL redirects, and we will permanently close down the site.

Please contact Open Doors with your The Boy / Michael Shanks 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 The Boy / Michael Shanks 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 The Boy / Michael Shanks 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 The Boy / Michael Shanks

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 The Boy / Michael Shanks 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 The Boy / Michael Shanks!

- The Open Doors team and alice ttlg

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 Raquel E. who volunteers as a translator.

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

I’m a beta reader and translator for the OTW European Portuguese team. The Translation Committee focuses on making content accessible to non-English speaking fans; that’s our main goal and includes working on news posts and notices. We also collaborate on work that committees do, such as with AO3 Abuse, Tag Wrangling and Support. We’re a multitasking bunch. I also volunteer for the Support roster and evaluate samples from people who apply to volunteer with the European Portuguese team.

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

I don’t really have a routine. Is that bad to admit? Our European Portuguese team works very hard to go through the amount of content, and I must say we do it quite nicely. We’re handed tasks as they come, and even though sometimes it’s hard to come together as a group because of our different routines, we get by because we get along well :)

What sorts of OTW content have you worked on?

I’ve worked on all sorts of content, since we translate documents related to every OTW project!

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

For me, it’s how rewarding volunteering is. Not only do I have a blast learning new things while translating all manners of documents -- be it legal, news posts or FAQs -- I also feel happy and fulfilled knowing my small contribution is helping other people by making our content accessible to them. I believe the mission of the OTW is an important one and being part of it is a blessing.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I’m going to be very predictable and go with ‘I read a lot of fanfic’! Even before I volunteered, I was already religiously using AO3 to bookmark my favourite fics. Besides reading it, I also write it sometimes, along with meta (mostly about Mass Effect and Dragon Age). I blog a lot on Tumblr, and I run a fan blog focused on Mass Effect. I also adore beta reading any fanfiction my friends send my way, and I love discussing plot ideas with them. My favourite thing in the world is talking about my favourite videogames and any assorted nerdery I happen to be into.

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 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.

I. MEMBERSHIP DRIVE SUCCESS!

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) recently held its October 2017 membership drive, run by the Development & Membership committee with help from Communications, Translation, Webs, and more. During this drive, we beat our goal of US$115,000, raising over US$137,000 from over 5,500 individual donations representing more than 70 countries. To break that down a little more: 2,733 donations were from first-time donors, 1,243 new members are eligible to vote in next year’s OTW Board election, and we will be shipping out 110 thank-you gifts in the next month!

Thank you to everyone who donated and signal boosted. Your support means so much to us. And if you missed the drive, don't worry, we accept donations at any time, and thank you gifts are always available.

II. AT THE AO3

Accessibility, Design & Technology had a busy October. First, AO3 switched to default to secure browsing (HTTPS), but then experienced some issues with server load during peak times, so the default was set back to HTTP. It's still possible to browse AO3 in HTTPS when following secure links or using a browser add-on, if you prefer that.

When the new front-end servers (coming soon!) are installed, HTTPS will be the default protocol for good. Users who use audio or video players in their works (to post podfics or fanvids) are encouraged to read up on multimedia embeds and secure browsing to learn how this change will affect them.

Another issue that Accessibility, Design & Technology tackled in October is spammers who were creating bogus works and collections on AO3 to link to their fare. They've become highly adept at using Archive features, and they've been flooding the invitation queue with throwaway email addresses to create new accounts. As a short-term measure, the invitation queue was turned off to relieve some of the burden on the Abuse committee, and to allow for time to discuss and implement a solution to prevent the worst spam attacks.

The Open Doors committee was also busy in October, completing imports of The Collators’ Den and the fanfiction section of Unknowable Room. Import announcements were also made for West Wing Fanfiction Central, MTAC, and Firefly’s Glow.

In other Archive-related news, AO3 Documentation updated the Skins and Archive Interface FAQ, for those who prefer customizing the look of AO3 and of their works.

Lastly, Support received roughly 1600 tickets in October, and Abuse received over 1000 tickets.

III. LEGAL ADVOCACY AND FANNISH ACADEMIA

Great news from the Legal committee! In response to the OTW’s petition, the U.S. Copyright Office has renewed the "vidder’s exemption" that permits vidders and other makers of noncommercial remix video to decrypt clips from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and online sources to make fair use of them without violating the "anti-circumvention" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Legal also filed petitions to clarify and broaden the existing exemptions for remix video and multimedia e-books, and will continue working on supporting those. Stay tuned—not only will there be progress updates in the months to come, but there will also be a request for your stories to help make arguments in favor of those clarifications and expansions!

TWC is also requesting your input. There are two new calls for papers out for upcoming issues of Transformative Works and Cultures. One is for an issue on Fan Studies Methodologies, and the other is for an issue on Fanfiction and Ancient Scribal Cultures. Submission guidelines and due dates are available at the links.

IV. GOVERNANCE

OTW's Board welcomed three new board members, who officially started October 1, and said goodbye to Alex, Aline and Katarina, whose terms have now finished. Thank you to the departing Directors for your service.

Finance issued an update on the OTW's 2017 budget this month. Thanks to everyone who attended the open chat on October 15th to ask questions. Meanwhile, preparations also continue for the first audit of the OTW's financial statements, which we expect to see happen annually from now on.

V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

As of the 27th of October, the OTW has 714 volunteers. \o/

Recent personnel movements completed by Volunteers & Recruiting are listed below:

New Committee Staff: Jess Hindes (Communications), 2 Communications staffers, 1 Translation staffer, ironysupplement (Systems), 1 other Systems staffer, AliceandJane (Abuse), guro (Abuse), 1 other Abuse staffer
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: li-sus, batgirlSwrite, and Kyubey Kotone
New Translator Volunteers: alive, nyxmidnight
Departing Directors: Alex Tischer, Aline Carrão, Katarina Harju
Departing Committee Chairs: Mahewa (Elections)
Departing Committee Staff: Minx (AO3 Documentation), JessicaLovesSocks2658 (Abuse and AO3 Documentation), Supergreak (Tag Wrangling), Morgan (Tag Wrangling) & 2 other Tag Wrangling staffers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 4 Tag Wrangling volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: HLITH, Chiralivity, and Jessica Park

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.

Glass Onion, a multi-fandom 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 Glass Onion
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Glass Onion, a multi-fandom fanfiction archive, was founded by Sophia Jirafe and Jintian in 2001. The archive, now maintained by alice ttlg, is moving to AO3 so that it can be available to the widest possible audience for the longest possible time, no longer reliant solely on one person to maintain the server and archive website.

Open Doors will be working with alice ttlg to import Glass Onion into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. We will begin importing works from Glass Onion to the AO3 after November.

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

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 Glass Onion 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 Glass Onion 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 Glass Onion 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 Glass Onion

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 Glass Onion 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 Glass Onion!

- The Open Doors team and alice ttlg

Last weekend, we had to disable new invitation requests to address an influx of accounts flooding the Archive with spam works. While our Abuse team has been banning these accounts and deleting thousands of spam works, the problem persists and would most likely get worse if we sent out invitations again.

We have decided to keep the invitation queue closed for the time being while we take steps to prevent spam from being posted in the first place. This means you will not be able to create an account unless you have previously received an invitation from either a friend or our automated queue. (If you requested an invitation before October 22 and have not received it, please check your spam folder and, if you use Gmail, your "Social" tab. If you are still unable to find your invitation, you can contact Support with your specific request.)

We very much regret denying invitations to legitimate users, but as the amount of spam being posted is affecting everyone's user experience, we currently see no other way to address the problem.

We will reopen invitation requests as soon as we can, although we do not have an estimated date at this time. When requests have been reenabled, the "Get Invited!" link will return to the homepage, and the Invitation Requests page will include a form to add yourself to waiting list. (The option to request invite codes for friends has been disabled since the last spam wave, and we have no plans to bring it back in the foreseeable future.)

Any updates will be provided on this post and our @AO3_Status Twitter account. For more information on the Archive's invitation system, refer to our Invitations FAQ.

Firefly’s Glow, a Firefly 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 Firefly’s Glow
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Firefly's Glow, is a Firefly fanfiction archive founded by alice ttlg in 2002. It is moving to AO3 so that it can be available to the widest possible audience for the longest possible time, no longer reliant solely on one person to maintain the server and archive website. The collection on AO3 will be open to new Firefly stories. Open Doors will be working with alice ttlg to import Firefly’s Glow into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. We will begin importing works from Firefly’s Glow to the AO3 after October.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on Firefly’s Glow?

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 Firefly’s Glow 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 Firefly’s Glow 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 Firefly’s Glow 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 Firefly’s Glow

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 Firefly’s Glow 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 Firefly’s Glow! - The Open Doors team and alice ttlg

We're currently experiencing an influx of spammers who have been creating bogus works and collections to link to their fare. They've become highly adept at using Archive features, and they've been flooding our invite queue with throwaway email addresses to create new accounts. This keeps our Abuse team busy around the clock, deleting spam works as they pop up and trying to weed out obvious spam email addresses before invites are sent out every day. It also prolongs the wait time for everyone else who wants to join the Archive. Our wait list is inching ever closer to 20,000, meaning legitimate users have to wait almost three weeks to receive an invitation email.

As a short-term measure, we've decided to turn off the invite queue for a week, so we can relieve some of the burden on our Abuse team, discuss technical solutions to the problem, and implement a quick fix or two to help with the worst attacks.

If you are a current user, you can check your Invitations page to see if you have any old invites waiting to be sent to a friend or fellow fan.

We are sorry for the long wait times, and we're doing our best to come back soon and get invites out quicker to those currently waiting!

Update on October 23, 11:23 UTC: People who are currently waiting for an invitation should still receive an email while the queue is under review. If you think you should have received an invitation, please wait another day or two, check your spam folder or "Social" tab in Gmail, and use our look-up tool to see if you're still in the queue. If you're sure you should have received an invitation and didn't, you can contact our Support team.

Update on October 30, 23:08 UTC: Please refer to our post "Update: Invitation requests remain disabled for the time being" for the latest information regarding invitations.

We recently fixed MOBI downloads on Kindle, solved some miscellaneous bugs, and cleaned up some code around the site.

Credits

• Coders: Elz, cosette, james_, redsummernight, Sarken, ticking instant
• Code reviewers: Ariana, Elz, james_, Sarken
• Testers: Aline, bingeling, Lady Oscar, redsummernight

Details

Works & Comments

• [AO3-5202] - MOBI downloads were suddenly failing on Kindle devices, due to a tiny little typo that had slipped into our code unnoticed. Now that we've noticed it, you should be able to download MOBI files again.
• [AO3-5199] - On October 5, we had to temporarily disable downloads when we mysteriously ran out of disk space. It turned out that was because our clean-up code was broken and we weren't deleting HTML files after generating them. We've fixed that.
• [AO3-1259] - The option to remove yourself as the co-creator of a chapter was buried on the page for reordering a work's chapters. Now it's also in a much more sensible location: the chapter edit page. (And as a bonus, when you remove yourself as a co-creator, the byline on the chapter will actually update now!)
• [AO3-5197] - Works with no content at all (near impossible to create, but sometimes databases do weird things) were causing word count errors, since the counter wasn't prepared for having nothing to count. It just counts to 0 now.
• [AO3-5125] - We've added a Rake task to map imported works to their counterparts on the original archives. Now if we host the original domain, individual work links from the original site will redirect to the copy of the work on AO3, as they should.
• [AO3-177] - Comments marked as spam were counted toward the total number of comments, even though they were hidden from view. We've made sure that wherever a comment count shows up, it now displays the number without spam.

Skins & Frontend

• [AO3-4376] - We had CSS-related documentation in a few different places, laying out information for creating your own skins to style the Archive or the content of works. This information is now all in one place.
• [AO3-4840] - Archive skins created with our Skin Wizard didn't properly style the Reindex Work button (visible to wranglers). Now they do!
• [AO3-5183] - The admin page for approved site skins was timing out, so we made a small performance tweak and now it's greased lightning.
• [AO3-4658] - The login page looked wonky on small screens and made it harder to log in on mobile devices. It's all pretty now!

Misc.

• [AO3-5201] - When accessing the Archive through our HTTP option (relevant when we switch to a secure default protocol for good), it was impossible to submit a page from the insecure.archiveofourown.org domain to Abuse. Now it is!
• [AO3-4976] - In autocomplete fields, tags with ampersands (e.g. "Abbi & Ilana") would sometimes show up with a semicolon after the &, which looked untidy. We've tidied that up!
• [AO3-4004] - Trying to use the tab button to navigate from certain autocomplete fields after entering a tag would jump you back to the top of the page in some browsers. You should now be able to reach the correct field.
• [AO3-5082] - The test for removing oneself as a co-creator of a work or series would fail sometimes (but not always), making the test not very helpful. That's fixed now.
• [AO3-5173] - There was some unused code lingering from a feature we had previously removed. It lingers no more.

Known Issues

See our Known Issues page for current issues.

As our October 2017 fundraising drive comes to an end, we at the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) would like to thank each and every one of you who donated or spread the word. You've helped our projects grow stronger, and we couldn't be more grateful! We would also like to recognize the tireless efforts of all the volunteers who work behind the scenes to make these drives and all of the organization's work possible.

During this drive, we raised over US$137,000 from over 5500 individual donations representing more than 70 countries. To break that down a little more: 2,733 donations were from first-time donors, 1,243 new members are eligible to vote in next year's OTW Board election, and we will be shipping out 110 thank-you gifts in the next month!

Over the past week, you've received updated information regarding our budget, checked out a timeline of major events in OTW history, and been given a glimpse into our plans for the future. The OTW has been serving the interests of fans for ten years now, and we hope to continue that work and improve our projects and services in years to come. Keep an eye on our news outlets for information on how you can help us pursue that goal.

Once again, we'd like to express our incredible gratitude to everyone who helps to make this organization successful: thank you!

(Don't forget: although the drive has ended, we do accept donations year round.)

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.

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.