Report

Welcome to our first Survey Sunday, where you will find a list of all questions asked in the OTW Community Survey. We introduced the idea in our previous post: we cannot release raw survey data to the public, but still want to give you the opportunity to interrogate that data. So from now through December, you can ask us questions relating to survey, and we'll try and dig up the answers.

The idea behind of posting this overview of all questions is that it enables you to ask combinations. A very conservative example: by cross-referencing questions #35 and #36 you get "Do people without prior wiki experience have trouble creating Fanlore articles?"

However, before you dig into the questions, please read our fine print so you know what to expect in terms of results:

To everyone following news on the OTW's Survey we conducted last month, we wanted to not only provide you with some more results, but also lay out our plan going forward in terms of

1) What we can release;
2) How quickly we can release it;
3) What sort of schedule you can expect.

The OTW Community Survey closed on Thursday 2nd May after its two-week run. An amazing 5986 people responded, which surpasses our wildest expectations. We'd like to thank everyone who took it and who helped to spread the word for making it such a huge success! We'd also like to apologise for the delay in posting about our preliminary results. We had originally intended for this post to go up the day after the survey closed, but unfortunately the mass of data involved and some unexpected commitments on the part of some key staffers meant that we weren't able to do this. We're sorry that we didn't post an update about the delay -- improving our processes to cover stuff like this is one of the things we're still working on. Thank you for your patience and your overwhelming response to the survey!

We wanted to cover lots of bases and get a broad picture of our userbases and their needs, which meant that this was a long survey! So we're especially pleased (and relieved!) that the completion rate was 82.2 % -- that is, 4921 people actually finished the entire survey and clicked the "done" button. (Don't worry if you were one of the other 18% -- we'll still be counting the results from partially completed responses.)

The high number of respondents corresponds with a humungous amount of data. Some of this will be reasonably easy to collate, while some of the free text responses will require more in-depth analysis. The final question ("Anything else you'd like to tell us?") alone yielded the equivalent of an epic Big Bang story: 60.000 words!

We've formed an internal workgroup who will help evaluate and publish the results. Due to the amount of data we're working with, this will be a gradual process, but we'll try to keep you up-to-date with the details as they emerge. We thank you for your patience while we get to grips with it all. The really meaty data may take us a while to collate, but here are a couple of tasty morsels to whet your appetite!

We recently announced that from now on we will be posting minutes from Board meetings - we hope this will help people both inside and outside the organization get a flavour of what the Board gets up to and what we're currently working on.

Each meeting generally begins with an “open session” that is open to all OTW committee chairs. The second part of the meeting is a “closed session” that is open only to the Board. Closed sessions are used for discussing confidential matters such as legal or personnel issues (in the latter case, the minutes generally do not record the names of the personnel involved), while open sessions cover a wide variety of topics. Following each meeting, minutes are drafted by the Secretary and then approved by the other Board members.

We had our first Board meeting on 22nd December. This meeting was devoted to setting things in place for the Board's work in the new term, so we didn't have any open session topics. We talked about policies and communication for the new term, and appointed new officers (the folk who play a specific role within the Board to keep its work running smoothly).

Congratulations to our new officers! The people appointed are:

• President: Kristen Murphy
• Treasurer: Nikisha Sanders
• Secretary: Jenny Scott-Thompson
• Vice-Secretary: Julia Beck

Read the rest of the minutes for 22nd December here.

Thanks and congratulations to all the people who worked hard to make the 2011 term a success - we're looking forward to seeing even more great work in the new year.

The OTW has just released its 2010 Annual Report (.pdf, right click and save), a summary of our past year, our goals for the next year, and our financial position. (We try to release this around tax time every year.) You can find it on our Reports page as a.pdf; .html will be available soon.

Time flies when you’re having fun — it’s time for the report from the Abuse committee already! We are delighted to inform you that this will be a really short report because everyone on the Archive of Our Own has been busy having fun, too, and has left us alone.

Since the Archive of Our Own went into Open Beta in November 2009, the Abuse committee has dealt with a total of seven cases. Of these, three involved warnings concerns, two were fannish next-of-kin arrangements, one was a fair use concern, and one was a spam report.

All of these cases have been resolved.

We remind users that the Terms of Service are always available for your perusal, before and after you get an invitation to the Archive, and that we are here for you! Go forth, enjoy the Archive, and be excellent to one another.

Abuse Committee, July 2010

The OTW has just released its 2009 annual report - a summary of our past year, our goals for the next year, and our financial position. You can find it on our Reports page in both .pdf and .html forms.

The Board of the OTW is pleased to announce the release of our 2008 Annual Report, which went live on our Reports page yesterday. The 2008 Annual Report is available both as a downloadable .pdf and as .html. A big thank you to all our staffers, volunteers, and members for another successful year!