Open Doors Committee

  • 852 Prospect - AO3 Supports our Sentinel*

    By .C. Ryan Smith on Sunday, 12 May 2013 - 8:17pm
    Message type:
    Announcement
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee

    The OTW is delighted to welcome 852 Prospect -- the Sentinel Adult Fiction Archive -- to its new home within the Archive of Our Own. The Archivists of 852 Prospect (most recently alicettlg) have worked hard in conjunction with ADT and Open Doors to make this move a reality.

    There's some special history associated with this move. 852 Prospect was the first automated fiction archive on the web. Back in 1997, astolat wrote the first version of the Automated Archive software for 852 Prospect, which made it possible for authors to post their stories simultaneously to a mailing list and to an archive, and which also made it possible for archivists to maintain fic archives without hand-coding every post. The automated archive software is now old and creaky and no longer maintained; we're delighted to be able to offer 852 Prospect a new home as an integrated collection within the AO3.

    Our coders have set up a redirect from the original domain to the stories' new URLs, to help preserve the validity of old links, rec lists, bookmarks, etc. Because the redirects will be set up to go to the version of each work imported with 852 Prospect, if you have a duplicate on the Archive which has comments / kudos you want to keep, we suggest you keep both versions for now (if you delete the one imported with 852 Prospect, then the redirect will break). Down the line, we’re planning to implement a way of merging two copies of the same work, so you'll be able to keep the redirects and the comments and kudos.

    If you don't care to keep the comments/kudos of both works, you can ask Open Doors to reset the redirect to point toward the pre-existing copy on AO3, and then delete the imported copy. To do so, please contact Open Doors with your AO3 account name, your account name on 852 Prospect, and links to both the 852 Prospect URL, and the AO3 URL of the fanwork designated for the redirect.

    Most of the newly imported works are not yet visible to people who aren't logged in with an AO3 account. If you're looking for The Sentinel fic on AO3 that was newly imported as part of 852 Prospect, please search for it while logged into AO3. You can also request an AO3 account by contacting Open Doors or using this page.

    If you're the author of newly imported stories, you can use the ‘edit works’ function to set them all to 'unrestricted' at once (if you wish) after you've claimed them. For help editing your works, please contact Support. For more information about what happens with imported works, click here for Open Doors' tutorial on automated imports, or here to contact Open Doors. Please note: If you choose to orphan your works, you will want to check them over first and edit out any remaining identifying data.

    And if you want to post new stories to the 852 Prospect collection, you are welcome to do so! The collection will remain open to new entries, but will be moderated according to 852 Prospect’s guidelines.

    Several of the OTW founders are Sentinel fans, and many org volunteers count The Sentinel among their beloved fandoms. We're thrilled to be able to continue preserving and protecting fanworks which are otherwise at risk of disappearing from the internet, and we're doubly thrilled to be rescuing an archive to which many of us have a longstanding personal connection! Hooray for Jim and Blair, Carolyn, Simon and Rafe and Henri, Megan, Naomi, and the whole city of Cascade finding a safe new home.

    *Support Our Sentinel was a 1997 effort by fans to keep the show on the air when it was facing cancellation. The effort succeeded, garnering fans an 8-episode season four which brought fan favorite Blair Sandburg back to life!

    Mirrored from an original post on AO3 News.

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  • OTW Fannews: Do it yourself edition

    By Claudia Rebaza on Sunday, 24 February 2013 - 7:26pm
    Message type:
    News of Note
    Tags:
    Gender and Sexuality, Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality, DMCA, Takedowns, Accessibility, Design, & Technology, Open Doors Committee, OTW Sightings, Technology
    • TechDirt discussed the new site DMCAInjury.com, which was set up to keep track of bogus DMCA takedown requests. Those who file such claims could face punishment for those actions under section 512(f) of the DMCAbut so far it's happened rarely and with difficulty. Keeping track of accidental or malicious takedown requests might spur more cases against those filing them, or "at the very least, perhaps it will create a useful dataset to explore the nature and frequency of bogus DMCA takedowns."
    • The Daily Dot discussed the controversy over racist, homophobic, and sexist commentary found at GitHub, an open source code-sharing site used by many projects (including the AO3). "GitHub is a platform geeks and techies love because it not only lets you manage projects but allows you to share your code and your projects with the outside world." However, the sharing mentality doesn't mean all users are welcome. "GitHub sits in the center of an Open Source community that has been dealing with heated ongoing controversy over its lack of diversity. In November, BritRuby, a Manchester conference of Ruby on Rails coders, was canceled after outrage broke out online at its all-male lineup of panelists."
    • A post at TeleRead offered fans tips on formatting downloaded fanfic from Fanfiction.net and the AO3, noting that MOBI downloads from AO3 can create wide margins and non-functional tables of content. Flavorwire tips readers off to the availability of Giphy, a search engine for animated GIFs. "Even in the age of relatively mainstream blogs like What Should We Call Me, though, a glance at Giphy’s front page reveals that the site caters to the kind of dedicated fandoms that popularized the .GIF in the first place."
    • Lastly, former Board member Francesca Coppa will be speaking at the Midwest Archives Conference on April 18 about the OTW's work on the Fan Culture Preservation Project and the AO3. Her talk will discuss how fan works are "an alternative, subterranean literature and arts culture, and describe the many ways fans have worked over the years to distribute and preserve that culture through zine libraries, hand-coded on-line archives,[and] songtape circles."

    What tools do you think help keep fandom running? Tell us about it in Fanlore. Contributions are welcome from all fans.

    We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

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  • Highlights from Open Doors Chat

    By Claudia Rebaza on Friday, 8 February 2013 - 6:03pm
    Message type:
    Event
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee

    As we reported early last month, due to delays in setting up the automated import for 852 Prospect, we are working to support authors who are interested in manually importing their stories into the Archive of Our Own.

    A public chat, hosted by the Open Doors and Support committees, was held on Campfire (the online chat platform the OTW uses) on February 2. You can now read the highlights. The second chat will be on February 10 at 01:00UTC. (Click the link to see when the chat is being held in your timezone). You can access OTW’s public chatroom using this guest link.

    If you have questions and are unable to make it to the chat or have additional questions after, you can always contact Open Doors for further information.

    Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.

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  • 852 Prospect - Manual Import Support Chat Reminder

    By Curtis Jefferson on Friday, 1 February 2013 - 6:06pm
    Message type:
    Announcement
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee

    As we reported early last month, due to delays in setting up the automated import for 852 Prospect, we are working to support authors who are interested in manually importing their stories into the Archive of Our Own.

    There will be two public chats, hosted by the Open Doors and Support committees, on Campfire (the online chat platform the OTW uses). The first will be on February 2 at 22:00UTC. The second will be on February 10 at 01:00UTC. (Click the links to see when the chat is being held in your timezone). You can access OTW’s public chatroom using this guest link.

    If you have questions and are unable to make it to the chat or have additional questions after, you can always contact Open Doors for further information.

    Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.

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  • 852 Prospect - Manual Import FAQ

    By Curtis Jefferson on Thursday, 10 January 2013 - 5:50pm
    Message type:
    Announcement
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee

    Hi, 852 Prospect authors!

    The 852 Prospect is still moving to the AO3 due to the state of its software (read more about this in our first post about the move), but there have been some unexpected delays with the code needed to do the automated import happen. For that reason, the Open Doors Committee will be emailing AO3 invitations (and explanations) to all of the 852 Prospect authors in the next few weeks. This will allow any interested author to set up their own accounts and import their stories to the 852 Prospect collection on AO3 if they don't want to wait. If you no longer have access to the email address you used on 852Prospect.org, or if you have questions not answered by this post, you can always contact Open Doors. (If you have verified your new address with Open Doors before, you don't need to do so again.)

    To avoid duplicate stories when the rest of the collection is auto-imported in the near future, we request you post them using the manual URL importer feature. Doing it this way will ensure that all of the comments, kudos and hit counts will be on one story and that readers following old links from 852 Prospect will get to your stories easily.

    To help you do this, you can read the Archive FAQs on Importing, Collections and Tags, and the short FAQ below.

    There will also be two public chats, hosted by the Open Doors and Support committees, on Campfire (the online chat platform the OTW uses). The first will be on February 2 at 22:00UTC. The second will be on February 10 at 01:00UTC. (Click the links to see when the chat is being held in your timezone). You can access OTW’s public chatroom using this guest link.

    How do I add my stories to the 852 Prospect Collection in the Archive?
    How do I import stories from 852Prospect.org?
    How do I search within the 852 Prospect Collection?


    How do I add my stories to the 852 Prospect Collection in the Archive?


    For stories already posted on the Archive of Our Own:
    1. Access your dashboard while logged in and click on "Edit Works".

    2. Select the stories you would like to add to the 852 Prospect Archive collection, and click "Edit".

    3. In the second gray box, there is a field for "Add to Collections". Start typing "852 Prospect Archive"; it will pop up as a suggestion. Click on it.

    4. Down at the bottom, click "Update All Works".

    5. Because the 852 Prospect Archive collection is moderated, your story/stories will not be added right away.

    While importing stories to the Archive of Our Own:
    1. While signed in, go to the 852 Prospect Archive collection page (http://archiveofourown.org/collections/852_Prospect_Archive) and click on the button in the upper-right hand corner, "Post to Collection".

    2. Import your story using the "Import From An Existing URL" feature. (See below for instructions.)


    How do I import stories from 852Prospect.org?


    1. While logged in, click on the "Post New" button in the upper-right hand corner.

    2. On the next page, click on "Import From An Existing URL Instead?" (also in the upper-right hand corner).

    3. Copy the URL of your story on the 852Prospect.org website, and then paste into the window for URLs.

    4. Select your story rating (required); pick one of five choices:
    Not Rated: Select this if you do not wish to rate your story.
    General Audiences: For stories on 852Prospect.org that were rated Gen or PG.
    Teen and Up Audiences: Select this if you would like to rate your story for PG-13 audiences.
    Mature: For stories on 852Prospect.org that were rated R.
    Explicit: For stories on 852Prospect.org that were rated NC-17.

    5. Select applicable warnings for the AO3 (required). (Any other warnings you would like to add to your story can be added under Additional Tags.) There are six choices, mark all that apply:
    Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings: Select this if you do not wish to assign warnings to your story.
    Graphic Depictions of Violence: For stories on 852Prospect.org that had a "violence" warning, or otherwise contain scenes of graphic violence.
    No Archive Warnings Apply: Select this warning if you do not believe the AO3 warnings apply to your story.
    Rape/Non-Con: For stories on 852Prospect.org that had a "rape/nc" warning, or otherwise contain rape or non-consensual elements.
    Underage: Select this warning if your story contains an underage person in a sexual relationship with another character.

    6. For "Fandoms" (required), start typing "The Sentinel" and it will appear as a suggestion. Click on it. (Add other fandoms if applicable.)

    7. For "Category", please select whichever you feel are applicable, or else none:
    F/F: Female/Female
    F/M: Female/Male
    Gen: General: no relationship, or containing relationships which are not the main focus of the work
    M/M: Male/Male
    Multi: Any combination of relationships, multiple partners
    Other: Other

    8. For "Relationships", start typing one character's name and select the correct suggestion.

    9. Add any other tags (warnings, or tags that mirror 852Prospect.org categories) that you see fit. Please note that Additional Tags should not be hyphenated. (For a list of all the tags currently in use within The Sentinel fandom, see this page.)

    10. Click "Import". It will take you to a preview screen of the story you imported (or, if you entered multiple URLs, links to preview screens for the stories you imported). On the preview screen for each story, there are four choices down at the bottom:
    Post: Click this if you are happy with the formatting and would like to post.
    Save Without Posting: Click this if you would like to save this story to your draft folder, to edit/post another time. (Please note, drafts are only saved for a week from the day they were first created.)
    Edit: Click this if you would like to edit the story before posting.
    Cancel: Click this to cancel, and start over another time.


    How do I search within the 852 Prospect Collection?


    To search within a collection, make sure you are on the 'works' view of a collection. You can browse to the 'works' view of a collection by clicking 'works' on the sidebar of the collection. You can search within the collection by clicking 'search within results' on the right hand side of the page, within the filters sidebar. This searches all the fields associated with a work in the database, including summary, notes and tags, but not the full work text. There are special characters you can use to further customize your results; the '?' button explains them in more detail.

    Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.

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  • October Membership Drive: Preserving Fannish History

    By Kristen Murphy on Tuesday, 16 October 2012 - 5:22pm
    Message type:
    Announcement
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee, Development & Membership Committee

    The Fan Culture Preservation Project is facilitated by the Open Doors committee of the OTW. The project helps preserve the printed history of fandom by assisting fans in donating their zine collections to the Fanzine Archives, located in the University of Iowa Special Collections. While FCPP has had a historical emphasis on print zines, it is by no means a limiting factor. Fan-created convention programs, fan art, buttons, zine flyers, songvids, scrapbooks, t-shirts, convention badges, circuit stories, calendars, fan crafts, and photos or video recordings of fannish conventions are all welcome and desired.

    Open Doors began transferring materials to University of Iowa Special Collections in early 2009. The first major donation was the Fanzine Archives, a collection of over 3,000 classic zines previously housed in Santa Barbara, CA. Open Doors was able to help retiring archivist Ming Wathne save and protect this valuable collection. Since that time, FCPP has helped many other longtime fans donate their collections to the library.

    In the past 5 years, Open Doors has seen the University of Iowa Fanzine Archives grow exponentially. There are now 9 individually named collections of fanzines, fan art, and fanvids at the Fanzine Archives, in addition to the overall OTW collection which allows fans to donate their zines anonymously. That works out to an estimated 286 linear feet, or roughly 6,000 individual items! An additional 800 items await cataloging, and Open Doors is working with a number of donors to secure even more fan collections.

    The preservation efforts have already had an impact throughout fandom. In 2011, a Star Trek fan made a field trip to the Special Collections to see the fanzines and to learn more about her fandom's history. In addition, the Fanzine Archives have supplied fans and volunteer editors thousands of tables of contents, zine covers, and other fanzine images, many of which have been included in Fanlore wiki articles.

    Open Doors has also supported other grassroots fandom history preservation projects. For example, in 2012, the Media Fandom Oral History Project was initiated by two fans who travel to fan conventions and record fan memories. These digital recordings have also found a home in the University of Iowa Special Collections. The FCPP hopes to be able to encourage similar grassroots preservation efforts in future years.

    In all, the FCPP has enabled fans to actively participate in preserving fandom history, whether by donating their zines, vids, and fan art or by recording their fandom memories for future generations of fans. Like messages in a bottle, we have no idea who will be waiting to hear from us down the road, but we look forward to "meeting" them through the FCPP.

    Learn more about the collections at the Open Doors website, and help support future preservation efforts by becoming an OTW member.

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  • 852 Prospect: Not Coming As Soon As We Thought

    By Claudia Rebaza on Thursday, 30 August 2012 - 8:28pm
    Message type:
    Announcement
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee

    Dear Sentinel fandom!

    We're writing to let you know that the import of 852 Prospect into the Archive of Our Own (which we announced in May) is not going to make its August deadline as we first expected.

    The import was rescheduled due to performance issues on the Archive, which are still being worked on by our coders. The Archive's next code deploy is scheduled to occur in a few days, but the import code is still being finalized and needs to be tested. Furthermore, as the new filter code is not yet ready, its absence would be a matter of concern for users who will want to search within an imported collection.

    We want to make sure everything is working smoothly at the Archive before we import 852 Prospect. Archive imports are a major process for all the committees that work on the site, so everyone wants to be as prepared as possible for any snags that may occur. We thank all of you for your patience as these changes are implemented, and if anyone has further questions, please don't hesitate to contact Open Doors.

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  • OTW Staff in the News

    By Claudia Rebaza on Saturday, 25 August 2012 - 7:28pm
    Message type:
    Media Mentions
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee, Development & Membership Committee, Legal Committee, OTW Sections, OTW Sightings, Technology

    These past two months have seen a spike in interviews with OTW staff by various media outlets. Here's a rundown on some of the places online where you can read their discussions about fandom, fanworks, and the OTW.

    • Geek Girl Con did an interview with Anna Zola Miller, who serves on the Open Doors Committee. Anna talks about her increased perception of fandom history, the challenges the project has faced, her favorite archived item, and what she's feeling fannish about.
    • Board member Francesca Coppa wrote Fandom: Open Culture Vs. Closed Platforms at OrgZine which also brings up the work of Open Doors and looked at the importance of fans' ability to keep their work from disappearing from online sites. "The social networks of Web 2.0 are mostly for-profit, commercial enterprises; the web is no longer the loose network of university and government servers it was twenty years ago. Fans used to roll their own code and make their own webpages; now others own the ground beneath their feet. And the priorities of these businesses may or may not be the priorities of fans."
    • Rebecca Tushnet discussed the legality of fanworks with Lauren Davis at io9 which formed the basis of a lengthy piece on this issue, required reading for anyone wanting to debate the topic, and sporting a nifty piece of fan art to boot.
    • Development & Membership staffer Aja Romano is delivering some excellent discussions of fandoms and fannish activities over at The Daily Dot. A notable recent piece provided recs to online sites for people wanting to find the next Fifty Shades of Grey, a badly needed guide if some of the rec lists appearing in the media over this summer are anything to go by.
    • Francesca Coppa and Tisha Turk of the OTW's Vidding Committee were the guests on talk show Hearsay Culture on KZSU-FM, Stanford, 90.1 FM, a show which focuses on the intersection of technology and society. They discussed their personal histories in vidding, what transformative works and vids are, the work of the OTW, and what our legal team's effort to secure a DMCA exemption for remixing is all about. Asked what they want the typical non-vidder to do, they exhort listeners to both know their rights and exercise them. (No transcript available).
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  • 852 Prospect: Coming Soon

    By Claudia Rebaza on Friday, 20 July 2012 - 4:38pm
    Message type:
    Announcement
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee

    Dear Sentinel fandom!

    We're writing to let you know that the import of 852 Prospect into the Archive of Our Own (which we announced in May) has been postponed until sometime in August. Our apologies for the delay!

    The import has been rescheduled because of recent performance issues on the Archive (which our coders are hard at work fixing). We're now waiting until the next code deploy before we import 852 Prospect, but Open Doors is still working to make sure it happens.

    Thank you everyone for your patience, and if anyone has further questions, please don't hesitate to contact Open Doors.

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  • AO3 / SSA = OTP <3

    By .Lucy Pearson on Monday, 5 March 2012 - 9:50am
    Message type:
    Announcement
    Tags:
    Open Doors Committee

    The OTW is delighted to welcome the SSA – the Smallville Slash Archive – to its new home within the Archive of Our Own. The Archivists of the SSA (most recently Danceswithgary) have worked hard in conjunction with ADT and Open Doors to make the SSA the first test case for our new mass importer – and the choice is both a symbolic and a practical one.

    It’s symbolic because the SSA is a venerable old archive, a relic of an earlier moment in fannish time. The SSA was founded ten years ago, four days after the pilot episode of Smallville aired. Originally founded by Livia Penn and Calista Rose, for most of its life the SSA was hosted by Minotaur, a fan beloved in many fandoms and communities.

    When Minotaur died unexpectedly in 2009, a coalition of fans (including Tallihensia and Elke Tanzer — thanks y’all!) worked with his family to ensure that the SSA archivists retained limited access to the site's account on the server where the archive was hosted, but this didn't include the ability to fix broken database code or updating the site.

    The limits to the access and the broken code, in addition to the questionable life expectancy of the hosting, meant the archive's survival was uncertain.They approached us shortly thereafter, and have been waiting patiently for us to build the functionality required to save this archive of more than 4700 stories. And that’s why this archive is a practical first test case for our mass importer — the import will preserve the stories if the archive should go offline, and will also give authors direct access to their stories while keeping them within the context of the SSA.

    The SSA’s new home is here in the Smallville Slash Archive Collection on the AO3. Our coders have been able to set up a redirect from the original domain to the new urls, to help preserve the validity of old links, rec lists, bookmarks, etc. The redirect will only work from http://smallville.slashdom.net/ urls; sadly slashdom.com is no longer available for us to set redirects. Because the redirects will be set up to go to the version of the work imported with the SSA, if you have a duplicate on the Archive with with comments / kudos you want to keep, we suggest you keep both versions for now (if you delete the one imported with the SSA, then the redirect will break). Down the line, we’re planning to implement a way of merging two copies of the same work so you can deal with these!

    The SSA Collection will be kept open for a while after import in order to allow authors who have existing versions of the imported works on the Archive to add their preferred version to the Collection. The imported stories will be set as visible to Archive users only by default; after you claim them, you can use the ‘edit works’ function to set them all to public at once (if you wish). For more information about what happens with imported works, check out Open Doors Questions and Answers. Please note: If you choose to orphan your works, you will want to check them over first and edit out any remaining identifying data.

    If you have questions for the SSA mods (or you’d like to give them a bit of love for their hard work keeping the SSA alive) then you’ll find more information at the mod posts: SSA Migration to AO3 - Q&A (Livejournal) and SSA Migration to AO3 - Q&A (Dreamwidth).

    We’re thrilled to be able to begin fulfilling one of our longstanding missions, preserving and protecting fanworks which are otherwise at risk of disappearance from the internet. It’s a privilege to begin with an archive which represents such a large contribution to fandom.

    Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.

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