For more information about the purview of our committees, please see the committee listing on our website.
I. FANLORE PASSES 30,000 ARTICLES
On June 8, Fanlore reached the 30,000 article milestone with a post by Sparcicle on Nox et Lumos! The Wiki committee last celebrated a milestone in February when it reached the 500,000th edit on the site. Many thanks to all the gardeners and editors who have made this kind of progress possible!
II. MORE PROJECT NEWS
Legal has welcomed three new staffers, Diane Girard, Elizabeth Gray and Kalli, who bring diverse expertise to the committee. Legal has had another active month as they have continued to represent the OTW in the USPTO and NTIA’s multi-stakeholder process for improving the DMCA notice and takedown procedure. As part of that process, Legal has participated in several working group meetings and conference calls. Legal has also created two posts about legal issues of interest to fans, one on fair use and the other on the U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling in the “Free Sherlock” case. As always, Legal welcomes your questions!
Open Doors has been tying up loose ends from the Yuletide archive import, and is working on preparing two other archives for a manual import.
Journal's issue No. 16, a guest-edited issue on material fan culture, came out bang on time. Thanks to the editorial and production team members for their great work, particularly Rrain Prior for her work as production editor. The next issue comes out on September 15. Co-chair Karen Hellekson will be attending Worldcon and is giving a talk on Doctor Who fan videos there.
III. OVER AT THE AO3
With the help of their new recruits, the Abuse Committee has successfully closed over 150 reports in the last month! Many of these were long-standing and complicated issues requiring cross-committee work and internal policy debates. As of now, the Abuse Committee only has about 30 pending reports. Because of this, their response time and productivity have dramatically improved. Meanwhile Content Policy made a few FAQ tweaks to address some common questions.
Accessibility, Design and Technology is continuing to work through our backlog of bug fixes, with five deploys and 52 issues closed in our bug tracker in June alone. AD&T were looking at a pile of almost 200 pull requests (code submissions) at one point earlier this year, some of which were over two years old, and they're now down to under 50! This has been a very satisfying and very exhausting process for the committee and our coders. They're now looking forward to digging into bigger projects and making plans for the rest of the year once more of the code mountain has been defeated.
Support held another chat to assist AO3 users, and in conjunction with Translation, was able to do so in multiple languages. Support's chair, Sam, extended thanks to all the longtime Support staffers who have made both their daily work and special events possible.
Tag Wrangling has had a month of working together on many, many tag-related Support tickets, and AD&T's latest code push included some excellent tag-related fixes. Tag Wrangling got a great response to their latest recruitment and is welcoming in the new volunteers. The Wrangling Staff hosted some staff-led training sessions for new and current wranglers in June. They were a rousing success and more are being planned for the future.
IV. INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT
Development & Membership is undergoing a leadership transition. The committee is saying goodbye to long-time chair Kristen Murphy, who is taking on a more silent role in premiums and CiviCRM support, but is appreciative of all that she brought to the OTW and everything she taught her staff. DevMem has begun working with other committees to start up the Visual Identity Group, which will focus on the OTW's visual branding. Meanwhile, convention outreach is undergoing an overhaul, with a current focus on Nine Worlds and Loncon.
Strategic Planning is in the process of surveying Legal, Finance, Category Change, Translation, Fan Video, Journal, and Fanhackers, and is making good progress on the reports for Support, Communications, Abuse, DevMem, and I&O. Their two newest staffers have finished their training and are starting to take lead on their own surveying projects! They have also started the succession planning process for committee chair, Hana, and are working on developing procedures for chair training.
Translation has welcomed 8 new staffers. With this increase in staff, they are working on strengthening internal procedures and making progress on new projects and ideas. Last month they were able to release the OTW video with subtitles in 16 languages! Huge thanks to all of the language teams who put in so much work on this project.
V. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
Volunteers & Recruiting has been recruiting for Tag Wrangling Volunteers and Wiki Committee Staff in June resulting in a slew of new names around the OTW!
New Committee Staff: Kiri Van Santen (Communications), MyraM (Communications) Katarina Harju (Translation), LilyC (Translation) Elizabeth Gray (Legal), Kalli (Legal), Girard (Legal), 2 other Communications Staffers, 1 Internationalization & Outreach Staffer, and 6 other Translation Staffers
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: sarken, Night, Allons-y, Jamie Marie, bbcatemysoul, Elizabeth H, cadkitten, starrwinter, BearHatter, Gesundheit, Fredericks, justlikeheaven, Katarina Harju, defe, and 1 other Tag Wrangler volunteer
New Translator Volunteers: Anne-Katrin Koch & 3 others
Departing Committee Chairs: Kristen Murphy (Development & Membership)
Departing Committee Staff: 6 Abuse staffers; 1 Translation staffer
Departing Workgroup Members: 2 AO3 Documentation volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: KeevaCaereni and 2 others
