Description: The Wiki Committee is in need of a terrific writer to help us straighten out the internal side of Fanlore -- basically, we need help reorganizing and rewriting policy pages and help files, and organizing them in a user-friendly manner. You do not need to be an expert in wiki markup, though some experience and comfort with basic wiki markup (linking, categorizing) is needed.

The committee's feeling is that our policy pages are somewhat over-detailed, and our help files aren't sufficiently helpful in walking a new user through the process. Basically, we need help straightening this out to make Fanlore as user-friendly as possible. The ability to write clearly and succinctly, using examples and user-friendly language, is required, as is the ability to organize information.

Estimated Time Involved: We would love to have this complete by the end of the term (December 18th), but the position can continue into the new term if necessary. No specific time commitment is required per week, but we would like to see steady progress.

How to Volunteer: Use our contact form to send us the following information:

Your name (you may provide your real name or your fannish name--please consider what you feel comfortable using both inside and outside the organization):

Your email address:

Applicable experience:

What you can bring to this position:

Please put " Wiki Documentation Specialist " in the subject line.

Send us your information by: This volunteer search is closed.

All volunteers will receive an email confirming their information has been received; please give us up to five days to reply.

Anyone can contact the Volunteers & Recruiting committee at any time by using our contact form.

The Wiki committee of the OTW is pleased to announce the formation of a Fanlore community on Dreamwidth. We needed a place for people interested in the Fanlore wiki to congregate, talk about pages (cool ones, ones with issues and concerns, plus general "how do I..." type stuff), and just keep in touch with what is happening on the site. We've been looking at various options for a place to gather, and Dreamwidth's open ID option makes it attractive; you don't have to be a member, but can comment using a free open ID account. (Note: if you do want to be a member of Dreamwidth, some folks in the community have been donating invite codes.) The community is also syndicated on LJ, so you can also keep in touch with what's going on here.

Please spread the word about the community, and about Fanlore itself. While some areas of fandom (and some individual fandoms) are well covered in the wiki, others are badly under-represented. We will be doing outreach to some of these under-represented areas, trying to get help and expertise, but please help us spread the word. If you know people who have been nervous about Fanlore or afraid they were "doin' it rong" (offhand assurance: you really can't do it wrong), please tell them that there's a place they can go to ask questions, either technical or content-based. Membership is open; everyone is welcome!

Don't panic! Livejournal isn't in any imminent danger, despite today's news (many of us here at OTW are archivists, and we know how long it takes for sites, even unattended ones, to degrade.) We'll all still be here tomorrow!

That being said, we do want to remind LJ-based fandom that:

* You can create a User: page for yourself on Fanlore. (All those "If LJ goes away" posts on LJ are kind of useless if LJ actually goes away!) You can put all your pseuds, journals, websites, and other contact info on your User: page, and the wiki is searchable and obviously updatable, so folks will always know where to find you. (See examples here, and there's an easy "create account" link in the left side toolbar of every page.) (Please note that the User: page is different from a regular wiki page. You control the content of your User: page: it's more like a LJ profile page, whereas regular wiki pages about individual fans are collaborative and editable; generally, others will make and edit these pages.)

* You can also document fannish information and resources on Fanlore. LJ hosts a number of irreplaceable fandom overviews, rec lists, newbie guides and the like, so take a minute to add some information to your fandoms' main pages, pairing pages, etc. Document fannish lists, communities, fanon, writers, artists, vidders, stories, kerfuffles, debates, and other fanworks. It's really easy. (Ask me how!)

* The Archive of Our Own has been steadily giving out beta accounts a few at a time; help us out, whether by giving us useful feedback on the workings of the beta-archive (there's a handy feedback form) or by volunteering to work at with us in some other way, and we will totally put you at the head of the line (er, as long as you're up for the creakiness of beta. Hey, we're working on it!) If not, we hope to be offering more general invites soon, after the next few rounds of code revisions. (We're at 953 on the public; 1012 is in the can; more coming soon!)

Remember, too, that if your fic is archived on LJ, and all the fancy backups alarm you, you can just go to your stories on LJ and save them as HTML pages on your hard drive -- then, in the worst case, even if LJ vanishes in the meantime, you'll be able to just copy and paste those files into the archive software once you do have an account.