Archive of Our Own ^beta

This February 15th will mark the 5th annual International Fanworks Day. Wherever you are across the globe, we invite you to celebrate with us!

In honour of IFD, the OTW will be hosting several events, but we'd love for you to tell us what you'll be doing for #IFD2019 so we can signal boost other celebrations.

So what's the OTW doing? Lots of things!

1. What Fanworks Mean to Me: A couple of weeks ago, we sent out a call for essay contributions about what fanworks mean to you. Tomorrow, we'll be posting selected essays from the submissions. If you missed your chance to send us an essay, don't worry! You can always post on social media with the tag #IFD2019. Let people know how you feel and help spread the International Fanworks Day festivities.

2. IFDrabble: This is a fanworks fest that invites you to create short fanworks (like drabble fanfics) about characters and/or celebrities being fannish over something. We created an AO3 tag to use when posting your works, and on social media, you can use #IFDrabble for a chance for us to signal boost your work.

This year, to shake things up, we're suggesting a specific theme: Characters and/or celebrities discovering new fandoms! How about Izuku and Katsuki discovering Madonna? Or McCree discovering Venom? Anything goes for IFDrabble--fanfiction, fanart, fanvids, or anything else you can come up with.

3. Feedback Fest: Feedback Fest is a chance to show your favourite fanworks some love, and to get some great recommendations from others! Look for our Feedback Fest post on February 13th, then leave a comment with some fanwork recommendations. On social media, use the tag #FeedbackFest when posting.

4. Fanlore Challenge: Fanlore is participating in IFD, too! Every day from February 11-17, Fanlore will post different challenges on their Tumblr, their Twitter, their Dreamwidth, and on Fanlore for all editors to participate in. How well do you know your fandom? It’s time to show off your knowledge and contribute to Fanlore!

5. Games and Fan Chat: On February 15th, we’ll be hosting a chat in the OTW’s Public Discussion chat room. Join us between 23:00 UTC February 14th (What time is that where I live?) and 04:00 UTC February 16th (What time is that where I live?) to play trivia games and chat with other fans! The the games schedule and chat room link are now live. (The chat room will be moderated in English.)

I. UPDATES TO TAG WRANGLING

During January, Accessibility, Design & Technology made several updates to AO3, one of which was a change in how tags are sorted for wrangling. This change will mean more efficient wrangling and less strain on the servers going forward. However, Tag Wrangling would like to remind folks that, for the next little while, it may take up to a month for new tags to be wrangled, rather than the usual goal of two weeks. Thanks to everybody for your patience and understanding while we get everything sorted.

II. AT THE AO3

During December, Accessibility, Design & Technology made several updates to AO3, including successfully updating the Archive's login system with a switch to the Devise gem. During January, they made other updates, including squashing several bugs related to Collections.

AO3 traditionally sees traffic spike around the end of the year, and some old traffic records were soundly broken over the last couple of months: there were 857 million page views in December 2018 (compared to 731 million in 2017), and 219 million page views in the first week of January 2019 (compared to 189 million in the first week of 2018).

Policy & Abuse received approximately 1,100 tickets during December, bringing the 2018 total to approximately 12,300. During January, Policy & Abuse received approximately 1,000 tickets. As a reminder, sending in multiple reports about the same case with no new information, or encouraging others to also report the same issue, slows down Policy & Abuse drastically. They investigate every ticket sent in, and the more complex the case, the longer it takes.

Support received 1,518 tickets during December, bringing the 2018 total to 18,743 (1,478 of which were in languages other than English). During January, Support received 1,165 tickets, nearly 200 of which were in Chinese. Thanks to the Translation committee for helping with all non-English tickets!

Tag Wrangling wrangled about 194,000 tags in November, and in December they handled a whopping 238,000 (approximately)!

III. LEGAL ADVOCACY

In December, Legal worked with Communications to inform users regarding changes to the Tumblr terms of service. Also in December, Legal staffer Rebecca K. appeared on the Three Patch Podcast to talk about OTW Legal’s advocacy work.

In addition to that work, Legal got some excellent news in December regarding a trademark matter they’ve been working on. Together with allies at Suffolk Law School, Legal had opposed registration of the term "Rapunzel" as a brand of dolls, explaining how fans make fanart, fanfiction, and other works regarding the fairy tale character, and demonstrating that fans use the name as a generic descriptor of the character. The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled that it was proper for to advocacy groups (like the OTW!) to file such oppositions. Our allies' case will go forward to what we hope will be a great success!

In January, Legal worked with Communications on two posts for Copyright Week – one regarding the long-awaited expansion of the public domain, and the other regarding the dangers of Internet filtering and a positive development regarding EU copyright.

IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

As of 25 January the OTW has 712 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Staff: antonomasia09 (Tag Wrangling), Christine Mains (TWC), Jessa (Finance), Julia Santos (Tag Wrangling) and 2 other Tag Wrangling staffers
New Tag Wrangler Volunteers: AlgaeRa, Armand, Ayumi09, Brie Atienza, c_doves, deliciousghosts, EldritchLaura, Elsinore, Evey A, faejilly , Ffwydriad, Hemisphaerica, HerderInk, HS, Isis C, Jackee Wu, Jessa Sue, Ketsele, KillClaudio, Kjcblackstar, Lilized, lydia-theda, Madi, Marian Weaver, Meicdon13, NikitaRia, Ohsodeluded, Pete M, Rei, René D, R.M. Hartwell, Resilur, Shalee, SherlockianWhovian, syr shimmer, thomastelbon, touchinghearts, tread-softly, unknownlifeform

Departing Committee Staff: Siobhan Gibson (AO3 Docs Staffer), Seamus Johnston (Systems Staffer), 3 other Systems Staffers, Tisha Turk (Communications Staffer), 2 other Communications Staffers, Misty Fritz (Elections Staffer), 1 AD&T Staffer, Kit Molnar and 3 other Support Staffers, 3 Open Doors staffer, 1 Tag Wrangling staff, Girard (Legal Staffer)
Departing AD&T Coder Volunteers: 2 volunteers
Departing AD&T QA Tester Volunteers: 2 volunteers
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: Francesca Coppa and 2 other Fanlore Gardeners, fictionforlife, Fie, and 3 other Graphics Volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 7 Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: canakya, Stefan Fjellander, wellperhaps and 3 other Translation volunteers
Departing TWC Volunteers: Amanda Retartha

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.

Soon we'll be replacing our current method for generating work downloads with the Calibre command line interface. Our current patchwork system of third-party tools and custom code comes with a number of bugs and limitations, and moving to a well-maintained and documented application like Calibre will enable us to better maintain and even enhance the download feature going forward.

Because this is an entirely new system, there will be some differences between old and new files. We've provided an overview of these changes and some previews below, but we're still testing these changes, so there may be some minor differences between the previews and the final versions. Additionally, exactly how a file looks and behaves may vary depending on your device, software version, and settings.

HTML & PDF

HTML files serve as the basis for all of our download files, so it was necessary to make a few tweaks to help Calibre create tables of contents for other download types. Most of these tweaks are invisible, but we did make one visible change: the work title is now included at the top of the file, above the URL. Aside from these minor changes, HTML downloads will remain the same.

Because generating PDF downloads with Calibre would require us to install additional software on our servers, we will continue to use wkhtmltopdf to create PDFs, although we have upgraded it to a newer version. Like HTML downloads, PDFs will now include the title at the top of the first page but otherwise remain the same.

EPUB & MOBI

The biggest changes will be to MOBI and EPUB files, which are currently very different from each other due to limitations that existed when our system was created nearly ten years ago. The new code will give these files a more consistent look and feel and allow readers to take advantage of some features ebook readers provide.

EPUB

The new EPUB files will do away with the two-column display of work meta (i.e. tags and statistics), which doesn't work well for small screens, lots of tags, or large font sizes.

This update will also fix the bug where EPUB files were missing chapter endnotes.

You can download an example of the new EPUB files to preview on your device.

MOBI

Our current system provides a list of links on the first page as a makeshift table of contents, but Calibre will create files designed to work with your device or app's built-in table of contents function. (As you navigate with the shiny new table of contents, you may also notice each chapter begins on a fresh page.)

Calibre will also add margins to prevent the text from running against the edge of the page. Additionally, we've switched from using indented book-style paragraphs to using vertical margins to create blank lines between paragraphs, bringing MOBI files in line with how text is formatted on the site and in other download files.

This update also brings a major improvement for internationalization: MOBI files of works written in non-Latin alphabets will no longer be automatically transliterated! Please note, however, that MOBI offers only limited support of right-to-left languages like Hebrew and Arabic, so Kindle users will need to use AZW3 to read works in those languages.

You can download an example of the new MOBI files to preview on your device.

AZW3

We'll also be adding a new download format: AZW3, which was created by Amazon for use with Kindle devices and apps. It's a newer format than MOBI, and it will allow us to offer Kindle users downloads of works in right-to-left languages, but it will otherwise look the same.

AZW3 downloads will be available on all works, but if you rely on Send to Kindle to transfer files to your device, you'll need to stick with a different format: Amazon doesn't allow you to send this file type. However, you can still transfer AZW3 files to your Kindle by downloading them to your computer and connecting your device.

If you're using the Kindle app on an Android device, you can move AZW3 files you've downloaded to your SD card's Kindle folder in order to access them. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a workaround for the iOS Kindle app, so iPhone and iPad users will need to use another download format or a different, non-Kindle app.

Deploy date

While this upgrade won't immediately resolve all of the existing issues with downloads, it's an important part of the process, and it will ultimately make the Archive more secure and more maintainable. (After the deploy, our release notes will have more detail on specific bugs this change has fixed.)

We're still in the testing stages, but we plan to deploy these changes sometime after February 11. When the time comes, we'll announce it on our @AO3_Status Twitter account.

No downtime is expected, but if you have a work already loaded in your browser at the time of the update, you'll need to refresh the page to download it.

Do you love meta and research on fans? Or would you like to assist AO3 users by resolving complaints? Or are you fluent in a language other than English? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting for new personnel in several roles!

Today we're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

• Communications Staff: Fanhackers Staffer - closing 13 February 2019 at 23:59 UTC
• Policy & Abuse Staff - closing 13 February 2019 at 23:59 UTC
• Translation Volunteer - closing 13 February 2019 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

Communications Staff: Fanhackers Staffer

Do you love meta and research on fans? Are you familiar with Transformative Works and Cultures and other fan studies research? Are you interested in volunteering for the OTW? Great! Fanhackers is a project and blog that aims to make fan studies research accessible to fans. The Fanhackers team is currently looking for someone who can spare a few hours a week to help us collate, curate, compile, and manage academic work on fans and fannish meta. We would love someone with a good knowledge of fan studies (both historical and current) who is interested in communicating complex research to a more general audience.

Communications staffers are responsible for the distribution of information internally to OTW personnel and externally to the general public, the media, fans, and other fannish organizations. Communications is also typically the first point of contact for someone interested in or wanting help from the OTW.

Applications are due 13 February 2019 at 23:59 UTC

Policy & Abuse Staff

The AO3 Policy & Abuse Committee is dedicated to helping users deal with the various situations that may arise. We also handle any complaints that come in about content uploaded to the Archive of Our Own. The team determines if complaints are about legitimate violations of the Terms of Service, and what to do about them if they are; our major goals are to adhere to the TOS, to make our reasoning and processes as clear and transparent as possible, and to keep every individual case completely confidential. We work closely with other AO3 related committees such as Support and Content.

We are seeking people who can keep in close contact, be patient in rephrasing explanations, make and document decisions, cooperate within and outside of their team, and ask for help when it's needed. Staffers need to be able to handle complex and sometimes-disturbing content, and must be able to commit a sufficient amount of time to the team on a regular basis.

Policy & Abuse staffers are required to spend at least five hours a week handling committee work, though it often tends to be more. Please be sure you can handle the workload before applying.

Applications are due 13 February 2019 at 23:59 UTC

Translation Volunteer

If you enjoy working collaboratively, if you're fluent in a language other than English, if you’re passionate about the OTW and its projects, and want to help us reach more fans all around the world, working with Translation might be for you!

Translation volunteers help make the OTW and its projects accessible to a wider global audience. We work on translating content by the OTW and its projects from English to other languages, such as site pages, news posts, AO3 FAQs and AO3 Support emails. (However, we do not translate fanworks.)

We really need volunteers who speak Arabic, Bengali, Croatian, Filipino, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Malay, Marathi, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Welsh—but help with other languages would be much appreciated. If you're interested in starting a team for a language we don't have yet, you're very welcome to!

(Please note that our Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese-BR, Portuguese-PT, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish teams are not accepting new members at this time.)

Applicants may be asked to translate and correct short text samples and will be invited to a chatroom interview as part of the selection process.

More information about us can be found on the Translation committee page.

Applications are due 13 February 2019 at 23:59 UTC

Apply at the volunteering page!

Open Doors is pleased to announce the completion of 11 archive import projects in 2018, a total of nearly 12,000 works, bringing the total number of works preserved over the lifetime of Open Doors to just shy of 100,000! We hope that you will find old and new favorites in the collections listed below.

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MTAC

Completed: January 2018

MTAC was an NCIS fanfiction archive for all characters and pairings, including crossovers, founded in 2006.

Find works at the MTAC AO3 collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the MTAC announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the MTAC Fanlore page.

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The New Adventures of Sinbad: Fan Fiction Season 2

Completed: February 2018

The New Adventures of Sinbad: Fan Fiction Season 2 was a fanfiction virtual second season for the TV series The Adventures of Sinbad.

Find works at the New Adventures of Sinbad AO3 collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the New Adventures of Sinbad announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the New Adventures of Sinbad Fanlore page.

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The Boy - Michael Shanks

Completed: February 2018

The Boy / Michael Shanks Fanfiction Archive was a "multi-Michael" archive for gen, het or slash fanfiction about any character portrayed by the actor Michael Shanks. It was founded circa 2002.

Find works at The Boy - Michael Shanks AO3 collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see The Boy announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out The Boy Fanlore page.

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The Spooky Awards 2003-2005

Completed: April 2018

The Spooky Awards, also known as the Spookys, were an annual fan-run event to recognize excellence in X-Files fan fiction. Alice_ttlg hosted the award winners from 2003-2005.

Find works at the Spooky Awards collections. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the Spooky_Awards fanlore page.

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Unknowable Room

Completed: April 2018

The Unknowable Room was a Harry Potter archive for fanfiction and fanart, focused primarily on Marauder-era works and Lily/James as a primary pairing. It was founded in 2005.

Find works at the Unknowable Room AO3 collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the Unknowable Room announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the Unknowable Room Fanlore page.

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Death-Marked Love

Completed: May 2018

Death-Marked Love was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfiction archive focused on the Spike/Buffy pairing founded in 2001.

Find works at the Death-Marked Love collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the Death-Marked Love announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the Death-Marked Love Fanlore page.

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Firefly's Glow

Completed: May 2018

The Firefly's Glow was an archive founded circa 2002 for Firefly fanfiction of all types -- gen, het and slash, all pairings, all ratings.

Find works at the Firefly's Glow collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the Firefly's Glow announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the Firefly's Glow fanlore page.

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Artifact Storage Room 3

Completed: August 2018

The Artifact Storage Room 3 was a The Sentinel fanfiction archive founded in 2008.

Find works at the Artifact Storage Room 3 collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the Artifact Storage Room 3 announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the Artifact Storage Room 3 Fanlore page.

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Glass Onion

Completed: September 2018

The Glass Onion was a multi-fandom fanfiction archive founded in 2001.

Find works at the Glass Onion collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the Glass Onion announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the Glass Onion fanlore page.

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Pretty Lights

Completed: September 2018

Pretty Lights was a multifandom actor RPF Secret Santa challenge which ran from 2005 to 2010.

Find works at the Pretty Lights collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the Pretty Lights announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the Pretty Lights Fanlore page.

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P/K All the Way

Completed: December 2018

P/K All the Way was a Star Trek: Voyager fansite founded in 2000 that included a small fanfiction archive for stories dedicated to the Tom Paris/Harry Kim pairing.

Find works at the P/K All the Way collection. For more information about the archive and its move to the AO3, see the P/K All the Way announcement post. To learn about the history of the archive or share some stories of your own, check out the P/K All the Way Fanlore page.

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A huge THANK YOU to all of the archivists and volunteers who made these imports possible, as well as all the creators who have transferred or claimed their works! For a full list of Open Doors projects, please see the Open Doors Fanlore page.

To start the year right, we deployed some major improvements to the tag wrangling interface and fixed several collection and challenge bugs. Plus, editing a work will now display the proper word count upon preview!

Credits

• Coders: Cesy, Elz, redsummernight, Sarken, Tal, ticking instant
• Code reviewers: Ariana, cosette, james_, redsummernight, Sarken, ticking instant
• Testers: antonomasia09, Arya_Sheppard, briar_pipe, Dre, Ebonwing, GoldenFalls, hhertzof, Izzy, JenS, Lady Oscar, Luin, MagnusIsMyRock, McBangle, mmmdraco, mumble, Paula, phoenixacid, PS, Qem, redsummernight, Sarken, ticking instant, VSSAKJ, WhitedSepu

Details

Collections

• [AO3-5584] - We found a few issues in our collection code that made it possible to handle or delete someone else's data, e.g. works submitted to another moderated collection. We have now put more rigorous ownership checks in place.
• [AO3-4613] - Deleting a collection that was set to anonymous and/or unrevealed would trap the works previously added to that collection in a permanent anonymous and/or unrevealed state. /o\ Deleting such a collection will now set those works freeeee.
• [AO3-5206] - In some cases, removing a work from an anonymous collection and adding it to a non-anonymous one in the same edit would keep the work mysteriously anonymous. Now it properly adopts the settings of the collections it's actually in.
• [AO3-5533] - When posting a new work directly to an anonymous or unrevealed collection (as in, creating a new work with the collection name filled in), the work would occasionally not be marked unrevealed and anonymous. Even though it was in the collection! We believe we have fixed this baffling bug now, so fingers crossed.
• [AO3-5544] - Possibly relatedly, some works in a collection would sometimes remain anonymous or unrevealed even after the collection as a whole was set to reveal all works. Awkward! We have put steps in place to prevent this as well.
• [AO3-5569] - For extra testing fun, we added tests for the owner of an anonymous or unrevealed collection removing an item from the collection items page.

Tag Wrangling

• [AO3-5493] - Assembling all unwrangled tags per fandom (i.e. from works posted to those fandoms) and sorting them into bins for the wranglers to handle, complete with usage counts, relied on awkward code that put quite a bit of stress on the database. We are now leaning on Elasticsearch to save and manage that data, which will improve page load times and generally make for a smoother wrangling experience.
• [AO3-2270] - Previously, new character/relationship/additional tags would only show up in the aforementioned bins if their works used canonical fandom tags (e.g. "The Musketeers (2014)"). Now, the bins will also include unwrangled tags for works tagged with a synonym (e.g. "BBC The Musketeers"). For more context, see the Tag Wrangling committee's post on the improvements.

Miscellaneous

• [AO3-1305] - Editing a work to remove or add words would not update the word count in the preview. Now it does! \o/
• [AO3-4310] - In our work towards an Archive interface in many languages, we prepared another email template for translation.
• [AO3-5494] - If you use disallowed special characters in a search or otherwise upset the search engine, you will now be greeted with a helpful error page instead of a sad error 500.
• [AO3-5580] - We made sure old drafts are properly disposed of, even if they still somehow belong to deleted series.

Infrastructure

• [AO3-5579] - Updated Rails from 5.1.3 to 5.1.6.1, because it's the right thing to do.
• [AO3-5600] - Fixed an issue with the gem we're using to create the graphs on the Statistics page.
• [AO3-5581] - We improved tests using Elasticsearch so they don't delete and recreate test data unnecessarily.

AO3 is making a change to how tag wrangling works. Starting January 24, tags will be sorted differently for wranglers to interact with.

Before now, wranglers for a particular fandom were only automatically shown tags from works that were tagged with the canonical tag for their fandom. That meant, for example, that wranglers for How I Met Your Mother would only automatically be shown tags from works tagged with How I Met Your Mother.

With the new changes, however, wranglers for a particular fandom will also automatically be shown tags from works that are tagged with a synonym of their fandom's canonical tag. That means, for example, that wranglers for How I Met Your Mother will now also automatically be shown tags from works tagged with HIMYM.

This change means that more tags will get to the correct wranglers faster, which will make wrangling more efficient overall. However, it also means that, when the change kicks in, a bunch of tags that hadn't gotten to the correct wranglers before will be resorted all at once, and wranglers will have an extra-large pile of tags to deal with.

While these extra tags are being dealt with, it may take up to a month for new tags to be wrangled, rather than the usual goal of two weeks. Tag wranglers are unpaid volunteers, and there's only so much they can do at once. We'd like to ask you all for your patience as this backlog gets worked through. We'll work hard to get caught up as soon as we can.

In the meantime, you can keep creating new tags the same as always. Nothing will be changing on the user side of things. So go ahead and add as many tags as you'd like to your fanworks.

Tag Wrangling would like to thank the Accessibility, Design & Technology committee for this new feature. We're as excited to have it as you are to have the server performance improvements that come with it!

And as always, thanks to our users. Without your support, none of what we do here at AO3 would be possible.

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 Solovei, who volunteers as a staffer in our Tag Wrangling Committee.

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

Tag Wrangling volunteers make sure that readers can find the works they're looking for, while also being able to tag their works however they want! We've seen just about every variation of a ship name you can think of. Usually with tagging systems, it's either a free-for-all or a strict set of allowed tags, and Ao3 has somehow managed to find a very interesting medium in between those two! I think the tagging system on Ao3 is amazing - I have yet to see something like this work anywhere else.

On top of my regular wrangling work, I am also a Tag Wrangling staffer, which means I do a lot of the administrative tasks that are required for other wranglers to do their work: everything from looking at incoming applications, scheduling and conducting training and regular check-ins, to processing hiatus and retirement requests.

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

It really varies! Tag Wrangling opens up recruitment several times a year, and those are usually busy periods for staff. The tags themselves go through phases, with fic exchanges and events usually happening around the holidays. I really enjoy my work, so sometimes I'll sit down intending to only wrangle for a little bit and then realize that several hours have passed!

What made you decide to volunteer?

The year was 2015. I had just finished my Master's in Library and Information Studies and was having trouble finding work, so I needed something to occupy my brain during the job search slog. I had gotten back into writing fanfic some months before after being too busy for it for a few years, when I saw that the OTW had opened applications for tag wrangling. I really loved cataloging and information management classes in library school, so this seemed like the perfect thing to satisfy my love for fiddly organization and make use of some obscure fandom knowledge.

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

The other volunteers! I honestly cannot imagine what my life would be like if the OTW suddenly wasn't a part of it anymore. I've met some truly wonderful people as a result of my volunteer work (both online and in person). It's also great to have a built-in community of people who are are willing to listen when I want to flail about some new fandom I've gotten into!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I primarily read and write fanfic, though these days it seems that my to-read list is just getting longer and longer... I've been writing fic since the mid 2000's, so I've been in fandom for a while! I also used to participate in roleplaying communities on LiveJournal, and I've been known to make an OTP fanmix or two. My fandoms are many and far-ranging, from obscure webcomics to very popular video games and anime. A friend had recently introduced me to Star Trek, so I'm diving into that fandom headfirst.

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.