Archive of Our Own ^beta

As people get ready to celebrate the end of 2017 in one way or another, we'd like to thank our users for their patience and supportive comments as we navigated downtimes, spam problems, and bumpy infrastructure upgrades together. We accomplished a lot of what we had hoped to tackle this year, and added a lot more to the to-do list for next year. Thanks for sticking with us!

As you might know, we've had to disable invite requests for existing users (due to abuse by spammers) and decrease the number of invites we automatically send out from our queue (ditto). As a result, people have had to wait to create an AO3 account for longer than we'd like. So, for the holidays, we're giving 1 shareable invite to every existing account that:

• currently doesn't have any invites, and
• is older than half a year, and
• has left at least 10 comments, or posted at least 1 work

(Sorry, we had to ensure we don't accidentally let the spammers invite all their spammer friends, so some restrictions apply.)

Check out our FAQ (available in a whole lot of languages) to read up on how to send an invite. You can either email the invite code, or copy-paste the code to share it with people through other means. In that case, our FAQ contains some information on how to use an invite code to create an account.

Happy gifting!

All Things Rat, an archive focused on the X-Files character Alex Krycek, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have works on All Things Rat
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

All Things Rat is an archive which includes fanfiction about Alex Krycek, a character from the X-FIles. The fanfiction on All Things Rat is moving to AO3 so that it can be available to the widest possible audience for the longest possible time, no longer reliant solely on one person to maintain the server and archive website.

Open Doors will be working with the moderator, alice ttlg, to import the fanfiction on All Things Rat into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. We will begin importing works from All Things Rat to the AO3 after January.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on All Things Rat?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your All Things Rat pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your All Things Rat account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the All Things Rat mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection All Things Rat

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of All Things Rat on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve All Things Rat!

- The Open Doors team and alice ttlg

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 Mandy Gooch, who volunteers for the Strategic Planning Committee.

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

As a Strategic Planning (SP) committee member, I am involved in helping to grow and develop the OTW as an organization through implementation of its strategic planning goals. We do this work so that the OTW can keep focused on particular things we want to have happen in the future, and so that we'll have the guidelines and tools we need to help that happen.

Some of the ways we'll do this is to make sure volunteers understand their roles and how to do them, to make sure our board and the leaders of our committees can hand their roles on to others when they need to change their positions or move on, and to make it as easy and clear as possible to do the different tasks that the OTW, as a non-profit, needs to do to be accountable to its users and supporters. My committee doesn't come up with these plans so much as it helps all the different parts of the OTW come up with them. We help them decide what's truly important for both their committee and the OTW as a whole, and then help make sure that progress is getting made by all parts of the organization since some groups are farther along in some details than others. Because Strategic Planning's mission is about the future, we work most closely with the Board and the chairs of the OTW committees who will guide us there, and help them think about what's coming when they're usually busy dealing with today's problems.

I am also a Tag Wrangling volunteer, which is where I get to dabble in the fandom side of things a bit more. It's a lot of fun and is a way that I can be more connected to fandom without actually creating fanworks. It's also a really great way to find new authors in AO3, which is fantastic on the one hand...and also dangerous on the other since my To Read list keeps growing and growing!

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

I typically put in a few hours each week for Strategic Planning -- between 3 to 5 hours depending on what is happening in the committee. I usually meet for two hours each week with everyone in the committee to keep up-to-date on our current projects and discuss future goals. Right now SP Staffers are very involved in the implementation of the Strategic Plan. This involves at least two SP committee members signing up to be implementation monitors during a month; we call ourselves ImpMons (yep, just like the Digimon). As an ImpMon I am usually communicating with other committees about upcoming goals, tracking their progress, assisting committees in understanding a goal or meeting a deadline, and updating Board about the OTW's overall progress. ImpMons also host Open Office Hours for our staff/volunteers to attend each month in our internal chat channel. It is a great way for committees to learn more about upcoming or current goals and to get feedback.

Outside of ImpMon duties, my week may include meetings for projects the Strategic Planning committee might be working on -- we have to meet the goals of the Strategic Plan, too, so we work on our committee's goals at the same time as monitoring implementation. It might sound like a lot of meetings, but honestly it flies by since the work is rewarding and my other Strategic Planning staff are so much fun to work with on projects!

I also try to fit in a few hours each week for wrangling tags in my fandoms and working on a wrangling project for MCU.

January will mark the one-year anniversary of the Strategic Plan. What will that mean for the OTW?

I think it means we've hit a great milestone and made some real strides into completing our Strategic Plan. I'm so excited to see our one year mark coming up! The OTW is moving forward and growing even stronger as an organization and this is thanks to all of the hard work every committee has put into completing their goals.

I honestly have to say that when I first started in the Strategic Planning committee about 2.5 years ago, I was pretty intimidated when thinking about the implementation process for this plan. However, that was newbie!me being nervous. Working with everyone on this has been a great adventure and I've learned so much about strategic planning, volunteering, and working in an international organization. Everyone here is so dedicated and passionate about what they do in the OTW and it is really inspiring to see that level of commitment! Personally, I think reaching one year has been a great time to reflect on where we were, where we are, and where we are going. I am very glad I can take part in all of this.

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

Meeting new people and learning more about what everyone does in the OTW. It takes me a little while to open up in a group and I think volunteering for the OTW has really helped me grow in that area. I've made some great friends in my time here. It's also really interesting to learn about each committee and how they contribute to the organization. Strategic Planning has a very different process compared to, say, Tag Wrangling or Systems. Every committee contributes a lot to the functionality of the OTW and understanding how everyone works together has not only been important as an SP volunteer, but also as someone who appreciates and strives for collaboration.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read a lot of fanfiction in my spare time and years ago I used to write a little here and there. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or motivation to write fanfiction right now, so I consume a lot to make up for it. I also enjoy conventions and cosplay. Creating costumes has been a passion since I was a kid and I really enjoy making a costume and interacting with other fans at conventions.

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.

I. MORE WAYS TO SUPPORT THE OTW!

The OTW is excited to introduce an additional way to donate as of November 2017: We're now a Humble Store charity! Are you shopping for games, books, comics, or software? If so, shop at The Humble Store or purchase a Humble Bundle, select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice at checkout, and the OTW will get a portion of the proceeds.

Humble Bundle lets you pay what you want for a selection of games, books, comics, and software, while the Humble Store acts as a hub for users to purchase games for multiple platforms. In both cases, you can select an amount to go to the OTW in support of its projects. Content availability may vary depending on your country, but there’s an incredible selection to choose from. Just remember to select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice at checkout, and we will receive a portion of the proceeds. As always, your privacy is guaranteed!

(Donations the OTW receives as a result of Humble Bundle or Humble Store purchases will not make you a member of the OTW. If you wish to become a member, please donate via our donation form.)

Thank you so much for your support! And kudos to the Finance committee for launching this new relationship!

II. AT THE AO3

In November, Accessibility, Design and Technology and Abuse successfully combatted an avalanche of spam works through the deployment of several new anti-spam measures and improvements to the admin interface. This allowed the reopening of the AO3 invitation queue after a forced closing of several weeks. Using the spam detection tool to automatically hide works flagged as spam, with Abuse staffers monitoring the hidden works to unflag legitimate fanworks, has had a promising success rate so far. Users should start seeing less spam in their fandoms, and what does make it through should be dealt with in minutes instead of hours.

On a related note, the Webs committee has also (fortunately) seen a sharp dip in spam on the OTW website as of late.

At the end of November, Support received 1,686 tickets in one day when the old search engine went down. Accessibility, Design & Technology resolved the immediate problems and are working to deploy the new version of the search engine--which includes improvements to the filtering interface--as soon as possible, even while necessary server upgrades are ongoing.

The Open Doors committee continued to be busy during November, completing imports of The Alpha Gate and The Fandom Haven Story Archive! New import announcements were made for Glass Onion, The Boy / Michael Shanks, and the Dana Knight Memorial Archive.

Lastly, Systems have bought new servers and are working to set them up, and ticket numbers continue to rise, with Support receiving an unusually high 2,954 tickets in November, and Abuse receiving over 1,200 tickets.

III. LEGAL ADVOCACY

As part of the Legal committee's petition for clearer and more inclusive legal exemptions to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, they put out a call for stories to help the OTW fight for fair use. The stories collected will support Legal's petition seeking exemptions that would allow fans to rip clips from DVDs, Blu-Rays, and digital downloads, not only to make noncommercial remixes like fanvids, but also to include clips and stills in fanfiction. These expanded and clarified exemptions would build further on the successful renewal of the vidders’ exemption to the DMCA in October.

IV. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

As of the 27th of November, the OTW has 671 volunteers. \o/

Recent personnel movements handled by Volunteers & Recruiting are listed below:

New Committee Chairs: Rebecca Sentance (Fanlore)
New Committee Staff: 1 Communications staffer
New Fanlore Volunteers: Nat Bauer, fie, fictionforlife, and 3 other volunteers
New Translator Volunteers: Gaël, Carrochan, MJ Martinez, Poro, KeepCalmAndPlayDumb, Hanna Alexander, Halley, Adi M., Nilv, and 5 others
Departing Committee Staff: Atiya Hakeem (Lady Oscar) (Finance), and 2 other Finance staffers, Madoc Cage (Translation), Stephanie Godden (Elections), 1 Abuse staffer, Nemopedia (Legal), Morgan (Support), and 1 other Support staffer
Departing AD&T Coder Volunteers: dense.lancer, and 3 other volunteers
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: AParticularlyLargeBear, Chiralitivity, Amanda Triplett, MichelleMS, Llwyden ferch Gyfrinach, Tari, Avery, supergreak, pedanther and 39 other volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 volunteer

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.

InDeath.net Fan Fiction, an In Death fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work on InDeath.net Fan Fiction
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

InDeath.net Fan Fiction is a forum and archive for fanfiction about the In Death book series by Nora Roberts (writing as J.D. Robb). The InDeath.net forum has closed, but the moderator wants to ensure that the fanfiction on the forum and archive will still be available.

Open Doors will be working with AJ to import InDeath.net Fan Fiction into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own.

We will begin importing works from InDeath.net Fan Fiction to the AO3 after December 4th.

What does this mean for creators who have work(s) on InDeath.net Fan Fiction?

We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We'll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

Please contact Open Doors with your InDeath.net Fan Fiction pseud(s) and email address(es), if:

1. You'd like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive
2. You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
3. You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
4. You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
5. You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
6. You have any other questions we can help you with.

Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your InDeath.net Fan Fiction account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's great; if not, we will work with the InDeath.net Fan Fiction mod to confirm your claims.)

Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on

• importing your works to the AO3
• adding your works to the new collection InDeath.net Fan Fiction

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, contact the Open Doors committee.

We'd also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of InDeath.net Fan Fiction on Fanlore. If you're new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We're excited to be able to help preserve InDeath.net Fan Fiction!

- The Open Doors team and AJ

In recent weeks, OTW Legal has gotten some questions about net neutrality in the United States. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should treat all data on the Internet the same way, without discriminating or charging differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. There's been some recent activity surrounding net neutrality regulations that fans may want to know about.

Last week, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a proposal that would severely reduce net neutrality requirements in the United States. The FCC is currently in charge of regulating broadband internet access services in the U.S., and FCC rules currently forbid ISPs from, for example, blocking or "throttling" access to lawful content, prioritizing access to content based on payment, or requiring consumers to pay more for access to certain content or services. The new FCC proposal would retain existing transparency rules, but would roll back prohibitions--effectively permitting ISPs to engage in blocking, throttling, paid prioritization, and other interfering behaviors.

The FCC's proposed order has not gone into effect yet; the FCC Commissioners will discuss the proposal at their December meeting. Despite widespread and vocal opposition to the proposal, most expect that it will pass in mid-December.

What would this mean for fans?

It's difficult to predict exactly what these changes would mean, because it's difficult to predict what ISPs will do when the regulations change. Many major ISPs have pledged not to block or throttle content, but the law wouldn't prohibit them from changing their minds. Some ISPs may also decide to offer tiered pricing that would, for example, charge different amounts for access to different parts of the Internet, or create "fast lanes" and "slow lanes."

Essentially, the changes would allow ISPs to do whatever they think will be most profitable for them, which may mean (for example) giving preferred treatment to sites or services that are affiliated with the ISP or pay the ISP. This could make it more expensive for consumers to gain access to the full range of Internet services and content, and could make life harder for small sites or startups. ISPs would have to disclose when they do such things, but there would be little meaningful mechanism for preventing them, other than market forces.

Most of the effects would probably be for users in the U.S., although decisions about Internet in the United States tend to have a broad impact on access even for non-U.S. residents. Any law affecting internet access may also have an impact on works hosted by AO3, information available on Fanlore, and the OTW's day-to-day work of preserving fan works and supporting fan culture.

For these reasons, the OTW supports net neutrality and OTW Legal personnel have submitted comments to the FCC in support of net neutrality. We will continue to be involved as opportunities arise.

What can fans do about it?

Although it is likely that the FCC will adopt this proposal, the FCC is not the last word on the matter. The FCC must submit its rules to the U.S. Congress, which can overturn them. Therefore, one thing that fans can do--especially fans in the U.S.--is contact their Congresspeople to let them know that they should care about net neutrality. Knowing that net neutrality is important to their constituents, and having concrete examples about why constituents care about net neutrality, will make a difference in whether Congress decides to overturn the FCC's plan. A coalition of Internet-focused nonprofits led by Fight for the Future has created tools to make it easier to contact your Congresspeople about net neutrality, and has also planned some other actions. See their "Battle for the Net" site here.

In addition, many of the OTW's allies, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, are active in promoting net neutrality. Interested fans can follow their activities and get involved through them.

We at the Organization for Transformative Works are excited to introduce an additional way to support us: we're now one of the charities you can select when purchasing a Humble Bundle or through the Humble Store!

Humble Bundle lets you pay what you want for a selection of games, books, comics, and software, while the Humble Store acts as a hub for users to purchase games for multiple platforms. In both cases, you can select an amount to go to the OTW in support of its projects. Content availability may vary depending on your country, but there's an incredible selection to chose from! When you use the Humble Store to purchase games, or buy a Humble Bundle, select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice at checkout, and we will receive a portion of the proceeds. As always, your privacy is guaranteed!

(Donations the OTW receives as a result of Humble Bundle or Humble Store purchases will not make you a member of the OTW. If you wish to become a member, please donate via this form.)

Thank you so much for your support!

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.

Do you use screencaps or video clips in your fanfiction? If so, the OTW needs your help!

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") makes it illegal to rip from DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, and many other encrypted technologies. The OTW has won a legal exemption that makes it legal to rip DVDs, Blu-Rays, and digital downloads to make fair uses for the purpose of noncommercial remix videos, like fanvids.

But the DMCA still blocks fans’ ability to make fair uses of video in other contexts, such as fanfiction. Although fair use law would often allow fans to incorporate video clips or stills into their fanfiction (making it what the law calls a "multimedia e-book") the DMCA restricts fans’ ability to gain access to video material for that purpose.

What the OTW is Doing About This

Fortunately, the law provides for a rule-making process every three years where the Copyright Office can recommend exemptions for authors to access the works they need, which the OTW has participated in. There is currently an exemption for e-books, but it only applies to nonfiction multimedia e-books offering film analysis.

A group of allies led by the OTW and the Authors Alliance are fighting for a modified exemption that will allow all authors of e-books, including fanfiction creators, to gain access to the clips they need from DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and digital streaming services.

How You Can Help

Share your stories with us! If you're a fanwork creator who's needed to rip digital content for use in your fanfiction, or if you anticipate finding yourself in that situation in the future, you can help us demonstrate why there's a need for this exemption.

The Copyright Office places an emphasis on stories from authors who have been harmed by the DMCA in the past or are likely to be harmed by the DMCA in the future, so please take our 5-minute survey and share your experience!

The deadline for us to submit our evidence is soon, so please fill out the survey by December 4, 2017. And even if you have no story to contribute, please spread this message to others. Every story helps.

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.