Madelyn (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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otw_news2008-01-17 03:28 pm
svmadelyn.livejournal.com) wrote in otw_news2008-01-17 03:28 pm
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January 2008, Newsletter, vol. 2
Welcome to the second issue of the OTW Newsletter! We're constantly on the lookout for ways to keep fandom up-to-date and informed about what's going on behind the scenes here at OTW, so twice a month, Community Relations will be compiling some updates about what the various committees are working on and we'll share them here.
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
ADT update from Naomi Novik: (Note: Handy links to the following open positions can be found under the volunteers update.)
We're currently recruiting coders and QA volunteers, and we are working on lots of tutorials and training materials. Coders will be hearing from us shortly after January 26, when we sit down with all the applications, and QA folks the week after.
In the meantime, we're getting a lot of questions about the archive software, and for now we need to just ask you to be patient. A lot of details will be evolving as we go, based on feedback from our testers, so the best way for us to answer your questions about features and how the archive will work is for us to build it, so you can come and see for yourself. And if you want to help, please sign up for testing!
A few basics we can tell you right off:
* It's going to be open-source.
* We're building it in Ruby on Rails with a MySQL back end.
* It's going to be hosted on Google Code.
* As much as possible we will be building it as nice separate plugins that can be mixed and matched.
* We're building it with a team, so we can teach a lot of people how to add to and maintain the code even as we build it.
* We're strongly committed to accessibility and open web standards.
* We're building in easy interface translation right from the start. (Watch this space for a call for volunteer translators coming soon.)
Board update from Francesca Coppa: One of our founding board members, Jo Wyrick, had to resign from the board due to time commitments, though she continues to serve on an OTW committee. OTW would like to congratulate her on her book deal! The board recruited KellyAnn Bessa, who was serving on a committee to join the board.
KellyAnn Bessa has a BS in Management from Cardinal Stritch University, and currently works as a human resources consultant for an investment firm. She has been in fandom for nearly ten years as a writer, mailing list owner, community moderator, and webmaster. In addition to running several archives, she hosts and maintains websites for a number of fan fiction writers. One of her first childhood crushes was Batman, and she still works several hours a week at her local comic book store, and participates in the online feminist comic fan community.
This will be updated on the website shortly.
Community Relations update from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
svmadelyn: We now have liaisons from each committee in order to bring you the most up-to-date OTW news. (We are incredibly excited about that one. *g*) We are currently working on clarifying some questions that have arisen about OTW's policies - you can expect those next week. This weekend will be the upcoming Australian chat with Cathy Cupitt; provided we get at least ten people interested in chatting.
Content Policy update fromainsley: The Content Policy committee has been making final preparations for the first round of focus groups on the archive's Terms of Service/Terms of Use, which will concentrate on general principles. Additionally, we've been drafting the abuse policy, which includes procedures for addressing plagiarism and harassment.
Elections update fromellen_fremedon: Board elections aren't until fall, but the Elections Committee is already hard at work. We've been researching voting and tabulation methods, working out confidentiality protections for the ballots and the voter rolls, and putting together the timelines for candidacy, membership, campaigning, voting, and the orderly transfer of power :-).
Financial update from Sanders: The 990s are coming! The 990s are coming!
For those who are going "bzuh, wtf?" the 990 is an IRS tax filing we're required to do as a nonprofit. It summarizes activity for the prior time frame and keeps us in compliance with US federal tax law. The FinCom, shark mascot and all, is currently preparing our first 990. We're also revising our plans for finding an accountant, and anxiously awaiting the official nod on the 501(c)3 paperwork that would establish OTW as a federally recognized nonprofit organization with tax exempt status.
Journal update frommafaldastasi: The journal committee is currently meeting weekly to work on finalizing the journal flyer/call for papers (CFP) design and establishing how to disseminate it. We are also pulling together academic resources where we can get the journal listed. The Review team, which is in charge of considering book and media reviews written for the journal, is making lists of works to be considered for review.
February 1 is the date that the CFP will be disseminated, and on that date, the journal’s Web site will go live.
We approved the job description drafts for production, layout, and copy editors. These have been sent to Volunteers; you can find links to those under Volunteers.
Legal update fromkillalla: The Legal Committee is working on our application for 501c(3) status, which the OTW must obtain in order to gain exemption from federal income tax and offer tax deductions to donors who make charitable contributions. We are also reviewing licenses for the various pieces of software which will be used by the coders creating the archive, and researching the types of public licenses we might use to release the archive software we create. And finally, we're working to respond to related queries that arise from members of the public and develop a more comprehensive Legal FAQ.
Mem/Dev update fromignazwisdom: kassrachel is now our committee chair. The Development and Membership committee is working hard to fine-tune the structure of our database of donors -- which is growing rapidly! Thank you so much to everyone who's made an early contribution! We're also developing our corporate gifts policy, as well as guidelines for helping international donors. We've set a tentative date in the spring for officially opening up membership and we're really looking forward to it. If you would like to support the OTW financially with an early donation, you can find out how on our Get Involved page. (Please note that donations are not tax-exempt yet, but we will let you know when that happens.)
Public Relations update fromjacquez: One of the OTW's new webmasters, imjinnie, has also joined the PR committee. Among other things, Jinnie will be working on website updates and planning. Our second new webmaster is derryderrydown. PR is also working on templates for fliers, so that people can print out copies and give them away to interested parties.
Systems update fromjadelennox: The Systems Committee has been preparing a training program for volunteers who would like to learn how to become sysadmins while helping out the OTW. Additionally, we've completed the port of all of our services over to our shiny dedicated server, and we've been working with some of the organization's projects, such as the wiki and the dead fiction office, to help them prepare for launch. And, as always, we are available to help the Archive team whenever they need systems support.
Volunteers & Recruiting update fromdevildoll: The Volunteers & Recruiting committee has been very busy posting jobs and adding new people to the volunteers database. As of this week, we have over 360 people in our database, who are either working or are willing to work on our various projects. This is up from the total of approximately 200 we had in October of last year.
Speaking of new people and being busy, we added some members to our own committee, too. Jenn Ashin (fannore) and Holli (holli) were kind enough to agree to come on board with us, and have been working hard learning the ins and outs of Volunteers.
Additionally, the committee has been working on orientation materials for committee members and volunteers--information on OTW policies, where to find things, and tips on using the various tools we depend on for project management and communication. These materials, and the orientation process itself, will be constantly updated and refined as the OTW continues to expand and include new people.
Our two recent job postings for Systems, Unix Systems Administration Volunteer and Unix Systems Administration Trainee, had really great turnouts. The applications have been forwarded to Systems for their review.
The TOS/TOU Focus Group post also got a big response, and those names are currently in the hands of Community Relations and Content.
These job postings are still open and accepting volunteers:
Volunteer Ruby Coder
Volunteer XHTML/CSS Coder
Production Editor
Layout Editor
Quality Assurance (QA) Volunteer
The Design Pool remains open indefinitely, and is always accepting people!
Wiki update fromwickedwords: The Wiki Committee is planning for a soft launch of the wiki this year, and is currently brainstorming structures and potential content models. A project timeline and proposed feature set is being assembled, and we are documenting the policies required to support the project. We hope the project will demonstrate our intent to explore a multitude of fan experiences, rather than the traditional historical narrative tone of something like Wikipedia. We look forward to seeking feedback from fandom in upcoming stages of the wiki's development.
Our next newsletter issues will be posted: Thursday, January 31st and Thursday, February 14th.
What details would you like to know? Please give ComRel a helping hand and let us know! Email us at comrel @ transformativeworks.org.
--femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
ADT update from Naomi Novik: (Note: Handy links to the following open positions can be found under the volunteers update.)
We're currently recruiting coders and QA volunteers, and we are working on lots of tutorials and training materials. Coders will be hearing from us shortly after January 26, when we sit down with all the applications, and QA folks the week after.
In the meantime, we're getting a lot of questions about the archive software, and for now we need to just ask you to be patient. A lot of details will be evolving as we go, based on feedback from our testers, so the best way for us to answer your questions about features and how the archive will work is for us to build it, so you can come and see for yourself. And if you want to help, please sign up for testing!
A few basics we can tell you right off:
* It's going to be open-source.
* We're building it in Ruby on Rails with a MySQL back end.
* It's going to be hosted on Google Code.
* As much as possible we will be building it as nice separate plugins that can be mixed and matched.
* We're building it with a team, so we can teach a lot of people how to add to and maintain the code even as we build it.
* We're strongly committed to accessibility and open web standards.
* We're building in easy interface translation right from the start. (Watch this space for a call for volunteer translators coming soon.)
Board update from Francesca Coppa: One of our founding board members, Jo Wyrick, had to resign from the board due to time commitments, though she continues to serve on an OTW committee. OTW would like to congratulate her on her book deal! The board recruited KellyAnn Bessa, who was serving on a committee to join the board.
KellyAnn Bessa has a BS in Management from Cardinal Stritch University, and currently works as a human resources consultant for an investment firm. She has been in fandom for nearly ten years as a writer, mailing list owner, community moderator, and webmaster. In addition to running several archives, she hosts and maintains websites for a number of fan fiction writers. One of her first childhood crushes was Batman, and she still works several hours a week at her local comic book store, and participates in the online feminist comic fan community.
This will be updated on the website shortly.
Community Relations update from
svmadelyn: We now have liaisons from each committee in order to bring you the most up-to-date OTW news. (We are incredibly excited about that one. *g*) We are currently working on clarifying some questions that have arisen about OTW's policies - you can expect those next week. This weekend will be the upcoming Australian chat with Cathy Cupitt; provided we get at least ten people interested in chatting.Content Policy update from
ainsley: The Content Policy committee has been making final preparations for the first round of focus groups on the archive's Terms of Service/Terms of Use, which will concentrate on general principles. Additionally, we've been drafting the abuse policy, which includes procedures for addressing plagiarism and harassment.Elections update from
ellen_fremedon: Board elections aren't until fall, but the Elections Committee is already hard at work. We've been researching voting and tabulation methods, working out confidentiality protections for the ballots and the voter rolls, and putting together the timelines for candidacy, membership, campaigning, voting, and the orderly transfer of power :-).Financial update from Sanders: The 990s are coming! The 990s are coming!
For those who are going "bzuh, wtf?" the 990 is an IRS tax filing we're required to do as a nonprofit. It summarizes activity for the prior time frame and keeps us in compliance with US federal tax law. The FinCom, shark mascot and all, is currently preparing our first 990. We're also revising our plans for finding an accountant, and anxiously awaiting the official nod on the 501(c)3 paperwork that would establish OTW as a federally recognized nonprofit organization with tax exempt status.
Journal update from
mafaldastasi: The journal committee is currently meeting weekly to work on finalizing the journal flyer/call for papers (CFP) design and establishing how to disseminate it. We are also pulling together academic resources where we can get the journal listed. The Review team, which is in charge of considering book and media reviews written for the journal, is making lists of works to be considered for review.February 1 is the date that the CFP will be disseminated, and on that date, the journal’s Web site will go live.
We approved the job description drafts for production, layout, and copy editors. These have been sent to Volunteers; you can find links to those under Volunteers.
Legal update from
killalla: The Legal Committee is working on our application for 501c(3) status, which the OTW must obtain in order to gain exemption from federal income tax and offer tax deductions to donors who make charitable contributions. We are also reviewing licenses for the various pieces of software which will be used by the coders creating the archive, and researching the types of public licenses we might use to release the archive software we create. And finally, we're working to respond to related queries that arise from members of the public and develop a more comprehensive Legal FAQ.Mem/Dev update from
ignazwisdom: kassrachel is now our committee chair. The Development and Membership committee is working hard to fine-tune the structure of our database of donors -- which is growing rapidly! Thank you so much to everyone who's made an early contribution! We're also developing our corporate gifts policy, as well as guidelines for helping international donors. We've set a tentative date in the spring for officially opening up membership and we're really looking forward to it. If you would like to support the OTW financially with an early donation, you can find out how on our Get Involved page. (Please note that donations are not tax-exempt yet, but we will let you know when that happens.)Public Relations update from
jacquez: One of the OTW's new webmasters, imjinnie, has also joined the PR committee. Among other things, Jinnie will be working on website updates and planning. Our second new webmaster is derryderrydown. PR is also working on templates for fliers, so that people can print out copies and give them away to interested parties.Systems update from
jadelennox: The Systems Committee has been preparing a training program for volunteers who would like to learn how to become sysadmins while helping out the OTW. Additionally, we've completed the port of all of our services over to our shiny dedicated server, and we've been working with some of the organization's projects, such as the wiki and the dead fiction office, to help them prepare for launch. And, as always, we are available to help the Archive team whenever they need systems support.Volunteers & Recruiting update from
devildoll: The Volunteers & Recruiting committee has been very busy posting jobs and adding new people to the volunteers database. As of this week, we have over 360 people in our database, who are either working or are willing to work on our various projects. This is up from the total of approximately 200 we had in October of last year.Speaking of new people and being busy, we added some members to our own committee, too. Jenn Ashin (
fannore) and Holli (holli) were kind enough to agree to come on board with us, and have been working hard learning the ins and outs of Volunteers.Additionally, the committee has been working on orientation materials for committee members and volunteers--information on OTW policies, where to find things, and tips on using the various tools we depend on for project management and communication. These materials, and the orientation process itself, will be constantly updated and refined as the OTW continues to expand and include new people.
Our two recent job postings for Systems, Unix Systems Administration Volunteer and Unix Systems Administration Trainee, had really great turnouts. The applications have been forwarded to Systems for their review.
The TOS/TOU Focus Group post also got a big response, and those names are currently in the hands of Community Relations and Content.
These job postings are still open and accepting volunteers:
Volunteer Ruby Coder
Volunteer XHTML/CSS Coder
Production Editor
Layout Editor
Quality Assurance (QA) Volunteer
The Design Pool remains open indefinitely, and is always accepting people!
Wiki update from
wickedwords: The Wiki Committee is planning for a soft launch of the wiki this year, and is currently brainstorming structures and potential content models. A project timeline and proposed feature set is being assembled, and we are documenting the policies required to support the project. We hope the project will demonstrate our intent to explore a multitude of fan experiences, rather than the traditional historical narrative tone of something like Wikipedia. We look forward to seeking feedback from fandom in upcoming stages of the wiki's development.Our next newsletter issues will be posted: Thursday, January 31st and Thursday, February 14th.
What details would you like to know? Please give ComRel a helping hand and let us know! Email us at comrel @ transformativeworks.org.
--
femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelynCommunity Relations Committee
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Dang, this is the first committee newsletter I've ever enjoyed!
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I do know for certain that ComRel doesn't *need* the crutch of a mascot. *tilts chin nobly*
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and that is: i like the look and functionality of TS fandom's Cascade Library - it's easy to read, search, and find what you want to find. only things i'd change would be links direct to the story (which i understand why they don't want to do that, but again, personal preference here), and it would be nice to have a date written added to the story. i realize not everyone cares when something was written, but when i'm tunneling through an archive, it's the easiest way for me to figure out what i've already read: sort by author, then date, then work down the list.
despite my own uncertainties, i do agree that something like OTW is needed, and i am especially happy about the archive and the journal. if nothing else comes out of this effort, i'm of the opinion those two things will make the whole endeavor worth it.
thank you, and good luck!
-bs