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Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
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3:26 pm - Sticky Post
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devildoll
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Because Journalfen is no longer giving out accounts, the OTW will no longer be mirroring its blog on Journalfen. An influx of new committee members at the start of each one-year term, and the fact that many people choose to serve under their real names, makes it difficult to maintain Communications committee access to this journal when we cannot create new accounts for posting purposes.
Please visit our website at transformativeworks.org to subscribe to our RSS feed or for a full list of places you can find us.
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| Sunday, December 14th, 2008
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1:33 am - OTW co-sponsors IP/Gender Conference on Female Fan Cultures and Intellectual Property at American Un
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bethbethbeth
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Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog
The OTW is proud to be co-sponsoring the 6th annual IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections Symposium at American University Washington College of Law on April 24, 2009. The theme of this year's symposium is Female Fan Cultures and Intellectual Property. Below please find the call for papers; abstracts are due December 19th. If you're interested in attending, the conference is free and open to the public, though registration is required.
CALL FOR PAPERS
American University Washington College of Law
IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections
6th Annual Symposium
April 24, 2009
Special Theme: Female Fan Cultures and Intellectual Property
Sponsored by:
American University Washington College of Law’s
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
Women and the Law Program
Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law
In collaboration with:
American University’s Center for Social Media
The Organization for Transformative Works
Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University
Francesca Coppa, Muhlenberg College
Deadline for submission of abstracts: December 19, 2008
( click here to read more )
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| Monday, December 8th, 2008
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1:38 pm - New Media Literacy - Part II
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| Saturday, December 6th, 2008
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11:36 am - A DMCA Exemption for Vidders?
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bethbethbeth
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Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog.
Vidding News: The OTW wants to announce its support for the EFF's proposed DMCA exemption for video creators--like vidders--who rip DVDs in order to use clips for fair use remixes. Members of the Board provided the EFF with background information on the petition to the copyright office (.pdf file, right-click and save), which explicitly cites fan vidders as an established creative community that relies on clips from DVDs to make works that are fair use: or what the petition calls "fundamentally transformative visual works."
As the EFF's petition notes, noncommercial videos like vids have good fair use arguments, but they may not have their day in court without an exemption to DMCA circumvention claims. To put it in layman's terms, vids themselves may be legal fair uses, but right now, it's hard to make the argument because copyright owners are able to claim that the DMCA says ripping DVDs to make the vids isn't legal--yes, even if you bought them.* (Capturing, for those of you who still capture, is legal; it takes advantage of a loophole called the 'analog hole'.) The blanket prohibition against ripping short circuits fair use; as the EFF notes, a DMCA exemption will give vidders and noncommercial videographers the chance to make their fair use arguments.
The EFF's petition briefly discusses fan vidders Luminosity, Lim, and here's luck: "A vid like Vogue is a direct exercise in cultural criticism--a stylish attack on the romantic conjunction of violence and male sexuality in a major Hollywood film. Some vids (such as Us by the vidder known as Lim), can be far-reaching commentaries on vidding and fan culture itself, while other vids (like Superstar by the vidder known as here's luck) serve the more modest (but equally fair) purpose of commenting on characters in a favorite TV show." The entire petition is well worth reading for vidders or fans of vidding culture--not to mention those interested in issues of free speech in a Web 2 .0 world.
*(unless you're a film professor: film professors currently have the only fair use exemption.)
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11:31 am - OTW promotes New Media Literacy
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bethbethbeth
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Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog.
Vidding News: Henry Jenkins has posted part one of his spotlight on the vidding documentaries made by the OTW for MIT's New Media Literacies project. The post, called "Fan Vidding: A Labor Of Love (Part One)", profiles the first three videos and features excerpts from director (and OTW Board Member) Francesca Coppa. (Fans might also want to check out NML's introductory video on the new media literacies. The rest of the world is finally catching up with fandom; media educators want their students to be able to do what fans do, to know what fans know.)
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| Friday, October 3rd, 2008
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12:22 am - A first look at the Archive Of Our Own
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bethbethbeth
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Want a first look at the Archive Of Our Own? Come browse!
While we're still very much a work in progress, with many of our most exciting features still in development, you can now go to http://archiveofourown.org and browse for stories!!
(Please note that this early version of the archive only works/looks right with the Firefox browser.)
Yay! How do I get an account?
Account creation is coming soon! We've started with OTW staffers and testers because they couldn't get too mad at us if everything broke. :D Now with this read-only launch, we are hopefully going to get some information about how the archive performs with lots of people reading. Once we see our performance results (and fix or speed up the slowest things), we will start up an invite system where archive admins and current users can send out a small number of invite codes.
(This invite system is not intended to exclude anyone, it's just to let us control how many new accounts we get during these early beta stages. Once the archive is out of beta, anyone will be able to create a new account at any time.)
Remember, we're totally still a work in progress, and things may break, change suddenly, or not perform as expected. Plus many of our coolest features--like subscriptions and communities--are yet to come! So when you get a beta account, please do be prepared for occasional bugs!
Oh my god, it looks totally broken on my screen!
Did we mention it was optimized for Firefox?? The Archive is currently optimized for FIREFOX USERS ONLY! Eventually, the Archive will work with most browsers, including the dreaded IE (boo, hiss!) but that's going to be some of the last coding we do; for now, it's Firefox only. However, Firefox is an awesome browser that you should totally be using anyway, and it's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and can be downloaded here.
What features are currently available for users with accounts?
A user with an account can set up a profile, add different pseudonyms, upload new stories and port over stories from existing URLs. They can make some stories visible only to other users. They can bookmark stories and create rec lists.
Wait! Where is feature x? Where is feature y? You said--!
We're working on it, we swear! This Beta version is functional, but does not yet have all the features that the Archive will eventually have. In particular, the subscription feature (coming soon!) is likely to change how you use the archive; users will be able to subscribe to particular tags, meaning particular authors, fandoms, kinds of stories, etc. But for now, you can use full-text search or browse from our "people" page or our "works" page, you can browse and filter search results with tags, and sort by spiffy things like wordcount.
We will eventually also offer a more customizable experience vis a vis fonts and interface displays; for now, these things are standard. Icons will be coming too; for now, you'll see only placeholders.
That being said, we really want user feedback and opinions on what we've got in place so far. What works for you? What doesn’t work so well? Does everything work as expected? We can’t promise to change/fix everything immediately, and we won’t be able to please everyone, but as the coders keep coding, we want to get some feedback from real users. Please write to us and tell us about your experience searching, browsing, and reading.
There is a feedback form on the site linked on every page in the footer; please talk to us! Exact descriptions of problems are helpful; screenshots are awesome.
Hey, is there anything in particular I can help you with?
Glad you asked!
Giving us feedback and reporting the inevitable bugs will be a huge help all on its own. If you find yourself giving a lot, and you'd be interested in getting more involved, we can always use more volunteers for our awesome team of official testers, who go over user feedback and pass bugs up to the coding team, and who check to make sure the bugs are actually fixed.
And if you are a coder or play one on TV or even just would like to someday play one on TV, you can also contribute to the archive code! We are always looking for volunteers, so if you find a bug and feel like helping to fix it yourself, please get in touch with us through volunteers@transformativeworks.org.
If you are into web design or graphics, we're currently working on our browsing and searching interfaces extensively, trying to come up with the best way to cram in as much information as possible about a story or a user or a bookmark, while keeping results compact (so we can fit a lot on a screen), and making it all accessible for users with disabilities or limited computer setups. We would really really love any sketches and design proposals you might come up with -- please send them to us at feedback@archiveofourown.org!
And as our interfaces firm up, we will also be needing translation volunteers to help us actually put in the translations (we've got the infrastructure built for translation, as you'll see on the site, but haven't actually been adding translations yet while everything has been changing so fast). If you'd be able to help, please contact us through volunteers@transformativeworks.org and let us know what languages you can help with!
Thanks so much for checking out the archive, and in conclusion, YAY! \o/
-Brought to you by the Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee & all the fabulous OTW coders and testers! Contact us at adt@transformativeworks.org
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| Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
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6:09 pm - The New OTW website!
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femmequixotic
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Mirrored from otw_news on LJ
The Webmasters are pleased to announce the launch of the new website and blog.
http://transformativeworks.org
In addition to a facelift, the website now has several spiffy new features that increase the ease-of-use of the site. The most important of these is the blog, which will be taking over from otw_news as our primary information service. It will also allow all comments to be centralized in one (non-LiveJournal) hosted by OTW itself.
Features
We’ve been working hard to introduce a number of new features for site visitors, including multilingual options (take a look at the language switcher on the left), a new site-based OTW news blog (you’re reading it), and the ability to comment on this blog, with or without creating a site account (or you can use an OpenID).
Feeds
There are several ways to track updates to the site and blog:
A feed for all blog posts is available.
The on-site Tracker is a way to find updates while using the website.
Finally, there is the Yahoo!Pipe feed, which combines both blog posts and all updates to the website.
How the blog works
The blog will post all the things you've seen in the past on otw_news, such as newsletters, calls for volunteers, spotlights on OTW committees, and updates on our projects. This information will be re-posted on our other news services:
LiveJournal mirror (otw_news)
InsaneJournal mirror
del.icio.us
Follow OTW on Twitter
OTW news Yahoo Group
RSS Feed
Atom Feed
You can leave comments on the blog much as you would on the journaling services, by creating your own account or using OpenID, or simply by providing a name and an email address. The blog operates under the Website Terms of Service, which includes this comment policy:
We may maintain one or more blogs on the site that accept comments. We strive for transparency and will generally post comments we receive, including critical comments. However, by submitting a blog comment, you agree that it is our decision whether or not to post it. If we decide, in our sole discretion, that a blog comment is spam or advertising; reveals the personal information of another person; or contains illegal content or hate speech, we may not post that comment, or we may remove it at any time.
What about otw_news?
Not a lot will change. The big difference is that otw_news will become a feed service for the blog – all the same content will be mirrored there, but commenting won’t be turned on. All comments will be centralized on the blog, which will allow fans from different communities who use different blogging or social networking services to engage on equal footing.
Basically, if you’re subscribed to the feed on LiveJournal or a clone, sorry, we don’t monitor any comments there! Come on over to the blog to reach us – the link to our comment page is given below.
Feedback on the new website
We are very excited to finally be sharing all these new features with you, and we hope you enjoy the added functionality the website and blog offer. We know everything may not be perfect yet – so take a look around and tell us what you think! We’d really love to know if you have ideas for improvements or can point out things that work differently than you expected.
--The Webmasters.
If you have questions or feedback for the Webmasters, contact us at OTW Webmasters.
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| Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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11:45 pm
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cider
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Mirrored from LJ otw_news community
Welcome to the second September 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 compiles updates about what the various committees are working on and we share them here.
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
( Committee Updates! )
What details would you like to know? Please give ComRel a helping hand and let us know! Email us at comrel @ transformativeworks.org.
-![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee
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11:10 pm - Nonprofit status announcement
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cider
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Mirrored from the LJ Community.
We're very pleased to announce that our tax-exempt, nonprofit status has been officially approved by the IRS. \o/ One of the benefits of our nonprofit status is that any donation that you make to the organization, including your US $10 OTW membership fee, is now tax-deductible in the United States! Even better, your past donations are also tax-deductible, back to our date of incorporation: September 5, 2007.
For those of you who donated in 2008, or who plan to donate this year, donations will be deductible as part of your itemized deductions, with the rest of your charitable donations. If you donated in 2007, you can retroactively claim your OTW donations by filing an amended return (form 1040X) for tax year 2007.
Please note that if you are located outside the US, your contribution may or may not be tax-deductible. You should consult with a tax adviser and see whether a gift to a US 501(c)(3) qualifies for a tax deduction under your local laws.
Here are some resources on the topic:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=106990,00.html - tips for deducting charitable contributions
http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=164249,00.html - retroactive donations
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc308.html - amending a return
-- Development and Membership Committee
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| Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
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5:12 pm - September Announcements
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cider
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Mirrored from LJ otw_news community.
EVERYONE STAY TUNED!
September is PROJECT ROLL OUT MONTH here at OTW!
The second half of September will be one of the most exciting times in OTW's history. The Archive of Our Own is in testing and will begin its very first public beta this week! Invites will have to be very limited for a while as we get our first real-world performance results, but all will be welcome to read stories, post comments, and explore the archive. (PS: giving us lots of feedback including those exciting bug reports will be a good way to get an invite. :D)
The first issue of our journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc) is out as of today! (Read the full press release here: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement.) A new version of the OTW website at http://transformativeworks.org will be going live very soon (this new version contains a blog and rss feed that will allow us to move the OTW off Livejournal for good.) And the Fanlore wiki is finalizing its policies and will be ready for a soft launch and population of information.
October is our biannual MEMBERSHIP and VOLUNTEERS Drive!
With all our projects rolled out by October 1, we will then hold our second membership/donations drive. This is your chance to become a member if you aren't already (which will make you eligible to vote in the upcoming Board elections) or to donate money or time to support the OTW and its ongoing projects. We will also be having another volunteer drive, and we hope that you will declare yourself as "Willing To Serve" on one of our committees next year.
November is for ELECTIONS!
All members of the OTW will be able to vote in the Board Elections scheduled for November. After these elections, the OTW will take a brief hiatus to reconstitute itself, and the new Board will appoint or reappoint the next Committee Chairs who will rebuild committees to take us into our second awesome year of projects. Be a part of it!
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| Friday, September 12th, 2008
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9:21 am - A Message from Elections
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bethbethbeth
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(This is a mirror of the original LJ post)
The Elections Committee has been developing a set of guidelines for how we'll handle our annual OTW Board Elections: our goal is to create a process that is transparent and fair to all candidates. We've posted a bunch of material over on the OTW website, if you're interested in reading more about this.
The Election FAQ (FAQ link here) and the 2008 Election Timeline (Election Timeline link here) explain how the first set of Board elections will be handled.
The FAQ and Timeline answer important questions like:
-- Who is eligible to become a candidate? Why is committee service necessary?
-- Will candidates' real name and fannish identity be connected? (For a more extensive discussion on this issue, see our following post ETA See note below.)
-- When is the deadline to become a paying OTW member, in order to vote in this year's Election?
-- How will votes be counted? Why is the OTW using cumulative voting?
We're hoping this will all work well, but we will be watching to see how it goes and how we can improve these policies. If you have comments or suggestions for how we could make them better for next time, please share them with us. Representatives from the Elections committee (cordelia_v and eponis) are on hand to answer questions left as comments here; private questions may be e-mailed to elections-chair@transformativeworks.org
(Note: The temporarily deleted companion post to this entry discussed the OTW's Requirements for Candidates and the organization's privacy policy, both of which can be found in the FAQ.)
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| Thursday, September 4th, 2008
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2:20 pm - September 2008 Newsletter, vol. 17
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femmequixotic
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Mirrored from the otw_news LJ
Welcome to the first September 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 compiles updates about what the various committees are working on and we share them here.
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
( Committee Updates! )
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
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| Thursday, August 21st, 2008
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5:59 pm - August 2008 Newsletter, vol. 16
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bethbethbeth
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(Mirrored from the LJ newsletter post)
Welcome to the August 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 compiles updates about what the various committees are working on and we share them here.
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
( Committee Updates! )
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
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| Thursday, July 31st, 2008
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5:13 pm - July 2008 Newsletter, vol. 15
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bethbethbeth
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(Mirrored from the original LJ Post)
Welcome to the third July 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 (three times this month), Community Relations compiles updates about what the various committees are working on and we share them here.
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
( Committee Updates! )
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
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| Thursday, July 24th, 2008
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10:18 am - -- Spotlight on . . . #4
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mirabile_dictu
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Mirrored from the OTW News LJ
One of the five core projects of the OTW is to support the noncommercial sharing of fanworks within fan communities. The official OTW website says:
The OTW believes that fanworks are creative and transformative, core fair uses, and will therefore be proactive in protecting and defending fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. This help will not be limited to those fans or projects directly connected with OTW.
I'm not a lawyer, nor do I understand much about law -- in twenty-first century America, it seems a tool of the powerful and the rich. When I was younger, I saw the law as a way to facilitate social change, but not so much anymore.
However, even cynical me acknowledges a need for legal resources at times, and a special kind of legal resource for online services. The existence of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a "civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world," and the work it's doing is one indication of the need for legal analysis and protection.
( The other core projects of the OTW )
To keep up with Legal's activities, follow Killalla's updates in the OTW News bi-monthly newsletter.
Written by Mirabile Dictu, with help from the OTW Legal Committee, and with help and support from ComRel.
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| Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
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9:32 am - Convention-friendly OTW Flyers Now Available!
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bethbethbeth
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Just a quick note to anybody who's going to be attending Comic Con (July 24 -27) or any other upcoming fandom conventions and gatherings:
If any of you want to print and distribute materials about the OTW, .pdf files of full-sheet and half-sheet flyers can be found here.
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| Sunday, July 20th, 2008
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11:59 am - Terms of Service Draft Part One
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femmequixotic
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Mirrored from otw_news on LJ
From the OTW Content Policy committee:
Here are the draft Terms of Service for the Archive of Our Own, as well as some FAQs we've developed in internal discussion and with the assistance of valiant focus group members.
Some things to note:
1. All together, this is pretty long. We've split it up into two posts and hope that makes it easier to read. Readability feedback is appreciated.
2. This is a draft. We're posting it to get as much input as possible. Very little is set in stone, and many links have been left inactive pending decisions about the organization and layout of the Archive.
3. If there's something you don't understand, please ask. We will try to clarify, and possibly add to the FAQ.
4. If there's something you don't like, it would be really helpful if you'd suggest alternatives.
5. Members of the Content Policy committee will be available to answer questions. Please remember that anonymous comments must be signed in order to receive a response.
( Terms of Service: Sections I-III )
( Terms of Service FAQ (1-7) )
Note: The second half of the Terms of Service draft may be found here. Please feel free to leave feedback either on the LJ post or via email (content@transformativeworks.org).
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11:57 am - Terms of Service Draft Part Two
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| Thursday, July 17th, 2008
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2:54 pm - July 2008 Newsletter, vol. 14
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femmequixotic
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Mirrored from otw_news on LJ
Welcome to the second July 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 compiles updates about what the various committees are working on and we share them here.
All issues of the newsletter will be tagged accordingly, so you can follow our progress chronologically.
( Committee Updates! )
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| Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
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1:41 pm - - Volunteer Search: XHTML/CSS Coder
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mirabile_dictu
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Mirrored from the OTW-News LJ
Job: Volunteer XHTML/CSS Coder
Works With: Naomi Novik -- Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee.
Description: Do you know HTML and CSS, either really well or want to learn more? Do you like building websites? The OTW is looking for more front end coders! Come and work with our irresistibly enthusiastic team as we bring the Archive of Our Own to life! You'll learn how to create accessible sites compliant with the latest Web standards and best practices, how to use the incredibly cool Scriptaculous Javascript tools and embedded Ruby in your webpages, and how to work with web application coders.
Skills Required: HTML and CSS knowledge and a deep-seated urge to write clean and readable web code. General comfort with software tools and picking up new things from tutorials.
Experience with accessibility and Web standards, and any experience with XHTML, Javascript, Ruby, PHP, or Perl is all a plus. No visual design skills or graphics tools necessary (though they certainly don't hurt), as our front end layout is being created by our user interface designers, so the job will primarily be to implement a design, given pictures of what it should look like.
Estimated Time Involved: 5 hours/week on average.Because of the investment in setup and training time, we ask that you be willing to give us a year if at all possible!
Other Information: Ideally you will be working with the same setup as the Volunteer Ruby Coders, in which case there will be a steep setup process just to get all the software tools installed on your system and working. However, unlike with the Ruby on Rails coders, this is not as critical, because if this setup isn't feasible for you, you can just create static html and CSS files and hand them over to the Ruby on Rails coders to be integrated into the application. Although that way you don't get the really great fun of seeing your webpages live and working with the database code instantaneously as you write them. *g*
How to Volunteer: Send an email to volunteers@transformativeworks.org or post a comment here. All comments on this post are screened in order to protect the privacy of volunteers providing personal information.
Please include the following information:
Your name (you may provide your real name--please consider what you feel comfortable using inside and outside the organization):
Your email address:
Relevant experience and credentials (fannish and/or real life):
Computer system (hardware -- CPU, RAM, disk space -- and operating system
with version):
Amount of time per week you can contribute:
Length of commitment you can make:
(Optional) What you are particularly interested in working on (if you have a preference):
Your time zone*:
Please put "XHTML/CSS Coder" in the subject line of your email or LJ comment!
Deadline for Application: Ongoing
*For chat scheduling purposes, so the committee can schedule online meetings at a time that's convenient for everyone. You can find your time zone here. Example: GMT -05:00
Anyone can contact the Volunteers & Recruiting committee at any time by commenting on this post (all comments are screened) or sending an email to volunteers@transformativeworks.org
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