Archive of Our Own ^beta

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 Sammie Louise, who volunteers as an AO3 Documentation chair and Support volunteer.

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

My current volunteer roles are chair of the AO3 Documentation Committee and AO3 Support Committee volunteer. So what I do primarily is help people understand how to use the AO3 site and its features directly through my support work and indirectly through writing and editing our FAQs and help documentation.

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

As a committee chair, a lot of what I do on a weekly basis is background admin type work. I meet with the other chairs every week where we discuss any short or long term projects and what we need to be doing to move those forward. I also review the documents that our volunteer editors have been working on and sometimes meet with the editors directly to address any questions. Occasionally, I have the time to work on a document myself. ;)

In AO3 Support, I unfortunately rarely have the time to take user enquiries directly, but I do spend some time helping to troubleshoot an issue or check responses other Support staff have drafted. It's important we do these checks to make sure the answers we're sending are accurate, and fully answer the person's questions.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I've been a volunteer with the OTW since April 2014. I honestly can't remember what prompted me to volunteer. I think I was invested in a particular fandom at the time, and that led me to AO3. I had spare time on my hands and wanted to help out. I joined AO3 Documentation then, and have since also worked with OTW Translation, AO3 Policy and Abuse, and now AO3 Support.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Hmmmmm. That's a difficult question. I guess, over such a long period of time, maintaining my motivation can sometimes be a challenge. There are a number of things that remind me why I'm here though—sometimes we'll get a message through Support that lets us know our FAQs and Tutorials have been helpful to someone, and that's motivating. (Seriously, let us know what's helped you out, you can contact us via the Technical Support and Feedback form in the footer.) Also, I'm working with a phenomenal group of people who I genuinely like, so that also helps keep me on track.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read on AO3 a LOT. Like, an unreasonable amount of fan fiction reading is going on in my life LOL. I dabbled in writing many years ago, and that was fun and felt like a huge accomplishment. But I seem to have run out of stories to tell, so I mostly enjoy the stories others have shared. There's so much writing talent in fandom, it's inspiring.

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 the 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.

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 Fiona M, who volunteers as an AO3 Documentation staffer.

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

I’m an AO3 Documentation Committee staff, so I’m part of the team that writes the AO3 FAQs and any other documentation you might find on the Archive, like tutorials.

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

My weeks vary a lot depending on what kind of tasks I’ve taken on, and what stage the document is at. Some weeks I put in a lot of hours, and some weeks I don’t put in a ton of time.

Usually I start at the beginning of the week by filling out our check-in and catching up on what the other staff are working on. I also check to see if any documents have been moved to the open (“free-for-all”) beta read stage, so I know if I need to make time for a beta read during the week.

Then, I work on the tasks I have assigned to me. That might be drafting a new document, or beta-reading someone else’s document. I might be testing out new archive features and taking notes so I can write about them, discussing grammar and phrasing issues with other staff, checking HTML code, or any of the other various steps needed to take an FAQ document from the beginning of drafting to the end point of uploading new/updated documents to AO3.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I really wanted to be able to give back to the organization that has given me so much. I am super passionate about the importance of fanfic, both in my personal life, and as an art form in general. Transformative works have been quite literally transformative for me. I’ve read legitimately life-changing fics, as well as made some wonderful friends through reading and writing fic.

I had been keeping my eye on volunteer postings for a while, and the kind of work that Docs does aligned well with my skills. I’ve now been a volunteer for almost two years, and I love getting to have a hand in helping others understand how to use the site.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

I’ve had to learn a lot about Archive features that I didn’t know how to use! When you’re suddenly testing all the instructions on how to run a Prompt Meme, for example, first you have to quickly learn what a Prompt Meme is! But that’s been a wonderful challenge that I enjoy very much. Being an AO3 Docs staffer has made me so much more knowledgeable about all the features the site offers and everything that users can do.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I write a lot of fanfic, mostly for sitcom fandoms. I read fanfic almost every day as well, whether I’m rereading old favourites, or looking for new fics. I also run a tiny Tumblr blog where I rec fics, write meta and just in general discuss my favourite characters.

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.

We're excited to announce that the AO3 Documentation committee is replacing the current Collections & Challenges FAQ with a suite of FAQs and tutorials. 🎉

The Collections FAQ will answer several common questions about how to put together and maintain a collection, and the Gift Exchange FAQ and Prompt Meme FAQ are full of information you'll need if running or participating in a challenge on AO3.

Making a collection for the first time, or just unsure of the process? Try starting with our Tutorial: Creating a Collection for step-by-step instructions. You'll be able to group your own works according to themes or collect your favorites as neatly curated bookmarks in no time!

Want to encourage fellow fans to create more works for your favorite ship or trope? Check out our tutorials on Running a Gift Exchange on AO3 or Running a Prompt Meme on AO3 for guidance on setting up and running a challenge!

And if your heart just beats for a well-organized help section, there's a lot more in our collection of AO3 FAQs, which aim to cover all the tools and features available to you on the site. You might be interested in Formatting Content on AO3, which will guide you through using HTML to format your works, comments, notes, and summaries. Or you could check out the Unofficial Browser Tools FAQ, which lists several useful userscripts and browser plugins for commonly requested features we can't provide at the AO3 at this time.

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 telescopicpoems, who volunteers as a staffer on the AO3 Documentation Committee.

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

I’ve been part of the AO3 Documentation Committee ("Docs" for friends and family) since late 2016. Docs is mainly responsible for writing, revising, and updating the FAQs and Tutorials found on AO3 (for the most part, it’s whatever can be found in the Archive FAQ). We’ve also been working with Open Doors on updating their user-facing documentation. Our goal is to help the people who use the Archive understand how everything works and use it to its full potential!

Other than that, I’m also an Open Doors staffer, still on my training wheels, learning to help keep both fanworks and fandom history alive.

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

Open Doors work is more sporadic and it involves a lot of replying to emails, which I usually can do on (IRL) "work days". Every now and again I’ll have to do something that’s more labor intensive which I leave for the weekends (more often than not it has to do with new archives that we are looking to import).

My Docs work is done almost exclusively on weekends, as I need a lot of time to think things through. I usually have an ongoing task to work on, but if I’m waiting on a response from a beta or an author, I’ll pick up a new task: that can be drafting a document (which might mean either writing it from scratch or updating it) or doing beta. Other than the Alpha review round, which is done by one of our chairs, we have three rounds of beta checks, with each round consisting of two different types of beta that happen simultaneously.

On the first round we make sure everything is working as it's described and that a document is as accessible as we can possibly make it. That might mean using "fanworks" instead of "fanfics"; not assuming gender; or assuming that the user is based in the US, so using examples from, say, the Sailor Moon fandom instead of the Harry Potter fandom and so on.

Since that first round might end up with a document being significantly altered, it's only on the second round we start looking at it from a "format" point of view: we'll go over grammar and what's its reading level; if all the other documents that are linked in it are working fine; and if everything that you could possibly need referring to is being referred to.

Finally, there's the Free for All and External rounds. Free for All is the last chance for all Docs staffers to go over a document. External gives other committees a chance to read it so we can make sure that everything on there is nice and accurate.

Ideally, every Docs staffer should have gone through the documents at least once over the course of these three rounds. So it ends up being a lot of collaborative work, a lot of checking and double checking and discussing all sort of things, from testing issues to what should be capitalized and when.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I was actually away from fandom for quite a while before I decided to volunteer, even if I kind of kept tabs on it. On a random day, I spotted a post on Tumblr about volunteers being needed for some committees, Docs included, which made me think this could be a really awesome learning experience, as it has been! That and, to be honest, I also happened to be looking for a new job at the time and thought it would look good on my resumé.

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

As cliché as it is, and, well, that doesn't exactly count as fun, but I love what the OTW stands for, that it’s made by and for fans, and that it’s a non-profit. (Weird as it sounds, it's important for me to know that no one's getting rich(er) at the expense of my work -- or that of any volunteer).

Not only that but since the busyness of life is what made me step away from fandom stuff in the first place, I also really like that volunteering for the OTW keeps me in touch with it, so it’s always part of my life one way or another, no matter how lazy and/or busy I’ve been to actually participate in it. Plus it really helps that there are also some really cool people in here!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I had a very intense fandom phase maybe ten years ago, but have been in an on and off relationship with it ever since, so I usually chase after whatever I’m fancying at the time, which varies a lot. I also have a special liking for those fandoms with six people and a shoelace, so there’s that. Generally speaking, I'm quite the lurker and for the most part I read fanfic, will maaaybe write something, and look at awesome fanart I could never make myself.

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.

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 Rebecca Sentance, who volunteers as chair of the AO3 Documentation Committee.

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

I'm a co-chair with the AO3 Documentation committee, also known as "Docs", which handles the user-facing documentation for Archive of Our Own -- things like FAQs, tutorials and screencasts. You can find our work over on the Archive FAQ page. Our job is to make sure that there's clear and accessible documentation explaining the different functions of the Archive, which users can consult if they run into any issues.

For this we work closely with the Support Committee, making sure that our docs address the user queries that they're getting; Accessibility, Design & Technology, to take interface changes and feature updates into account; and Translation, who make our documentation available in all sorts of languages.

I also wear another hat which is as a layout editor for the Transformative Works and Cultures academic journal, where I'm responsible for HTML tagging articles for publication in each issue. I've learned a lot about the world of academic HTML in the process!

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

Every week is a little bit different. I do the bulk of my work for Docs at the weekends, so during the week I'll take care of smaller tasks like replying to and resolving comments on documents I'm betaing, checking in with the newer members of Docs that I'm mentoring in my capacity as chair, and looking over documents on "Free For All" -- that's the last internal beta stage our documents go through, where everyone in the committee goes over them with a fine-tooth comb and provides feedback.

Then every Saturday, Docs chairs will have a meeting to touch base and discuss anything that needs our attention. There are three of us, based in Australia, the UK (me!) and Canada respectively, so finding a time of day that works for all of us is a fun task! On the plus side, it means one of us is always awake and available if we're needed. We also have committee-wide meetings about once every two months.

At weekends I'll sit down to do more in-depth beta and drafting work. Drafting is the process of creating a document from scratch, after which it passes through five beta rounds which focus on different areas: Testing, Accessibility & Internationalisation, Coherency & Consistency, Readability and SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar). From there a doc moves into Free-For-All, and finally into External beta where other committees will take a look and provide feedback. My favourite beta stage is Testing, because I'm a hands-on sort of person, and I like to poke about with the Archive and find out what works and what doesn't!

What was your path to becoming chair of AO3 Docs?

Haha, to be honest, it was a path I hadn't even realised I was on at the time. Right from when I joined the committee, I was interested in training to be a chair someday, but imagined it would be a long way down the line. But I was proactive in volunteering to help with any admin tasks that needed doing, attending committee meetings (I love meetings), and offering my opinion on issues to do with the committee's direction and future. I was also keen to get involved with the wider OTW, which is a plus point for a prospective chair.

This must have caught the eye of our incumbent chairs, because eight months after I joined Docs I was approached about training to become a chair, and I delightedly said yes. That was in April of last year, so from then on I became a "chair-track trainee" (as we like to call it) and carried out hands-on training with my fellow chairs, Sammie and Claire, and in January of this year I was officially "chaired up" to the level of a full Docs co-chair. However, I still consider myself a "junior chair" and there's always more for me to learn.

User-facing documentation uploaded to the Archive between 2014 and 2016 by the AO3 Docs team. The Docs team is responsible for creating and editing help documentation in multiple formats, from text-based FAQs and tutorials to video tutorials, or 'screencasts'. Revised refers to existing docs that were rewritten or amalgamated, and New refers to brand new docs that were created from scratch. Statistics start midway through 2014.

What do you enjoy the most about your work?

The best thing about being a chair in an OTW committee - and about being part of the OTW as a whole - is the feeling of doing something tangible to give back to the fannish community. That was the reason I applied to join Docs in the first place, and the reason that I pour so much of my time and energy into the OTW.

Docs is also the perfect committee for me because I'm a writer and editor in my day job, and I get a lot of joy out of tinkering with language and helping to improve the way something is communicated. The Docs committee is a haven for word nerds, and we have members who love to delve into the intricacies of spelling and grammar or spend ages debating the perfect wording for a single sentence. I used to be a beta reader for fanfiction, which I got into because I love to edit and help improve the quality of someone's writing. Docs work is really similar, but with a bigger team -- and we're in the business of creating as well as editing.

Plus, I get a kick out of knowing that the documentation that we create is the same documentation that countless Archive users refer to whenever they have a problem, or want to learn about a feature. So we contribute directly to helping people use the Archive -- which is a big responsibility but also very cool.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I've been an avid reader and writer of fanfic ever since I was a teenager (well, there were also a few fanfics I wrote at a younger age before I discovered the wider online fanfic community, but we won't talk about those...), and fandom has always been a big part of how I spend my free time. I started out reading fanfic on Quizilla, which was written as a second-person narrative with occasional responses to choose from, sort of like a fanfic choose-your-own-adventure. From there I progressed to Fanfiction.net, LiveJournal and AO3. My early fannish experiences were mainly in anime fandoms and Harry Potter, but I've since dabbled in all sorts of fandoms from The Road to El Dorado to Pirates of the Caribbean, Marvel Cinematic Universe and Inception.

In the past I've written some journalistic articles about fandom and fanworks for Paper Droids, an online magazine for geeky ladies. I also love to read about fandom, and record my fannish recollections over on Fanlore.

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.

In one of our next code updates, we're going to be rolling out some changes to the FAQ section of the Archive. Here's a little information on what improvements the new FAQ will include, and what this change means for you.

Improvements

As one of the main improvements, it will enable easy translation of questions and answers. Our volunteer translators will be able to submit their work to the FAQ and link it to the corresponding English text. The new interface for users will introduce a simple drop-down box for filtering the FAQ by language.

[Work-in-progress screenshot of the new FAQs, here depicting the list of available topics in Portuguese]

The new FAQ interface will benefit from a cleaner, easier-to-edit structure that makes adding questions to categories more straightforward. Browsing the FAQ will also be a lot easier: we'll improve our index page, so that you can see at a glance a full list of questions without having to read through the entire page.

[Work-in-progress screenshot of the new FAQs, here depicting the list of all available questions for one topic in Spanish]

Expected Issues

We had to make significant changes to the existing code to enable these new features. In addition, our AO3 Docs team has been working on a new and improved FAQ structure, as well as updates to the existing sections. New content will be added as work on these updates progresses.

As a result, old links to the FAQ might stop working or will link to an unexpected section of the new FAQ. For example, the link to the Bookmarks FAQ might suddenly lead you to the FAQ about Downloads. Please bear this in mind if you have linked to the FAQ on another site, as these links will likely need updating. FAQ links included previously within AO3's official communication (for instance on AO3 News or in previous Support replies) will also be affected, although we will do our best to update our own resources.

Finally, there's a chance that internal links from one section of the FAQ to another will also break temporarily as we wire the new FAQ together. There's a small possibility that following the code deploy, the FAQ section will be empty as we work on re-adding all existing content.

Looking Forward

We're excited about these latest updates: we hope that they'll not only improve our documentation and make it easier for you to find answers to your questions, but will also be a big step forward in beginning to make the Archive accessible in different languages for fans around the world. Many thanks to our teams of translators, documentation volunteers, coders and testers for all of their work on this project! We hope you find these changes helpful, and we look forward to your feedback.