An Update and a Letter
The AUREA website has been online since June 2019, and with the end of the year quickly approaching, we thought it deserved some updates. The website development team will be hard at work in the weeks to come implementing the beginning of these updates, based on feedback we have received from all of you, and they will likely continue throughout the next year.
After the updates, we have a letter from the Editor. You can read a little personal reflection on what has passed and what is to come.
An update
Upcoming changes include:
Adding a Policies page under the About section, so that we as an organization can be more transparent about our policies and procedures
Reworking the Resources section, to better separate out aromantic communities from other resources and make them easier to find
Adding a Projects page under Resources, so you can find special projects like the Aro Census, Aros Create Pride, and more!
Simplifying our contact information, so you know the best ways to reach us
Adding a Volunteer page with a list of what specific things we currently require assistance with
Other miscellaneous updates such as: editing the languages header to an icon, adding an author to all news feed articles, and adding a section to the home page with shortcuts to key pages, among other planned quality of life updates
In addition to these additions and reworks, we also plan to add a comments section on our feed posts as soon as possible. However, this change will most likely only occur after the bulk of the new work currently planned for the site. While a comment section has been highly requested, and we are excited to provide one, it comes with a fair amount of maintenance and must be planned with care. We will be drafting a comment policy, and will need to find a comment moderator to help enforce it. If you are interested, please keep an eye out for the position’s announcement on our new Volunteer page, once it is implemented, or contact us at contact@aromanticism.org.
We have also heard feedback regarding the accessibility/readability of our news feed articles. We plan to begin including charts, pictures, etc. in our feed posts when possible, in order to make our news feed more readable. We will also be updating any images with alt tags, and are currently researching other ways to make our site as accessible as we can.
Once initial updates are complete, we will put out another feedback form for the site and contact everyone who previously gave feedback on the site. Reviewing this feedback will allow us to tweak any aspect of the updates, to make sure that they are as user friendly as possible.
After the English edition of AUREA is completely updated, we will begin to update the translation bundles & send them out to our volunteer translators. As we begin to get translations back, we will work on updating various translated versions of the AUREA site.
As a note on translations, AUREA’s translations depend entirely on our volunteers, and we are very grateful for those that have worked with us in the past. Because we depend on volunteer translators, many of whom have varying amounts of free time or levels of experience, versions of the AUREA site in languages other than English are often trimmed down. Formatting may also be different due to the differing amounts of content or resources available. As always, if you have aromantic resources you would like to see on the website, in any language, please let us know via our contact email, contact@aromanticism.org!
We hope these updates will improve the user experience of AUREA, and we cannot wait for you all to see them, and try them out. As always, we are so very grateful to all of our volunteers, everyone who has provided us feedback, and all of our readers. We look forward to continuing to provide the aromantic community with content and resources, as well as growing our community and opportunities in the new year. We appreciate your continued support as we move towards the future!
- Lokiana, Web Developer
A letter
It’s a surprise to me that we’re at the end of the year - in more ways than one. Every letter from the Editor I’ve read recently has talked about how difficult this year has been, so I won’t. You know how hard it’s been.
I’m here to gush about AUREA. This baby is 18 months old. We just had our one year anniversary, like four months ago. And yeah the math is correct on that, it was a struggle to get the whole team together for a party. Time zones, y’know?
That was the first time everyone on the team was in a call together. It was like meeting an old friend, or seven. Together we’d put a whole year of work into this website. A whole year of planning and care, of exertion and emotion. I’m amazed at what we’ve accomplished. And now we’re even further along.
Here’s a highlight reel. Some time next year we’ll have comments available on articles so next time I write to you I’ll be able to say what got the most engagement. For now though, these are my personal highlights.
Go check out Aromantics Create Pride and leave some love. Every piece of work submitted is beautiful and we’re proud to have them linked on our website. Come next Pride there’s no doubt we’ll be hosting that event again. For articles I thoroughly enjoyed the piece on civic activism, that was extremely cool. And altogether inspiring. I loved reading the submissions for My Aromantic Future. There’s pure joy in that. Some despair too.
If you’d like more of that gloomy uncertainty actually the first installment of My Aromantic Fears went up today. It says a lot that we got about 10 thousand words on aro’s hopes and dreams and 25 thousand that detail what we’re afraid of.
There’s good stuff on the horizon too. We like to balance the good with the bad here. Some ideas are still conceptualising, others are in the works.
Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week 2021 is imprinted on our minds. Exciting stuff that takes months of preparation. What’s something I can tease at? We’re exploring a video medium or two this time ‘round. You’ll be able to interact with one of them also. As much as I love writing, there’s nothing like seeing someone’s face as they speak to you. And for those of us who don’t know any aromantics in IRL, that’s going to be special.
Speaking of the impactful, analysis of the Aro Census 2020 results is about to begin. An eager team has been put together and many questions are about to be answered. What will they find? What will we learn? How will we be surprised? We received around 9 thousand responses — from 9 thousand aros.
We’ve always centred growth as a major goal of ours. For both the website and aromantic communities. I have this idea for a series of articles that will be interviews with people who run a-spec meetup groups. There’s so much potential offline that is waiting to be explored. Imagine the full extent of what aros meeting aros, face to face, could do? It's hard not to feel like we’re playing catch up sometimes. The various aro spaces across the internet are in their grassroots. And offline isn’t an option for a lot of the world right now. We’ll see when that series is necessary. What good is an article about the ups and down of running a community group if no one needs a template?
If there’s anything to take from that, it’s that AUREA won’t be running out of ideas any time soon.
In particular there will be a greater focus on intersection come 2021, that I can promise you. Being on the aromantic spectrum is one aspect of a person and we want to explore that. There will be interviews, we’re hoping for more guest contributors (volunteer here!). You have such interesting things to say and lead such interesting lives! If there’s an intersection of identities you’d like to read about, let us know. I can’t tell you how curious the people on this team are.
And I can’t tell you how reliable the team is either. On the few occasions that I have doubts, someone comes through. We’re more than the sum of our parts for sure, but there’s great value in each of the team as individuals also. Everything on the website is proof of their commitment and heart.
We received some criticism recently - rightfully so - from a choice we made which had us in a deep, multiple day discussion. We had to reflect on ourselves, our actions, the website and how we want to be perceived. And there’s no doubt we’re stronger because of it.
For this letter I had intended it to be about the past. I intended to reflect on this past year. Except I can’t help but look forward. There’s so much to be excited about. We have so much to offer. There will be countless things that aros achieve in 2021 and we get to report those things! To you!! I fucking love volunteering for AUREA.
Here’s to 2021, we’ve got plans.
Darcy,
Editor-in-Chief