This is the special post about the incredibly wonderful women (and a smattering of Nigels) who’ve made Ovarit possible.

The first person to recognize is /u/girl_undone, whose bravery, intelligence, dedication, myriad skillsets ranging from coding and design to moderation and platform development, is the reason we are all here today. Without her knowledge, financial contribution, and leadership over this immense project, we would not have the amazing platform we have right now. I’m honored to be a part of this project despite not having a fraction of her tenacity or skill, and I’m delighted to consider her a personal friend as well.

The beautiful thing about places like this is the way it brings people together who never would’ve met before.

Thank you to our developers and the upstream developers who’ve debugged and rebugged and unbugged and debugged the site. We especially want to recognize and thank /u/grrrandma who has contributed a tremendous amount of code over the life of this entire project, we wouldn’t be running without her.

Here’s a fraction of the developments they made to the site in the past year:

• Added post and user flairs
• Given moderators options to lock posts, create stickies, and distinguish mod comments
• Improved user reports
• Updated the hamburger menu to help mobile users navigate the site
• Given users ability to see their posts and comments even if they’re removed by mods
• Given moderators the ability to see removed posts or comments for circles they moderate on the user’s page
• Blocked outsiders from being able to view users’ post history. Users must be logged in to see other users’ post histories
• Created shared moderator mailboxes for each circle, so users can communicate with an entire mod team with one message

Thank you to our moderator and admin teams, who’ve managed the sitewide community as well as offsite outreach to others who’d like to join us here.

Our moderators have collectively:

• Written the rules and stickies for 36 separate circles
• Handled more than 1,700 reports
• Detected and removed a number of trolls and malicious contributors
• Offered significant site feedback and user testing
• De-escalated site conflicts
• Clarified different circles’ rules and expectations as many times as needed
• Offered support, guidance, and compassion to both users and each other

Thank you to our supporters and participants, for writing and commenting and sharing content, for inviting other women here, for keeping the women’s movement going no matter how many seek to silence us. Thank you for being part of a space where women’s voices matter.

We’re glad you’re Ovarit.