We have reached 1000 members at MTT today. (In case you are curious, dunderjim was member #1000.) We never expected the archive to get that big. We hope you have enjoyed your stay here so far, and thanks to all of you for making this a fun community to be in. We'd also like to thank everyone who has lent a hand along the way to set up, organize, moderate or give suggestions... You helped us make the fanfic archive what it is today.

Cheers!

Just over the past week, we've noticed that some authors are being a bit lax with spoiler warnings. As per the submission rules:

As much as possible, spoiler warnings are expected on all stories. For categories with serialized content, such as series of books or television series, spoilers are mandatory for the current season and/or most recent part. An appropriate spoiler warning to place in your summary would be: Spoilers for The Pilot. DO NOT do anything like this: Spoilers for the one where Jim puts Dwight's stuff in jell-o.

This includes speculation based on spoilers you've heard/read about for upcoming episodes. Episode titles of upcoming episodes are even considered spoilers for a lot of people, so please be very aware of this when you've written a story that contains spoilery content for an upcoming episode. Include warnings in both your story summaries and chapter notes. All you need to put is something simple, like "Includes speculation based on spoilers for upcoming episodes.", this will be more than enough to let spoilerphobes know to steer clear of the story.

On another note, it often comes up in discussion, about the tone of reviews of late. I think we are starting to see some that just more or less bash the pairing, instead of providing the author with constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is encouraged, but leaving a review to let the author know that this pairing made you violently ill, doesn't fall under that category. The author is invested enough in said pairing to write about them, so they are going to be understandably upset by the implication that what they've written about is bad or wrong. Opinion is one thing, but this is another. To clarify what would be good etiquette, and what would be poor etiquette to those who are unsure, I'll quote Kyrafic's example from the TWOP discussion the other day:

I do think there's a nice way to do this, and a not so nice way. I don't really have a problem with "I don't normally read Pam/Karen, but this was really fun" versus "EWW, Karen ugh I hate her. But good fic." It's like going over someone's house and criticizing their music or food or whatever. You don't have to like something, but ragging on it to someone who obviously does... just not in good taste.

More Than That does have a heavy Jim/Pam focus, but we encourage stories of all kinds, we want our authors to feel comfortable posting them here, and not fear being flamed for writing something that doesn't flow with the current fandom norms.

We're all here because we love The Office!

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. ~Attributed to Harry S. Truman

Recent discussions have focused on various pet peeves, beta readers and the process of writing fanfic in general. It seems that an excess of grammatical errors can be a real deal breaker for some of our readers - causing them to give up on a story halfway through the first chapter.

At a minimum it should be standard for all authors to use spell check before posting a story. But what to do with those pesky things spell check will miss - like the use of your vs. you're, its vs. it's, too vs. to?

I had a question last night about the use of lay vs. lie. My betas were all off living their lives (or more accurately - watching The Office Marathon). I clicked on the following site to get out of my predicament. I just thought I'd share...

Grammar Girl

She has fantastic tips about punctuation, acronyms, and proofreading. I've been making mistakes I didn't even know about - and not just in my use of verb tenses (the bane of my existence!!!).

A typo or two is easily forgiven, but I think even if you consider yourself a grammar guru it never hurts to take a little refresher course. The quality of all our writing will be the better for it, not to mention the impact it could have to the level of enjoyment for our readers.

And let's face it. That's pretty much why we're here. :)

*Phrase can be found on a t-shirt sold over at TWoP.

Here is this week's challenge sent in by a MTT member: Arabian Nights. But as always, feel free to use older challenges as well to inspire new stories!

Back in the fall, I was often recommending/featuring again older stories. Since we have so many new members, I figured I should start doing that again. So for your reading pleasure this week, I recommend Random Scenes by colette (Rated MA) and Something Borrowed, Something Blue by cocare2001 (Rated K+).

I've been playing around with the site tonight so you may notice a few changes here and there. The biggest change is that I've added a comprehensive FAQ that should answer most inquiries about the site. The FAQ is still a work in progress, but you should feel free to use it.

EDITED: Links and submission rules are all fixed.  If you see any glaring error, let me know.

I've posted a new challenge sent in by a MTT member: Mixtape.

Seeing as Phyllis's wedding is coming up, I think it would be appropriate to recommend this older story: Swaying Isn't Dancing by xoxoxo.