About the A Files

Background

The A Files were launched in 2002, as part of alt.fan.pratchett's 10th birthday celebrations that year. They are intended to give people a way to put a face or voice to the name, and to satisfy curiosity in general.

Being listed in the A Files is entirely voluntary, and there are no entry requirements.

Basically, if you want to be listed in this gallery, then that's all the reason you need. In particular: subscribing to, posting to, or even lurking on alt.fan.pratchett (past, present or future) is not a requirement, and the A Files maintainer gladly welcomes entries from abp'ers, meet-attenders, irc'ers, significant others, and everybody else who feels connected enough to the virtual community portrayed here to want to join in.

Submission Guidelines: Primary Info

To become listed in the A Files, please send an email to the maintainer.

Your email must explicitly mention:

• The primary name you want to be listed under.
  This can be your real, full name, but if you would prefer a nickname, or e.g. just your first name, then that is no problem.

and it must include at least one of the following two items:

• Your portrait picture.
  This picture need not be afp-related (i.e. does not have to be taken at an afpmeet or fan event), but it should be a recognisable portrait.

• Your soundbyte.
  A short recorded sentence or two, silly or serious, again not necessarily afp-related; but in your normal speaking voice, and preferably including the correct pronunciation of your name.

A submitted picture can be in any file format and of any size or quality. (Although larger, high quality pics are always encouraged if you have them -- the maintainer will scale and crop them down to size.)

A submitted soundbyte can also be in any file format, but its duration should probably not exceed 10 seconds, or it will just get tedious for the listener. (Higher quality recordings again encouraged -- the maintainer will take care of post-processing.)

Entries with both sound and vision are grooviest, but submissions with just one or the other are more than welcome, too.

Submission Guidelines: Keywords

In addition to your primary name and your picture and/or soundbyte, you can include in your mail a set of keywords and values that you would like to see listed in your A Files entry. Useful ones (feel free to pick and choose) are:

• Event
  At what occasion was the picture taken (or soundbyte recorded)?

• Location
  Where was the picture taken (or soundbyte recorded)?

• Date
  When was the picture taken (or soundbyte recorded)?

• Real name
  If your A Files primary name is a nick, but you also want us to display your true name.

• Nickname
  If your A Files primary name is your true name, but you also want us to display your nickname(s).

• Homepage
  Do you have a home page you'd like us to link to?

• Afpcode
  A compact way of specifying various bits of information you may feel like sharing about yourself.

• Comment
  Anything else you want to share with the world that is not covered by any of the other keywords.

For examples of the use of these keywords, just browse through some of the current A Files entries. Again, specifying keywords is entirely optional (although encouraged!). Send in as many or as few as you want.

If there are additional keywords you would like to have listed with your entry, feel free to send them along, and we will see what we can do.

It is always possible to change or update the information listed in your A Files entry. This includes changing keywords or even your primary name, replacing your picture/soundbyte, or deleting your entry altogether. Just send an email and it will be taken care of.

Credits

The A Files pages are generated by a heavily modified version of the BINS photo album software.

Various bits and pieces of the A Files were inspired by the Rogues' Gallery and The 'L' Files, and by discussions on the (now defunct) Afparty mailing list.

Special thanks to elfin for his help with the XHTML and CSS coding of these pages.

Oh, and our A Files stunt-double is nameless (as far as we know), but generally referred to as "the widdle dwagon". Its image is taken from one of Paul Kidby's illustrations for The Last Hero.

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