Annotations & Spoilers
Annotations
One special kind of relevant post is an annotation. The subject code for an annotation is [A].
Basically, Terry Pratchett's books are full of hidden references to the real world. However, in the early days of AFP, it was realised that many of these references were culturally, or geographically, based. In other words, if you weren't from (for example) the UK, you might miss some of the hidden jokes or references.
So began The Posting Of Annotations - posts in which people state that they have detected such a reference and then go onto explain it.
Many pre-existing annotations have been compiled into The Annotated Pratchett File, so it's strongly recommended that you don't post an annotation until you have checked that it is not already listed.
To check for recent annotations , it's an idea to run a search at Google Usenet Archive on the keyword "[A]" or 'annotation'. If, after following all of the above suggestions, you're still convinced that you have come across a new annotation, please remember to post it to the group with a subject line starting with the specific tag [A] and send a copy of your post to the APF maintainer.
Spoilers
Please, if you're going to talk about something that might spoil the plot of a book for someone who hasn't read it, put [SPOILER] in the title in the subject so those people will know to avoid your post. Then put another warning in the body of the post, in case someone accidentally selects it. Finally, throw in about twenty five or thirty blank lines before any text so they don't have to see the message in that case.
If you are responding to a post containing spoilers - please keep the spoiler space!
The idea of spoiler protection is so that you don't accidentally spoil the plot of a particular title for people who haven't read it - but those people that have read the book and want to discuss it, can. As a general rule of thumb, the newer the book, the more careful you should be about spoiler warnings and spoiler space.