Profile checklist

Alternately you may want to go through these questions. Your choice.


Work a bit on the first few classifications

They are further explained here, and are very useful for Google searches and the like. When in doubt about how to fill them, please ask. As always, consistency (among various profilers) is desired.

Avoid Roman Numerals for characters

In real practice they create more confusion than they avoid. For instance, Marvel UK used to publish two characters named "Death's Head", but there is a little-known 1970s Daredevil villain by the same name that predates both of them.

Remember to credit yourself

The preferred way is by including a "Profile by" line between Comments and Clarifications. Including a link to your own entry at the Masters page is optional.

Check for applicable profile listings

Profiles may be found in a number of ways, including the alphabetical listings and though links for other, related profiles. They are also kept for a few days on the Recent Updates page. But it is important that we also keep the other listings updated. There are historical period, author and connection listings. Alternate Earths and even Universes are also covered. If you are a profiler, feel welcome to suggest applicable listings to the Editors for updating!

Link at the correct places

Link to an alternate dimension or race in the classifications heading, rather than base of operations

Use the current templates

They may be found at this page and saved on your own disk by right-clicking on them. Few free to customize them (e.g. by including your own name on the "Profile by" line) within reasonable limits. There is also an alternate web template that will send you a draft of your profile by means of an attached email file if you want it to.

Profiles are written in the Past Tense

For consistency reasons.

Check the Master List

Snood has set up a Master List that is very useful both for keeping track of all appearances of a character and for recognizing characters worth a clarifications mention. Don't overlook it. Another valuable resource is the MCP - Marvel Chronology Project.

Clarifications deserve a bit of work

First of all, they are made with HTML unordered lists. They must be done with unordered lists. It is not really difficult, trust me. All it takes is a handful of UL, LI and /UL HTML tags, and that is assuming that whatever you use to edit HTML doesn't have built-in support to this very early HTML feature.

Please provide all the links that you can. Many more mainstream characters are available at the Handbook site and/or in other places. Characters and concepts profiled at the Appendix should be linked. Others with stable URLs may be profiled too. We often include links to the Handbook for more well-known characters that aren't featured at the Appendix. Since the URL of the Handbook is subject to changes, we do not link directly to it - see Devros's clarifications for a few examples (Devos and Captain Marvel).

Avoid links to unstable URLs

Some sites, especially those hosted on free or inexpensive servers such as Yahoo Geocities or Tripod, have a tendency to change URLs fairly often. We met this dilemma whenever we linked to the profiles of more well-known characters at the Unofficial Handbook that was once hosted by the Appendix. To avoid broken links, the best solution is probably to link indirectly as in this very paragraph. In some cases it will be best not to link at all.

Check for spelling and grammar corrections

Many programs have their own grammar and/or spell check. It is always possible to cut and paste the text of your profile to check it through Spell Online.

Try to be consistent with the Appendix's notation

Avoid writing v3 or volume two, etc. to describe titles of comic books. Use Roman Numerals. i.e. Avengers I#209. Avoid using them to describe characters, not titles.

Horizontal Lines

Horizontal lines are to be included

Check the "let me know" link at the disclaimer

Email addresses are not quite set in stone, so it (and for that matter the profile authory link) should point to the appmasts.htm page instead of to a specific email address.

About image formats

This can get a bit technical. We can usually resize and convert image formats without too much trouble, but filesizes can be a problem. Feel free to experiment a bit. But if you would rather follow a set procedure, just scan the images as TIFs or BMPs; work on them (resizing etc) as much as you like; and convert them to JPGs as the last step before sending them to us. If there is a "Quality" setting to be adjusted, choose some number between 75% and 90% (your choice). We will accept BMPs, TIFs and PNGs, but they usually produce exceedingly big file sizes and may cause mailbox capacity trouble.

For ease of organization, please give all your images the same basic filename that your profile uses, suffixed with straight numbers from "1" on. GIFs are also acceptable, but usually not as desirable as JPGs. If you have any doubts about dealing with images, please contact me.

Sending the profile

The standard way to do it is by writing the HTML code (or "Saving it As" HTML) and sending the resulting ".htm" file as an email attachment to one of the editors or to Snood himself. Images may be sent the same way. Zipped files are welcome, although they usually don't save much space. Some MotO maintain their own websites and like to store their profiles there and send us the URLs (web addresses) so that we can check them. That is a great idea, and makes sending email attachment files unnecessary since we can just copy the files from the website.