Platesmenistan: About This Site

	About Platesmenistan
	For the Explanation of a Strangely-Named Site

Why Platesmenistan? Why License Plate Collecting?

Have no fear, all your questions shall be answered by this informal, irreverent, and hopefully informative FAQ (frequently asked questions) page.

Bullet Point What's all this rococo about license plates?

License plates have always gravitated towards me; don't know why. Anyways, a few were usually scattered about in my room, and one or two perpetually found their way up onto my wall. At work this summer, before entering the long slow twilight of law school, I had to research the 1982 Falkland Islands crisis. Upon doing a key word search for "Falklands", I stumbled upon Drew Steitz's PL8S site and I quickly fell in love looking at the plates.

The next weekend, I combed Northern Virginia looking for plates; and it's been a fun hobby ever since.

Bullet Point What the heck does Platesmenistan mean?

Another work-related story: I had to do some researching (sound familiar?) on Soviet Central Asia, and in particular the new republic called Turkmenistan. Around the same time as that research project, I started collecting license plates. Always being one for non sequiturian reasoning, when it came time to name my plates collecting page, my mind immediately conjured up "Platesmenistan."

Turkmenistan + License Plates = Platesmenistan. Naturally.

Bullet Point How do I get started?

It'd be easy to spout off lots of tips for the beginning collector. But as a relative novice myself, I'd just say as a rule of thumb: if it catches your eye, snag it. It's also a good idea to have a certain goal in mind when looking to get plates, for example trying to get every U.S. state issue for your birthyear.

I'd recommend taking a look at the informative pages for beginners put out on PL8S and the Official A.L.P.C.A. page.

What Do I Mean By "Discrete and Active" Links?

In attempting to assemble thorough and accurate, as well as useful, links pages, I make every effort not to duplicate links, "discrete," and to ensure links still exist, "active." This way visitors can use everything that appears on the pages without fear of being led down a dead end.

Now, I don't always succeed in this endeavor, and occasionally you will find useless hotlinks. Please accept my apologies in advance, and contact me so I can correct the oversight.

Bullet Point How do you stand on the issue of digital information copyright?

All the HTML coding and images that appear on Platesmenistan has had its copyright asserted. If somebody would like to use these, it's probably fine with me, but please do send me an e-mail and check.

For a deeper discussion of the problems and potential of Internet publishing and copyright, read the letter I posted to the plate collecting listserv on the subject.

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