explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Technical

Technical issues about the explain xkcd wiki, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests. (+post)

ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS[edit]

Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Technical.

Unable to view "what if?" page[edit]

The link to the page for the what if? blog displays an error: "No input file specified." JBYoshi (talk) 03:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

This also happens to me on 1205: Is It Worth the Time? Must be something with the ?s in the titles. 172.69.22.66 15:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
I've noticed that as well. I made a page in my userspace that redirects to the what if page, and for some reason that seems to work. (here is the link to the page) Blue screen of life (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
I have also noticed this but it is not just on pages with questions marks. Both 259 and 1705 show the same thing. A full list (as of 22 June 2020) of the ones i found is in the last reply to my report found here #2138_page_issues TomW1605 (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Both 259 and 1705 have an (e-with-accute-accent, Unicode U+00E9) in the URL, so for those pages, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?
For the "what if?" page, I had recently added a redirect from what if (blog) to get to it, and the What If disambiguation page has been updated with it, so at least we can get to it that way; and for the comic explanations, at least we can get to them by linking to their number-redirects (as 58 instead of 58: Why Do You Love Me?); but not sure how to fix it overall. At the following page, it suggests tweaking an Apache rewrite directive in .htaccess (or a CGI setting in PHP if it's running on IIS):
So maybe something about that has changed recently? Documentation:
Summarizing a few points from this related discussion:
  • Only one of the site's 10 administrators has made recent edits (SlashMe).
  • Neither of the site's 2 bureaucrats (Jeff and Lcarsos) have made any edits recently.
  • For admin access to the server itself, my limited understanding is that Jeff might actually own the server, but may have also given admin access to Dgbrt; however, neither of them have made edits recently.
But "most recent edit" might not be a good indicator, so I wonder of some of these folks are still involved in the project?
– Yfmcpxpj (talk) 05:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Looks like it happens for any page that has a percent-encoding in the title. PoolloverNathan[stalk the blue seas] 16:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Known broken pages[edit]

(Redirects work, whereas links to the actual page are broken.)

Title containing e-accute-accent:

Title ending with question mark:

Moved[edit]

I moved the what if? page to the what if (blog) page which I then changed to simply what if to fix this issue and because anyone new to this site would type that any way to see it. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Still trying to wrap my head around it – so just to summarize, we currently have:
For completeness, we also have...
...and the disambiguation page...
...and these troubleshooting pages from User:Blue screen of life:
Given that the actual content of the "what if?" article now lives at what if, I've started updating pages (except for Talk pages) to link directly there instead of the other redirect pages. All that's left to do are pages that link to the what if? redirect-page (which is broken). Its "What links here" special page is broken too, so it's difficult to find what pages link there – but now that it redirects to the what if page, you can see them indirectly from that page's "What links here" special page. These are the pages that still link there. There are still a lot of them to go.
Also, should the following redirect-pages be simplified to have them redirect straight to the new what if page, instead of redirecting through the intermediate what if? page (which itself redirects there anyway)?
– Yfmcpxpj (talk) 17:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Fixed the double redirects, don't ask me why we have so many pages for the same thing. PoolloverNathan[stalk the blue seas] 16:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion not displaying with comic[edit]

I am using FireFox on a Win10 machine. When I come to the site I can see the comic, explanation and transcript. But the discussion section is hidden. Even when logged in.

Any ideas?

You say "when I come to the site". If the address bar says you are on Main_Page and you see the heading "Latest comic", then it's simply working as designed. Above the comic, click on "Go to this comic explanation" and you will see the comic plus discussion.
Also, Steve, please sign your comments every time, with four tildes. That expands into your user name and a timestamp. Like this -- JohnB (talk) 10:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Random page sometimes takes me to an invalid address[edit]

Sometimes, when clicking on "Random page" in the left sidebar, the site will be blank apart from the text "No input file specified. ".

An example of such an URL is: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F


I've noticed this happens for all URLs to comics that end in a question mark (or possibly any special character). Interestingly, this doesn't happen if you go to the comic from the search bar. Danish (talk) 23:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Bug on the main page[edit]

Bug Enviroment(Might work on other enviroments): Ubuntu 20.04LTS Firefox85.0 2021.2.7

Bug: The front page reads: `Welcome, Main Page, to explain xkcd!` with `Main Page` formatted as a username,can someone fix this?

Xkcdjerry (talk) 09:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Occasional error via Cloudflare[edit]

Just a note that I'm getting Cloudflare errors of "origin not reachable" (sounds wrong to me, in my head it should be 'destination', but never mind) three times now in the last ten to fifteen minutes - of maybe a dozen general site-requests.

I've also been getting seemingly .CSSless formatted pages over the past few days, which I've been putting down to slightly dodgy wifi at my end (not unknown) but if I'm getting Cloudflare's error cleanly then perhaps it's been entirely upstream/downstream/however-you'd-describe-the-Explain-server. (Obviously CSS resource requests, as with images, are additional HTTP calls, but I still lump it into the single site-request per page in my 'dozen' estimate above. No obviously lost images, though, in incomplete pages - not that can't be explained by .CSS non-following, anyway.)

I had copy-buffered some of the exact info, but due to incompetence I recopied over it before coming here. If it happens again, I'll try to bring it over here. But (the way these things go) maybe it won't. FYI, though. 141.101.98.52 12:04, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Not a Cloudfare error (looks like an error of the actual explainxkcd server) but every now and then (like just a few minutes ago) I get an error page that generally goes away if I immediately refresh. To whit:
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Not really a problem (occasionally happened while submitting an exit, and I have to confirm to the browser that I wish to repost the data, but this particular copied instance was through a more 'read-only' link-click, like most of the instances) but... in case someone finds this to be new and useful information... here you are! 141.101.98.192 03:45, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
OP, here, of the above 503 error report/casual mention. Obviously this is the same message that happened for an extended period of time over a number of days, but I've only just happened to find the site responding again and have not yet looked to see if it is explained as the same or different cause to the old intermittent issues (at root). I hope things are resolved from the major outage (server quota? bill payments? renewal/reconfiguration blips?) but wonder if I should report any future minor outages? I'm still smarting from the total loss of the fora.xkcd.com platform, a few years back, and while I'm not active enough here to consider a proper login (lurking as a freeloading anon-IP is good enough, usually, for my intellectual enjoyment, with all due apologies) I did have a slight pang of emptiness while it was out-of-order. 141.101.99.79 15:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Add TemplateData[edit]

Add the TemplateData extension to allow setting data for templates. This will help editors because they will be able to see the data of templates.

MediaWiki 1.30.0?![edit]

This wiki is currently on MediaWiki 1.30.0 (release notes), the first of three releases of a version of MW that reached end-of-life in June of 2019 (mw:Version lifecycle). It's thus missing multiple important security updates from 1.30.1 and 1.30.2, not to mention the two years' worth of security updates since 1.30.x reached end-of-life. Even 1.31.x will be reaching end-of-life in just over a month.

If the sysadmins here update to MediaWiki 1.35.2 (release notes), that version will be maintained till September of 2023, with only a few security updates in the meantime. I would strongly encourage y'all to update to 1.35.2; to promptly update if there's a .3, .4, etc.; and to make sure you switch to the next LTS release (which will presumably be 1.39) well in advance of September of '23. (Note that this will also require updating to PHP 7.3.19 or later.) PinkAmpersand (talk) 07:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Uptime[edit]

Did the website just go down? Beanie talk 13:06, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

It was definitely down this weekend! https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/nxrm65 ProphetZarquon (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Comic template lappend breaks for standalone comic links[edit]

For example, https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html is changed to https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html/ which isn't valid 172.69.90.15 15:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Template here, I think it needs to be changed to solve this https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Template:comic

exkcd page here https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Blue_Eyes

May not be your problem, but FYI.[edit]

My typcal setup: Android tablet, with Chrome for Android (latest update), but also Firefox for Android (ditto), using default Gboard (likewise) for input.

Occasionally (notably within the last few weeks/maybe a month or so), when going in to edit an explainxkcd page through Chrome (it's how I divide up my browsing), I'm getting the cursor in the textarea box which can be used to Cut/Copy/Paste (as applicable and useful), but the on-screen keyboard isn't popping up. Page is fully loaded (can be refreshed, doesn't have the "stop loading" alternative), can go back (page viewing) and try to go back to the page editor (often to same result). Sitting and waiting doesn't pop the keyboard up, either (sat there for minutes). Happens both on home wifi and mobile connection.

If I transfer my attentions to the page to Firefox (copy URL, to use there... but I don't use that by default for expxkcd stuff) there's no problem, but then if I come back to Chrome again it seems to start working again anyway so not sure if it's just avoiding/flushing a transient problem that would also initially crop up with Firefox if I used that more.

Because editing is a different (mobile-optimised) process on Wikipedia and I can't be sure about any the equivalence of any other wiki out there (and it doesn't happen with anything else I regularly key into on Chrome) it's not something I've reproduced outwith this site, and of course desktop page-editing doesn't require touch-screen keyboard because there's a physical one.

Not getting much feedback with Chrome (really can't get on with their bugrep processes, it's too huge a project to make headway, IME), not even tried to pester the Gboard team and I've not seen anything said on here about this being a site-issue (not sure how it could be, as it's outside the remit of the core web-page rendering process and more an Android or App level of incompetence), but I thought I'd make a note of it here for future reference. Make of it what you will. Annoying but not game-breaking. And I just wanted to vent a little. 172.70.162.147 16:54, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

special:interwiki[edit]

where'd it go? 172.69.68.200 05:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter[edit]

Seriously. Many scripts and such built for modern, supported versions of MW do not work here because it is so unbelievably undated. PinkAmpersand above basically covers the reason why. I also highly recommend adding the extension AbuseFilter (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter) as it immensely makes removing vandalism easier (by straight up disallowing or blocking those that do, esp if it's like the current formulaic massive-replacement vandalism.) CRLF (talk) 00:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Ditto. I feel like the main problem is that the sole person who has access to the backend either doesn't have time to update, doesn't have interest, or doesn't have the technical knowledge necessary. But yes, I agree - updating and installing an extension to help control vandalism would help this wiki tremendously. Obwankenobi (talk) 20:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

↑ ?[edit]

Why do some pages have ↑ at the very start? They can all be spotted by searching ↑ Is it a technical thing, vandalism, some sort of glitch? Maybe I'm just uninformed or being an idiot.

Edit logs tell me that an IP user manually reverting vandalism somehow inserted one or more extra characters while manually reverting vandalism. Davidy²²[talk] 13:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
Should it be removed? It's not necessary and might be confusing for screenreaders... Mushrooms (talk) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Maybe not en-mass, I'd say. But I've dove in to delete a rogue leading <br /> tag left from a part of a prior vandalism (likewise, just before the {{comic}}-element) and I've promised myself that I'll remove any more that I spot (and now that arrow) in any future whole-page edit I make. Plus a small shopping-list of inessential but useful edits like making {{Citation needed}}s flow better when they're mispunctuated/etc.
But that's my solitary opinion. I'm sure hunting out and squishing this isn't a problem at all. I'm just balancing my own peculiar brand of OCD with what is somehow my also my own version of casual apathy towards other details. (Also, it probably looks better for a named account of recognised good standing to start editing potentially hundreds of pages in a session, rather than myself... potentially indistinguishable from the IP who seems to relish worn out memes in a general page-trashing.) 162.158.159.121 12:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Is there anything else we can do to prevent vandalism?[edit]

There's been quite a significant uptick in vandalism recently, and I don't feel we have any effective tools to combat it. I believe one of the biggest issues here is due to the way logged-out editing works on this wiki. Blocks are completely ineffective at slowing vandals, and IP editors can vandalize with basically nothing we can do to thwart them other than revert-warring. Is there a better way?

There's been some discussion of installing AbuseFilter, but I'm not sure anything became of it. We could disable logged-out editing, but that would likely be counterproductive as we get lots of legitimate contributions from logged-out users. If there's a way to switch to location-based IPs, we could rangeblock problematic users as well as proxies. Does anyone have any ideas? 162.158.78.145 16:11, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm sort of making server side changes via telegraph so an extension is probably going to take a while to get installed. Takes a bunch of emails and followups to get single variables changed in the mediawiki settings file. There is an email verification option, and some edit frequency variables that could be set to make spam more time consuming. Don't love range blocks but wouldn't mind getting the CDN IPs dealt with so we can actually use the IP bans again. Davidy²²[talk] 17:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm very grateful that you're working on changes under the hood. What do you think is the best way to deal with disruption in the meantime? Vandalbane (talk) 17:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
Could borrow a patrol bot like the ones people on main wikipedia have, could ask around. Davidy²²[talk] 18:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
There's not really a drop-in solution that you can use, especially since the server's MediaWiki version is not in sync with Wikipedia's (so a lot of the APIs etc have completely changed; when initially reverting vandalism I tried importing some scripts from enwiki but they failed as a result), but also because the bots have gotten pretty complex (using machine learning provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, for example). CRLF (talk) 03:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
Oh I do notice mediawiki hasn't been upgraded in a while. Looks like new version of mediawiki should be dropping extremely imminently, would be nice timing for an upgrade Davidy²²[talk] 04:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Rollback[edit]

Does the rollback permission exist on this wiki? Vandalbane (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

The rollback permission of course exists but there's no group called "rollbacker" like you'd find on Wikipedia (limited to admins). You'd need the sysadmin to change the configuration to add one, which as established is not really an option right now. CRLF (talk) 03:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

What happened to custom JavaScript?[edit]

I put some code in User:Some user/common.js, but it is not alerting 'hi' every time I load a page. Why can't we execute JavaScript anymore? Is it in response to the crapping incident? Some user (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Entirely because of that, yeah. Davidy²²[talk] 04:51, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

My IP[edit]

Why is my IP address a Cloudflare address in Norway? Is this a joke of some kind that I'm missing?

Other wikis like Wikipedia are showing me my actual IP when I go to Special:MyContributions, so I suspect this is a wiki misconfiguration. It changed again while I was typing this. 162.158.222.194 16:55, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

All IPs (as this one will be) are from Cloudflare gateway IPs, because that's the default IP that the Wiki understands as the source. Cloudflare mediates all the traffic, and perhaps to some advantage (not being privvy to the logs, I can only guess how much it insulates the true server from extreme problems, but I bet it does in some way).
There have been suggestions before to change some setting (in the MediaWiki implementation? ...can't recall exactly) to have it pick up and use the IP that the gateway reports (in its meta-request) was the origin, but that's not been enacted for Idunnowhat reason.
Because the black-box that is the Cloudflare traffic shapes in various ways, you will find that a single user will jump around 'apparent' IPs, and I've also been in the relatively embarassing situation of replying to another IP's info and finding that I've registered on the exact same IP so that it looks like I'm stooging myself, or something.
On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they were going to try and do the necessary tweak.
As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. If those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... 172.70.85.24 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
fyi it is supported in MediaWiki through $wgCdnServers. See MediaWiki’s introduction. -- 物灵 (talk) 06:58, 6 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Main page in categories[edit]

Ambox notice.png This discussion is marked as duplicate. See this discussion.

Main_Page was found wrongly appearing in some newly-created categories, such as Category:Cosmology. Could you fix it? --ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 17:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Never noticed this myself, but I'll take it as read. Before checking myself, I'm wondering if this could be when the main page 'inherits' tags from the Current Comic that it features. And thus solve itself (whilst gaining others) upon a newer Current Comic. (Must surely inherit "Monday Comics"/etc, on schedule every week.)
If it is that, perhaps the solution lies in the details contained within https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories#Categories_and_templates_(transcluded_pages)
Or maybe I'm wrong about it. But I have no rights to edit (thus at least examine the 'code' of) the Main page, to check my snap theory, as with most people. 172.70.162.46 19:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

This happened again in Category:Airplane banner. I27.O.O.I (talk) 09:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and it lasted as long as the latest comic was still one with particular categories. I don't intend to worry about it. If someone goes to a category that interests them and looks at the main page, as temporarily advertised, they're likely to find (as part of it) a comic which is indeed in that category. Doesn't sound like a big problem to me, except for determinin why some cats (e.g. Friday Comics) don't link to the Main page when they might be expected to...
(PS, I know for sure that I27.O.O.I isn't the same person as ColofulGalaxy (and various others, beyond even those with the bloomin' obvious "CG" initials or other recent spoofs on the RFC1918 addresses), and I don't think I mind too much, but faking disagreements between your various IDs isn't helping, anyone... smells too much of trying to establish alibis in advance of your next attempt to vandalise the site with stupid stuff. And doesn't impress me, so I doubt it impresses anyone else either. As long as you're just doing sane things, however, I'll accept your little idiosyncracies.) 162.158.74.32 19:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
(PPS: You left your fingerprint on this latter attempt to 'rescue' this page. - Spammer a few minutes before midnight, my IP reversion happened shortly after. A little later "Elisabeth" then re-spammed (modified), then another IP immediately jumps on it to restore it but with the modified undo-summary line clearly indicating that some sort of a game is being played. Please don't, it's not clever.) 172.70.90.34 02:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This doesn't happen to date categories, but it happens in manually added categories such as Category:Statistics. ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 21:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Cannot create user page[edit]

It says: There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page. 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

(Removed alternative text in the link involved, to not hide behind trickery.) I think you know that there's no problem with 2659: Unreliable Connection itself, except that it had become one of several pages targeted for spamming, the only one then locked down, then finding that the spammers just retargeted to its Talk page, etc.
I'm torn between "not assuming bad faith" and "don't feed the trolls", as competing principles, so I'm spelling out the situation. However much a tribute you might think it could be, I don't think there's a future in having a new username that's directly referencing a comic which has become so frequently seen in the recent history of this wiki's edits.
Obviously any genuine contributions are more than welcome. So prove me wrong, why don't you? 172.70.91.151 03:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Could you help now? 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 09:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I've created your talk page. I guess that what you intended is to have a backup or mirror page for comic 2659. Am I right? ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 20:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Fanmade comics[edit]

A fanmade comic appeared on xkcd. Could you edit the template? 172.69.23.100 07:21, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

You're going to have to say more about it, at least for me. Apart from the Sandbox attempt to make a page, I haven't seen the comic you're describing anywhere. Certainly not anywhere official. Link, for our benefit? 172.70.85.66 10:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Why doesn't this code block work?[edit]

Does anybody know why the code block at the end of this page doesn't work? I've tried everything and it still looks like plain text

Can't add RSS feed because of pubDate value on 27 Nov 2015[edit]

When I try to add the RSS feed in Nextcloud News feed reader I get an error Impossible to convert date : Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time.

W3C Feed validation says that pubDate must be an RFC-822 date-time and points "Pacific Standard Time" portion as the cause of the error: <pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</pubDate>. Can you please fix the timestap for this?

Admin request posted here because of vandalism[edit]

I can not currently access the admin requests page because it has been vandalized... can someone please protect the latest comic page (2805). There is some pretty childish vandalism going on there right now. Thanks!

It's not the latest, seems like ALL. I went back to 2804, 2803, jumped back like 15 comics, all the same thing. To me the most offensive part is doing it with a nonsensical image. And why pipe it through Archive somehow? NiceGuy1 (talk) 02:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
UGH. the vandals are back at it again... we need to lock xkcd pages @NiceGuy 172.70.39.2 00:59, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Way to contact the site hosters?[edit]

As many have pointed out the software this wiki runs on is horribly outdated. WikiEditor also isn't here for some reason. Quite a bit of messages here have seen no action. Is there some kind of contact form to reach the hosters? -- Aaron Liu (talk) 00:36, 10 October 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There are various levels of admin who do intervene, as and when jecessary, but I understand that the (active) ones closest to the actual hosting level of intervention are not really ready to do the (increasingly greater) degree of uprooting necessary to get a "working" system to be "marginally better working", by way of that very dangerous middle-ground of potentially being ruined entirely.
I appreciate and anticipate the counter-arguments regarding letting it go totally unupdated, of course, just I've personally seen enough failures (participated in some, or been the actual invokee, myself) to be very sympathetic to the "if it aint (too) broke, don't fix it" tendency. But that inertia is not the only factor, of course, and the full motivations (or lack of them) of those involved is not for a lowly IP like me to explain, even if I think I know... 172.69.195.42 01:24, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Have they posted some sort of statement? It also is most definitely not “marginally” better working, compare the source editor to that of Wikipedia and look at topic subscription etc features. Not to mention a lot of security fixes haven’t been added and this version has reached EOL long ago. Updating also would not ruin this entirely…Aaron Liu (talk) 17:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Some have also said that quite a bit of assistive scripts for modern versions don’t work. Visual Editor, while horrible, is still easier for new people to get started with. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I've found a new reason: This wiki doesn't even allow loading userscripts! Aaron Liu (talk) 01:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

That might actually have been a conscious decition, after a 'certain user' caused chaos here, not so long ago. 162.158.74.25 19:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
It was about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. 172.68.174.143 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Huh? What happened? Is there a place to request gadgets then? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
"What happened" involved automated vandalism (from someone who been doing it manually, then found the "better way") though I couldn't tell you the exact details, there were automated 'unvandalism's made in response, and theusafBOT/etc does some of that still, in response to non-automated(/off-site scripted) vandalism/errors that it can actually catch before ordinary users (or IPs like me) can. But certainly a certain brand of scripting was turned off to curtail the 'high intensity' vandalism phase.
You're more or less in the best place to request things, right here. Whether updates, (re)adding functionalitu or tweaking site settings. Can't tell if those who can do these things can't or won't do them... Or are actually absent, instead of just not replying. The cavalry has been known to come running in when necessary (e.g. when "what happened" happened) so it could be any manner of non-response (until you get one). Not necessarily the best state of affairs, but better than being confirmed absentees.
I ran a bot to mass-edit pages by replacing their content with the word "crap" repeatedly. I was 15 then, and I thought it was funny. It wasn't. 172.68.174.143 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
As an occasional but infrequent actual-Wikipedia editor, too, I must say that if the Visual Editor is what I currently have to use for that (at least as an anonIP when using a mobile device, which tends to be when I get the urge most) then I like the unaugmented editor here more. Straight up, honest, un'wizarded' interface, where you only have to get used to markup details and not a WYSIWYG editing environment (as well?). Not sure I'd be happy with an even more 'assistive' script imposed upon me, like I dislike modern generations of Windows (and 'user friendly' linux dists). So can I just ask that functional/visible changes of the kind you seem to be asking for, if made available, aren't overimposed/left as options rather than the default (or only) choice...? Ok, so I can (or would have to) adapt, but I'd rather not. Of course, I have no weight to pull in this matter, it's just an afterthought (even as I wish you good luck with raising an admin's eyebrow, in some useful manner). 141.101.98.135 05:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I am not asking for VisualEditor, which no one likes on Wikipedia either. For some blasted reason they made it edit HTML instead of Wikitext and it’s clunky and loads for a very long time.
I’m asking about the WikiEditor, aka Wikipedia’s source editor. In VE, click on the pen next to the publish button and click on “source editing”. That editor makes this one look like freaking Stone Age, syntax highlighting is especially a game-changer. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
There’s also the annoying ReCaptcha v2 every single edit… it seems like it would be relatively easy to switch to v3 which only makes you do the challenge when you’ve visited a bit too much. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that would make things easier for someone who wanted to do mass vandalism like I did. If it didn't do it every time, someone could still edit quite quickly. 172.68.174.192 18:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, I can tell you that it doesn't always demand that I fulfil more than a tickbox (most trouble I have is when it fails to connect to give me the tickbox (or respond with anything useful when I do), for which I'm forced into one or more Previews until it will. When it does ask me to do something about it, I do often get forced through two or more request to identify traffic lights, motorbikes, stairways, bridges, hills, tractors, buses, etc, etc, etc... But I think that's more the Tesla-training Algorithm being nust greedy for my attention than the Robot-sentry having a less casual attitude to my attempt to edit. (I believe I'm on a usually untroublesome source IP/Cloudflare gateway, but it could also depend on how many others try to do things via (part of) the same route. Very, very rarely I get Google Search requesting something similar of me ((It: "You have made a lot of searches", me: "Of course I'll have play your little game, but this is my first lookup today...")), which I'm sure isn't Cloudflared, so it might reach back to my ISP's gateway and what fellow users are currently getting up to.)
As for the guy above (and you, Liu), can't speak for how well or badly others on your own 'choice' of gateways behave. Or yourselves. Luck of the draw? For the first part, at least. 172.69.195.174 20:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
MediaWiki 1.40 automatically tags all edits that remove over 90% of page text with "mw-replaced". You could block all edits in mainspace with that tag, either if MediaWiki has it or through the AbuseFilter extension. While I can complete the CAPTCHAs, it's very annoying to need to Captcha every edit on a place where the main focus is edits. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Plus, v3 doesn't just do nothing. It tracks how your cursor moves to see if it's robotic, while v2 annoyingly gives you the challenge every time. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Presumably for touchscreen control (like mine, right this moment), it does something else than track a nonexistent mouse-pointer's passage across the monitored elements of the display... ;) 172.70.90.190 12:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
There are a few MediaWiki plugins that help keep vandalism/spam under control without requiring users to solve a Captcha every time they make an edit. I use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Moderation on the wiki I maintain, and it works very well. However, it does require that there be enough active moderators to approve edits, as it basically requires every single edit to be approved before it's posted. Thus, it also introduces some "lag" between when stuff is written and when it can be seen by others. I think it could work if the extension could be installed (I'm not even sure if it's supported on this version of MediaWiki) and if a good list of moderators could be put together. Obwankenobi (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
I disagree with requiring edits to be approved. Unless we have extremely high vandalism, just filtering out the above tags I mentioned and using ReCAPTCHA v3 would be enough. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Ok, fair point. However, that wouldn't stop human vandalism, just vandalism from bots. I'm not sure how much human vandalism there is, though, so it might not even be a problem. Obwankenobi (talk) 12:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
It's hard (for us 'civvies') to know how much bot-vandalism is stopped but probably a lot, most of which we never see, with occasional ones we might see having be dealt with. (I'm guessing these things are rare (temporarily-)successful 'bots, because flesh-and-blood vandals wouldn't be occasionally doing essentially the same insta-reverted thing on a thematically-small set of pages, over several years without moving on. It has to be a lucky unattended script-based effort that just keeps trying the same things over and over with an easily revertible but tangible result happening only infrequently.)
More obvious human vandalism tends to rumble on, with occasionally a spate of it as someone gets short-term kicks for it. Though some of them seem may repeat themself after a break. Friendly humans and friendly 'bots both tend to provide the main anti-vandalism responses fairly quickly, though, depending upon what kind of a mess they caused. I've seen worse places, definitely, and it's by no means a losing battle against chaos, just regular skermishes.
Not wanting to tempt fate, of course. I guarantee that there'll be some fool that takes all this as a challenge, so I just have to trust to the Good Guys keeping on keeping on. 172.70.90.71 14:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

heyo, is there a way to add actual citations to explainxkcd instead of the template citation needed? couldn't find anything, but i'm pretty new here - thanks in advance. Nigga (talk) 21:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Not that I have much faith in your usernae lasting long (you're 'that guy', aren't you? ...in which case you know anyway), but for the sake of anyone else who needs to know:
  • If you mean "add an actual 'citation needed' tag", then it's {{Actual citation needed}} that you'll use.
  • If you mean "add an actual citation link to somewhere", then:
    • Link to URLs with [].
      • A link such as [<url>] will give you a superscript-number link, which isn't pretty, IMO.
      • A link such as [<url> <text>] (that's a space between the two) will link <text> to the URL, just work it into the sentence you're writing, fairly easy
    • Link to internal (or cross-wiki) pages with [[]].
      • [[<page title>]] will make a literal link to <page title>.
      • [[<page title>|<text>]] (with a pipe) is how you make the <text> your link.
    • You can use the last to link specifically to wikipedia's cross-site format, but for that it's best to use {{w}}
      • {{w|<page title>}} (w-pipe...) uses the page title
        • It will use the link as if the first character is uppercase, so you don't need to capitalise that. Other case-sensitivity is preserved.
        • {{w|<singular page title>}}s will link the obvious pluralisation of the page title, just to save you effort
      • {{w|<page title>|<text>}} (w-pipe and pipe) lets you use entirely alternate text.
    • There's also templates that shortcut (or make easier on the eye, or add appropriate warnings) for some other commonly referenced external sites, from xkcd's own what-if to TVTropes.
...hope that helps everyone that doesn't already know these few simple bits as relate to wikis in general or this wiki in particular. 172.71.242.218 22:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Confirmation Email Bug[edit]

Hi. I've been trying to get my email confirmed so that I can get pinged when pages are edited, but I just can't find it, even after trying multiple times. I use Gmail, and yes, I have checked my spam folder. Has anyone else had this issue? EDIT: I see that others have had this issue, but the admins haven't done any action to solve it, except for one sarcastic comment by Davidy22 back in 2014. 42.book.addict (talk) 00:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Lack of Userpage[edit]

Hey, I joined a few years ago, but I still do not have a Userpage. Can you make one for me? I do not have the permission to do so. GreyFox (talk) 22:47, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

This is actually your very first post, after joining a bit more than a year ago ("18:35, 14 November 2023 User account GreyFox (talk | contribs) was created"). I'm sure someone can oblige (not me, for obvious reasons), but you've not done much to contribute (at least under this account), which would have then eventually brought you to the point where you can just self-create your Userpages/etc. So your request is a bit out of the blue.
Just so long as we all know where we stand, though. 172.69.194.227 09:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Oh, thanks! Do you know the exact number of edits I need to create it?
50 to be autoconfirmed. Also, please sign your comments. 42.book.addict (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

server errors[edit]

is anyone else constantly getting 503 errors? youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 17:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

yup, been seeing those all the time. Also seeing that the server is down a lot of time-it suggests me to Google for what I’m “looking for” 42.book.addict (talk) 17:18, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
503s are fairly common (often when I'm in a rush), and have been for... well, certainly years, maybe more than a decade (though more common during major vandalism/anti-vandalism surges). I had, however, noticed a recent blip (during the last day or so) of the Server Down/Try Google page that you refer to, which I haven't seen for a long time (not really sure when, but maybe five years or so ago). In fact, I probably got Cloudflare 'rejections' more, during aformentioned vandal-overloading.
Without any access to the admin logs, I can only speculate as to what might be sparking it. But service (notwithstanding the brief page-refusals themselves) seems to be happily unaffected. 172.70.160.249 20:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Allow new users to edit their own page[edit]

I found someone asking if we could change this in the proposals page (Community portal/Proposals: Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed (not a typo)). PDesbeginner (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Technical difficulties?[edit]

I keep getting a message that says: "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Cannot access the database)" It's happened a lot so I was wondering if there was a specific cause behind it and perhaps a way to fix it. 172.68.54.65 00:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

yeah, I’ve been getting those errors too. I can’t even log into my account before it says that there’s an error again. I’ve been steadily receiving them for a couple months, but never like today. From Recent Changes, it doesn’t look like anyone is spamming the wiki, so maybe it’s an attack of some kind. You’ll need to contact the admins who have access to the server and can poke around, but good luck getting User:Davidy22 or User:Jeff online. 172.69.135.130 17:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. 172.69.135.129 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The site is collapsing[edit]

503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I’ve messaged Davidy22 and Jeff about it, hopefully they see it and reply. It looks fine right now, appears that it works horribly at times and fine later. Due to the on-off nature of it, I would suspect DDoS attacks, as a 503 error means that the server can’t process the request, which occurs with DDoS attacks. 42.book.addict (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! 42.book.addict (talk) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. 42.book.addict (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Agree, the situation is not terrible but feels extremely unstable. What happens if the wiki just breaks, and nobody can even contact Jeff? I feel like these errors are happening more and more frequently. --FaviFake (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
Were you around for the (hacking-enforced) sudden ending of the xkcd fora? All things end.
But (touch wood) the 503s/other connection refusals are a lot less frequent right now, so I'm not actually quite so worried as I might occasionally have been. What's more likely to happen is that the hosting plan, physical hardware and/or domain reaches an end and then... that's probably it unless someone with the wherewithall somehow manages to drag it back up again. 162.158.74.14 00:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
I really don't like the idea of this site becoming permanently unavailable :( This makes me want to contribute less! I was not around back then, no. --FaviFake (talk) 15:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

List of All Comics[edit]

I think that FaviFake and I have accidentally broken the All comics page. When clicked, it brings you to the page List of all comics, which displays the comics 3000-3002 (as of right now) instead of the list of all comics (oops-my bad). How do we fix this? There’s also the page List of all comics (3000-3500), but the TheusafBOT ignores it. Can someone more technical help troubleshoot this problem? Again, sorry for making a muck of things. 42.book.addict (talk) 18:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh I'm sorry, I created a new topic for this and I didn't see this one. I noticed the List of all comics (3000-3500) today and scheduled it for deletion because we never make such a page until we have exactly 500 comics to put there. Also, the name is wrong, it should say 3001-3500.
The page List of all comics is supposed to display comics 3001-3005, not all comics. You might be confusing it with List of all comics (full), which would work perfectly if List of all comics displayed the last 3 comics. I have no idea why the bot stopped updating it. Maybe it will work now that the wrong page is scheduled for deletion? FaviFake (talk) 05:15, 31 October 2024
Wait a second, why did you move the List of all comics to List of all comics (3000-3500)? It seemed to me like everything was working fine before you moved it FaviFake (talk) 05:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
I was trying to copy the content to List of all comics (3000-3500), and accidentally broke it. Sorry! 42.book.addict (talk) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Yeah I can confirm the content and the entire edit history was moved to the incorrectly-titled page that's now scheduled for deletion. I guess maybe we didn't really need the edit history on that page, but who knows.
Weirdly, the bot seems to have restored the page as it was and then stopped doing its thing. Since we're the only ones here, I suggest you manually create the missing rows for the new comics and we'll see if that works when the next comic drops. If it doesn't, I'll contact the maintainer and creator of the bot myself. Sounds good? :) FaviFake (talk) 18:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Sir yes Sir! 🫡 42.book.addict (talk) 04:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
Great, thanks! I can also do it this afternoon if you don't have time. I realise my previous messages read like orders lol, they were supposed to be suggestions to try and fix the issue. FaviFake (talk) 07:18, 1 November 2024

The List of all comics is no longer being updated automatically[edit]

Hey everyone, I noticed the bot isn't updating this page anymore: List of all comics. There are supposed to be five comics in it but there are only two at the moment. Is this supposed to happen? FaviFake (talk) 05:06, 31 October 2024

2034: Equations error?[edit]

One of the TeX math-thingies (sorry for the informal writing), is showing this error: "Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \oint". Idk why it's showing this, can someone fix this? 108.162.237.48 19:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

It's a long-standing error, to do with the background processes that turns the TeX-style markup into embedded images. All equations (or whatever it might be that the particular MathML was being used to render) that were originally given cached-imagery still work fine, but it seems a later update made it so that if you adjust it at all (even slightly), it no longer has the route to produce the embedding cleanly.
It can probably be solved by rolling back some module(s) that got refreshed quite some time ago, though the advised fix is to actually fully update them (and/or reconfigure the backend scripting) to work with all the newest versions of the original tools. Unfortunately, the people (or maybe person) who would do this is not too active at the moment (may also not be up to speed on everything, either, if it involves a bit of more tricky administration), so we're left with the occasional problem establishing the texvc handler.
Not sure which page you're encountering this on, but sometimes if you look back in the edit history you can find a working version of the thing you're seeing go wrong. If it's an aesthetic difference (e.g. the presence or absence of a spacing character), you might be able to just restore the render-cached version and make do with it not looking quite right.
If it's a necessary change that was made (e.g. "dt" instead of "dx", which is definitely wrong the old way), or it seems never to have a valid render, then there's two obvious solutions:
  1. Make your own image of it as it should be and (with a suitably auto-validated account, or via a handy external image hosting service and/or a more mature account here) get that embedded in place of the markup-source, or
  2. Replicate its appearance in more basic (by standard) but complex (by source needed) markup. Combinations of basic wikimarkup and HTML can do most 'fiddly positional' things, see 2614: 2 for a numerator/denominator layout, for example.
Not as 'simple' as TeX-markedup. But, on the other hand, the "\oint" symbol is "∮", so perhaps all you need to do is copy'n'paste that actual unicode symbol to wherever you found the problem, and use that instead, and forgo the TeX version altogether? (Might not show on some displays, but probably enough to make it a minority issue.) 172.70.90.105 22:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Had the brainwave that I could probable search for the offending \oint, actually. Did so, found 2034: Equations, noted that it was the only (current) rendering issue and therefore just did the pasting over myself. Looks good for me, but obviously might not help (but not make worse) others' viewing of it. 172.69.195.54 22:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

...Why didn't I think of just pasting the Unicode equivalent. I'm dumb, but thanks for fixing it. 172.69.70.10 13:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Esolang wiki bug[edit]

The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into the Technical Community Portal. Two, I saw your talk page on esolangs.org, which you brought up this “bug”, which the local admin (who’s probably just as sick and tired of you as I am) called BS on. If the server was changing your sig to my sig, it would be 42.book.addictTalk to me!, not the sig that you faked in. You’re obviously seeking attention and are being abusive and childish. Please see the bottom of https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esolang:Introduce_yourself to see a full list of complaints. I will be asking Kynde to ban you and all of your alt (or shared) accounts. -tori 162.158.167.98 05:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
I just realized that they've changed my signature as well. That's strange. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Once again they suddenly redirected my username to the Main Page. And the bug even forgot to remove "User:". ConscriptGlossary (talk) 13:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

It's working normally now. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 13:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. ChristmasGospel (talk) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

No, it has not been hacked. The error message means that the server that is hosting the wiki is under a lot of stress and load. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes and no.
429 Too Many Requests (RFC 6585)
The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. Intended for use with rate-limiting schemes.
...it generally means that (in the opinion of the server), the person getting the 429 has been bashing the connection too much. This could be because they happen to be going through the same proxy as an actual prolific user (or several sub-prolific ones that similarly got lumped together to add up to "too much"), but load-sharing systems generally account for that already. General 'stress and load' is more likely to invoke a 500s message (depending upon what actually is happening).
But, either way, if you get one of them then you're advised to pause, take a breath, perhaps wait a little before your next refresh/reload attempt, but if that goes wrong then wait a bit longer still (double your patience, maybe), and again more (further doubling) as necessary.
Either it's not your fault, but you probably don't need to add to the problems, or it is your fault (e.g. you're webscraping in the background at full throttle) and you really need to stop causing those problems (and try not to do it again later). 172.70.90.109 20:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Hint: even if you don't entirely trust Wikipedia not to be written (or rewritten) wrongly, you don't get the whole world of possible wrongness of a mostly uncomprehending AI repeating a load of mangled fragments put together on an "at least it looks grammatically correct" basis. If you trust AI so much that you don't go looking anywhere else (there are plenty of technical sites out there, including the actual official RFCs which say what servers should be doing and saying) but Wikipedia is also far from wrong and pretty thorough on this point.
Ask Google's AI for entertainment, or to start to put together a school report (but be prepared to check everything, as well as edit enough not to be caught by AI-detection as well as Plagiarism-detection). But not for insta-expertise, if you've not got enough grounding in the subject to at least sanity-checking what you're being told. Truth-checking and reality-checking are always necessary, of course, no matter what the source. 141.101.98.36 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
Noted and acknowledged. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 14:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

RSS Feed: XML not well-formed[edit]

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

Location: https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml?_SLWxoPenuRl=nOtinFEeDPREVIew

Line Number 31, Column 18:

	<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^

PHP-Fix:

$title = str_replace("&", "&amp;", $title);

or

$title = htmlspecialchars($title);

Same problem here. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the first time an xkcd title has included an ampersand (as far as I can see from List_of_all_comics_(full)). 141.101.99.85 14:16, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

rss feed[edit]

Hello

the rss feed is broken, could you fix it ?

Error : try{(function overrideDefaultMethods(r, g, b, a, scriptId, storedObjectPrefix) { 

   var scriptNode = document.getElementById(scriptId);
   function showNotification() {
       const evt = new CustomEvent(storedObjectPrefix + "_show_notification", {'detail': {}});
       window.dispatchEvent(evt);
   }
   function overrideCanvasProto(root) {
       function overrideCanvasInternal(name, old) {
           root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
           Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
               {
                   value: function () {
                       var width = this.width;
                       var height = this.height;
                       var context = this.getContext("2d");
                       var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height);
                       for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
                           for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
                               var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
                               imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
                               imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
                               imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
                               imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
                           }
                       }
                       context.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0);
                       showNotification();
                       return old.apply(this, arguments);
                   }
               }
           );
       }
       overrideCanvasInternal("toDataURL", root.prototype.toDataURL);
       overrideCanvasInternal("toBlob", root.prototype.toBlob);
       //overrideCanvasInternal("mozGetAsFile", root.prototype.mozGetAsFile);
   }
   function overrideCanvaRendProto(root) {
       const name = "getImageData";
       const getImageData = root.prototype.getImageData;

       root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = getImageData;

       Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, "getImageData",
           {
               value: function () {
                   var imageData = getImageData.apply(this, arguments);
                   var height = imageData.height;
                   var width = imageData.width;
                   // console.log("getImageData " + width + " " + height);
                   for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
                       for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
                           var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
                           imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
                           imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
                           imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
                           imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
                       }
                   }
                   showNotification();
                   return imageData;
               }
           }
       );
   }
   function inject(element) {
       if (element.tagName.toUpperCase() === "IFRAME" && element.contentWindow) {
           try {
               var hasAccess = element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement;
           } catch (e) {
               console.log("can't access " + e);
               return;
           }
           overrideCanvasProto(element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement);
           overrideCanvaRendProto(element.contentWindow.CanvasRenderingContext2D);
           overrideDocumentProto(element.contentWindow.Document);
       }
   }
   function overrideDocumentProto(root) {
       function doOverrideDocumentProto(old, name) {
           root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
           Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
               {
                   value: function () {
                       var element = old.apply(this, arguments);
                       // console.log(name+ " everridden call"+element);
                       if (element == null) {
                           return null;
                       }
                       if (Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object HTMLCollection]' ||
                           Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object NodeList]') {
                           for (var i = 0; i < element.length; ++i) {
                               var el = element[i];
                               // console.log("elements list inject " + name);
                               inject(el);
                           }
                       } else {
                           // console.log("element inject " + name);
                           inject(element);
                       }
                       return element;
                   }
               }
           );
       }
       doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElement, "createElement");
       doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElementNS, "createElementNS");
       doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementById, "getElementById");
       doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByName, "getElementsByName");
       doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByClassName, "getElementsByClassName");
       doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagName, "getElementsByTagName");
       doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagNameNS, "getElementsByTagNameNS");
   }
   overrideCanvasProto(HTMLCanvasElement);
   overrideCanvaRendProto(CanvasRenderingContext2D);
   overrideDocumentProto(Document);
   scriptNode.parentNode.removeChild(scriptNode);

})(24,14,-9,19,"ojkrt", "ltwvx");} catch (e) {console.error(e);}Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé Emplacement : https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml Numéro de ligne 63, Colonne 18 : <title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>

^

Total amount of accounts created on this wiki?[edit]

I was editing explain xkcd:Museum and I was wondering how many accounts have ever been created. Is there a way to access this? -- DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 15:52, 17 March 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Hey, I moved your message from the Coordination portal. --FaviFake (talk) 16:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
The base information you need is from the special page that is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers - although bear in mind that an overwhelming number of created accounts are spam-attempts (that get no further), so perhaps the count needs to be qualified as "users that have then gone on to post" (a few of which are still spam-only contributors, but now an insignificant amount rather than a probably overwhelming majoriy).
How you go about counting and classifying valid accounts is up to you, of course. 162.158.74.68 21:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --FaviFake (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
There's [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]], that gives you the value 145,780 (it was 142,958 when I wrote this), for the total number of registered users (including no-input pre-spammers, only-ever-spammed contributors, "I only created this account to say..."ers who didn't realised they could do as much as an IP, maybe some banned, sock-puppet/legitimate-alts/forgot-my-old-login duplicate accounts, maybe not some totally excised by top-tier-admins).
There's also [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]], with the value 119 (119, as I write this), which I think is everyone active (+registered) in the past 30 days.
Possibly there are other "magic word" values for more useful in-betweeny values (nearer the top end of the first), e.g. of everyone who has made at least one edit ever. But not sure I know what that might off the top of my head.
I can think of ways to interrogate the wiki for one or other (better) counting criteria, but it would be horribly intensive. If anyone wanted to do this (it already needing a bit more technical ability than merely using inbuilt auto-value magic words, and preferably you'd need to not be a 'mere' scriptkiddie jumping in with both feet without knowing how to do it sensibly), I'd suggest ensuring a very throttled-back process that may take its time over days. Then, once 'completed', a not-quite-so-throttled-back version can just 'top up' its stats with everything from the last point you'd reached the last time round until the present (to never hammer the site).
Please please please, though, you should probably only try any of this if you're already sure of everything I've been suggesting. There are also far easier ways to attempt a DoS, but it would be ironic if you did this while trying to be helpful... 141.101.98.65 20:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Oh neat that's exactly what we needed! Could you add these magic words to the museum, maybe calling one "total accounts" and the other one "users active in last 30 days"? --FaviFake (talk) 16:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

email confirmation[edit]

my email confirmation did not get sent even after a week. is there anything wrong? - (((((((((((((([...](((((((((((((( (talk) 21:36, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

been broken for a decade i think. --FaviFake (talk) 08:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
WE REALLY NEED JEFF BACK !!!!!!!! hi (talk) 16:12, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

RSS[edit]

RIP RSS feed yet again. 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[insert signature here] (talk)

Is there something new we should know? 172.70.58.6 00:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

MediaWiki error when visiting 1270: Functional or 1270[edit]

When I go to 1270: Functional or 1270, there is a MediaWiki error. This does not occur at 1269 or 1271. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 13:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Could not replicate.
1270 redirects to 1270: Functional, so does it happen for you if you go via Functional and its redirect? How about https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1270:_Functional (as URL) rather than what you may be doing (but so did I, at first, still to find no error) in plugging the text into the "Search explain xkcd" field..?
Unless it's an off-page edit (some template, broken and then fixed), the page itself seems to have no recent edit to explain any changes (to broken and/or to unbroken)... I think we may need more info. Including myself in "we" in case it's an error even I can fix, which isn't unknown but not guaranteed! 172.71.178.160
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: Functional: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/L5icGdZ9nBzw.png?o=1
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/1nP1qunLk86a.png?o=1
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting Functional: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/7S3Ct5wghTIH.png?o=1
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: Functional via index.php: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/HghYaRj9wA1f.png?o=1 Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 14:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Anybody else? None of that happens here.
Could it be somehow browser-specific, or even extension-related? One thing to try is if you any further browsers handily installed (or installable) that you can use (even if just just for this one purpose, you don't need them to be the default system one). As of right now, though, I'm flumoxed and don't have any obvious other steps, and I dont believe anybody else has the means to enable the debug options.172.69.79.190 22:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
This occurs on a Chromebook managed by my school, so I can't install any browsers besides Chrome and I can't manage the extensions. I can see the editing page but I get an even less elegantly presented error when I try to preview the page.Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Couldn't replicate either, Windows 11 Chrome Canary. --FaviFake (talk) 17:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Figured out the problem. This error occurs on any page using the <math> tag. I don't know why, though. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Yep, added <math>This causes an error.</math> to the top of explain xkcd:Sandbox and now it gives the same error. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
This bug has been around for at least 7 years. Here's the fix: #Mediawiki exception on some pages. --FaviFake (talk) 21:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Captcha repeat[edit]

When you've finished editing, there is an "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA.

But if you preview the changes before saving, that gets reset, so you can't just say "yup, looks good, go ahead and publish this change."

How hard would it be to make the CAPTCHA sticky, so that it doesn't need an extra interaction/mouse movement after previewing?

Or, alternatively, to not display either the CAPTCHA or the Save Changes until after a preview. -- JimJJewett20:40, 14 April 2025 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

If you're going to Preview (which can often be a good idea), don't bother ticking the "I am not a robot". Previews (also the "Show Changes") are 'free' and don't need you to feed the CAPTHA machine.
What's wrong with 1) editing, 2) previewing, 3) going "Yup, looks good" and ticking the box, 3a) if required, fulfill the Captcha, 4) Submit..?
It's exactly the same amount of work as having the Captcha-fulfillment at position (1a) and 'sticky'
Also, however hard it might be to 'sticky' the CAPTCHA, there's a reason that a validated CAPTCHA isn't held over willy-nilly. Theoretically, an automated system (or semi-attended one) that relied upon finding out if it could post an edit, before it even bothered to try could benefit (if only by a smidgen) from first having a pot-shot at authorisation and only then (presumably before any 'time out' kicked in) pushing the latest spambot stuff.
I see no value in allowing that, even if there was anybody who might have enough of an 'in' on the server code to enable such a thing. 162.158.33.248 23:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Moved this to technical portal. --FaviFake (talk) 17:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Request for feedback about {{comic}}[edit]

Hey, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the random button on our comic template, please see this page: Template talk:comic#Random button should link to Special:RandomInCategory --FaviFake (talk) 08:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone here know how to create a random link that fetches pages from two different categories? --FaviFake (talk) 10:12, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

the rss feed seems to be broken[edit]

the rss feed button on the side leading to https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml throws up and error making the feed not load properly in rss readers.

"This page contains the following errors: error on line 463 at column 18: EntityRef: expecting ';' Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." 172.71.241.19 (talk) 20:38, 5 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I think this is the continuing issue as of #RSS Feed: XML not well-formed, you're talking about. As far as I'm aware unfixed and (with the current smattering of active admins at their limits of admin-levels) unfixable. Because of a 'bare' ampersand (or two) being misinterpreted as a failed attempt at a character-entity reference. If that was fixed, without me noticing, then I'm sure someone will be along to try to fix your new issue too.
People have been trying to prod other people who can prod the server back into shape (insofar as that issue), but I've not yet been privy to anything coming of that, and presume you're just trapped in the exact same glitch. 172.70.91.30 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --FaviFake (talk) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
It's unusable so long as the "I'm parsing this is an '&Thing;' ... oh, wait, it has no closing ';'... ARGH!" happens to it. If you click on the RSS feed, to the left, you can see how it shows the (not quite humanly-readable) lines of the RSS feed (most recent, chronologically backwards) until the last line it shows is the comic imediately after the most recent "D&D" entry. (Actually, depends on browser. Sorry, just checked. It does that on Android Chrome, but currently I'm on Windows Firefox and it 'only' complains. But if you'll take my word for it.)
Someone really needs to go into the https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml file (who can edit it directly) and find the two "D&D" instances and make them "D&amp;D". (Note to editors: Had to "amp amp" the "amp", here in this edit, to get it to appear just as amp... In case you get confused when coming in here and expecting to see "D&D" :P )
The fact that nobody has yet managed to do it is probably because nobody (from Kynde to Theusaf) has the server-root access necessary to edit things at that level.
Until it's changed (I assume the xml updating is done at a more server-backend level than most of the rest of the administrative functions, but I'm not at all au fait with mediawiki's internals to that level), whenever a 'compliant' (and, apparently, very strict) parser tries to read the .xml it'll 'quite rightly' tell you that there's a bare ampersand and then refuses to do anything more.
Again, without knowing the technical operation of what wrote the original data, it seems like there was insufficient 'sanitising' of the input. It applied the bare-ampersand without forward-converting it to an ampersanded ampersand-entity. That maybe also needs fixing (in case we get more), even if the existing ones get manually changed. I don't use any RSS feeds, myself, being too new-fangled ("Initial release: RSS 0.90 (Netscape), March 15, 1999; 26 years ago; Latest release: RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.11) March 30, 2009; 16 years ago"... yeah, to me that's still new-fangled! :P ) so all I know about how this one fails is what people have talked about above, and trivially clicking on the left-sidebar link to look at it myself, and venture what I think is the logical nature of the glitch (both cause and effect). Maybe somebody knows more about it, but I'm filling in until that person comes along and says otherswise (and/or more) about it. 162.158.33.193 20:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
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