User talk:Davidy22

Thanks for helping roll back the vandalism

Hi Davidy22,

Just a quick thanks for helping roll back so much of the vandalism. Per your recent log comment, yes, there has been a recent spate of vandalism; before yesterday, it was the odd spammer that I've had to remove. But with the advent of Click and Drag, there's also been an insurgence of ip-based vandalism. I'm hoping this is just a spike owing to the popularity of the comic, but I'm with you; if it doesn't die down, something more drastic is going to have to be done.

But again, thanks for helping...

-- IronyChef (talk) 14:17, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Please don't

Please don't create the redirects to explanations that haven't been created yet. It breaks the next and previous buttons, and gives people that are browsing through the explanations the false impression that the site is more complete than it is. lcarsos (talk) 06:41, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I'll stop then. Didn't know that. Davidy22 (talk) 07:17, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Glad I'm not the only one who didn't know. Sorry about 1633 this morning. /.\ — tbc (talk) 19:23, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

It's fine, just had to do a few things manually. Good intentions. Davidy²²[talk] 19:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Dani22, the spam connoisseur

Congratulations on transcending from being annoyed at all spam to recognizing the truly beautiful works of spammage from the rest of the cruddy heap. We should throw a party, lol. lcarsos (talk) 16:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey, it *was* a well written bit of spam. It was one of those copy/paste types of spam, except it was nicely formatted and coherent all the way through. It was informative too. A great change from the mindless template drivel or gibberish that we usually get. Davidy²²(talk) 23:11, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Just asking

Mostly cuz that didn't work when it was on the main page, and calling attention to specific comics has worked exceedingly well. Davidy²²[talk] 06:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Was there a reason you deleted most of the List of all comics? lcarsos (talk) 05:21, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

What on- shi-

I was adding comic number 1132, and the preview was really slow, so I copied everything in the edit box and refreshed the page. I think half of the page hadn't finished loading in the edit box, and I only copied the first half. Derp Davidy²²(talk) 08:21, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I figured it was something like that. lcarsos (talk) 04:56, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Just so you know, it happened again. But SlashMe fixed it. lcarsos_a (talk) 18:07, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Mother of fracking- I'm going to figure out what's causing this and I'm going to fix this. Godammit. Davidy²²(talk) 23:20, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Durr dee-durr, and now I've done it. Thanks for spotting that. lcarsos_a (talk) 07:22, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Ahem... You gonna finish that?

Have you taken a look at the front page recently (say within since you created the 1134 redirect)? lcarsos_a (talk) 05:42, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I have it open right now. Please don't ninja me again. Davidy²²(talk) 05:44, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

*Sits tight and twiddles thumbs* Actually, if you've got this I'll go back to the pitiful bit of literature I'm calling this year's NaNo. lcarsos_a (talk) 05:53, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

The Anonymous editor of 1132

Has been 50.0.38.245 all along. For a while he changed his signature to be a userpage that didn't exist, and wasn't a registered user. He has now changed it back to being the IP address again. Just thought I should do some out-of-band communication about that. If you want to change your last comment about the anonymous user, that would be good. (I almost offered to edit it for you, but then realized the subject we're talking about, and decided that if 50.0 ever learns about looking at the edit history and diffs, I don't need to be called a hypocrite as well as a banhammer wielding BOFH) lcarsos_a (talk) 03:35, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Broken mirror...

Sorry for the "ninja"... I guess we probably don't need 2 versions of the image though... Feel free to distill the explain part...--B. P. (talk) 07:15, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Godammit, I even had the window open waiting for the article. The definitions can be merged into one paragraph, and wiki magic will explain how the comic works. Davidy²²(talk) 07:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Fooooooooor He's a Jolly Good Fellow...

You are the man, man. Keep it up! lcarsos_a (talk) 06:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Seconded. Great work, you deserved the milestone! --Waldir (talk) 12:26, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Please take a look

...at this. Nothing new to you, I suppose (spam fighting can be quite hard if we're overly cautious on every step), but I'm dropping the note just in case :) --Waldir (talk) 17:52, 25 November 2012‎ (UTC)

autoblocking suspicious users

Once again, it looks like auto-blocking users that have suspicious usernames would require someone with more power than we have.

However, I very nearly blocked those three when I noticed the account creation. But, I didn't because I thought they might be legitimate users with stupid usernames. But now I've read up on Wikipedia's block policy and from now on I'll be posting {{uw-blockindef}} (which I've bungled fantastically right now, but shortly should be working) which should allow the rare legitimate user (with bad taste in usernames) to reclaim their good account, but allow us to block bad people.

You're ever friendly, massive toddler of an admin, lcarsos_a (talk) 03:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I've also just found this page Wikipedia:Administrators' how-to guide which I will be reading very thoroughly and beginning to use this blacklist. lcarsos_a (talk) 04:16, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Hum. A great many of these templates could be condensed into a few bigger ones, but at least the documentation links are there for us to use. Also, you do know that Template:UserBox already exists, right? Davidy²²[talk] 04:55, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, crud. You switched, I switched. I do like the one we had better, mostly because of the descriptive labels and the nice thick borders. The name's in convenient CamelCase too. Davidy²²[talk] 05:18, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

As a general rule I loathe my shift key, using more keys to achieve the same goal is wasted time, and I could be called ruthless about wasted time. Saving a single keypress seems petty. But I had a CS professor point out that by specially crafting what you have to type (creating shortcuts) saving a keypress here and there can add up to saving several thousand keypresses every 8 hours, which over a long enough quantity of time can equal hours and days. That's my long winded explanation for why I like using {{userbox}} instead of {{UserBox}}.

Also, I like the wikipedia userboxen, it's more flexible. And that allows anyone who comes over from Wikipedia to know how to work userboxen here too. That's my case for it. I hope you agree because I don't want to have to push my shift key, but I'll take your input, and if we end up in a tie, we might ask Waldir to tie break for us, as he'd be a neutral third party. lcarsos_a (talk) 06:44, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

In CS, I learned that descriptive variable names and easy to recognize naming conventions can save heaps of debugging time. I personally like the CamelCase version better because it uses variable names like left-bg instead of id-c for the background color in the box on the left, which makes the template self-documenting and easier to grok for a new user who's just reading the source. Davidy²²[talk] 07:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I was asked to comment. Here are my thoughts:

• Regarding CamelCase, it is indeed a neat convention but we don't use it elsewhere on the wiki. In fact, MediaWiki itself, in its early versions, used to rely on CamelCase for linking, but moved to the free-form, space enabled link syntax, which is better in many cases. Not everything converts nicely into CamelCase. So while I appreciate the argument to use CamelCase as the template name, I think the regular case version fits the wiki better. Besides, redirects are cheap and work well, so if the CamelCase title redirects to the lowercase one, whoever wants to use the CamelCase version can still do so seamlessly. Not an issue, therefore.
• I agree with Davidy22 on the parameter names. In fact, the code of the template can be arranged in a more readable form (using whitespace and indentation) so not only its uses can be deciphered, but the template itself too. Renaming parameters is a simple matter, especially for templates with not many uses as these are, which means there isn't a lot of replacements to perform.

In summary, I think the two templates should definitely be merged and the best features of each kept in the final version: the title being Template:userbox (with redirects from Template:UserBox and Template:Userbox), and the parameters using intuitive names as {{UserBox}}.

--Waldir (talk) 17:06, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. The wikicode looks god-awful ugly though, who's up for cleaning that thing up? Davidy²²[talk] 00:03, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

If you guys do the merge, I can clean it up afterwards :) --Waldir (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

separate section for title text

I agree that in the two instances you removed the section header for the title text, it wasn't justified, but in some cases it does make sense. See here. Cheers, Waldir (talk) 15:27, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

No more imagesize

I made a comment on Template Talk: comic#Imagesize, essentially imagesize isn't necessary, and I've changed the {{create}} template to not include it. So rejoice, and forget imagesize ever existed (until the bug gets fixed). lcarsos_a (talk) 03:02, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Bah, what was that parameter good for anyways? Clicking on the image should take you to the XKCD site anyways. What user cares about the image pages that the template currently takes you to? Davidy²²[talk] 06:20, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. It's technically doable. But I think there should be a way to access the comic images (granted, I'm not sure why exactly, but I'm not comfortable leaving them "orphans" —linkless— either) --Waldir (talk) 12:08, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

There's the list of all comics page, and we could make the titletext link to the image page or something. I dunno, any excuse to kill imagesize. Davidy²²[talk] 12:16, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

To clarify, linking the image directly to xkcd has nothing to do with killing imagesize. That, for what I understand, has already been done. Good point about the list of comics page. I'll wait for more comments before implementing the change in the image link target. --Waldir (talk) 12:35, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Imagesize isn't *quite* dead yet. There's still four or five comics that still use it. Permission to upload the thumbnail versions of those comics, as we do with the other large comics, and end that broken thing once and for all? Davidy²²[talk] 13:05, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of uploading smaller versions of images. We ought to be able to use mediawiki's own image scaling abilities as soon as we can do some testing in the wiki setup and make the image scaling issue go away. Apart from that, what exactly are the problems of imagesize, again? I haven't followed the discussions about it, sorry. Feel free to give me pointers to the appropriate places where the issues have been discussed. --Waldir (talk) 13:17, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Please move pages

I'm noticing that when someone creates a new page with the wrong title you're just copy/pasting the content onto the new page. Please don't do that. Please use the move page feature on the drop down of the page, that way we can keep the edit history for the page intact, and that way it doesn't look like you created these oddly poor quality pages. Thanks much. lcarsos_a (talk) 00:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Righty ho. Davidy²²[talk] 02:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry

I have been working contra u by routinely adding a white line above the categories. I instantly raise white flag! And say good night! -- St.nerol (talk) 00:40, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Trivia placement

Cheers mate! Please check the comment I made some time ago in the section you started, "Section style and usage" on the Proposals community page. –St.nerol (talk) 23:10, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

If you disagree with the trivia placement between explanation and transcript, why don't you say so, and explain why? –St.nerol (talk) 14:50, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I made a section for discussion of this, so that we can come to some agreement: explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals#Trivia and transcript. –St.nerol (talk) 15:18, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Moved to explain xkcd:Community portal/Coordination#Trivia and transcript placement –St.nerol (talk) 23:05, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Jurassic Park category

Hi, you wrote you don't like how I created a new category for Jurassic Park. I thought it appropriate: there's a *lot* of references to Jurassic Park and/or velociraptors in the comics. And not all reference are to both... But what did you not like? Thanks for enlightening me! Kaa-ching (talk) 09:07, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

There's a lot of categories on this wiki. When adding categories to a page, it can get extremely difficult to make sure that you've gotten every category that applies to the comic. For regular editors, the amount that we have to remember when maintaining pages is already quite onerous; more categories hurt our dinky heads. If you're willing to steward that category, go ahead, but you'll have to remember to put in the explanation pages yourself when you find a comic that it applies to. Davidy²²[talk] 09:36, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

OK. Kaa-ching (talk) 08:26, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

220: Philosophy

Actually, what happened was: This being my first new page edit, I copy-pasted the format from another page, and then edited all the information to fit the correct comic. Then I realized I'd forgotten to remove the date of the original page's comic, so I did so. *blushes* No trolling intended, just a newbie mistake. Is 2/7/07 the correct date for this comic? Ekedolphin (talk) 11:23, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Oooh. I thought you had gotten the date then removed it after seeing earlier rants concerning omitted dates. You can check a comic's date by clicking on the "All Comics" button in the sidebar on the left. All dates are in YYYY-MM-DD format. Davidy²²[talk] 11:37, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Yep. I see that now, and now that I know it's there, I create new pages straight from List of all comics. No offense taken. Thanks for the useful advice! Ekedolphin (talk) 05:52, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Character names in transcripts

Ah, I see now that you've been cleaning up after me, adding character names to transcripts instead of "Man", "Woman", et cetera. Now realizing that's the wiki's standard, I'll endeavor to do that myself from now on. Thanks for your patience with the new guy. Ekedolphin (talk) 07:40, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

It's k, just doing maintenance. You're really prolific, do you write all of those yourself or are you getting those explanations off the forums somehow? Davidy²²[talk] 10:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I write them all myself. It's been some time since I've looked at the xkcd forums, actually. Sometimes I get a little help from Wikipedia when a particular detail escapes me. But you'll notice I don't make an attempt to explain the math ones. *laughs* Ekedolphin (talk) 02:16, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

My unexplained hobbies.

I just want to make sure that you are getting this, but I restored "My Unexplained Hobbies." You can now explain them. Greyson (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Shweet. Davidy²²[talk] 00:44, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I suck at wiki stuff but am a real human - sorry for the confusion. -- ‎Schmammel (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No matter. Also, see the blue box above the talk page edit box for instruction on how to sign your posts. Davidy²²[talk] 04:55, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

About your new admin powers

Actually just the rollback hammer. I've learned this after being burned a few times.

Rollback will actually not revert just the one edit you are looking at, but will go back until it hits a revision that wasn't done by that user, so its useful for pure spam accounts, but if you're just undoing a single edit, you may still want to use the undo tool.

Also, once or twice I actually had it revert all the way back to the last patrolled edit, which meant it actually got rid of the edits of a few anonymous editors too.

Just a caution that with great power comes great responsibility.

--lcarsos_a (talk) 04:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh damn, did I do that? Welp. Davidy²²[talk] 04:28, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Removed Level 2 headings from Discussion page

Hi, I noticed you removed the level 2 headings in the discussion of comic 1188. I'm guessing it's the application of some formatting rule established on this wiki, so I'm curious where I can find a list of these standards that I should adhere to, so I don't make such a mistake again in the future. Jfresen (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

It's not really a formatting convention, more of a workaround to technical limitations of the wiki. The way discussion pages are embedded into comic pages, headings in talk pages cause breakages when tables of contents are spawned. It's ugly and bad and it's the reason why we delete discussion page headers. Davidy²²[talk] 15:33, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Captcha help

This thread was moved to explain xkcd:Community portal/Admin requests#Captcha help.

RE: Signature

Sweet, thanks David. Omega ^{Talk • Contribs} 14:51, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Time is hard...

... and not only that, she also is, just like her sister Gravity, a heartless b**** :D Thanks for taking care! :) Caranhyas (talk) 09:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

Hey David. It's nice that you're so responsive to requests such as those at Mediawiki talk:Sitenotice (or this one), but please take also a moment to report the request as completed, as that not only provides feedback to the requester, but is also a reference for the future (which removes the need to dig through the relevant page's history if, for example, one decides to check whether a request ever got implemented), and exemplifies desired behavior for future administrators. Cheers, Waldir (talk) 21:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Alright. Was just trying to get through everything quickly, and forgot to reply to those requests. Davidy²²[talk] 23:55, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

262 correction: Thanks!

Hi there!

Unfortunately, I was not aware that I had incorrectly created the page for xkcd 262. Thanks for fixing that. My only question is whether the page "262" should be redirected to xkcd 262 rather than just showing the deletion template.

Thanks,

Milar Kayne (talk) 07:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The page "262" and all other pages consisting of only numbers are used internally to handle page linking. You don't really need to worry about them, you just need to know that making explanation pages in those numbered pages is baaad and that the create templates in the List of all comics will set up everything relevant for you. Davidy²²[talk] 08:14, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

So all of the xkcd comic pages theoretically "exist" on the site, but not all have connected pages? Also, how do I create a new page from the "All comics" page? Thanks for being so patient--I really want to be able to contribute meaningfully here. Milar Kayne (talk) 20:27, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

No, we just link to the xckd comic pages. The numbered pages handle links between explanation pages. On the "List of all comics" page, there are (create) buttons next to all the red links; click those to start explaining those comics. Davidy²²[talk] 00:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

OK thanks for explaining! I'll try to do better next time :). Milar Kayne (talk) 01:36, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

List of unexplained comics

Thanks for the vote of confidence - hoping it'll encourage more contributors! Sean (talk) 21:50, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

New sections in comic talk pages

Re this correction (especially your edit summary!): while there is the "Add topic" tab at the top of talk pages, you'll get new sections added to comic talk pages too.

Perhaps reducing them to ; headings is a better alternative that still marks a new topic.

Just testing that I have the right formatting character

Yes.

Of course this won't fix the automatically supplied heading from the "Add topic" tab, but then we do still want that functionality in other talk pages, like here... Mark Hurd (talk) 03:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Ooh, the semicolon does that? You learn something new every day. Noted. There might be a way to change those controls at the top, I'll look into that. Davidy²²[talk] 03:50, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Time frames 1008-1014 have an artefact in your upload

In your uploads "under the ground" between frames 1008 and 1014 there is a grey horizontal line with unmoving "ticks" while the terrain does change above. This is not reflected in the live hash for the only hash in this range recorded so far. Mark Hurd (talk) 10:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Hrm, I've just been pulling the images from the xkcd site and uploading them straight. Imma check on this. Davidy²²[talk] 11:29, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not just you, the geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190 has it too. Randall must have had a snafu that he's fixed. Mark Hurd (talk) 12:47, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Time1190 - but sometimes I also have NO time

I did register in here mainly for 1190, I am sure you did see this. This weekend I will work on a script giving me an easy update for the next day template, for now I am doing manual.

THANKS for your great job on all the other comics!

I just do need more TIME...

And I am not native English, so I am still happy about everyone correcting me.

Archive discussion I did start here Talk:1190:_Time

--Dgbrt (talk) 21:29, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I actually already have a script to do that. I thought you had made one of your own though when you were filling in for new days, so I was just letting you go ahead with that. Here's my script: [1]. Change the variables at the top of the script, run it and copy/paste the output into the page for time. The fields should be self-evident, but ask me if you have any questions. Davidy²²[talk] 00:38, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh, PYTHON - I prefer Perl or just a simple bash script.

So I will ask Randall for a translator for Python to Perl ;)

And tomorrow I hopefully will have some more time, your script is helpful.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:53, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Just for fun I did the script in PERL. Here is the link: template--Dgbrt (talk) 19:29, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

And sometimes I do have time

Just tell me what I did do wrong (I will follow you...). I am still new to WIKI syntax, it is still new to me. But I am learning as you can see. And after all that I will write a Perl Script with a missing close paren...

I like jokes but I also like a clean Wiki here!

--Dgbrt (talk) 23:38, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Uh, the explanation for that page is a wee bit thin for the size and complexity of the comic, and it uses terms like the hibbert curve without defining them. It's not enough of an explanation to cover the whole comic. Also, there were a few missing categories and a bunch of trailing spaces in the transcript. Davidy²²[talk] 23:46, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

"a wee bit thin for the size and complexity of the comic" so sure this is still incomplete (I just did forget to add that template). Oh, and we have so many more complex comics with a need for more explanations. And while I am still not native English, which does mean I have to goooogle fore many memes, I am hoping I can support this wiki. I just try to do my best - any help on me is welcome! --Dgbrt (talk) 00:12, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

And I'm pretty sure they're all tagged as incomplete too, so all is well. Davidy²²[talk] 02:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

User talk page deleted?

Hey there, apparently my talk page was deleted because the only content on it was "buttsex", which is fine, but I just thought I should let you know that I did not add that ;). Can I restore my talk page blank? --Mynotoar (talk) 11:39, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, I saw the edit log when I deleted it. Do whatever you want with your user page. Davidy²²[talk] 11:50, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Incomplete explanations

Hello Davidy22, I will stop creating incomplete new pages even when I think it's good idea to have a page for each comic here and work afterwards on all those incomplete ones. The pages Help:How to add a new comic explanation and List of unexplained comics should clarify this issue. Furthermore there are many more incomplete comics here not marked as incomplete so you can't find them here: Incomplete explanations. I am trying to give my best to support this wiki--Dgbrt (talk) 17:44, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

One add: I am not a youngster, my first computer was a C64 and the next one was a IBM compatible PC 286 (512 KByte main memory, 20 MByte hard drive). And right now I'm just trying to encourage other people to help here. But I don't want to fight against windmills.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:24, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't making any implication as to your age. It is actually harder to track incomplete articles than nonexistent ones - the wiki has no way of automagically detecting them the way it automatically provides red links for missing explanations. We have the incomplete tag, but people delete it from pages that still haven't quite been explained completely, and I sometimes forget to tag a new incomplete explanation as incomplete. Also, the fact that some incomplete articles exist that are not tagged as incomplete does not justify the creation of more stubs; if you find an unsatisfactory explanation, mark it as incomplete yourself. Davidy²²[talk] 23:15, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Various requests

Could you delete the spam page User:Inkovic and block the user who created it? And delete Talk:283: Projection as well, since it was apparently created by mistake?

Also, 1225: Ice Sheets is still missing a transcript. Could you help add it? And 266: Choices: Part 3 and 267: Choices: Part 4 lack explanations, but have been removed from the List of unexplained comics. Should we re-add them to that page, or create some basic explanations for them? --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 20:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Incomplete articles are marked as incomplete, we'll deal with all the unsatisfactory articles on this wiki after we have a page for every comic. Still not an excuse to make more stubs, mind you. Did all the rest though. Davidy²²[talk] 22:08, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Please block spammer 70.50.106.152, he did kill 1190 Time.--Dgbrt (talk) 08:53, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Looks like a mistake. Not ban-worthy. Davidy²²[talk] 10:24, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

This was the only edit he/she ever did. I am hoping this will not happen again, that big page was really hard to load.--Dgbrt (talk) 10:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The main page needs to be edited, as the recent deletion of the List of unexplained comics was recently deleted, making the wiki comic count one less than the actual number. Also, could you delete Talk:List of unexplained comics and File:a matter of some gravity.jpg? The former is an orphaned talk page, and the latter was superseded by File:A Matter of Some Gravity.png. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 20:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Done. Davidy²²[talk] 02:08, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I created an explanation for 1228 (Prometheus). What I wrote didn't appear for a few minutes and then when I tried to check why, I found you'd deleted a page, but the text I wrote then appeared where I was expecting it. Your comment on the deletion referred to "a thing on the front page" I should have read. I looked for this "thing", but I've still no idea what I did wrong, or what happened with all the page creation / deletion jiggery pokery. I created the explanation after clicking a box which told me to do so if I wanted to provide / improve the explanation. I apologise for my mistake, but perhaps it would be better not to put boxes on the main page which invite edits if those edits end up in the wrong place? 87.115.172.168 08:55, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I manually create the comic page and set it to show up on the front page usually within an hour of every new xkcd comic. The explanation pages for every comic follow a naming convention, with the comic number followed by the comic name. We also make a few redirects for the wiki to use to make the back/forwards buttons work. In addition to that, every explanation page has a template; note how every other page on this site has a particular look to it. The page that you created didn't follow any of that, so I deleted it and copy/pasted it to the correct location. The thing on the front page that I was referring to was the correct explanation page location that I had created 21 minutes earlier. Davidy²²[talk] 09:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation - quite a manual process! I didn't realise I was creating a page - it looked to me like the page had already been created (which it had, it seems) and I would just be editing the empty section for the explanation. Now I realise that the "please edit" box should have shown up in the editor, perhaps alarm bells should have wrung. Nevertheless, I'm still wondering if it would be better, if possible, to somehow remove or modify the "please edit" box when it appears on the main page so it doesn't create an incorrect new page when one already exists! 87.115.172.168 09:29, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank You,

hopiakuta DonFphrnqTaub Persina hopiakuta (talk) 09:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

There are a couple of xkcd comics that link to an extra image on the site when they are clicked. On this wiki, most of the time, the explanations just contain a direct link to this image. However, sometimes, users upload the secondary images and link to those. This is rather inefficient, especially since some images are too large to be displayed directly after they are clicked on the wiki. So, I was wondering if you could delete the few secondary images from the wiki. They are: File:lakes and oceans large.png, File:na make it better.png, File:subways large.png, and File:lojban translated.png.

In addition, I suggest that some unused files also be nuked. File:combination vision test fullcolor.jpg was superseded by File:combination vision test fullcolor.png. File:22 pieces.png was uploaded by a user who apparently just wanted to show off his Tetris skills. File:2008 christmas special original.png is an xkcd comic before it was updated, which I doubt is necessary to include on the wiki. File:starsmove.png doesn't seem to serve any useful purpose. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 23:50, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Na make it better and the translated lojban do add to the comic. The two larger versions of comic images and the junk files have been deleted. Davidy²²[talk] 01:12, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I think you might have forgotten to delete File:22 pieces.png. And 404: 404 Error was created by mistake and also needs to go.

Also, could some admin tackle the issue that involves thumbnails not displaying properly? Dgbrt suggested this fix. Perhaps it could be tried? --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 16:00, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

The 404 page needs to exist for the previous/next comic buttons to work properly. It also explains why comic 404 is missing, which may be confusing to some xkcd readers. Mostly the forward/backwards buttons though. The scrap image is gone, and I'm looking into the proposed fix. Davidy²²[talk] 12:21, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Nope. The page 404: 404 Error is a duplicate to 404: Not Found . I just did a redirect there because I can't delete it.--Dgbrt (talk) 17:58, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Whoop, deleted. Davidy²²[talk] 23:08, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but there is still the discussion page. I did the same redirect there.--Dgbrt (talk) 23:26, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Spam at 1190 Time

Hi, IP 68.100.149.94 is still doing annoying edits here. I do not like that.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:38, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Su Doku

Hi Davidy22, I'm trying to enhance explains. People do read and understand shorter explains more easy, but the link to the details must be always included. I just did add the incomplete tag because my edit is maybe not complete. Everyone is welcome to help. But please keep short as possible, otherwise people won't read.--Dgbrt (talk) 13:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

That explanation is hardly too long. Our explanations should be self-sufficient, with the links there just to provide further context on things that we talk about in the explanations. A description of the format of sudoku is an important part of the explanation for comic 74, as the comic deviates from it in a notable way that not all visitors may recognize, be it because they haven't heard of sudoku before or because they aren't particularly familiar with the puzzles. There's a wee difference between cutting information and condensing the wording of a passage, and what you did with that explanation leads further towards cutting content. Davidy²²[talk] 13:45, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I prefer explains people will read. The wiki link for Su Doku is already there but I will work on a small explain soon.--Dgbrt (talk) 15:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

What, three full paragraphs is too much for people to read? Three full paragraphs of a complete explanation are better than a paragraph and two sentences of incomplete description? I'd rather we follow the name of the wiki and actually explain the comics. Davidy²²[talk] 15:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Read my version completely, I did adopt your hints on explain Su Doku and did some more polish. PLEASE just read before you undo! Tell me what's missing but I still prefer a more simple explain. --Dgbrt (talk) 16:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

You made a complete explanation incomplete in the name of simplicity. At least you bothered re-adding the relevant information back in post-hoc this time. Davidy²²[talk] 02:03, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

1190 Time pictures after major changes

Hi, any ideas to get new file uploads here? After your change we have some silence...--Dgbrt (talk) 00:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Geekwagon, Aubronwood and many other sites keep archives of past frame hashes. We can look up our last hash and upload all proceeding images here. I did that for the first 500-odd frames, until people started doing it faster than me. I'll probably start again since other editors seem to be on holiday. Davidy²²[talk] 02:43, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

You did upload all the images manual, is this the new way to do this? I thought your scripts don't like file names like 1234a, 1234b..., so do you not use a bot to upload the images? Further more: Since hashes from other sites do not map to the new naming here I think we have to document them here. But it seems I'm just running against windmills.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:01, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Post-hoc scripts; instead of an image archive littered with special cases, scripts need only iterate in numerical order. It's slightly more difficult to upload, but it's a consistent naming scheme for future use. Davidy²²[talk] 02:03, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

1190 Time pictures - Do you use a bot or not...

...it seems not - why? Lazy as I am! You're not like this.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I have a script to help with backlog uploads, but then I also manually upload new images while I'm awake and am near my computer. Davidy²²[talk] 05:14, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

What do you think about a bot? My computer is downloading the images by 24/7 so an upload here should be possible. But first I will start some tests at my local MediaWiki installation.--Dgbrt (talk) 12:56, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

A bot would be nice. Slashme's Slashbot actually did time image uploads, but he stopped cuz electricity bills or something. We could ask him if he's willing to share. Davidy²²[talk] 13:31, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I am thinking about a bot like DgbrtBot. I never have done this before (WikiBot) but I know the fucking manuals and while Randall does not like Perl I will use this language ;). Tomorrow I will start some tests at my local MediaWiki and then I will need an account for a bot.--Dgbrt (talk) 14:53, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Outage from Friday to Saturday

Did you recognize this, every error was just a "access denied for user ... on database ...". This board was dead for 24 hours.--Dgbrt (talk) 23:32, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep, purged cache to fix it. Not currently in a place with perfect access to internet though, so I'm not quite as fast with that as I usually am. Davidy²²[talk] 01:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

The same happened yesterday. Do you have chronic disk space/quota shortage? --Chtz (talk) 13:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep. We added a donate button and the sidebar ads when these issues started happening - a few days after time - to buy better hardware. Money comes slow. We could probably stand to upgrade mediawiki and PHP too sometime. Sometime. Davidy²²[talk] 13:43, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi - I'm wondering if there has been any traction or progress in upgrading mediawiki - I was thinking especially with the recent comic comic 1434 - but also historic comics like 826 - that an imagemap would be useful in the explanation, which is apparently bundled with mediawiki 1.21, but also available as a extension(?) -- Brettpeirce (talk) 16:24, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Imagemap seems to be compatible with our version of Mediawiki. I'll get to adding it. Davidy²²[talk] 19:58, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Done. Davidy²²[talk] 02:40, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Brettpeirce (talk) 11:28, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

I tried to create an imagemap for 1434 on a separate page, but any attempt to include the imagemap caused the submission to hang (sitting showing only a blank page whether I tried to submit for a preview or to actually edit) - I believe it was Friday, but might have been Thursday if you're looking for error logs. This is in contrast to the behavior when I tried to use wiki image maps before you said you added the extension (it would:::::::: simply strip out the tags and show the text content). I don't know how much time you have to contribute to this site every day, or how high a priority fiddling with this extension would be, but I'd appreciate anything you can do to look into this. Specifically, I used the cropped image I uploaded and the Online image map editor markup generator, which was linked from the MediaWiki:ImageMap page as it "supports all shapes, [and is] Extension:ImageMap compatible".

Alrighty, I'll get on it. Do you have the imagemap markup you were trying to use saved somewhere? Davidy²²[talk] 15:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Tested it, the error appears to be an old friend of mine. All the more reason to try and resolve it. Disabled the extension in the meantime, but it's still installed. Davidy²²[talk] 20:22, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't have the markup handy, but it's pretty easy to create sample markup (which is why I included the links for errythang) - I'm not even sure how to escape it in a wiki to make it postable here, since it doesn't even commit the change - I appreciate your efforts! Do you get more money if I click on Ads? :-) -- Brettpeirce (talk) 19:18, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

The way our pricing works, ad clicks don't directly translate to income, but they make the ad space more attractive to potential buyers which leads to them bidding up the price. Our base prices are rock bottom though to encourage our own users to advertise with us, and we wouldn't mind if you pointed your boss/marketing dept at work towards our bargain bin ad space. Davidy²²[talk] 20:01, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

A long-time friend has been dealt with, the plugin is now re-enabled. Davidy²²[talk] 02:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

User RouterIncident and a bunch of templates

Hi, I'm hoping you have had nice holidays. We all do need recovery. But it's bad when no active admin is available here.

Please delete that citation template, or just enter a link to 285: Wikipedian Protester. Please delete also this categories: "All articles lacking reliable references" and "Articles lacking reliable references". We still have the incomplete category, that should be enough.

BTW: RouterIncident is maybe also on holiday, no action the last days. --Dgbrt (talk) 17:04, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I could not find these categories you speak of in the page creation log, but citation needed is gone now. Davidy²²[talk] 08:01, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Please move some pages and edit the "List of all comics"

I can't move pages here, but this should work:

{{comicsrow|1245|2013-07-31|10 Day Forecast}}

• the correct page must be: "1245: 10 Day Forecast"
• the title must be: "10 Day Forecast"

So I did not save this update because it would result into corrupt links:

xkcd.com/1245 | 10 Day Forecast (create) | number / title / talk | 10_day_forecast.png | 2013-07-31

Please help, or give me the power to do this on my own.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:03, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Ooor instead of deviating from the title on xkcd, we could use an excellent feature to the comicsrow template put in by Waldir. Davidy²²[talk] 21:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Uh, I didn't know this feature.--Dgbrt (talk) 08:03, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Template:Verification needed

This template is unnecessary, please delete it.--Dgbrt (talk) 08:03, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Please also delete the templates behind this non existing categories:

• Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates‏‎ (2 members)
• Wikipedia protected templates‏‎ (2 members)

--Dgbrt (talk) 08:07, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Holy dependency hell. Purged the lot. Davidy²²[talk] 12:42, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Can you nuke Talk:404: 404 Error? You forgot to delete it when you got rid of 404: 404 Error.

Also, any update on the thumbnail issue? They are still not displaying correctly See unused files. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 22:03, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Deleted. Thumbnails are a bit trickier, seeing as Jeff is the only one who has direct access to the server. Still plugging. Davidy²²[talk] 02:08, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

For some reason, the wiki places the Main Page in the same categories as the current comic. This should be fixed, as the only category it should belong to is the root category. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 16:30, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

FYI I have answered User:Oneforfortytwo on his talk page. Mark Hurd (talk) 19:01, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

One more thing: Can you edit 1190: Time and remove all links to images after 2973:00? Seeing as there will not be any more of them uploaded, and some of them are showing up on the wanted files page. Also, can you restore the deleted image File:starsmove.png? Originally, I thought there was nowhere to put it, but I realized that I can link to it at 1190: Time/Pictures. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 06:04, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Done. Davidy²²[talk] 06:51, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, can you delete 1360: Old Files/info? Also, could we possibly get a page where people can post pages to be deleted? That would make it easier to report them. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 19:47, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Can do. Davidy²²[talk] 23:59, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Mkay, deleted the page, was in the process of making the page when I recalled that explain xkcd:Community portal/Admin requests and explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals tend to be the pages used for proposing deletion of pages. Page deletion doesn't come up incredibly often, although I could create the page if people really want it. Davidy²²[talk] 01:25, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I found Category:Pages to delete. Although you can't explain why to delete a page. Perhaps a template would be more appropriate. Speaking of which, can you delete Category:Commissioned, File:16px-BlackHat head.png, File:spirit rewrite unknown author.png, File:tongue awareness.jpg, all of these uploads, and the Lorenz uploads here?

By the way, User:DgbrtBOT is not selecting the xkcd.com licensing choice when uploading new comic images, causing all of them to show up in Special:UncategorizedFiles. And User:Dgbrt appears to have gone AWOL. Is there any way we can contact him and get him to change his bot?

Finally, I think there should be a category for the pages listed here. Maybe helper comic pages, seeing as there is a helper comic images? Or comic subpages? --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 23:47, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

The template template:spam automagically includes the delete template. We used to have a delete template, but it literally saw no use. The black hat head is the site favicon and the tongue awareness image is used in an explanation. The others seem justifiable though. I'll submit a patch to dgbrt that oughta fix the image categorization thing. Comic subpages oughta be a fine name. Davidy²²[talk] 03:19, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Time animation—a little help maybe?

About the animated Time GIF, I actually prepared one right away at the end, but I haven't been able to get it to upload here, even though it's rather less than the stated size limit, 12 MB out of I think 40 MB. If anyone can suggest what might be going on, I'll be happy to try it out. I did ask in the XKCD forum, but didn't get any help there. Just in case it was a temporary thing, I'll go give it a shot here again after I post this. Wouldn't want to save face or anything if it actually works all of a sudden, after all.—KarMann (talk) 20:03, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Clean explains

Oh, I did some reverts (undo) today again, I'm not happy:

• Ninja Turtles still belong to NASA
• Bullsh.. sorry
• Duplicate on some chess jokes
• Math
• And math again at some statistics (Increased Risk). <- ok, or (Increased Risk.)

While you do fight against spam, I simply do fight against some similar windmills. --Dgbrt (talk) 23:04, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Many of these were hamfisted ones that were targeted at one change, and reverted everything else contained in the same edit. Some of them were legitimate, some of them seem to show minimal effort to look at context before you edit. It's getting to the point where it's actually kind of disruptive now. If something is not in your area of expertise, don't revert like you do currently. There's a reason why rollback privileges are not given to all users. Davidy²²[talk] 03:37, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

1269: Privacy Opinions‎

This edit war is useless. The add is just TL;DR. And I'm sure even you did not read it all. Please keep explains as short as possible, otherwise people don't read. For understanding my post read this (read it all, there is a final statement at the bottom):

According to the title, the comic is about “opinions on internet privacy” in general. Six positions are offered as options. Four of the positions are tagged negatively by the author by their subtitles alone: the Crypto Nut, the Conspiracist, the Nihilist, and the Exhibitionist, all of which have negative valences in contemporary English. That the viewer is encouraged to identify negatively with these four positions is further encouraged by the content of the panels, as those characters are depicted either as having such boring lives that they have no need for privacy (the Crypto Nut, the Nihilist), or as being crazy (the Conspiracist, the Exhibitionist).
A fifth position, the Philosopher, is tagged somewhat ambivalently by the author: Megan is depicted as boring her interlocutor, yet in the title text, the author admits that he is usually the Philosopher. Also, “Philosopher” in vernacular English is neutrally valenced, potentially having the ability to expound either wisdom (sophia) or sophistry. It is also a synonym for Sage, the sixth position. As the author condones his own movement from Philosopher to Sage, he thus indicates that the Philosopher is to be viewed negatively, even if it is a tempting position to hold.
The title of the sixth position, the “Sage”, is positively valenced in contemporary English, and the author in the title text states that once he obtains a “burrito” – i.e., a “real” thing, he switches from the Philosopher to the Sage. The internal evidence presented thus far therefore is entirely consistent; the author encourages the reader to identify with the Sage.
By presenting five negatively tagged positions followed by a positively tagged sixth and final one, the author follows a rhetorical commonplace of listing and refuting a number of positions one by one, concluding with the favored and best one, which is not refuted and should be accepted both on its own merits and by virtue of being the last one standing. The comic therefore implies that no other (significant) positions exist.
Having completed the rhetorical analysis of the comic, we are now in a position to understand the meaning of “Internet Privacy”.
Panels #3 and 5 directly reference the American NSA. Panel #5’s “exhibitionist” also references Google, but the characters in the panel appear to be NSA agents (one wears an official cap and they are viewing the exhibitionist on an official, government-looking monitor). Likewise, the focus of the “Nihilist” is that the joke is on the people who gather the data, rather than those who are subsequently able to make use of it (such as Facebook’s users rather than "Facebook" itself; i.e., Facebook's employees and, by extension, its advertisers). The content of the actual data is only mentioned in panels #2, 4, and 5, and in each panel, it is suggested that it is meaningless or trivial. The Sage underscores the notion that any data known about him does not bother him, and therefore must be meaningless or trivial. The reader is thus encouraged to believe that it does not actually matter whether others discover personal data abou t him/her.
The comic is therefore what social theorists call *reductive*, because it reduces the range of possibilities of “Opinions on Internet Privacy” to an artificially and simplistically narrow subset; in this case, individuals concerned with government or corporate agencies using data that they have gathered on individuals, and the futility of worrying about such things. The comic does not admit the possibility of other “opinions on internet privacy” – namely, that individuals might have legitimate concerns with governmental or corporate uses of their data, let alone other individuals’ access to data that is assembled and distributed by corporations such as Facebook. The comic likewise does not consider the possibility of individuals having more interesting lives than the characters depicted, and therefore very real concerns about their privacy due to the activities that they engage in that are potentially more career limiting (should they be discovered) than obsessing about cryptography or eating a burrito.
The comic is “functionally” reductive, as opposed to “intentionally” reductive, because the reduction is the function or effect of the comic for readers who read it straightforwardly (such as the poster who claimed it was “about” Edward Snowden), whether or not the author intended this reduction to occur. There is not enough internal evidence in the literary text (i.e., the comic) to maintain that the author intentionally excluded other viable opinions on internet privacy; it could be that they are just not on his radar. For example, we do not have enough information in the comic to claim that the author is against civil rights; it could be simply that he doesn’t often think about them. Likewise, it would exceed the evidence of the comic to claim that the author believes that schoolteachers who use the internet to facilitate legal but frowned-upon sexual behaviors should lose their jobs if they are found out due to internet privacy breaches; it could be that the author simply hasn’t bothered to worry about these matters if they don’t affect him personally. This adjudication – whether the comic is “intentionally” reductive or not – may only be made on the basis of external evidence; that is, data known about the author from sources beyond this comic.
Use of such external evidence – historical, personal, psychological information about an author – is valid in determining the meaning of an author’s text, and is increasingly viable due to the accessibility of information about an individual on the internet today.
Additional observations about the comic follow. 

And when you did complete all that readings maybe you can summarize it, just in a way a reader would read.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:15, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

PRO TIP: explainxkcd is not guessxkcd.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:19, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I did actually read it, and goes well past merely defining words in the comic. It covers writer's craft and all of it is derived from valid analysis of text from the comic. There's maybe a couple of excess words that I edited out, but length is not a bad thing. I read it the first time, and it was a valuable analytical contribution to the explanation; I question the value of flat-out reverting major edits that significantly improve pages. Davidy²²[talk] 18:33, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

First sentence is mapped to the title, the TL;DR section is at the bottom. OK?--Dgbrt (talk) 19:10, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Uh, you cut the passage in half and split it up when it was referring back on itself? And you're accusing me of not bothering to read it? Davidy²²[talk] 19:26, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Uh, Oh, Ahh, I did not delete any content, I just asked about improvements. Read my comments, still much smaller than this adds.

Are you happy when people do not visit this site again because the explain is bullshit? TL;DR... I still prefer articles people will read.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:49, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I know you didn't delete anything. You cut it down the middle and pasted half the passage at the end of the article, with little regard for flow or structure. That's not a valuable edit, even if it's a smaller change than the initial passage addition. Having short explanations is not worth cutting out valuable information. Cutting out content that's irrelevant to the comic, yeah. Cutting out false relations and waffle, that's fine. Don't cut out well-written analysis.

Also, I'm noticing concurrent issues being raised against your edits again. Consider editing and working on top of edits instead of straight reverting them, and avoid antagonistic language. You already have one warning from the last time this happened. Davidy²²[talk] 21:59, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I still disagree. The list of panel explains is overruled by a massive amount of text before. This is still not a helpful explanation.--Dgbrt (talk) 06:58, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not a helpful explanation for those incapable of reading or scanning a sizeable passage of text. It contains all the relevant information in a coherent and laid-out manner, with a bullet pointed list to draw attention to the frame-by-frame explanations for those who want to skip the intention and analysis. Davidy²²[talk] 07:26, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Advertising

My Firefox AddOn NoScript did block the external page "projectwonderful.com". The untrusted picture [2] does not belong to "explainxkcd.com". Then clicking the picture brings me to this link: explain_xkcd:Advertise_Here. But, I still do not see any advertisement here at all, only this "wonderful project world", what's wrong?

I would like to pay here for a link to Randall's store (he doesn't know), but it has to be an internal picture to an external link. A user action is required, ask Randall about this security. External clicks do count, embedded content to external sites is a real insecure solution. Many modern browsers will not allow this. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:51, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

The image does belong to us, it's just served by project wonderful when no advertisers are currently bidding on us. The word "advertise" used in the link title is in the verb form, not the noun; that page describes how to advertise on our site. That page contains our advertising guidelines and a few links to our project wonderful bidding page. There, you can create an account and bid on any of the four regions we have on offer. Our minimum rate is USD$3.8 per day, and they let you link any image to any site. If you still can't advertise with us, post imgur links to screenshots to show me what you're doing.

Have you not said in the past that you are an employed software developer? Instead of advertising a site wholly unaffiliated to you, why not ask your boss to try his hand at advertising on explain xkcd? It's cheaper than most advertising outlets, and we have a large and valuable audience for your average technology company. Your company can probably easily muster the ~$15 per day needed to advertise in all our available regions, and the process takes about as long as creating an account on any other site on the internet. Davidy²²[talk] 07:13, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

A database error has occurred...

I did clean the cache, it seems no admin is required to fix this damn problem. Site was down but available now again. I will also talk to JEFF about this.--Dgbrt (talk) 14:54, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

New server coming soon. Hopefully these DB issues will stop... forever. --Jeff (talk) 16:39, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

IP Users

I still do not like this mess: User:108.162.216.45 and User:50.151.2.168. Users have to register for this.--Dgbrt (talk) 11:18, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

No they don't? User:70.21.5.28. The page takes up so little space, it's not worth forcing them to do something they may not want to do. When our IP friend wants an account, they will make that choice on their own. Davidy²²[talk] 16:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Someone else will use the IP 50.151.2.168 in the future. If that user also likes xkcd and explainxkcd he will find a history he never has done. Still a mess. Nevertheless you can be sure that I never will edit this without admins permission.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Question: — or -

You're changing — to -, even while it looks to me like a (typical American) loooong dash at the picture. Original transcript by Randal on 752 is "Do you--", so I don't understand some of your latest edits. I'm changing &mdash to — ( on Linux). I did opt for removing the double spaces after a sentence, but is this dash also history? Like miles... --Dgbrt (talk) 21:01, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Eh, I just do it because it's only one character in the original comics. I don't actually have easy access to an mdash on my keyboard when I'm editing, I'll probably bind that to a key for future use. Davidy²²[talk] 00:12, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

My question was just: Is "—" wrong or not. You know I am German, but my OS and much more programs are running on English. That's because all that translations are just annoying. Nevertheless, at 752 the original transcript shows this: "Blonde: Do you--". this should be a long dash. And you did change many &mdash to "—", I just want to understand how to behave on this.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

There isn't really a codified grammatical rule for the length of a dash. It's mostly stylistic, but it seems to be a rather common convention that a short dash is for joining words, and a long mdash is for punctuation dashes. Again though, it's not on the keyboard and the vast majority of people probably don't pay attention to dash length when reading. Davidy²²[talk] 21:41, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

You did introduce this in the past, my keyboard gives me on "ALT GR + SHIFT + -" just a "—". but we still have to decide about a rule on this. "-"--Dgbrt (talk) 22:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Extension:Comments

Have you thought about trying Extension:Comments? It was recently updated (July 2013) and looks like it would make commenting the explanations much more user-friendly. Could you make a little experiment to see if it works well? Say, install it so we can test and see if it works well? I'd be willing to help in the conversion of current comments to the new format, and we could even make it a long-term goal to eventually bring back all the comments from the blog :D --Waldir (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I did edit the incomplete template, ERROR is not correct. But a hint to the missing reason is great.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:24, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

From prior experience, the comments plugin does generate a lot of meta-pages with scrambled names that made me prioritize other things over it, but I can totally run it for a few days to see how things go. In a few weeks, my free time will skyrocket and I should be able to install and monitor the plugin then. Davidy²²[talk] 08:40, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Hey Davidy. I wonder if you're able to try this out. If so, let me know how I can help!

On the other hand, I am disappointed to hear that the comments extension doesn't integrate neatly with mediawiki. Are you aware of any similar choice that may be better-behaved? --Waldir (talk) 17:33, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

New comics BOT

I think that BOT is doing the job right now. Maybe there is a possibility to install it on this server, not much but some PERL modules are required, it should work on any OS. Nevertheless since I could see the updates in general did happen at 04:00 UTC I will implement a new script starting at 04:00 UTC, polling again after that again. But since I don't want to poll xkcd too much that poll would stop after fifteen minutes. Then there will be just a five minute schedule, until a new comic is found.

BTW: $text .= "{{comicsrow|$comic_num|$date|$comic_name|$picture_name}}\n"; means I will always add the optional parameter for the picture. Not all picture did work properly in the past, so I decided to include this parameter to get a working picture link on the main page. Any suggestions are welcome. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:50, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I have an idea for that, but I have a metric buttload of things that I need to do by the end of this week. I've seen comics come out several hours late so I think polling for four hours would still be apt, and I'm sure Randall's server could handle us polling him a little faster. Having a explanation page up at the same time as a new comic is really huge. I believe I have a solution for the comicsrow problem, but I also don't know Perl. I could probably figure it out in a weekend though. Davidy²²[talk] 01:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Incomplete tag at main page

Am I wrong, or is every new comic complete at the main page in the future? --Dgbrt (talk) 23:16, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

When we include a comic page on the main page, templates and categories are preserved. While that's good for page layout and the like, it's not so good when we have templates that impart their categories upon the inheriting page, like the incomplete template did. It was tagging the main page as incomplete whenever the newest comic was marked as incomplete. Davidy²²[talk] 23:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Yezzz, I understand. But presenting a new incomplete page in this way is not good. The counter has to be adjusted. But I'm serious on this and maybe some noinclude tags may help. While the main page should not be counted, the page it presents, if incomplete or not (<-the problem), should presented at the proper state. My bot will cover any solutions for further uploads. --Dgbrt (talk) 23:40, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

What counter? The counter on the main page doesn't take into account the main page itself, and the transcluded page is shown in its entirety, save for the discussion page and one category. What's the problem here? Davidy²²[talk] 00:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't mind about a 24 hour ban...

...but after that I did try to do some more talks here: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:Mrarch&curid=13771&diff=55110&oldid=55109 DELETED! I'm still the pest here, or what? I'm still hoping you will understand my actions here. I'm working much on the health of this board, talking to Jeff and many more here. And Mrarch just did delete my message. I'm German, so it could happen that I do use a sentence which could be interpreted different to my meanings. BUT: I just want to support this site as much I can do. --Dgbrt (talk) 00:49, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh nuts, didn't see that. I though he was just setting up his own user and talk pages. I'll leave a notice. Also, try to cooperate, and practice your English. There are a few naunces in his arguments that you're gliding over. Davidy²²[talk] 02:45, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

And oh nuts, we need some more people to review all the updates here. We have many new people here, doing great edits, but sometimes a correction is needed. I will still do this here, but you can be sure I will be much more polite when an edit-war does happen. I don't mind - xkcd is just fun. That counts! --Dgbrt (talk) 00:26, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

BOT uploads at the comic list

Hi, I can remove that "Picture.png" add, but I think it's more safe to use this optional parameter. Sometimes upper case and lower case did cause some problems. I'm trying to prevent this by providing the image link my BOT did upload here.

On January 1 my BOT did fail because the picture was not accepted at this Wiki, and my BOT stops on every unexpected error. The BOT doesn't understand Randall and so, when the BOT is running on problems it simply does nothing.

I've had serious problems to connect this site since a few deys, I don't understand why, but my BOT is doing it's job as planed.

Looking forward to some translations...

--Dgbrt (talk) 22:04, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Hm? What cases cause it to fail? Imma make this work. In cases of ambiguity, we could always err on the side of caution and include the parameter. Davidy²²[talk] 00:54, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The BOT did fail on January 1. because the "PNG" was in fact an "Adobe XMP" format and the upload was rejected by this site. A BOT barely can't handle this unexpected mess. This requires human action and the BOT stops further actions. The optional parameter will be posted anyway; if BOT doesn't fail.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Incompleteness Tag.

My browser (Chrome) is showing that 137: Dreams is the incomplete comic of the day. I used the tags there as the page instructed. Did I use them incorrectly? (possibly it was supposed to be in the main page edit instead of the discussion? I am fairly new here)This is the algorithm now. 19:10, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The explanation page is already tagged. Tagging the discussion page marks the discussion page as incomplete. Davidy²²[talk] 19:31, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I did edit this discussion page with a nowiki marker. And ‎Anomulus please sign your comments in the proper way, it's much more easy to discuss with an user instead of just a date. --Dgbrt (talk) 22:41, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I did move some comics back to the incomplete section, a full explain is still more worth than a 0% ratio here. Nevertheless I am still thinking, not really working, on a German translation. But just because the ratio looks great here I will focus on that translation soon. Stay tuned...--Dgbrt (talk) 23:18, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

If our numbers are right, a very healthy portion of our visitors should be German and you shouldn't have to be concerned with taking on the entire burden of translation. It's probably good to be conservative with the incomplete tag, it reduces the burden on of research on translators if they only have to change the language. Davidy²²[talk] 23:33, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Incomplete Explanation of the Day

Some thoughts:

• explain xkcd:Incomplete Explanation of the Day: No need for the daily update, it's also still at the top.
• MediaWiki:Sitenotice should contain a link to this: Incomplete explanations.

--Dgbrt (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

It takes very little extra effort to also update the project page, so I just do it anyways. The incomplete explanation of the day is supposed to be a focusing effort, to finish off one comic at a time. A link to the list of all the incomplete comics wasn't working, which is why I started drawing attention to individual comics in the sitenotice. Davidy²²[talk] 19:55, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

So tell me what's wrong with this link: Incomplete explanations. In my opinion this could be still placed at the top.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:26, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Mostly cuz that didn't work when it was on the main page, and calling attention to specific comics has worked exceedingly well. Davidy²²[talk] 06:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand, there was a similar link in the past.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:13, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

And in the past, that link had almost no effect on the incomplete pages count. Davidy²²[talk] 23:54, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I just did remove a typo

:"1930s" has "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". a

If you can not accept my typo correction on that simple damn "a" I will give up here. And I'm not sorry. --Dgbrt (talk) 00:40, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

In the same edit I removed whitespace from the page, as is not immediately obvious from diffs but can be seen from the edit size numbers. The "a" has been gone in each of my proceeding edits, as you can see in the revision log if you would care to read it. Autoreverting is bad. Davidy²²[talk] 00:57, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

1037: Umwelt

Hi, I'm sorry. But as my comments did say, some texts maybe helpful; but I can't fix all that layout issues. The individual pictures are still great, some ideas on that edits are nice, but it does not work in the full context. And those massive edits don't give both of us a way to review them all. I just did that revert because it doesn't work. --Dgbrt (talk) 22:09, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

The layout is still broken... I don't like edits without using a preview to verify a proper layout — and I do not like massive edits no one can follow.--Dgbrt (talk) 22:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Image resizing will be fixed soon. Give it at most three weeks. Davidy²²[talk] 01:37, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

New admin proposal

Please take a look here. Cheers, Waldir (talk) 18:36, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Template:comic

Isn't this just a revert and a freeze to a former revert done by me? Others did play then again on the main page appearance, but changes at this should be only possible for people not experimenting. The entire main page has to be protected. That page isn't a playground.

And on that admin discussions on me: My most posts are related to language, layout, and something — and I still don't like all those esoteric explains on ASSes, PENISpumps, ... But an admin has to work mostly on different issues.

Randall does primarily focus on "romance, sarcasm, math, and language.". Randall does more, so the SEX category is here, but I think we have to focus on the "primarily focus" at the headlines on explain pages first.

My advice here: Do NOT try to enhance well working templates, other statements are much more important.

--Dgbrt (talk) 00:18, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

It's not quite a revert, he changed how linking works for the first comic page, added jump links to the first and last pages and attempted a few fixes. I just fixed a few omissions that he made. Admin work usually tends to be focused on non-content stuff, yeah, but I feel like those people maybe probably might be right. Innuendo in comics not explicitly mentioning sex exist. Davidy²²[talk] 03:03, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Mail send

It's still not easy to find important mails, I nearly lost yours but now you got a reply. Your issues needs a test, I will do that soon. And sorry for this three month late reply. Maybe I have been blind, I just found your message today.--Dgbrt (talk) 23:46, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

The site GitHub.com did send a message to me from "David ???(possibly your surname)" but the address was in fact [email protected]. So this reply was stupid by me because that mail will never reach you.

Please send me a notification here because I don't visit that GitHub site on a regular base. Last visit was two or three months ago. It's just a backup for myself and available to everyone who likes.

Your request could remove links to GIF or JPG files, so I decided to include the picture link always because it does work on that template. Dynamic comics are much more complicated and my BOT stops to post any update here if something went wrong. I'm still thinking about a better logging on that, My idea is still: If the BOT decides not to post chaos here it should save any content for later manual analysis. But that's a big deal because Randall's comics are so different...

Nevertheless the BOT covers most comics just in time, I know people are happy on this — and when the comic is too sophisticated, it just stops to prevent chaos here.

--Dgbrt (talk) 21:41, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

File:lorenz-new.png

Moving this to File:lorenz.png does not work like my former updates, maybe it's some cache on the server. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:31, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Huh. I'll have to take a look at that. Davidy²²[talk] 21:45, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

The file on the server looks right. It'll probably update itself on the caching servers in good time. The distortion is annoying though. Davidy²²[talk] 21:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Can you clear the cache? The page 1350 still looks bad like my former reverted updates. But maybe we use this just a test for the servers. Uploads are easy, but updates are the hell. --Dgbrt (talk) 22:08, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Eff it, let's wait on it. Davidy²²[talk] 22:17, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

One idea: Try "Lorenz.png" instead of "lorenz.png". While WIKI is mostly case insensitive the servers maybe are. --Dgbrt (talk) 22:20, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

German page

Is it still possible to create a German page here? I'm complete (honestly mostly) on my investigations for presenting a proper German page. On a positive reply I will present some more details (maybe screenshots) of my local wiki and a plan on how to bring it up to public. And consider, this would not only be for German readers, we have Austria, Switzerland, and many other parts in Europe. I would be happy to support this, and my BOT would be too. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:37, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

It's still possible, gonna do it after we clear out all the incomplete pages as promised.Davidy²²[talk] 20:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

So then this never would be happen. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:50, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

No, because we'll eventually clear out our backlog of old, incomplete articles. Davidy²²[talk] 21:24, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

/r/xkcd sitenotice

May I ask why you've added a sitenotice about /r/xkcd? The /r/xkcd sub is controlled by /u/soccer, who links to racist, xenophobic and misogynistic content regularly. Randall has even spoken in support of a petition for /u/soccer to be removed as a mod (which of course didn't happen because reddit doesn't do that). /r/xkcdcomic is a non-hateful alternative, one that Randall supports, and it has more users than /r/xkcd. LadyMondegreen (talk) 13:19, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

If you look closely at the text and click on the link, you'll see that it actually says and links to xkcdcomic. Also, /r/xkcd is currently at 40000 subs and hit 10000 a few years ago. Davidy²²[talk] 20:38, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm, yeah, I'm not sure how I got that backwards, but I did. Someone pointed it out to me on IRC and I guess I didn't look closely enough. Sorry about that. LadyMondegreen (talk) 19:35, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Any idea on this: A Smarter Planet

This should be mentioned here, but that article doesn't represent a comic from the main page. Maybe it should be merged to Randall? What do you think? --Dgbrt (talk) 21:17, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea. I'll put that on the list of things to do. Davidy²²[talk] 03:56, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I've forgotten to post a reply here. I did put in a new template for this special issue because it's different to a common comic from xkcd. A standard comic template never can cover this. And when this template is complete it should be protected, but the resulting category page is still bad and I need help on this. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:55, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I figured that when I tried it myself. It might be a bug with parserfunctions though. Davidy²²[talk] 03:17, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Do we have active admins here?

This site seems to be running into chaos. The former approved admins do not work that much here; and now I'm even missing you.

Maybe you are on holidays; if so, I'm just greeting with "Happy holiday". BUT this site still needs an admin.

You know I'm still looking forward on a German page for this, but this English page is still on my main focus. --Dgbrt (talk) 23:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

The image caching issue is caused by Cloudflare not refreshing the image that it serves as fast as we'd like it to. Outstanding admin requests and unsigned messages were left for one day. That's not inactivity. The only thing I saw being raised was the admin request, which was closer to a progress update to which you butted in with an irrelevant remark. The only conflict I see in talk pages is between you and other editors, and it's only mild disagreements and mostly civil discussion at the moment, so I'm pretty fine with it. Davidy²²[talk] 03:56, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Minor edits

Hi, you are often doing minor edits like fixing some syntax or missing parentheses. If you would mark them as "minor edits" it could be ignored at the "Recent changes" page. Major changes could be found much more easier. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:29, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Incoming confirmation email: Domain of sender address [email protected] does not exist

Since the email address of incoming confirmation emails come from a non-existing domain, they are bounced so never reach me.

From the mail logs:

   2014-05-30T08:36:21.455368+02:00 snap sendmail[12564]: NOQUEUE: connect from vps.lunarpages.com [67.210.100.50] (may be forged)  
   2014-05-30T08:36:22.049902+02:00 snap sendmail[12564]: s4U6aLdn012564: ruleset=check_mail, arg1=<[email protected]>, relay=vps.lunarpages.com [67.210.100.50] (may be forged), reject=553 5.1.8 <[email protected]>... Domain of sender address [email protected] does not exist  
   2014-05-30T08:36:22.219369+02:00 snap sendmail[12564]: s4U6aLdn012564: from=<[email protected]>, size=2306, class=0, nrcpts=0, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=vps.lunarpages.com [67.210.100.50] (may be forged)

-- Jeroenp (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

You shouldn't need a confirmation email to contribute and use the site. Uh, that feature'll probably be turned off; how did you request the email that generated the above error? Davidy²²[talk] 02:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Because at http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Preferences it says:

E-mail address is optional, but is needed for password resets, should you forget your password.You can also choose to let others contact you by e-mail through a link on your user or talk page. Your e-mail address is not revealed when other users contact you.

E-mail confirmation: Your e-mail address is not yet authenticated. No e-mail will be sent for any of the following features.
Confirm your e-mail address

• Enable e-mail from other users
• Send me copies of e-mails I send to other users
• E-mail me when a page on my watchlist is changed
• E-mail me when my user talk page is changed
• E-mail me also for minor edits of pages

So I used this to send a confirmation email: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:ConfirmEmail

Jeroenp (talk) 19:13, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The lunarpages do not know to set up a proper Mail Server. My Mail Servers also would never accept this until I whitelist them. Sadly I still have to do this for some customers — also big customers in the US. Reasons because this mail isn't valid:

• dig vps.lunarpages.com:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
vps.lunarpages.com.	3600	IN	A	80.156.86.78
vps.lunarpages.com.	3600	IN	A	62.157.140.133

• whois 67.210.100.50:

The answer belongs to LunarPages.

• But 67.210.100.50 isn't a registered MX entry for the domain "lunarpages.com":

lunarpages.com.		300	IN	MX	0 sharpmail-new.lunarpages.com.

• which is:

sharpmail-new.lunarpages.com. 300 IN	A	74.50.25.50

I'm sorry, but fighting against SPAM is important and a proper Mail and DNS configuration is mandatory. Maybe those admins at LP do need some help and advise.--Dgbrt (talk) 22:06, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

If you don't have anything useful to say, don't say it. You don't have to be in on every single conversation on the wiki. The issue is being dealt with. Davidy²²[talk] 03:45, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

"Feeling old" category

Hello, Davidy22. I noticed that you deleted the "Feeling old" category I made a while ago due to being "tenuous, not significant enough." In the interest of becoming a better contributor to the wiki, could you explain further on significance for a new category?

I realize that there are various qualifications that a category has to fulfill, lest it only add clutter to the wiki. A category ought to be simple, memorable, and concise. It should refer to something within or about the strip, be deliberate, and be objective. And, ideally, it should apply to a fair number of strips. I figured that the four strips that included the motif of "character/Randall reflects on how distant the seemingly-recent past is" all used it significantly, as a central theme or as a punchline. I personally feel that Randall hasn't exhausted his use of this motif, and therefore it warrants its own category for future comics, saving time in future explanations and aiding readers of past explanations.

(My one personal issue with it is that the phrase "feeling old" does not feel concise or specific enough, but I couldn't think of a single word or a better two-word phrase to describe it.) -- 108.162.216.21 18:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I hope you (Or Davidy22) don't mind me starting off this conversation. Categories are not meant to be used as a tag cloud. Categories are a concrete thing in the comic such as Category:Comics with color, Category:Red Spiders. They are not motifs or feelings about the comic. We don't have categories for happy comics and sad comics, and I can't think of a persuasive enough argument to allow them. Until there's a significant number of comics with "I feel old" or "I'm getting old" or "#FeelingOld" (eww) in the text, I'd hold off on trying to push this one through. lcarsos_a (talk) 05:55, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Part of the deletion was because it only had four comics under it. The only times I've allowed categories with that few comics behind them was when they were put forward by registered users who I could make promise to maintain them. Davidy²²[talk] 09:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay, so feeling old is a bad category name. Categories that sound subjective in general are bad. Perhaps "Aging" could work? And also, courtesy of two particular xkcd blogs, I know of at least 10 comics that would belong to it: 218, 354, 447, 493, 647, 891, 973, 1093, 1393, and the recently posted 1408. - 108.162.216.21 03:38, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Weird formatting bug

I remember back when I had asked about skins you had told me to mention if there was anything off. Well, it's nothing major, but this seems to happen on the Main Page alone on the monobook skin. I can't say I've ever seen this before... Schiffy (Speak to me|What I've done) 16:55, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Mmmm, testing does not give me the same bug, but that part of the page is still malformed. I'll get on that. Davidy²²[talk] 19:58, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Dont change other peoples comments

When the user clicks "add a topic" in the comments block a new section is added. When a user does this you modify it to a heading style you prefer. This is against every design principal I know of. You have 3 legitimate choices: remove the button, style the header so it pleases you more, or let it be. Since this is a standard part of the wiki and updading versions would likely undo your changes, I would sugest that you simply learn to live with it, as it is not objectivly ugly.

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

108.162.216.209 13:10, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

It's not actually done because the header is ugly, it's done because of an error case that occurs when the discussion page is transcluded onto the main explanation page, that came up a while back. It would probably be better to remove that button instead of having to manually change every discussion page header, and I'll get to that when I have the time. Also, note how I only modify headers in explanation talk pages, where the error can occur; headers in user talk pages and the community portal are unchanged. Also, updating between mediawiki versions does not change the contents of (most) pages, so it wouldn't actually undo what I'm doing. Davidy²²[talk] 14:54, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Am I allowed to undo other peoples comments when they include blatant racism? See Weatherlawyer's comments on 500: Election and 522: Google Trends. --Pudder (talk) 09:28, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

No. You are not the judge of what other people are allowed to say. If other people say something questionable, they will be warned and/or banned. On the subject his his specific comments, they doesn't seem overtly racist in 500, just heavily politically skewed, but 522 seems pushing it. I'll warn him for now. Davidy²²[talk] 19:32, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

With respect, referring to 'Only having voted for a chimpanzee twice' is (to me at least) an obvious racial slur aimed at Obama. I have no issue with anyone posting inflammatory comments with regard to his politics/policy/decisions as President/what he stands for etc etc etc, but racism is not ok. --Pudder (talk) 21:10, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Chimp in the general lexicon is used to describe someone mentally challenged, not black. I must say it's quite hard to discern exactly who or what he's talking about because it feels like he's just making comments for the sake of making lots of comments. His statement about texas being granted statehood probably doesn't support the idea that he's talking about Obama, since they're not very supportive of him to begin with. Texas to my knowledge has been a republican state, so unless he really doesn't know what he's talking about, I'd say it's more likely that he's talking about one or more of the recent Republican presidents. Davidy²²[talk] 22:47, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Other explanations

What if we tried to include explanations for the What if? portion of xkcd? -- Brettpeirce (talk) 19:26, 4 November 2014 (UTC) (p.s. - I'm not sure how to get my question to look like it's written on graph paper)

That question comes up every once in a while. My response to the first one was that those things tend to be self explanatory and that the wiki is for the comic, but this'll be the fourth time it's been suggested. I dunno, how would it be formatted on the main page? Davidy²²[talk] 20:01, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Format indeed... also I understand what you mean about self explanatory - I'd say at least 85% of each entry is quite plain, simple, and straightforward. Most of the humor of the feature is not traditional "ah-ha!" humor (that comes from revelation of a twist on assumptions, or which might benefit from explanation). Every once in a while, though, that remaining 15% (often from the images, but sometimes from a factlet or two) contains a few nuggets of knowledge that make me yearn for discussion or comment, and occasionally clarification to one degree or another. In addition to possible issues of cherry-picking what's explained, and questions on how to format it, there's the question of the variability in release date of the comics (used to be every Tuesday, then Thursday and, if I'm not mistaken, the last two(?) have been on Friday, with a few weeks missed (sometimes with and sometimes without notice or explanation) - so how to catalog that? I'll append to this conversation whenever I get that feeling of "if only there was" and we'll keep it open for discussion, if that sounds good to you(?) -- Brettpeirce (talk) 12:33, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Probably just note the release date of each article, although I don't fancy to task of cataloging that. I dunno, drop me a message whenever you want. Davidy²²[talk] 16:37, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Template:i

I created that template for a reason. Unicode doesn't work right in many circumstances, especially on phones. Now people without Unicode support will see incorrect equations. Plus typing in a Unicode character is not easy, and not having an easy way to do it will guarantee it won't be used. That's why character templates exist on other wikis.

I copied the way of making the imaginary constant from Wikipedia. That's how the math template works. The Unicode version doesn't even look like an i in many fonts--the dot is missing. It looks like a weird squiggle that people won't recognize.

I really wish you would have done like other wikis and had a discussion (and let me know) before just deleting something. I'm lucky I happened to leave the tab open and happened to see it was deleted.

--Trlkly (talk) 22:54, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Huh, tested and it does seem to be broken on phones. I'll get restoring that. A lot of these templates don't tend to end up being used though, past their creation. Davidy²²[talk] 02:33, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Strong Language

Hey - I find it interesting that someone chose to create the category about "strong language" or something that you chose to delete because it had one comic. There are countless examples of "strong language", pretty much irrespective of what you consider to be "strong" (just search for one of the various "strong" words) but it's fascinating noone has felt strongly enough about it to make a category until 2015 -- Brettpeirce (talk) 15:04, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

It's also that "Strong language" is a really subjective category name that doesn't hold the same boundary for everyone, and is gonna be tough to populate to a degree that satisfies everyone. Although the person who made the category still frequents the wiki, so maybe he's capable of maintaining it. Davidy²²[talk] 13:36, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Delete a page

I created a page Test Page to test a potential feature. I intended to delete it afterwards, but it seems I don't have permission to delete it. Could you do so? Alternatively, make it into a sandbox Mikemk (talk) 03:28, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, sure. In the future, use explain xkcd:Sandbox. Davidy²²[talk] 03:33, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

K Mikemk (talk) 05:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Comic template

I made an upgraded version of the comic template that'll deal with Radiation's broken navigation bar for once and for all. Could you please look over it to make sure it's all working fine, then replace the current template with it? Updated template is over here and can be viewed in action here. Pixali (talk|contribs) 02:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Tested, this implementation seems to break the back button. Documentation is incomplete and may need usage examples for the new parameters, but I can probably write that when this makes it to the actual implementation. When I'm free, I'll try and get it to work, there's a good start here. Davidy²²[talk] 03:52, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Got there before ya. I effectively rewrote the entire experimental template, fixing formatting & the broken back buttons while keeping the support for undefined numbers. I still have the examples up over at the talk page for the new template so you can check it out there. I also tried to document it a bit better (inc. explaining the sort key better), but I'm not sure if it's satisfactory yet. Pixali (talk|contribs) 04:51, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Seems pretty solid. I'll fold it into the main template. Davidy²²[talk] 06:42, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Advertising?

Check the recent changes log. A page appears to have been made for the purpose of advertising or political rant or something (I didn't read much, it's long).

In any case, it's not relevant to this wiki. Mikemk (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yeah, it happens. Looks like another admin got to it before I came home. Davidy²²[talk] 02:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

dgbrtBOT Problems

While I did update my OS to CentOS 7 this weekend I did some tests on my bot. But it seems that problem doesn't belong to my update because I can't get this site via https - only http works.

Broken: https://explainxkcd.com//wiki/api.php

Working: http://explainxkcd.com//wiki/api.php

My bot requires a secure login via https so I don't know how to fix this.

Browser request gives me "Error 521" and my bot is "Error code 2: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable".

Even https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page doesn't work for me.

Unless this is fixed my bot will not work. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:57, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

On it. Would it be possible for you to fall back on http while we work on that? xkcd comics aren't hugely security sensitive, so it should be fine. Davidy²²[talk] 23:13, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad to reach you so soon. And sadly this WIKI requires HTTPS for a bot to login. My attempts on plain HTTP did fail, I do need SSL. Did you change something here? On Friday my bot did work. --Dgbrt (talk) 23:28, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

What's the error message with HTTP? Davidy²²[talk] 00:04, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

"Logging in over plain HTTP is a bad idea, we would be sending secrets (passwords or cookies) in plaintext over an insecure connection. To protect against eavesdroppers, set protocol => 'https'..."

I do accept this restriction; using https should be possible here for BOTs because a BOT can do many. If someone missuses my BOT account it would be bad for this site.

Maybe I have to import a non trusted certificate (costs money to make it public), but I want still to be on a save path.

--Dgbrt (talk) 22:30, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Hum, it would be bad if another party got your address. In other news, have you tried it again recently? It should work, I believe. Davidy²²[talk] 22:58, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

PROBLEM SOLVED! And the secrets are reset, just in case...

I got an expected error message while trying to update the LATEST COMIC. Not allowed because it just exist. Looks good...

Next BOT run should work until it's an unexpected dynamic one done by Randall. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:24, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Bad news: Picture upload did work but then my bot failed. Error messages are not very helpful but I'm sure I'll figure it out. So I will do some tests tomorrow on that damn API changes. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Oof. If there's anything you need server side, tell me. Davidy²²[talk] 22:48, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

More BAD news: I still have to figure out the reason for error messages like this: "Error code 0: at /opt/xkcd/xkcdtest.pl line 104." What the hell is "Error code 0"??? Sadly it seems I have to work on this a little bit more. AND gooooogle doesn't help me... --Dgbrt (talk) 23:06, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Error code 0 is the default exit value in perl. It seems like you're terminating the script at line 104. It's a natural exit though, so it's probably part of your error checking. Davidy²²[talk] 02:51, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Request for help

I'm in the midst of a [disagreement] with another user about some general stylistic issues and I'd like to solicit broader input from the wiki community. Do you know a mechanism by which I can request such input? Thanks! Djbrasier (talk) 00:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC) http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:Davidy22&action=edit&section=77

The community portal would be the place to do it. People don't usually frequent there, but you'll get input over an extended period of time. Davidy²²[talk] 05:24, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Djbrasier (talk) 15:29, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

List of all comics broke recently

Thanks for adding "For comics from 1001-1500, see List of all comics (1001-1500)" to http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_all_comics_(full) But now links are being added in the wrong place. I'm just not sure why/how. Nealmcb (talk) 18:44, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

There's a couple of things I did wrong. Fix'd Davidy²²[talk] 20:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

The "incomplete explanation of the day" doesn't seem to be updated daily...

Should this be the case?--17jiangz1 (talk) 08:06, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Currently, it's whenever the current one is completed. It used to be per day, but we don't have as many incomplete comics left to cycle through, and the ones that are left, are difficult to fix and don't get frequent changes. Davidy²²[talk] 09:12, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

What Ifs taken down?

Hey man, I saw you took down the 'Short Answer Section', 'Alternate Universe Whatifs' and the 'Growth Rate' page. Is this because of the Creative Commons license, because you maybe don't want whatif-pages on this wiki or is it of something else? I really spent some time working on those two and maybe a genuine reason for taking them down would be appreciated Nk22 (talk) 19:55, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

The what if pages were literally just the contents of the main articles transferred over to here. Those articles are already Randall's answers to questions, well explained in-of themselves. They don't need any further assistance from us, and we're not providing a lot of value by just copying the text of his articles. Davidy²²[talk] 20:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, I see the point you're making. Most of those don't go as deep as some of the comics and are basicly explinations themselves. I might as well just add links to the what-if.xkcd.com website for more info. Nk22 (talk) 20:05, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

You're a hero

I don't know how often you're told that. But you're a hero, and you're my hero. Keep doing an amazing job and avoid burn out. I'll be coming back in 2 weeks. lcarsos_a (talk) 06:07, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Being able to just set up pages and let users fill everything in really helps with the load. Makes it much less work than it may seem. Davidy²²[talk] 11:19, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Green Hat

If Green Hat's one appearance is not sufficient for his own page, why does Brown Hat have his own page with only one appearance in 399: Travelling Salesman Problem? --Forrest (talk)12:46, 05 May 2015 (UTC)

I was not a part of making that, and am not a huge fan of the existence of that page because of the precedent set. Weak precedent doesn't really justify making more though, as there are enough one-off characters to easily make the characters navbox very cluttered and unusable while providing little real value to visitors. Davidy²²[talk] 04:22, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Unicode Theme

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand how unicode wasn't a significant theme in xkcd. It has been mentioned directly and indirectly, from the past into the present. Compared to "no title text", it seemed at least as significant of a category. What kinds of categories are considered significant? (It was significant to me.) -- Azule (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Hum, looking back, it *is* a central point of all four comics included. Might be more justifiable than the typical marginal category page. Just remember to maintain it. Davidy²²[talk] 21:10, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Bot Problems

Can you see anything at the log files why my BOT can't create/edit a simple page here? Since I still get only "Error code: 0". I maybe have to debug the API itself. Picture upload should be fixed now. Someone did beautify the LATESTCOMIC template my bot didn't expect this and did a save STOP at that point. Let's see if the picture works again tomorrow, but I want to do the entire comic again. --Dgbrt (talk) 19:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I'll check soon, wee bit busy at the moment Davidy²²[talk] 01:28, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for help. Picture upload works again since I adopt the beautified LATESTCOMIC page - I need that number to verify a new comic. My bot is doing nothing if that test fails.

But when I try to create a new page I still get NO information about the error. And I did many investigations so far. It's frustrating... --Dgbrt (talk) 20:01, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Please delete this:

2 June 2015

(diff | hist) . . Nb Test 000001‎; 20:23 . . (+33)‎ . . ‎DgbrtBOT (Talk | contribs)‎ (Created by dgbrtBOT)

(diff | hist) . . Nb 000001: Test 000001‎; 20:23 . . (+288)‎ . . ‎DgbrtBOT (Talk | contribs)‎ (Created by dgbrtBOT)

Bullshit... downgrading my BOT API to the former version did solve the problem. The documentation for the current MediaWiki:Bot is WRONG!!! I don't know why I haven't had this idea before.

If my bot works again I will update the dgbrtBOT page on that status tomorrow. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Huh. It might be that we're out of date, and you upgraded to a version incompatible with our mediawiki version. I'm gonna have to get on that eventually. Davidy²²[talk] 20:53, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's your MediaWiki version, my BOT API was just crap. Let's see if it does work again tomorrow. Picture uploads are already done by my bot again - even when people overwrite it. But maybe I've to do some minor fixes tomorrow, let's see. May the SCHWARTZ be with my MOG... --Dgbrt (talk) 21:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I suspect your newer version wasn't trying to break things, we *are* very out-of-date. The only way to really know is by upgrading the wiki and seeing if it breaks the bot again, I guess. Davidy²²[talk] 22:20, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

My latest API client was corrupt, not the wiki here itself. Your guess sounds a little bit like the test was done in "2001: A Space Odyssey" on HAL. But since my BOT can't talk like HAL I have to check the log-files afterwards. Today there was only ONE PROBLEM: An user here was faster than my BOT within just 2 minutes - should not happen very often.

But if this happens again my BOT will get a new enhancement: If my BOT finds a just a few minutes old upload here it will override them all and create all the edits needed here. Nobody can write an explain by that time but my BOT would ensure all the proper changes would be done here. What do you think? --Dgbrt (talk) 19:16, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. I could also restrict page creation to certain groups, so that an anonymous user doesn't pull the trigger so fast either. Davidy²²[talk] 21:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Let's see first if my BOT works again. But restricting page creation should not affect/effect the creation of TALK pages. Maybe overwrite this posts by my BOT would be the better option. Everything wrong would be cleaned up. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:09, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

The problems are solved and I'm happy about that. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I noticed. Good stuff. Davidy²²[talk] 21:04, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Bad uppercase

Please delete this: File:Antique_Factory.PNG. The correct lowercase picture is done by me. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Done Davidy²²[talk] 23:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Please delete

Please delete this File:1540.jpg because it's the wrong name. I did change 1540: Hemingway to the correct file uploaded by my BOT. For the first time my BOT reverted an existing page because some standards did miss. My BOT was late (13:35 Nk22 vs. 13:48 dgbrtBOT) but my BOT was still acting correct and did all the further actions needed. Nk22 got a message by me. My BOT acts every 2 minutes so it seems I have to solve a cache problem, maybe at Randall's cloud... --Dgbrt (talk) 20:03, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Dunnered Davidy²²[talk] 20:00, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. A new upload on the correct image did last more than three hours for me to see. My BOT suffers on the same Cloud Cache problems. I've no idea to solve this damn clod cache. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:54, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

BOT problems, CLOUD problems

My BOT still got the old comic while other people did upload the new one in a corrupt way. So let's define some rules for my BOT to be slightly more violent. For now I'm only checking if also the comic-name redirect exists. But I think that my BOT should test all required updates here, and if something is missing it would do a clean job here. Wrong picture uploads and more will still have to be solved manually. It will only a few minutes and I don't think that it will delete many essential contents, and even if it does it will be available at the history.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:11, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

RE: Delete Template

Really? That's weird, Template:Delete is showing up blank and redlinked for me. ~AgentMuffin

Kudos on fighting spam !

I don't know if anyone tells you this.. You do an amazing job to keep all this working smoothly. It was especially evident in your current spam fighting. You were able to undo things even before anyone sees it. Amazing work man ! Keep it up. We are all with you, just holler somewhere on main page if you need help and we'll be there. (Well I haven't opened an account yet but I try to help anonymously...) Kudos again.. I'll buy you a drink if we ever meet and you mention that you are Davidy22 :D 199.27.130.216 10:48, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

If I was good at this sysadmin thing, there just shouldn't be any spam. Took a whole day to figure out a configuration that keeps it at a manageable level, but stuff is still slipping through the cracks. I'll get to polishing it off in the weekend. Thanks for the support though. Davidy²²[talk] 17:50, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I second the anonymous praise here. All of it, both spam and keeping the page up and running. I did not even notice any spam, not before I read your note at the bottom below the Should we change the tagline? discussion. How does it manifest it self (can you shown an example, or is it not just reverted but completely deleted from the pages?). Great work no matter! --Kynde (talk) 22:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

If you take a look at the deletion log, you'll see all the garbage that appeared here in the last few days. There's also some vandalism in Miscellaneous, and no other community portal, which is suspicious. This just cropped up in the last few days, not sure why spammers decided to target us again. Davidy²²[talk] 23:12, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Did it fall together with the "Should we change the tagline? What do you want the new one to be? Discuss it here!" banner at the top, that links to the site that was spammed? That might make sense? Thanks for answering, now I understand what type of Spam we are being subjected too, and also why I did not see these pages from normal use. --Kynde (talk) 07:29, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, links from the main page probably determine where the spammers are targeting, but I don't know why they decided to start targeting us after all this time leaving us alone. Davidy²²[talk] 07:42, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Someone might have linked the misc page from some other site (reddit/tumblr/etc.) after banner was put up and the spammers might have just followed the link when crawling that site. That seems to be logical explanation of why it started just after we put up that banner. 199.27.130.216 22:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, i personally think that Davidy is doing a great job with handling this spam situation, and he deserves a lot more credit than what he's getting. So thanks, Davidy, for making sure the site is still functional. P.S. Sorry about the lack of signature. i just joined the channel today and i haven't figured everything out yet. -- Flamewolf (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

If I were doing a good job, there wouldn't be spam to clean up in the first place. I'm trying a bunch of things but the spammers are fairly smart. Davidy²²[talk] 18:27, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

This thread has gone too deep, I'm coming out to first level. ;-) Alright, you could try couple of things. You first want to know where the spammers are coming from and if you can stop them at source. You might have to add tracking on what previous site is the user coming from. If all spam bots are coming from single source, we could request the source site that links us to modify/hide their links. Second, are the spam accounts posting from different IPs every time ? Otherwise you could place a temporary IP based ban. Third, I'm interested in knowing why the bots are creating accounts while they could edit the pages anonymously. This might tell us about the algorithm they are using. And how are accounts treated differently than anon users ? Do they not get captcha while posting ? In which case, you could enable captacha's for users with accounts as well. EDIT: I'm the same guy as the OP of this thread (IP : 199.27.130.216). 108.162.245.153 11:18, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

And in case you haven't seen this, take a look at [this mediawiki page] about spam fighting. 108.162.245.153 11:27, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Another observation by looking at recent changes / deletion log, half the edits seem to be by bots, while half of them appear as if real people are behind this. There are companies out there that take contracts to and employ people to manually circumvent the spam protection strategies. If this is the case, we need a different strategy. That's why it's so important to know the nature of spammers and what are they using.108.162.245.153 11:48, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

To be honest, i've had an idea for maybe stopping or slowing this. Maybe we could find a way to trace where all these accounts are coming from and block that place's IP from connecting to the website? --Flamewolf (talk) 15:26, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Alright, so, we're using cloudflare as a CDN and intermediary for traffic for performance reasons, and they obscure IP addresses. There's a fix that we've yet to implement, but something always seems to get in the way in real life. IP banning is a little weak because of this. Users with accounts also get CAPTCHA'd, until they are at least 3 days old and have at least 10 edits. I'm not sure why the spambots make accounts, besides gunking up our database with more garbage. Davidy²²[talk] 09:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey, good job! Whatever steps you took, seem to be working. Spam is nowhere to be seen. [Recent changes] are all clean. Well done ! :) 199.27.130.216 05:38, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

The last thing I changed was a permissions thing shutting off talk page creation for new users. Now that's over with, I'm going to have to dive back into that mess of a discussion over the tagline again. Blergh, with finals coming up too. Davidy²²[talk] 05:54, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Question about spam

If I see spam on a talk page, such as what is present on the current comic's talk page, should I delete it? I don't want to get in trouble for messing with other people's posts. Mikemk (talk) 13:31, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Spambots aren't people, go nuts. Davidy²²[talk] 18:25, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I just spotted this spam where the entire 1613 was deleted. I had just added something today, and found it was missing. I have of course corrected it, but could there be more? --Kynde (talk) 18:52, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Creation of disussion pages for new comics

Hi Davidy22. I have recently seen at least two cases where people wish to make a comment on a new comic, but cannot because the page has no been created (and they do not have the right to do so). For instance I even had a message from someone who could see I was making changes (I guess). Would it be possible for the BOT to create the discussion page empty like I did here Talk:1654: Universal Install Script, with a not shown reminder about signing comments? That would help some users of explain xkcd who do not wish to make a user account. --Kynde (talk) 07:45, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I can leave a message in dgbrt's talk page. I'll push him the changes needed to make it happen as well. Davidy²²[talk] 08:51, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Great, it would help some of the early users :-) --Kynde (talk) 22:22, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Davidy22 and hi Kynde. Sorry, I'm late. Please check my talk page for further progress.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:46, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Davidy does the boot not work at all now? Posted a reply on Dgbrt's talk page. Kynde (talk) 17:06, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Errors in counting "known appearances" for characters

Hi Davidy22. I have seen this error more than once, and today with a comic featuring Danish it once again became very clear that something was wrong (impossible to spot for Cueball and the other main characters). On her page it says 16 know appearances. But on the page Category:Comics featuring Danish it says 18, and even though one of these are the main page (which will change Wednesday when the next comic is released) there is one too few in the count. Maybe it will correct it self later? I think I have seen the same for Hair Bun Girl but her count is up to date now. But it is typically on the release days that people would pass these pages, so it is a shame if it first works later. Just so you can check it out, and if you know what's going on let me know ;-) --Kynde (talk) 13:08, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

So, the way the explanation on the main page works, we take the number in Template:LATESTCOMIC and find the page that is named that number. Every comic in this wiki must have a correspoding page for their number that redirects to the comic explanation to make the forward/backward buttons work and for the main page to automatically point to the latest explanation without need for us to allow bots to modify the main page directly. The entire text of the explanation is included in the main page in this process, including categories. The discussion template actually has a check for the title of the current page, and it doesn't render if it's the main page. We can do a similar thing to prevent categories from being assimilated into the main page, create a template that inserts the check around the categories and have a bot remove the template when the comic isn't the newest one anymore. Davidy²²[talk] 05:47, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

That would be great. Guess you have more important things on your mind right now. Such a shame this should happen when this crazy april fool came out. It probably hinders some people in using this page to help explain. Good luck with making it work. I tried to read the post on the community page but did not really understand why it happened. It cannot be related to the Garden comic can it? And it was working fine all weekend. So nothing with April 1st either... Kynde (talk) 12:14, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

The traffic is slugging our servers around and making a bunch of things on the wiki weird. I'm trying to alleviate the symptoms, but stuff like styles not working is the traffic's fault. Davidy²²[talk] 04:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

So because people come in here due to the Garden comic there is so much run on Explain for a work week that it is still not working? If that is true Randall has done it again with his Nerd sniping! And yes I'm very guilty and would have been smeared all over the side walk by the truck had it been Black Hat rather than Randall who did this to me ;-) Kynde (talk) 15:53, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Wiki continuity

Hey - I noticed that neither of the two 'crats have been active since mid-late 2015. Have you been in contact with them? People may come and go from a wiki, but it'd be a shame to lose contact with the only folks who have the ability to promote admins. A wiki-reader, Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:32, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I do actually keep in touch with Jeff still, but Lcarsos is AWOL as far as I know. Jeff and I have server access, and I technically could make myself a beauracrat if I wanted to, I just wanted Jeff to be ok with it first and never asked. Jeff is still alive though, and I can get him to promote an admin if the community ever agrees that a user should be upgraded. I'm looking at kynde in particular, he does a lot here. Davidy²²[talk] 05:47, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Hey thanks Davidy. I'm not sure I'm up for the task though. I do actually not know that much about computers or what it means being an admin on such a page here. But I really appreciate the thought and the notice. Funny that Jeff wrote the note of the 100 mil. views only six days after the post from Philosopher. I had not heard about Jeff before, but read about him after that. Oh and also spotted that DGBRt works on the bot making auto discussion pages. Maybe it works here on April 1st (a comic I'm looking much forward to. Where is it. It's noon in Europe I cannot wait any longer ;-)--Kynde (talk) 09:50, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Davidy. As you can obviously see I have been contributing quite a lot to explain xkcd lately. But it is time I took a break as I simply have spend too much time on xkcd... So I will take a break at least for the rest of 2016 from posting here. I hope to return later. Since I plan to stop completely from contributing after this post, I thought I at least would let someone know that it was a choice ;-) Best regards --Kynde (talk) 08:27, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work you've put in here, have a good holiday and I hope you'll be able to come back some time soon. You do good work here. Davidy²²[talk] 17:21, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi Davidy. Thanks for those words. I will not be back to me normal amount of editing, but I will start to contribute again some times. Just did on the 2017 comic. Nice to be back. --Kynde (talk) 10:25, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh, good to see you back already. Take your time with it, don't burn yourself out on editing. Davidy²²[talk] 08:06, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Complaining about Dbgrt

Hi Davidy. I'm a bit tired of what happens lately with no. four top contributor back in the warzone. I would like to write something to you about why I feel I might end up taking another (longer?) break due to this... I hope you still would be sad to see me go, but these last few weeks it has been more with dread than enjoyment I come to these pages to see what has been written about my edits... --Kynde (talk) 20:55, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

By the way just read through Talk:1806: Borrow Your Laptop. I have said a lot of what I have been thinking there now... --Kynde (talk) 13:31, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I've had problems with dgbrt and other users before, I'll look into it. Davidy²²[talk] 19:15, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. It is developing into a heated discussion between mainly Dgbrt and the rest... I'm sure I also sometimes make bad edits, and could cause problems... But at the moment Dgbrt seems to believed I had agreed with him on his other points rather than just the transcript. I tried to write that it was the tone and style that provoked me (and it seems others). And also that he seems to wish different style than the others involved at the moment. He claims there are many who have issues with the current style, but apart from the transcript I have not seen many examples, and none that he links to. Mainly it is to be expected that those who has issues write, and those that have not are much less likely to write that they like something. --Kynde (talk) 10:08, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi again. I'm really getting sooo tired of the way Dgbrt writes to my edits (and others). So I have now written an angry reply to him here Talk:1805:_Unpublished_Discoveries, and explained to him that I have also complained to you directly. Because it is just not OK to become personal because I missed a "]" or write as I explain in my comment on that talk page. Hope you will find time to do something about it before he scares other editors than me away! --Kynde (talk) 16:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Hope you will soon find time Davidy, because it just gets more and more out of hand between the two of us. I had not been back to edit since the March 11th until today (long time for me when a new comic was up yesterday), because I'm really getting depressed by the way Dgbrt acts. See his comment (and my reply) to my admission that I had talked to you here in the link above. As I said he scrutinizes everything I do and find it lacking. If I think I'm improving something he says I have ruined other peoples work, but he also just undos others work as well... I see that you also undid one of his undoings as your most recent edit here... For the newest comic 1810 I really believed I only followed the consensus in the discussion and made some really nice additions, in my opinion of course. I hardly deleted any info, but moved it around. And then almost instantly I get this message. And again he only looks at the red not at what I have actually written. When deleting a paragraph or moving around everything turns red. This is thus the second time in a row he goes after my edits like this. I have almost not looked at what he have done to my many edits from this weekend, but the one I for other reasons did look at today he had undone. I redid it, but to what purpose...? I'm really sad that it has come to this, and have no proof yet that it is other than Dgbrt that has anything in general against my edits. Though he keeps claiming so. Of course there will be some negative comments, but he writes as if he knows that many other editors dislike what I do. Maybe I should have agreed to be an admin back then... ;-) well probably not when I end up in such a stupid edit war :/ --Kynde (talk) 22:14, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Current lack of styles etc.

You obviously have more access than me, but simply turning on Chrome's Developer Tools shows all load.php script and style references are returning 404 status, but when you go to those references directly in a new tab they all display "No input file specified.".

And for me, the site doesn't seem to be slow in any way that would suggest lots of load.

Mark Hurd (talk) 16:04, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

A simple search at google gave me this: Manual:Load.php. So someone with access to the server has to edit the file ".htaccess". If this doesn't help I would need the log-files from the server for further investigations. --Dgbrt (talk) 12:47, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

It was permissions, didn't change htaccess when the problems started. Had a good few red herrings, figured it out eventually. Davidy²²[talk] 19:00, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Looks much better now. Thanks! --Dgbrt (talk) 20:01, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

The current incomplete explanation in the spotlight is not incomplete. (Help us fix it!)

Every page says "The current incomplete explanation in the spotlight is 1338: Land Mammals. Help us fix it!"

But 1338: Land Mammals doesn't have an incomplete notice, and the list of all complete pages does not list 1338: Land Mammals.

I think someone removed the incomplete status from 1338: Land Mammals but no one picked a new one for the spotlight.

108.162.215.131 03:16, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me, I'll get better about checking on that. Davidy²²[talk] 19:01, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Category that should be deleted

Hi Davidy22. When 1724 came up someone added the Category:Axiom of Choice. That took this category up to three. But I believe this may be warranted to keep that category. But I'll leave that to you. You deleted one I made once with three comics Category:Ba'al (see 1419: On the Phone).

But there was another category: Category:Set theory, which only referred to the two old Axiom of Choice comics and then as an under category had the Axiom of Choice category. So it was redundant. So I have removed any references to this category and moved relevant text to the axiom of choice.

So I will suggest that the set theory category page is deleted as with Ba'al. --Kynde (talk) 20:12, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh, how'd I miss that. Removed both categories, the axiom of choice category was too narrow and too infrequent to merit a category page. Thanks for telling me. Davidy²²[talk] 08:56, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I guess it is hard to keep up with all that happens here. I have made several new categories but now try to wait for at least five entries. For instance Category:Google Glass and Category:Climate change are recent addition, the latter very actual you could say with 1732... And then I also just added Blondie and Category:News anchor as new categories. I rephrased all three axiom of choice comics to refer to each other rather than to the category, so there is no loss of data for deleting both those categories. Let me know if you think I create too narrow categories. But as soon as there are more than five of anything, it become very tedious to refer back to each of them from each comic and a category is much to prefer. And with five already the chance that Randall soon add more comics is realistic. --Kynde (talk) 20:20, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

New category to delete. Maybe there should be a category but not with this hopeless name: Category:Comics featuring the floating sphere from the future --Kynde (talk) 19:18, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Done Davidy²²[talk] 19:48, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Great. Now that we know it was only a two comic series I have made a new category for that series: Category:Time traveling Sphere. I have also made a chronological list on the Category:Comic series of each series to see how special this new series was in it's release schedule. There have been similar series, but never just like this. --Kynde (talk) 23:49, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

---

Why do you keep disorganizing my comments?

I've run into the instance where I would leave a comment on a page and then get an email later, only to find out it was just you moving my comments around. I know you told me posts like this were supposed to follow a chronological order, but comments don't need to (nor do they have to) follow a chronological order, so why do you keep disorganizing my comments and put them all the way at the bottom of the page (even when they are in chronological order or mine aren't the only comments out of order, yet you move only mine anyways)? --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 22:45, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

They do actually go in order. You break chronology when replying to a comment, and you signify that with indentation, but otherwise the custom on wikis is that new comments and comment threads go to the bottom. Davidy²²[talk] 23:04, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

If they go in chronological order, then why don't others follow that formula? Because on the same thread (and others) I've noticed out-of-order comments. --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 23:13, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Every top level comment goes in chronological order. The exception is when you're replying to another comment. Everyone else puts new top level comments at the bottom of the talk page. Davidy²²[talk] 05:33, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I was talking about top level comments. --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 11:10, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

And they should be in time order. Minor mistakes happpen sometimes, but posting straight to the top is just deliberately disregarding the flow of comments. Davidy²²[talk] 18:41, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Current incomplete explanation

The "current incomplete explanation in the spotlight" has been the same for 5 months now and the last edit was almost a month ago. May I suggest to either (a) mark the comic as complete and move on or (b) put a different comic in the spotlight and send this one back to the backlog?

Pro (a): All regular visitors who are willing to edit have probably read the notice, visited the explanation multiple times and simply don't have anything more to add at this point and won't be re-reading everything again.

Pro (b): If the comic comes into spotlight again at a later date, people are more likely to click on it because it's different from their last visit and they may actually go through with re-reading everything.

P.S. What's the criteria for completion on a comic like this where you can essentially explore a whole world and write about pretty much anything in it? --7he3rain (talk) 10:50, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to just mark it as complete when I can't say that it is, I'll just change the comic. This kind of stuff does happen with the larger comics though, the pages get really unwieldy and they're older pages that people aren't necessarily interested in. I think there's a fairly good criteria for completion for 1608, set by the very large table, but it's an awful long way off still. Davidy²²[talk] 19:46, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Yep mostly my work and I lost interest and time when other big comics came out. I would like to complete it but it is a big task. There are also other reasons given for why it is incomplete. And so it should not be marjed as complete. But yes maybe it should be changed to another comic in the searchlight? Which has already happened. --Kynde (talk) 19:16, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Signature concerns

I have tried numerous times, and I don't know if it's because I'm an idiot or not, but I cannot find a way to make a signature for my page. I've tried codes and other things in the 'new signature' bar, but all it does is replace 'JayRulesXKCD' with the code I typed before... What am I doing wrong? --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 17:34, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Signature for your page? You mean a custom signature, right? You want to put {{SUBST:User:JayRulesXKCD/sig}} in the new signature box, then make a page containing the signature. You can view mine for a template. Davidy²²[talk] 20:11, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes. I meant a custom signature. Thank you. --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 12:10, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Falsehoods

>I'm not willing to keep making points that you'll brush off as false and state your own claims as true

It is literally the other way round. It is you who declare that 'signing' is good and I whose examples how it isn't you consistently ignore and vocally state that I have failed to provide. In light of this eerie brand of apparent self-victimization of yours, it doesn't seem to make much sense any longer to point out the nonsense of how you claim to have to 'clean mess' while the 'mess' in question is literally just freedom from screen clutter.

>this talk page is now locked for anonymous users

In a way befitting of an admin who spoke almost exclusively in falsehoods over this whole 'discussion', this is literally false as well. The page is locked to regular users as well. ~~~~ ‎198.41.243.245 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The talk page is locked for user accounts under 10 days old and with less than 10 edits in other places. It's the same protection level used for page creation. I used it on the talk page because in addition to yur willful refusal to recognize or follow site rules, there were multiple other anonymous users who were behaving poorly towards other users, for whom banning was also going to prove ineffective because of shifting IP addresses. I'm not going to waste unpaid volunteer time dealng with people who think they're being clever defying formatting rules on internet forums because they think 20 additional charaters of information is discussion crippling clutter. If you're going to waste my time on my talk page as well, I'm going to raise privilege levels here. Davidy²²[talk] 22:36, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

>yur willful refusal to recognize

Not only did I recognize them, I also explained why you made them, why they damage the community, why you're refusing to admit that they damage the community, how you refuse to acknowledge any of the prior, and how you repeatedly vocally deny that I have explained all of the prior (owing to your discussion style, much of it more than once). Also, stellar job using the word 'other' in two so different contexts: first by implying that I am 'behaving poorly', and second, that no one behaved poorly towards me. To anyone who might read this comment, search the page for the word 'civility' for the extent to which I abused other users. (Also, if you had a modicum of decency, you would have made a template explaining that owing to the page having been locked, any threads left unfinished do not reflect one of the participant deserting them, but just your interruption. But then, we've already established that it's not the site that you're caring about here.) (Oh, and shave your talkpage, it's fucking disgusting.) ~~~~ 198.41.243.238 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Damage is some kind of hyperbole to use to describe a convention so baked into wiki discussion, there's a rendered shortcut for it baked into the software. Also, you're not the only offender on the talk page, the whole page was locked for anonymous users because you, some of the users you were conversing with, and certain other people throwing slurs at randall and admins were on changing IP addresses, making blocks impossible for behavior that would typically justify temporary blocks. This is a problem with IP users in general, and letting anonymous users comment is a motion of trust that the user won't deliberately ignore written rules while swearing at admins through the protection of being impossible to ban. You are not the only reason the page is locked, though the time I wasted on you certainly contributed to the decision. I've issued an ineffective ban on a commenter on the page already, and the discussion is far off topic in multiple branches of your comment trees and aggressive sporadically throughout. The page is locked so that moderation can actually happen, and because anonymous users haven't shown their best side today. Also, your tendency to assert that statements you disagree with are unequivocally false is very irritating. Davidy²²[talk] 01:36, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Great response Davidy - and very polite compared to what you faced. By the way also interesting to hear what happens behind the curtain for an admin. --Kynde (talk) 21:03, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Sad comic trivia

Hi Davidy.

As you can see I'm back editing. Specifically I have been busy connecting the sad post Trumps election comics and have made the post as a trivia to 1790: Sad - see here.

I would like to hear your opinion on the placement. I do not think these comics fit into a category as their relation needs to be seen in a broader light that I have tried to shine here. But maybe a separate page could be created, but I really do not know what to call it. Sad comics in general would also cover lots of other comics especially many of the cancer comics. So Sad Comics alone would not do it. Also Trump should not be part of the name, as Randall has as far as I know never mentioned his name in his comics yet? But to me it is crystal clear that the comic is either a direct reaction to the election or to peoples behavior online (or around Randall). Although I'm quite sure he is sad about the way politic is going especially with his concern for global warming.

When I first made the trivia someone deleted it entirely, but it was also just a short sum up of those three other comics Blame, Negativity and 2017. Now I have also included he I'm With Her as it seems to have started the series of sad comics. But I think it is important for the understanding of these comics to have them collected somewhere, and if they are sad, then a comic called Sad seems to be the right place if no single page would do.

What do you think about this, and about my current trivia on Sad's page?

--Kynde (talk) 20:57, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Given the absence direct references to Trump in the comic, I would refrain from implicating him until Randall makes it explicitly clear that he's talking about Trump. The portions that talk about other comics' relation to Trump definitely fall outside the scope of the explanation page for 1790 and their removal was probably appropriate. Also, the word sad is a little tenuous of a link to trump and 1761, 1773 and 1779 all seem like similarly loose connections. They all depict feelings that may result from the election, but are not necessarily directly connected or caused by the election and linking them in a category or section for this and not other, older comics showing sadness is going to be difficult to support in the future. Also, constructing links between miscellaneous comics to Trump when none of them directly reference Trump seems like taking a side when we as a wiki should be firmly neutral. Davidy²²[talk] 03:05, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Davidy. Thanks for the constructive critique. What about the release days in relation the the election, the electoral college vote, new year (of the year he will be president) and finally the first comic after his first real workday. Personally I'm not in any doubt that his sad comics is a result of the election. Maybe they reflect more on other peoples sadness than Randall's own, but with the 1732 comic in mind I'm sure he is not only worried about the wall and Muslims banned from the states, but really really worried about the global warming that Trump will help increase. And he has made a direct comic related to his opinion on Trump in I'm With Her. By placing it in a trivia people can also choose not to read it, and I find that the increase in such sad comics is very relevant. I do not remember any real sad comics the year before his election.--Kynde (talk) 11:31, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

PS Just ran through the all comics a year back from I'm with her (or rather Blame) and on from blame. There are four depressing in those last 30 comics Blame included. The only remotely sad or disturbing comic in the 157 a year back from Blame is the global warming comic I just linked above here. And that is not really sad because it is also funny. But the end is scary. Also I checked the 15 pages listed under cancer. I would only say five of those are sad, the other are mainly funny or just something to be thoughtful of. The five sad comics came out over a range of 324 comics 818 in November 2010 until 1141 November 2012. SO instead of four in just three months it was only five over two years and on a subject he had real cause to be sad, negative or worried about. So I think it is very relevant for explain xkcd to note this increase in sad comics. Of course there could have been other sad comics in between those, but I just don't remember many comics like this. --Kynde (talk) 11:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

The difference between the cancer category and these comics that may or may not have something to do with Trump is that there are explicit references to cancer in the comics in the cancer category. It takes some amount of inference to link those four comics to Trump, and they aren't necessarily linked to the election. They may typify things that Randall noticed after the election, but they can be used in vastly different contexts and the correlation does not necessarily indication causation. The only comic among the five in the trivia section that genuinely merits a sizeable amount of of text on trump is 1756, because he's actually directly relevant to the comic. Davidy²²[talk] 20:24, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm. So would you suggest to remove it completely from the trivia. I could put it on my own page as a theory and link people with interest to it from the comics talk pages. Or would it be enough to remove Trump references and then keep the four sad negative comics as a worth of mentioning due to the fact that they do seem to take a negative view of the world which is not usually Randall's style. I'm of course sad... because I put a lot of work into that section. Just like I just did with the so far empty transcript of 1461:_Payloads (not that much though!). See by the way an interesting trivia I found regarding that comic and the transcript on xkcd for said comic. --Kynde (talk) 01:03, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Personal interpretation of a comic or loose perceived links between comics are what the discussion section is for. If users want to discuss speculative links between comics that aren't necessarily mentioned within the comic itself, they should do it in the discussion page and not the comic explanation. I'm usually actually somewhat against trivia because the kind of content that gets inserted in such a section is usually better suited to the discussion page, but it's sometimes appropriate. Davidy²²[talk] 11:48, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

OK- I have moved it away from Sad which is not about Trump. --Kynde (talk) 15:51, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Oversized texting

Hi David, I would like to see your opinion on this topic [3]. And then I found this (also done by Kynde): [4]. It really needs a major rework. --Dgbrt (talk) 18:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll take a look, swamped right now. Quick skim seems to tell me that kynde is somewhat compromising, though the solution he's chosen seems to be employing slightly needless cruft. I'll comment when I get back to my desk. Davidy²²[talk] 04:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Dgbrt and Davidy22.

I have tried to change the latest transcripts according to Zetfr's comments.

And yes I did realize that my changes to the xkcd page was way too much on that specific page. And that was also why I removed most of the content to other specialized pages (maybe there is still too much in the xkcd history?)

I did this before I saw the comment Dgbrt made about it to me on his page. That was where I had begun a thread Transcript and other features because I was really happy how our transcript discussion went in the end... I guess we were not on the same page there though :/

I'm sorry we are taking your precious time with our problems. I just wish to get as much information about correlations between comics etc. on xkcd into this wiki. Maybe it will not always end in the right place?

For that same reason I did not understand why Dgbrt's new category for comics where Randall has mentioned explain xkcd was not interesting enough (it just needed a better title IMHO), as I also just wrote to Dgbrt.

I will not do any further edits regarding the issues mentioned here above though, before hearing from you guys.

Best regards --Kynde (talk) 20:52, 20 February 20 don't understand a comic17 (UTC)

People come here because they don't understand a comic or part of a comic. First up, information that was found in metadata that otherwise has nothing to do with the comic is about as interesting to visitors as the letter from the president on a university website. A similar deal with the transcript, there are details that don't particularly contribute to comprehension of the comic that a blind person probably doesn't need to hear about, although you seem to have resolved your issues there. Explaining concepts used in a comic is useful, though you should try to use the {{w}} template where possible, as wikipedia is going to just be a better format for learning about something, and they'll remain up to date better than we probably can. It also has the side effect of cutting the length of explanations and leaving the extra reading to people who really want it. Davidy²²[talk] 02:59, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. There are also many people coming here investing many hours to write the big explains. Why just not let them know that Randall recognizes and mention this. The JSON pages a no secret content; but since many people don't know it has to be explained. And, why do not make those editors a little bit proud about their work. I will talk to Kynde about a different approach on this issue.

Since you have not reacted on all the massive enhancements by Kynde on the xkcd pages I will also discuss this with himself.

I'm hoping you will have a little bit more time in the future on such issue and not just pressing the UNDO button.--Dgbrt (talk) 13:47, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I concur with Dgbrt on the extra details, but maybe less in the main explanation. But trivia or sub pages etc I think it cool for those who use their time on these page. --Kynde (talk) 18:22, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

incomplete transcript 933

Hi, I saw you worked on 933, reverting and re-reverting. Do you think my way of transcript is ok and I can go on this way? Perhaps you can also give me some feedback or references to my approach for the 657 transcript? Anyway, is there a "how to" for transcripts? Thanks & best regards, LaVe--LaVe (talk) 19:37, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh, your work is fine, I just misclicked on the rollback button. Continue as you were. Davidy²²[talk] 02:59, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Sitenotice

Could the sitenotice be updated to randomly pull a comic from the incomplete explanations category? There's an example of how to do this on Wikipedia. And perhaps it could be set to update after a fixed interval of time - say, a week? It would be easier than updating it manually, and you could avoid situations where the highlighted "incomplete explanation" is no longer incomplete, but remains in the sitenotice.

EDIT: Well, it seems that the second part is not really feasible. However, I still think the first part should be implemented. Instead of linking to a specific comic that could easily go stale, the sitenotice could just say "click here to see an incomplete comic" or something like that. The actual link would take you to a random incomplete comic using the aforementioned method. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 05:18, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Explain xkcd doesn't have the random in category special page (or dpl which could also be used), the sitenotice does need updating though. E^ipi (talk) 10:26, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I wanted to do a specific comic so that people could focus on the large incomplete comics remaining, though at this stage there's not that many incomplete pages left, perhaps I could make it random. Getting brutalised by finals right now, will just change it for now Davidy²²[talk] 05:47, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Ads that interrupt content

In recent months there have been a number of users seeing massive ads right smack in the middle of the articles. These ads are extremely disruptive and are not acceptable by any means.

The ads have since seemingly disappeared, so we thought an admin might have disabled them, however today I see them again.

Please take a look: Talk:2220: Imagine Going Back in Time/Ads

--NeatNit (talk) 23:21, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I actually don't know when the site got moved to google ads, seems like it might be part of the mediawiki suite but I took my long abrupt hiatus somewhere between project wonderful going out of business and whenever the google ad plugin got added, don't even know if the server credentials are the same Davidy²²[talk] 01:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Set up X-Forwarded-For for correct IP address reporting

This should be done server-side, as right now (and for a very long time) it's been reporting load balancer / cache IP addresses for all the users. With recent vandalism, it'd help. BytEfLUSh (talk) 22:21, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh I remember this being a thing since way back when we went on a CDN. If I can still access the server and I find the time to take a look I could maybe Davidy²²[talk] 01:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Shutting down the crappifier

Thanks for deleting that common.js page Wafflefly21 (talk)

Heartily seconded. Many thanks David! Jrfarah (talk) 01:50, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks as well, this is a lot better. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 12:39, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I've been away for a very long time, this looked like it really needed some attention though Davidy²²[talk] 01:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

do you have...

... any good mass-reversion tools so we can revert the "crap (x 5000)" pages When even the muppets were on xkcd.com (talk) 02:11, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I have better rollback options, done. Davidy²²[talk] 04:44, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Are you back Davidy22? After five years. We have been missing admins on this page for years now...--Kynde (talk) 09:10, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh word it's been a while, I remember your name well and you've apparently stuck around far more consistently than I have. I'm an admin, not a beaureaucrat, so I can't actually promote you myself but jeff's twitter is open and I'm sure he's still alive, he maybe remembers you and I can vouch for you too. Davidy²²[talk] 13:17, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

We might need to assign some new admins (who meet the criteria to be an admin) that actually frequent the wiki. Having only one admin that is active is annoying, since we are limited by their availability. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 19:32, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes I hope for some better admins than me, as I'm not very tech minded, and could have done nothing about the current situation. But it would be great if we could find a way to get hold of you in such cases. I'm not particularly interested in being an admin... --Kynde (talk) 07:23, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

The vandalizer is back — please re-ban them

Hello — just wanted to let you know that the vandalizer's back under the username "Ex Kay Cee Dee". Can you re-ban them? (Also, how is the vandal not getting CAPTCHA'd, lol?) PaintspotInfez (talk) 17:20, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

The user has enough edits that they are auto-captcha'd. Check discussions here. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 19:40, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I could crank the autoconfirm minimum to make it a little more onerous to get past captcha permissions, and take away $wgAllowUserJs wiki wide. A little unfortunate for anyone who was using it for their theme/ui but looks like some people would like to make sure we can't have nice things. My server login from five years ago doesn't actually work anymore, which I kind of expected, so I'm going to have to get in contact with jeff again, with a new twitter account too because I deleted the twitter account that I used to message him with. Davidy²²[talk] 03:28, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for being here, first of all. But mainly you sound like you've got a gameplan, and I don't want to mention my ideas in case the guilty party can organise in advance how to get around them (or rather, chat on whatever darkweb forum they're getting advice from, I expect, because they show signs of being very unoriginal in many ways), so I expect you've got a few more things up your sleeve.

I very much expect a repeat of (whatever possible) vandalism from the same moron, as soon as they can be bothered, of course. So I shall continue to do my bit to counter any, from this anonymous sideline, as much as I can. 172.70.90.145 03:45, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Can we please get some more active admins? ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 12:47, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm an admin, not a bureaucrat, so I can't actually make more admins. Pinged jeff on twitter to recommend kynde already to go with the the request for new server credentials/variable setting. Davidy²²[talk] 13:44, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Ah, ok. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 15:25, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

What could I have done if I was an admin? I'm not very tech minded and not sure I would be the best choice for admin in such cases like this. We need some of those that actively fought the crapper this time to become admin. Think they proved their worth already... --Kynde (talk) 07:27, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

I've been skimming edit logs and history and I've got my eye on the person who made the current comic update bot, theusaf. and the person who did the last revert script, jacky. Looks like they both joined fairly shortly after my unannounced hiatus, which is why I don't recognise them, but they've been around a good solid while it seems. Davidy²²[talk] 08:37, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

DAVID!! VANDALISM BOTS ARE IMMINENT!

OH CRAP, Ex Kay Cee Dee is spamming everything, similar to last time. idk what else to say other than pls fix

It's likely the same user with an alt account. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 19:31, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Something for you to check?

I just reverted something, and I'm on my phone right now so not really in the best position to demunge it, but it looks like an attempt to socially-engineer a 'useful idiot' attack-by-proxy.

If you know otherwise, then we could trust you (after checking for character-spoofing of your account, obviously), but I don't think it'll be legit at all. Ball's in your court. At least until I get home and dig into it myself at more leisure, but I couldn't use it myself anyway. 172.70.162.77 17:19, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Pushed it through a deobfuscator and it's still obtuse, it's not a quick obfuscation pass of jacky's revert script and there's a section of obtuse operations selecting characters out of a string "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789+/=" in a function that infinite loops when I copy paste it into a console and I don't have enough time in a day to walk through this to see what it does so I'm going to not restore it. Davidy²²[talk] 03:05, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm the one wrote it. It is based on Jacky's script, but it has a secret algorithm for detecting spam edits that it is very unlikely that the vandal will be able to reverse engineer and bypass. I obfuscated it so the vandal can't see how it works, and unfortunately I'm not willing to publicly give out more information, because much more could allow the vandal to figure it out. Anyway, it's no big deal that it's removed; Jacky's script could probably be adapted to most future bots, and my script is still available in the edit history. 172.70.178.47 04:45, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

As the (double-)reverter, perhaps I need to apologise. You just edit-conflicted my "what I thought about the submission, and why I thought it suspicious" message (which I spent a while snippeling back down mightily, before actually trying to post). At the core though, you should realise (if a legit helper) that the obfussing creates more suspicion than confidence. And 'secret algorithms' with the usage instructions you provided... Sorry, I would not personally risk it. Rang alarm bells.

I did get some way into being a 'human interpreter' to your code, but hadn't yet got past enough 'munge' and onto the meat-and-two-veg to confirm either conclusion. So reserving my judgement. With all due respect, if you truly aren't "Ex Kay Cee Dee"/whoever, and I hope you appreciate my reasoning and (for what it's worth, to Davidy22 and the rest) my personal inclinations as to what colour hats are involved here.

But I'll shut up, for now. Lest I be thought too self-indulgent. Hmmmm.. 162.158.159.41 05:47, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

It's me, the self-indulgant one, again. Now a quadruple-reverter.

My arguments are basically:

• We can't trust this code.
• We can't trust you (presumably the same submitter, all four times).
• We can't trust that, even if you have honestly written it for honest purposes, it does not contain unintended flaws. (c.f. The (original) Internet Worm, albeit locked into this site... One hopes!)
• And we couldn't really fix it if we even knew that it was perfectly good except for some minor implementation error.

And I know I'm just as unidentified as you (the other IP party in this little squabble, sorry Davidy22 for using your pages to make this conversation), but I'm not the person trying to get as many users as possible to run something from as many tabs as possible. I respectfully submit my opinion (take it or leave it) that the risks outweigh the claimed usefulness.

We've fought the vandalism with manual and non-obfuscated scripts, previously. There's no reason to imagine that your solution is the necessary panacea, without which we are doomed. The opposite, however, is all too distinct a possibility.

I'm being civil towards you, IP, because I'm open-minded enough to believe that you still haven't realised how much you are presenting several problematic aspects. I'm sorry if I'm rejecting a truly helpful effort. But consider the various better ways of making use of your benevolent insights, and I'm sure your help would be welcomed if presented in less problematic circumstances.

If you're actually the bad-guy, then obviously you already know this, and are just going to be annoyed that you're found out. But then this means you have no valid arguments and my apologies are obviously moot. To this version of you, I invite you to just go away. Not that I'm under any illusion that this request would work. But I will still try to be polite about it, at least to your face.

Ok. That'll do for now. I've made my point, and whoever wants to read it can read it and decide for themselves what sounds more right. 172.70.86.64 00:34, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Just spent some time deobsfuscating the program. It is code for crapping pages. —theusaf (talk) 01:53, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Alright that saved me the effort that I already wasn't going to put in to walk through that hedge, semiprotected the page since there's probably not much good that's coming out of not doing so. Davidy²²[talk] 02:06, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

New users deluge

Hi Davidy

Is the many new users part of the spam and vandalism?

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers

Looks crazy... --Kynde (talk) 09:08, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

I mean, it's been like that forever, hasn't it? It was certainly like that before I left, although I did a bunch of permissions stuff that stopped those accounts from generating actual spam before my long break. Davidy²²[talk] 11:32, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm real at least. I made an account to make it easier to roll back some of the vandalism. You can also find me on a few other wikis like Sarna. That does seem like an unusual amount of new users. I wonder if they are wanting them to age so that they can use them for mass edits later. Shockeray (talk) 19:09, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

From my experience (long enough, without a username as I am) the volume and/or frequency is 'normal'.

I believe mein host (upon whose page we are) has said elsewhere that procedures he put in place to prevent auto-spammers spamming are working - insofar as the accounts get created but then never get to do much of the commercial spam-stuff they were being created for.

What's unusual, is that on the current view offered by the Log/newusers there are four (or so I spotted) such users without their Contrib being redlinked (i.e. they have contributed). I think you're one of them, Shockeray... TBH, I just skimmed to see if it had gone up by an order of magnitude. Which it hasn't.

My habitual lurk on this site is via the "Recent pages" link (with 500 'most recent items', usually) to keep me abreast of interesting things and things of interest. And the single-entry representing all of the latest accounts (per calendar-day block) is an old, old friend but one that I don't feel the need to dig into too much.

Noting that the latest troublesome account ("pants on fire", via emoji) was created a week or so ago and appeared to be a counter-vandal, IIRC (unless that was a different emoji-named account I'm remembering) and then showed itself to be controlled by the vandal anyway. Those accounts that have never posted are probably of no concern. Unless they start making subtle forays into doing so, maybe. Except for being a background level of resource-use. But I have no idea how much storage a Wiki has to reserve for unused feeler-accounts, etc. 172.70.85.177 01:09, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

If we check the edit log and sort by oldest, that account was made some days before the first automated vandalism wave that brought me back into activity, and their first edits were all vandalism. Davidy²²[talk] 01:50, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Why does the main page say "2616 comics" instead of "2618 comics"

Reerolmses (talk) 01:30, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

One of those (that doesn't exist) may be 404. But (whether or not), there are occasional glitches in the totalling system. Check which number(s) will not apparently count towards the total? 162.158.159.109 01:43, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

One is 404, which is permanently invalid, and the other one is fixed now. Davidy²²[talk] 01:50, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that is wrong. 404 is listed here: List of comics. And that list counts all comics, but the total on the front page is one lower... --Kynde (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Front page has a line to subtract to account for 404. Davidy²²[talk] 01:42, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

New admins

Hi Davidy. Seems you need to push Jeff if he should add us other two up for being approved as Admin? It is four days ago I accepted and same with Jacky720 --Kynde (talk) 16:46, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

He sometimes takes a little while to respond, pinged again. Davidy²²[talk] 01:42, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not on twitter. But I could create an account, if that would enable us to write directly. And would make it possible for me as admin to get in contact with you or Jeff, in case there are some issues with this site, and in case you again take a longer break from looking here ;-) We have had some serious troubles with long down time in between, with no one of the users here, knowing if the page would get back up again, and having no one to ask, and no one that made any comment on why and how it got up again. --Kynde (talk) 09:53, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I now have a twitter account. I found only one person by searching on Davidy22. But That was a new account. How do we connect... --Kynde (talk) 10:05, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

davidy22 was taken, I made davidy2222, it's brand new, I don't really use twitter for anything but pinging jeff and but you can dm me if you need me. Davidy²²[talk] 04:03, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm new to twitter... Found you there. Cannot write to you... Do not know what "dm" means? Get this message "David @davidy2222 can’t be messaged" Still waiting for Jeff to make the other two of your suggestions into admins. --Kynde (talk) 08:34, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Davidy did you see this message? I can see you are active still... Hope you stay here. But really would like to be able to contact you off site also. --Kynde (talk) 19:14, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Didn't get anything via twitter. I see a person named kynde followed me, so I know you've found the right account. Davidy²²[talk] 19:21, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Vandalbots

Thank you for stopping the vandal! If that happens again, would you please not delete the JS files? The vandal probably saves them anyway, and leaving them up would make development of counter-bots simpler. 172.70.126.65 23:30, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

If you really want to see them, they're always available in the deletion log. Davidy²²[talk] 23:34, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Only admins can see deleted pages; others can only see short excerpts in log entries. 172.70.126.65 23:37, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not comfortable with archiving the vandalcode, personally. There's little benefit to knowing exactly what common.js caused something (with such obvious footprints of what it has done, with nary a sign of finesse or adaptive intelligence imbued within) and all too much opportunity for a completely unrelated potential copycat to opportunistically copypasta a script that they don't even understand.

It's not like we're up against a sophisticated vandalism, after all.

(The chances are that it's the same idiot each time, what with other little clues they seem not to help leaving around, but the bar is really low for someone else to become the next incarnation.)

More than that, it seems a bit 'meta', even for us. Document the ins and outs of the changing appearance of the comic frontpage (hello Kynde, et al!) is a decent sideline for this wiki, beyond merely explaining the xkcd jokes, but once you start canonising (to coin a phrase) the various things that happened to this very wiki (http://explainexplainxkcd.com/wiki, anyone?), then it's a level or two beyond merely the self-authored User:page potted biogs, etc, that we might expect and embrace. IMO. YMMV. 172.70.162.155 00:23, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

(PS: Oh, come on... Only two of the CAPTCHA squares had bicycles in them. I looked carefully, and I'm sure. But you insist there's more. Rather than click on the motorbikes' square (probably where it is itself mistaken!) I'm going to add to my edit and wait for the challenge to expire... as it now has... and see what fresh hell it'll ask me to identify the next time round.) 172.70.162.155 00:23, 17 May 2022 (UTC) (PPS. Buses. 6 of them. Typing this quickly to not lose that verification...)

Blocked IP

You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason:

Your IP address has been automatically blocked because it was used by another user, who was blocked by Davidy22. The reason given is:

   Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "MeaganGilson8".

The reason given for MeaganGilson8's block is ""

   Start of block: 08:57, 19 May 2022
   Expiration of block: 08:57, 20 May 2022
   Intended blockee: 172.70.126.215

You may contact Davidy22 or one of the other administrators to discuss the block.

Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless you have a valid email address registered in your user preferences and you have not been blocked from using it.

Your current IP address is 172.70.126.215, and the block ID is #10010. Please include all above details in any queries you make.

108.162.216.119 21:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Spam Bot

This user, Special:Contributions/Explain xkcd server admin, is replacing entire pages contents with the word "crap." Been trying to revert their changes, but seems to be a bot. They've changed thousands of pages.

172.70.131.124 00:29, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical

This noticeboard seems unattended for years and there are serious technical issues that should be brought up.. I know you have contact with Jeff, who I imagine is the sysadmin, so if possible please relay my message at explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical#Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter. CRLF (talk) 00:49, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

I've already requested revocation of $wgallowuserjs for regular users, but jeff hasn't checked his twitter in a while. Gonna try email in a bit. Davidy²²[talk] 11:22, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Problems again with vandals

Hi Davidy. Hope you sees this. There is some big issues on the community portal and also other pages, so a large image of an old comic blocks everything from being seen. Even your talk page. A Donald Trump account, that I have now blocked was crapping 1000 of pages also. Do not know if he has something to do with this other part as well, but it makes it hard to discuss it as we cannot see the community pages or your talk page... We still need a way for me to get into contact with you, in case you fail to spot these post on your page here... --Kynde (talk) 19:49, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Well the image thing seems to have been fixed, it was probably some cage issue. But there is still tons of pages crapped, but seems like other users have reverted all of them already. Great... I was alerted here about Trump user. --Kynde (talk) 19:57, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Been in the back helping jeff get server side things sorted, you should be able to fix anything from the recent changes page via rollback without having to see the vandalised page. The twitter account you followed was the right one, I don't actually check it but I get email pings when jeff DMs me there so your DMs should also email ping me. Davidy²²[talk] 03:51, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Lost Account?

I do have access to most of my old email addresses from 2013 as I can see that's the last time my account was accessed but for the life of me I can't remember which one I was using at the time, especially under the username of PheagleAdler which I am still using across the internet today. And naturally I also forgot the password. (hey cut me some slack it's been 9 years lol)

I was wondering if maybe you could look into this for me, I could send all my known email addresses to you privately if possible and you could match it to the account. I'm actually surprised it's not the one I tried when I clicked Forgot Password but who the hell knows what I was thinking in 2013.

Huh, I think I actually remember your name, been a hefty while. Looking at registered emails isn't among the powers that an admin has and I also lost access to the server after a long long bout of inactivity, currently only jeff can look around the guts, you can ping him see if he can help you. Davidy²²[talk] 18:35, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I'll try contacting Jeff then, thank you.

Mierda

Why did you block Mierda? 172.70.130.105 03:27, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Obvious alt Davidy²²[talk] 09:59, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

How could you tell that? 172.70.130.195 13:52, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

"Mierda" means "crap" or "shit" in Spanish. 172.70.230.63 14:16, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Sockpuppet

User:Κραππερ edited the Admin Request board in a manner consistent with User:Anticrap, asking how to fight vandalism. Also note that their username is Greek and transliterates to "crapper". As such, I think it is very likely that this is a sockpuppet. Thank you for your time.

Edit: Also likely sockpuppets: User:Εχπλαιν ξκκδ (Explain XKCD), User:Vανδαλβανε (Vandalbane), User:Dookie, and User:CrapZap.

Yeah done Davidy²²[talk] 07:08, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Another one

User:Vаndalbane with a cyrillic "а" instead of latin.

Deleting from my talk page...?

Hi Davidy. What's up with this? Seems like the guy really tries to write something. What has his user name (user names like his) done to deserve it? I get a message every time you two roll back each others edits...--Kynde (talk) 10:40, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

See account creation log for May 25, 2022 in relation to the Maria D. Armstrong account used for the latest bot spam attempt, four accounts created in the same username pattern within 2 minutes. Vandal doesn't get an audience. Davidy²²[talk] 10:59, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm checked, and there are only that one Danny and that one Chorda and no other names near that time that reminds me of those name. He managed to do some edits before you blocked him, that looked harmless, but of course that could be to overcome CAPTCHA? --Kynde (talk) 11:07, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

And also... If he was a Vandal, why then continue writing about Chorda, instead of just creating a new account that you would not seem suspicious to you? --Kynde (talk) 11:36, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Go by timestamp, not text search. You can find the four account names that had been created within a 2 minute span in the block log, and you can view the contribution log of the latest spam attempt that was deterred by new policy, which now has the vandal falling back to persistent lying. Davidy²²[talk] 11:43, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

I just edited a brief (but less brief than yours, David) pointer to the info, then rumbled on a bit about other things. Edit-conflicted with last two edits, and perhaps for the best, I kept the clues down to a minimum as to how even I (not even an account user, let alone Admin) saw the connections, but no point saying too much and the above is more than enough to find what I think we all have been able to see.

Blatant and obvious, really. Then complaints from the 'cleanskin' identity, then an overly obsessive IP that protesteth far too much, methinks. (A normal person would surely have just gone on to another account much sooner.)

Noting that a more recent account has been created that has so far only been used to sensibly edit a single thing (like a normal editor) the last I noted. If this account only ever does such things then I'd personally leave it, as a 810: Constructive editor, but if it's the same source as suspected then it ought to know by now that we don't tolerate a deliberate mess being left, whether from an obvious sock-puppet or any old contributor who tries to slip in under the radar by just not initially being so insultingly obvious.

I've mentioned before ("hate the sin, love the sinner") I believe in redemption, but there is always the risk of recidivism as well. Which I trust both of you (and the others currently enrolled) to handle as fairly as you can.

But I would encourage use of off-site channels (or possibly pages viewable to admins only? ...do Wikis even have such things?) to go into the sensitive details and keep abreast of all the more subtle information that you might need to be communally aware of. No need to give out ideas of what abusive strategies are blown and which aren't yet even suspected, if not in this case, if there's no further threat, then in hypothetical future ones.

I also don't think I'm capable of doing your jobs for you, so apologies for jumping in with my armchair-opinions... ;) 172.70.91.82 12:31, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Mediawiki by design doesn't really do private backrooms. Vandal tends to figure out what doesn't work on their own when it stops working. Missed the new obvious alt, if you take a look at the rest of my talk page you may guess that I have a much less lenient history for spam and vandals, they won't keep an account for as long as they make it identifiable that it's them. Davidy²²[talk] 12:49, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Is there any chance we could set up a block appeals process like Wikipedia has? This was probably a vandal, but a similar response to a legitimate user who was accidentally blocked would definitely discourage contributions. Basically it would just be the user posting an appeal somewhere, and another admin decides whether or not to unblock. The blocking admin would be allowed to give information why they blocked the user, but would not be allowed to interfere in the process for any reason. 108.162.246.62 14:21, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

I have actually been trying to get a way of communicating with Davidy off site, but it has failed so far. We cannot write any direct contact details here, if we wish to stay anonymous. --Kynde (talk) 14:35, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Blocks for anything but spam follow a gradient of warning suspensions. Vandalism blocks are indefinite and not up for negotiation. Kynde, you've already found the new account that I'm using to contact jeff, just send a dm. Davidy²²[talk] 15:03, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes I would have but it says your account can't be messaged, guess you have turned that off (or not on?). I'm following you, maybe you can find my account that way and send me a message, then maybe I can reply? Managed to get hold of Jeff that way. --Kynde (talk) 08:44, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Oh, didn't notice, opened it up. Davidy²²[talk] 08:52, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Cool. Wrote to you now. --Kynde (talk) 08:26, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Davidy. I misunderstood the meaning. But is there not a constant flow of new accounts created? I mean it would be difficult to crate one without there being four other created close to it... --Kynde (talk) 14:35, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Compare timing and patterns to the entire rest of the adjacent block log Davidy²²[talk] 15:03, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

If a former vandal decides to stop spamming and start contributing helpfully, do you think they should be allowed to? 162.158.107.198 16:26, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

If they want to they'll have to do it from a fresh start Davidy²²[talk] 17:51, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

But that account was a fresh start. None of the Corchado accounts have been used for vandalism. (This is assuming these accounts were even created by the vandal; it's very likely but not definitively proven.) 172.70.130.105 21:01, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Being a preparatory vandal alt to beat the autoconfirm time limit in the same manner as previously done several times is not a fresh start, and if this is the vandal you're not getting those accounts back. Davidy²²[talk] 23:47, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

New vandal out again

Hi Davidy. Are you online here at the moment? Have you seen this: More reports --Kynde (talk) 08:03, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah saw it, my own personal email chain with jeff asking him to install the spam extension has gotten long and one-sided Davidy²²[talk] 08:25, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Good to know you are still active. Too bad you cannot get hold of Jeff. He did actually reply to me to make me admin...--Kynde (talk) 12:15, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Check the user creation history, we just had several 'users' created. I bet some of them are intended for spam purposes. 172.70.131.164 08:34, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Hundreds of users are created every day. But they have to make several edits with CAPTCHA before they can be used to spam. There seems to be nothing we can do about this creation of users.--Kynde (talk) 12:15, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

2652

Please restore the revised version on its talk page. Thanks also for your help with protection. 172.69.33.123 20:09, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello hello, media request!

Hi Davidy22, thanks for all your contributions here. I'm a wiki enthusiast and I'm writing about the Explain xkcd wiki. I'd love to hear how you got started on the site. Let me know if you'd be willing to chat! I'm Annie and you can email me at annierau at umich dot edu. Thank you very much for building something so wonderful! Postgradpredeath (talk) 03:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Yeah sure, I replied to the email. Davidy²²[talk] 14:48, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

New type of vandalism

Hello, just wanted to say there's been some vandals changing the image files on some comics to random images, nothing explicit as far as I've seen but some can be rather triggering or upsetting. I've seen this on Journal, Methodology Trial, and Radians are Cursed so far. Char Latte (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Changing capitalization of page names?

Hi Davidy22
Are you online?
Got a question regarding capitalization of a link. Agree on the problem, but it is not easy to solve. Do you have more power than me on that subject. See the question on My talk page Regards --Kynde (talk) 07:25, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Confirmation email not arriving

Hey,

First, I saw your message on Kynde's talk page. After all the efforts to transfer every comic and update every link, I think I'll leave the category where it is, but thanks for the help.

Second, I've not been able to get my email verified on this site for months since I joined. Whenever I click the button to send an email on this page, nothing happens. I can't get email notifications without verifying, do you know if this is fixable? Thanks, --FaviFake (talk) 16:41, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Hum, been a long while, I'll look around Davidy²²[talk] 14:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Did you find anything after looking around? It still doesn't work :( FaviFake (talk) 20:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

This issue might me connected with this other section on this talk page: #Incoming confirmation email: Domain of sender address [email protected] does not exist. --FaviFake (talk) 21:30, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Contacting Jeff offline

Hi. I understand that you may be able to contact the Wiki owner Jeff offline. If so, would you mind pointing him to my comments in his talk page, i.e.: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Jeff#Staying_an_admin ? (I'm just hoping for one or two more bureaucrats; there are no active ones these days.)

Thanks. -- Dtgriscom (talk) 02:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Inappropriate content

Hi I saw inappropriate content being added by the ip address 172.69.195.23 at 17:29 15 February 2023 (UTC) (an image of porn). Could you please ban that person? --1234231587678 (talk) 18:15, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there are currently no active admins, so there's nobody that could ban users like that. -- Dtgriscom (talk) 18:20, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

It's not so much that, but 'that person' being an IP (much as I am, though I'm not them) adds other complications. While actual admins don't tend to ban IP(-ranges), that's mostly because a combination of the current main monitoring 'Bot and the rest of the community quickly handle these sort of issues. As in this case... the 'bot restored from one or two attempts, named users did a subsequent restore before/instead of the 'bot seeing the next attempt, and I also helped out when I noticed something overlooked by the prior username who helped out.

This is not the first time such things have been done (that image has been used before, and clearly the instigator has picked up tips and tricks to refine their vandalism, as we've picked up on how to counter it). Totally locking out vandals from this sort of thing is never going to be as easy as simply banning a user (or IP), although such suggestions then also cue up the obvious discussion of "update the wiki, then add this/that/the other mediaWiki extension" (with various pros and cons).

Personally, I like the current setup, where we don't need a group of active moderators to whitelist everything, because we have a good community of users who can rectify (most) issues as they happen. Even restricting to registered users only wouldn't help much (we've seen enough usernames spam-or-vandalise the site, and yet there's also already good reason to praise the background systems that intercept almost all the spam-accounts).

I think the current balance works well. Yes, it'd be nice to have a bit more active moderation. That some of the few registered accounts that go onto spam haven't been banned indefinitely is hard to accept, but the fact that these ones (that got through the main anti-spam protection but then got sorted out by the community/'bots reverting again) have seemingly not even tried anything else (either not been as lucky to get further attempts to work or the script behind them had 'moved on' to its next fake-username) seems to suggest that this balance is working well enough.

Preferably, none of the idiots who do this sort of thing would do it at all. But we have seen that we can get past these occasional issues. You (@1234...) are fairly new here, but take it from me, with quite a few years lurking (and posting) here. It's a different contribution scenario to the xkcd fora (where I was originally far more active, until they finally fell over for unrelated technical reasons that yet shows how full-username interaction has its own potential issues), but all the problems here over the last decade-or-so have generally been dealt with promptly. With top-level moderators intervening when really necessary.

Still, horses for courses. This is my assessment of both the recent incident and all the rest I've been around to help deal with, but YMMV. 172.70.86.165 20:22, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Confirmation Emails

Hi Davidy22. I’ve seen your message on the Technical Page of the Community portal in regards to confirmation emails (hopefully you still remember 10 years later). I have a reason for you to add confirmation emails. I use my email a lot, and I would like to be able to see when the pages on my watchlist (talk page, community portal, etc.) are edited. Kynde had recommended me to you, as you’re on of the more technical admins. Could you please kindly advise? Thanks. 42.book.addict (talk) 16:59, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

too much downtime

there have been too many 503's, search google errors, and loss of session errors when i try to edit. also, load times are noticeably longer. can you check on the servers? youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 02:19, 19 September 2024 (UTC)