Talk:2576: Control Group

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 10:25, 3 February 2022 by Kimmerin (talk | contribs)
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This is my first explanation, feel free to improve upon it. KirbyDude25 (talk) 00:30, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Ran into your edit when I tried to submit mine, hah. I don't actually like Know Your Meme that much but I'm not sure where else I could source that joke. Maybe it's unnecessary. Obw (talk) 00:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Thanks for expanding my explanation, especially the description of the "study" aspect. I think the joke is fine, though we'll see what others think. KirbyDude25 (talk) 00:43, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Your explanation of the title text actually helped me understand the joke there! I added a bit more to flesh out the explanation Obw (talk) 00:45, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! Your edits definitely helped clear up the study terminology. KirbyDude25 (talk) 00:50, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Is the text exceptionally large for an xkcd comic? I was seeing if my browser was zoomed in, but the previous comics are all a normal size 172.70.134.215 00:55, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I noticed that, too. It looks about 1.5 times larger than normal. I don't think it means anything, though; Randall probably just made the image the wrong size by accident. KirbyDude25 (talk) 01:00, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
The image is the size normally used for the _2x version. In this case, the main image is the same size as the _2x version for some reason. Normal image: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/control_group.png; 2x image: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/control_group_2x.png; Normally the _2x version is double size for hi-DPI displays. I'm hoping that will get fixed and we'll get the normal size back. Orion205 (talk) 01:11, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
This size is way better though. Do people still use low-res monitors? When I check the website, it shows up as 478 x 613 pixels, which is absurdly small, even for a webcomic. - 172.70.130.153 01:33, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
The site standard is to give the standard version, for various reasons not just confined to monitor (or, in my case, tablet) resolution. It doesn't happen here, but the double-wide version of some comics would often make my device shrink the rest of the page to make the image fit within the width.
(Ironically, my device seems to load the _2x in the original published context, in normal non-huge comics, without changing the xkcd site dimensions, so maybe there's a CSS solution to that, as well as it clearly heing the reason for the current problem due to hard-coded pixel-widths adding up to less than necessary to wholey contain the image-width.)
If the _2x version is necessary to see details (not the case here), a link to that version is given. Or if it has been uploaded as well, I suppose. But anyone can go to the source and get the _2x if they want it. But for this comic it adds little value. 172.70.85.79 02:57, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Is there some way to make it DEFAULT to the 2x version (here or on xkcd.com) without some kind of addons or external scripts? I didn't see any settings, and I don't want to register an account. - 162.158.74.166 03:05, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Why is the "standard" version so tiny? If anything, they should make the <1mp version mobile-only, and the standard should be desktop/hd - 172.70.131.122 03:03, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I could give you several technical reasons why this is just not going to work here, without a lot of reworking that will probably involve breaking a significant number of readers of this site, but I don't think you'll be dissuaded. Like I said, it works 'natively' like that in the xkcd site, but it often breaks things here on explainxkcd (in my case, YMMV). It's been discussed under the Community Portal pages for this site, I know, but I'll leave it to you to find out how that went. 162.158.159.29 03:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)


Anyone know why the title text doesn't show properly? For me, the rows are on separate lines on xkcd.com but display on the same line over here, ruining the effect. Is there a hidden break character that's not displaying in the source? Zzyzx (talk) 03:07, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Knowing if you are in the control group or not can falsify the results, which is why any self-respecting study (aka blind or double blind) won't tell their participants this information. Kimmerin (talk) 10:25, 3 February 2022 (UTC)