Talk:Main Page

This page is for discussion of the Main Page itself. Other issues probably belong at the Explain XKCD:Community portal.

As a new user, I think the first page is very important. So I thought why not begin a discussion here what to have on the first page every user visits.--Relic (talk) 05:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT) Re-signed here - b/c I broke the comment in two when I added the "List of comics" header. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:01, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

List of comics

I was thinking of having a quick link to the list of comics that is explained. Right know, it took me a while to even see any of them. Eventually I found the "List All Pages" (found it in Special pages) where I could find the comics that have been explained. What do you think?

A category tag will do that for you automatically. Having a list of comics indexed by its number would be a little different.--Relic (talk) 05:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Sounds like a great list - I think it'd have to be manually maintained until/unless we get someone who knows how to make a bot update it. Categories will be useful, but they only work if someone added the category to the page in the first place. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:21, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

A (somewhat) related question - should Category:Comics be sorted alphabetically or by comic number? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:43, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

I think Category:Comics should be sorted by comic number. If you are looking for a specific comic, you will use the search field. Is there a way to make that happen? --Jeff (talk) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

They are two different functions. For the former, instead of adding [[Category:Comics]], add, say, [[Category:Comics|1]]. For the second, we can create redirects. Normally, I'd say just make sure the search term was in the article text, but since numbers are going to be use for other purposes than just comic titles, it may be better to create 1 and Comic 1 as redirects to the relevant articles right off the bat. --08:24, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

We could also have a comic-list template on the Main Page, I suppose, or perhaps two - one for number and one for name? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Here's what I was thinking of for that: {{Comics navbox}} Thoughts? Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.}

(outdent) It's ugly, but a sortable wikitable (click here for example) could be used as a checklist to see what has been uploaded and what hasn't. What's the project namespace here, anyway (analogue of "WP:")? --SurturZ (talk) 03:04, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

OK, I've found a way to get all the titles of the comics, so I was confident enough to create

Explain XKCD:Checklist

which can be used to fill in the gaps. --SurturZ (talk) 03:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I'm liking the checklist! That should do quite nicely as a "tool for editors". (I'm linking to it at the Community Portal). We still need the "template for readers." Did you think {{Comics navbox}} was on the right track or should we do something else for that? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:09, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Better idea - I'm throwing it directly onto the Main Page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:10, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Admin list

You can find a system-accurate list of admins here, so that might good to share, along with the manual list. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:13, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Added to page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:10, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

That's exactly what I wanted, but couldn't find the auto page for it. I knew it was somewhere. I don't see any reason to keep the link to the manual page. Do you? --Jeff (talk) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Not unless you want it. I'll remove it. Should I add the similar link for 'crats or is that unnecessary at this point? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

To be honest, I have no idea what the Burecrats role does. Might be unnecessary now but helpful in the future? --Jeff (talk) 11:16, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Bureaucrats can turn other users into administrators (or indeed, other bureaucrats). That privilege isn't available to ordinary administrators. I'd keep it to yourself for the time being. :-) --Yirba (talk) 17:39, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

You can actually see a technical list of which rights each group confers at Special:ListGroupRights. As the wiki grows, you might want to spin off a few, such as the ability to grant rollbacker and autopatrolled, to admins as some other wikis have. But for the time being, at least, there's really no reason for the wiki to have more than one 'crat. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:07, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Community portal

I've created the Explain XKCD:Community portal as a tools/help page. If that's not what you want, feel free to change/move/whatever it, but I thought it'd be nice to save this page for discussion of the Main Page and discuss the wiki as a whole/ask for help there. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:36, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Direct link to latest comic

There should be a direct link to the latest comic at the top of the Main page. A nice thing about going to explainxkcd.com was that the latest comic is right there at the top. For those changing their default link to the wiki, there should be an easy "Latest Comic" link that quickly takes them there. I'm sure some folks actually skip xkcd.com and come directly here instead to read the latest offering from Randall. They shouldn't have to search for it. - CFoxx (talk) 11:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Maybe the page latest should redirect to the most recent comic? Could that be taken care of by some sort of script/template so it doesn't have to be manually updated? Should each explination page also have "next", "previous", "random", "first" and "latest" links, possibly also generated automatically via scripts/templates? Additionally, shouldn't the number page be the canonical one? It seems like Internal monologue should redirect to 1089 rather than the other way around - certainly it would make a bunch of scripting types of things a lot easier. J-beda (talk) 13:02, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

If you wanted, we could even use wiki-magic to show the title of the page as the Comic name, but the URL as the number - in order to parallel the actual XKCD website. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:09, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Shouldn't there be a way to programmatically find the comic with the highest number that has a page with content? That would work as long as no one puts future comic pages up. --Jeff (talk) 20:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

It's all sounding like folks are over-complicating something quite easy. All I'm suggesting is a prominent link to http://www.xkcd.com/. No need, I think, to list which number the latest is, or include the next/last/random buttons, etc. - CFoxx (talk) 11:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Oh. We've got that, now, in the sidebar - labeled as "XKCD." I do think that having an internal link to the latest (explained) comic would be a great thing, though. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 16:36, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

You can transclude the latest comic on the main page like this: {{:pagename}} e.g. {{:Internal_monologue}} --SurturZ (talk) 00:25, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I've started with just a manual link to the latest comic. Ideally it will be automatic, but a manual link will work for now as I've had quite a few people ask for it. --Jeff (talk) 21:09, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Transclusion of the latest comic is great. Someone with the right permissions should add (for instance on the top-right corner of the grey transclusion area) a link to edit the corresponding wiki page, so that people seeing something they could add would feel invited to do so (wiki style). In my opinion this would be a good way to improve the quality of the user-generated explanations. Also, all the "XKCD"s in the "New here?" section should be converted to the lowercase "xkcd"... Cos (talk) 14:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Good points. I've done both. --Waldir (talk) 15:48, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Call me dumb, but... You've got a link called "prev" that goes to the explaination for the previous comic. Then a link called "comic #42" but that goes to xkcd. And then a smaller, less prominent link called "go to this comic" that doesn't go to the comic but to its explaination. Anyone else think that's a little back-to-front? Zootle (talk) 17:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, you're dumb :-). The standard template for an explanation page includes the header with "Prev", "Comic # (date)", and "Next" links. If we don't have explanation pages for the previous or next comic, we don't show the respective link. I hadn't noticed that the "Comic # (date)" bit was a link to the xkcd site before, but in context it makes sense to me. Including a link to the Explain page for the comic who's explain page you are already looking at doesn't make sense.

The explanation page for the latest comic is "transcluded" in the main page pretty much as-is, so we get the header, the comic, the explanation, etc. We don't get the discussion, which is visible at the bottom of the Explain page. Because there is never an explanation for a comic that hasn't been released yet, there is never a "Next" link on the main page's transcluded header. So you get "Prev" and "Comic" links. The "Go to this comic" link is added by the main page above the transcluded explain page.

I can see how the "Go to this comic" link might be poorly worded especially as it's placement seems to be within the explanation it's linking to. Blaisepascal (talk) 18:16, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Rather than "Go to this comic" maybe it could be "Go to full explanation" ? Something else? J-beda (talk) 13:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

There was a discussion at one point about a wittier/more descriptive link - but no one came up with anything. I do like "Go to Full Explanation" better, for what it's worth. --DanB (talk) 15:31, 5 September 2012 (UTC)