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Proposals

Place for ideas and suggestions to improve the wiki's design and organization on general issues can be
incubated for later submission for consensus discussion. Be sure to check whether your proposal has already been submitted. (+post)

Contents

ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS

Most of the discussions on this page have been archived.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

Removing unnecessary 3-comic categories?

I count eight categories on explainxkcd that satisfy the following properties: 1. They have only three comics in them. 2. They aren't really a comic series; they just feature or reference a comic theme. 3. They aren't Featuring some person or character. In short, they seem to have no real reason to exist. (They're thesones.) So my proposal: remove them. -Account (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

In addition, there are thirteen more four-comic categories that also seem rather in need of deletion.
Shouldn't the community at least have some time to expand on these categories, in case they're currently incomplete? For example, Category:The Matrix is on your list and now contains 7 strips, and Category:Tournament bracket got its 5th entry after your post. Even if they're not, a theme category can save some typing in the search box (and is probably also cheaper in terms of server resources than all the searches it'll eliminate). Promethean (talk) 22:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
So what do you think the limit should be for categories? Should we create a category when two comics mention the same topic? Three? --Account (talk) 16:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Three seems reasonable to me, and I could see a case being made for two. Categories aren't expensive. Promethean (talk) 00:17, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

New transcript

The transcripts in the comic pages are quite inconsistent, especially in the brackets where you have to describe what happens in the panels. If I understand correctly, the transcripts are for people to copy the text in the comic without having to type them out. If that's the case, then I think propose a new transcript. This transcript should have the comic with the words erased, and then the copy-pasteable words on top of that. Such a transcript would have no room for error, which would let anyone contribute to a seamless transcript.

The aim of the transcript is to provide a text-only version of the comic that would allow someone who is visually impaired to use a text-to-speech converter to understand the comic and also in a machine readable format for searching (see the Editor FAQ). Anything using mark-up, images or anything other than plain text will interfere with this and so should be avoided in the transcript. AlChemist (talk) 18:22, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Add title text and heading to transcript section

It has always bothered me that the transcript did not include the title text since it contributes so much to the humor of the comics. Also, it looks to me like the comic heading is sometimes included as part of the transcript and sometimes left out. I checked the previous proposals and did not see any discussion of these issues. Please consider having a policy going forward of including the heading and the title text within the transcript. Rtanenbaum (talk) 22:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

To my understanding (and also others, see discussion directly above) one of the main points of the transcript is to make the comics searchable, the other is, to make it readable when images are not an option. In both cases the comic's name and the title text mentioned above and below the image should be sufficient. I personally think this convention is fine. Lupo (talk) 08:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Pardon me -- (and, thanks for your patience) -- if this is too off-topic (/slash "boring") or TMI (see Information overload#Web accuracy e.g.), ...OR if this should have been posted elsewhere ...instead of here.
IMHO the term "title text" is a misnomer. I think the term is used to refer to the little (or, BIG!) pop-up -- (kinda like what is sometimes called a "tooltip", but ... aren't those usually pretty small?) -- that appears when one "hovers" his mouse [pointer] over an XKCD cartoon. ...at least, according to the "Talk:" page section Template talk:comic#The template field called .22titletext.22 which was added almost 3 years ago. I think that calling it a "BONUS text" would be even better than calling it a "caption". However, [to me], either one of those terms would make sense WAY more than calling it a "title text" ... for reasons which are stated in the [Template] "Talk:" page section mentioned (and ... LINKED TO) above.
Any Comments? . . *** Thanks! *** for listening! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 08:57, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi Mike, I see your point, and yes, something like "bonus text" might be a bit more descriptive. But FWIW, I think the reason it's called "title text" is because that's the text that appears in the title attribute of the HTML <img> tag of the comic's image on the xkcd.com site. For example, at https://xkcd.com/2364/, the code for the comic image looks like this:
<img src="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parity_conservation.png"
     title="Bloody Mary is made of antimatter. It explains so much."
     alt="Parity Conservation"
     srcset="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parity_conservation_2x.png 2x">
In there, you can see the title text as title="Bloody Mary is made of antimatter. It explains so much." See here for more explanation about that, and some discussions about it here. – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 03:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia links.

I think the links to Wikipedia should have symbols, so it's not confusing which ones lead to other comic pages.

It's time to remove the HTTPS lock icon

Explainxkcd should do the same thing that browser makers have done: treat HTTPS as the modern standard, and mark HTTP as the deviation instead.

Here are appropriate replacement icons: 

* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unlock_Icon_Red_(32_bit).png
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unlock_Icon_Red_(4_bit).gif

- Frankie (talk) 12:49, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

New page for Randall's regular column in the New York Times

Randall Munroe has been writing and illustrating a monthly science column in the New York Times. I suggest a page in this Wiki, indexing those columns. For some reason the New York Times itself does not provide such an index. If they ever do add one, we would still have a topic article here, similar to the one we have for the What If blog, that could link to their index. --JohnB (talk) 00:47, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

New York Times column: Good Question

Good Question is a more-or-less monthly column written and illustrated by Randall Munroe in the Science section of the New York Times, beginning in November 2019. The columns give serious answers to science questions, in Munroe's inimitable style.

The New York Times website ordinarily requires registration, and its content is always protected by copyright. Most particularly it is not under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License the way xkcd is. The good news: anyone can register for a free digital subscription to the New York Times, with access to 'recent' Science articles among some others, but outside of that only five articles per month. See Free Articles.

Unlike for many of their other regular columnists, the New York Times does not provide a clickable link either on the byline Randall Munroe or on the column title Good Question. The following tables are intended to correct that omission.

New York Times columns by Randall Munroe
Column Headline Byline Date
SCIENCE What Makes a Red Sky at Night (and at Morning) Randall Munroe Aug. 13, 2019
GOOD QUESTION If I Touched the Moon, What Would It Feel Like? Randall Munroe Nov. 12, 2019
GOOD QUESTION Is Earth Getting Bigger Over Time? Randall Munroe Dec. 10, 2019
GOOD QUESTION How Fast Can a Human Run? Randall Munroe Jan. 21, 2020 / Feb. 7, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What’s the World’s Worst Smell? Randall Munroe Feb. 17, 2020 / Feb. 26, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What if Galileo Had Dropped Bobsleds From the Tower of Pisa? Randall Munroe March 10, 2020
GOOD QUESTION How’s the View From a Spinning Star? Randall Munroe April 7, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What’s the Sweetest, Crispiest Way to Stay Safe in a Car Crash? Randall Munroe May 11, 2020
GOOD QUESTION Can You Boil an Egg Too Long? Randall Munroe June 9, 2020
GOOD QUESTION Could You Make a Snowball of Neutrinos? Randall Munroe July 7, 2020
New York Times columns about Randall Munroe
Column Headline Byline Date
LINK BY LINK This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix Noam Cohen May 26, 2008
BITS Tech’s Favorite Cartoonist Enters Mainstream Publishing Noam Cohen March 14, 2014
SCIENCE He’s Glad You Asked Kenneth Chang Nov. 3, 2014
BOOKS Randall Munroe Explains It All for Us Alexandra Alter Nov. 23, 2015
SCIENCE Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High School Kenneth Chang March 21, 2016
SCIENCE Randall Munroe of ‘XKCD’ Explains the Human Body, Elevators and the Saturn 5 (Actual pages from Thing Explainer) March 21, 2016
Looks goods to me, you should probably make that an article of its own, maybe New York Times: Good Question? --SlashMe (talk) 22:58, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Ambox notice.png I went and added the page, here: New York Times: Good Question --JohnB (talk) 02:42, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Bring back the {{{1}}} template! please

Can someone restore the {{rw}} template? I insist on its existence. I further assure that it will be of much use. It was deleted by an admin. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

nm, did it myself. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 04:15, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Link to high-resolution images?

The wiki includes the "standard" resolution images, but would it be worth adding a link to the higher-resolution image on each page? It appears that this could be automated in at least a strong majority of cases: if the standard image is xyzzy.png, the hi-res one is xyzzy_2x.png . BunsenH (talk) 22:10, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Please stop adding this to the explanations. This is not needed. Kynde (talk) 08:56, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
The high-resolution image was quite useful in parsing the "Amelia's Farm Fresh Cookies" comic. I'm not convinced that the hi-res images are commonly known. I've been reading xkcd for about 7 years and hadn't heard about them until I stumbled across a mention of them in one of the Discussions here. What is the harm in having a one-line link here? -- not, I emphasize, the actual image, which would take up a great deal of space. BunsenH (talk) 17:00, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
I didn't know about the high-resolution images either. While it might be a bit repetitive to add a full sentence to every comic's explanation, I agree that having some easy way to link to the hi-res image on xkcd.com could be handy. For example, maybe a "hi-res" or "2x" button before the "Next >" button above the comic in Template:comic? That's a bit extreme, but I added an example template, derived from the existing Template:comic, to demonstrate how that could work:
With those changes to the template, for all comics as of 1084 the "2x" button would automatically appear. (No need to go back and change all comics.) This assumes the images hosted on explainxkcd generally have the same filename as on xkcd.com, but there are optional parameters to override the filename or omit the "2x" button altogether for specific exceptions. I'm not suggesting we actually go ahead and implement this; but if there was enough interest, an admin would be needed anyway, to make the changes within Template:comic, which is currently protected. – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 23:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, I like this. BunsenH (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
My proposal is that a bot should add it automatically to the description of each comic image when available so that it does not take up space anywhere and is easily accessible. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 13:49, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to replace the top section with this...

I have come up with a new design for the top section of all community portals... It’s located here... https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=explain_xkcd:Sandbox&oldid=199882 — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 14:15, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

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Proposals

Ideas to improve the wiki's design and organization can be added here. (+post)

Crystal Clear app package settings blue.pngCrystal Clear teamwork.pngMop.svgInternet-group-chat.svg

I made a template for welcoming new users.

Logo.png
Welcome, Community portal, to explain xkcd!
 Dialog-information on.svgPreferences-system.svgEdit-find-replace.svgTools-hammer.svgHelp-browser.svg
  • Be sure to give our FAQ a read so that you can learn to participate as effectively as possible.
  • If you are interested in editing the wiki, you can help reduce the number of incomplete explanations and transcripts.
  • See the Wikipedia pages on editing if you are new to editing wikis in general.
  • Browse all the xkcd comics by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
  • Check out our community portal for general chit-chat about the site and xkcd.

--~~~~

Any ideas? Suggestions? Objections? — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 16:35, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

this is now in at the top of the Main Page --Jeff (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
Why? This looks like a template intended for (newly created) UserPages. And it replaces interesting data from the frontpage with something not useful for casual visitors (or even non-casual lurkers). I'd undo this change in an instant if I had authority to do so. ((The template looks good, to clarify, just obviously not intended to be in that location.)) 141.101.76.154 01:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Jeff is the owner of explainxkcd you dingus. Beanie talk 13:46, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

comic groups

i think we should have a tech problems list of comics ( as there are quite a few)

We already have a category for it. Category:Cueball_Computer_Problems. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 13:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Archiving interactive comics?

Has the possibility of archiving interactive comics been discussed? Of course, users can view them on the original website, but it’d be nice to have a working backup of sorts, especially considering some of the interactive comics haven’t aged too well in terms of compatibility or support (e.g. Umwelt displays a blank page for me.)

It probably wouldn’t be possible to do so directly from mediawiki, but I’d be happy to experiment with cloning a few of them on another server, or as simple PHP pages that could be embedded, if it would help. Most of the interactive comics appear to be implemented mostly in client side JS anyways, so replicating them shouldn’t be too bad.

Tague (talk) 13:12, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Replace head shots of characters in the wiki with these new and high quality head shots!

https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/n2u28r/i_took_head_shots_of_the_reccuring_characters_and/

These are not only upscaled, but are all squares and have all the features of the characters. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 03:33, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I think you should do it (because higher quality = better) :] Beanie talk 13:42, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
There seemed to be no objections, so I went ahead and did it. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 12:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Cleaning up Special: Wanted Templates

I decided to take a look at the list of wanted templates. Imagine my surprise when I see that a lot of the templates wanted were mis-capitalizations or misspellings of existing templates. I hereby request permission to create redirect pages for some of the most popular errors. I intend to do five, wait a week, and do another five as to not spam the wiki. I will not begin for a week, at which point I will only proceed if nobody has said no OR a moderator has said yes. May I proceed? {)|(}Quill{)|(} 11:34, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Knit Cap

Sometimes Knit cap has long hair, sometimes short. Is Knit Cap meant to be a male character that sometimes has long hair, or is Knit Cap sometimes female? I want to clear this up before I finish editing 1350: Lorenz. Beanie talk 13:40, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Hm, in the 'Enemy Pikachu used theft' scene in 1350: Lorenz, Knit Cap's hair looks merely slightly unkempt. From this, I will assume that Knit Cap just sometimes has long hair and is always male. Beanie talk 13:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Ok, the official transcripts say that Knit Cap is 'A guy in a knit cap'. I will take that to mean that Knit Cap is definitely male.

We still need to complete some explanations like this one:

I think should change the banner shown at the top of every page to show a comic that is still incomplete, like Hoverboard or something. Sure (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Update MediaWiki

explainxkcd is running MediaWiki 1.30.0, which reached end-of-life in June 2019. There are likely security issues because of this, so please update MediaWiki to the latest version (or LTS) using the instructions here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading Cam1170 (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

It seems like the mysql is too outdated for the upgrade Starstar (talk) 17:37, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
Upgrade MySQL thenAaron Liu (talk) 03:16, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Does anybody know how to contact an admin for this? I have no clue. Cam1170 (talk) 03:25, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed

I can edit this page, but I can't create my own talk page! Starstar (talk) 17:34, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Upgrade Icons

The icons look quite old fashion (the ones on the sidebar and the ones above the editing text area), could they be replaced? Starstar (talk) 23:07, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

They probably could be, but changing icons the moment they're not absolutely cutting-edge just means using new icons that are as easily edged-out (as tastes change yet again), meanwhile annoying those who prefered the first set and rather wouldn't see a revolving door of ever-evolving aesthetics.
If I had a vote, I'd say keep the simple glyphs we're used to. If any are not totally obvious (perhaps some would not be, without the text captions) consider revising, but I think you'll get less agreement on what new images to use than that which would advocate the retention of the current ones.
Alternately, it would definitely be on-theme to find Randall-drawn illustrations to replace them all. But the constraints of adapting (say) any particular stick-figure-world depiction of randonmess to meaningfully replace the current Random Page icon (at the same scale!) might be less than optimal.172.70.162.57 01:08, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Make searchbar not case-sensitive

The way the search bar is currently set, it only suggests comic links when what is being typed is capitalized ("Assigning Numbers" rather than "assigning numbers" for instance). Would be nice if we could make it not case-sensitive :D Wielder of the Staple Gun (talk) 02:48, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Good idea. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:46, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Do not allow ordinary users to edit redirects that are just numbers

This overrides the default page you're sent to when you check a comic; e.g. recently a vandal edited the page entitled "2614" so it overrode the actual page, 2614: 2 on the main page.

The problem would be when creating a new page and the overrides are needed... ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

ExplainXKCD discord (or other platform)?

I'm just saying if we had instant messages, pings etc. there would be a lot faster reaction to vandals. The community portal is hard to get attention from and comments are all very well and good but conversations on Discord could get very quick response, and people could request edits, organise page re-writing etc. Idk if we can get "official" backing by anyone high up but we could make one anyways?

The problem with platforms like Discord or others is that we can't guarantee that everyone has access to them; on the wiki, anyone can edit, while some people may not have access to discord or such. A possible solution would be having a sort of service built into the wiki, but not sure how that might be done. Besides, this is a wiki, not an xkcd chat site. This is a good idea, though. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:43, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Anyone can create a discord account like anyone can create an account on this wiki. You don't even need a dedicated client/app as it can run in browser. Just like the wiki. Just my two cents. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:28, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
Some user may not wish anyone to be able to contact them outside this wiki. You do not need an acount to edit this wiki... Kynde (talk) 17:14, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

So, I got a question about transcripts.

A lot of comics show links (e.g.: all the ones with a drawing of wikipedia on it), and the transcripts don't really have a standard. In the transcript, should it be an actual link or just blue text or what? 162.158.79.52 15:03, 2 June 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

I'd say that if the linked thing (presuming it's a real linkable target!) is linked in the Explanation, it doesn't need to be (re)linked in the ostensibly flat-and-descriptive Transcript.
And I know that some Transcripts are hypertext formatted to emulate the thing they are transcribed from (whether bolded, enbiggened, sub-/superscripted and and/or given the hue) but maybe primarily the "[:Text that describes the text]" should be explaining the details, in case the screen-reader (or text-searching algorithm grepping the Transcript text for "green text" or "superscript" instances can't quite work it out from the various style-tags that can be applied to that effect in so many an various ways.
But this is IMO, I don't know if there's a specific policy about it, but it is how I've seen it vaguely applied... Not everywhere quite so consistently, though. 172.70.91.128 20:28, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
We try to keep links and explanations out of the transcript. The link and the explanation goes in the explanation section above. Kynde (talk) 17:12, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Use 2X Images

Apparently xkcd.com provides double-sized versions of almost every comic if you add _2x to the end of the image name. For instance,

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/watches.png

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/watches_2x.png

Since we are in 2022 and computers can load high-resolution images just fine, and they are easier to read, I propose that this website should use the provided double-sized images. Really, I think Randall ought to be doing this himself as well. 172.68.18.107 12:22, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

While I agree with using the higher quality images which are default on xkcd.com for many people, there has been discussion about this issue already. At the moment, the consensus seems to be to continue using the 'standard' size to 'use less space,' and instead link to the higher quality image on the image page. —theusaf (talk) 14:35, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
I think I may have mentioned it on that link (or similar), but often when the 2x image is used (or even an unwise too wide image/unbreakable-line-of-content) the explainxkcd site cannot sensibly handle it and it forces the default 'page width' of stuff into a zoomed out narrower column to the left (including the margin-line normally inset a dozen or so pixels in from the right) so that browser-window can display the whole of this wide element.
While "saving space" does apply to server resources and viewer download bandwidth/quotas (e.g.53kb vs 109kb) may seem insignificant, screen-space can be badly hit by this.
The motherlode xkcd site has code behind it to (usually?) serve the right image for the right displays, but explainxkcd isn't currently equipped to do the same choose-and-provide (which would need both images uploaded to it and a revised {{comic}} implementation, once we work out the method it could use). And I've never seen any case where the 'low quality' comic is conversely too small and narrow to appreciate (though occasionally the larger one reveals minor drawing details that have been obscured by the downscaling), just when the _2x one makes everything else too small.
...this may not apply to everyone's browser implementation, but it definitely happens, and consistently, on my usual Chrome and/or Firefox on Windows and/or Android platforms (according to which system I happen to be on at the time). 172.70.162.147 21:20, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
ExplainXKCD actually does have the capability to do this. For example, see 1079:_United_Shapes. It generates multiple images, automatically choosing one based on screen size (similar to how xkcd.com does it). The bot could use the `imagesize` parameter to keep the image within the page's width by using the 'standard' image size. This does add a button labeled "click to enlarge," but if that is annoying, the comic template can be modified to hide that button if specified.
Here is what it might look like:
Collapsed content
Capri Suns
[As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"
Title text: [As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"
which is clearer than the original comic page and the same size. —theusaf (talk) 05:20, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
As specificaly implemented above, I certainly see no immediate problem (need to check across machines/devices), but I suspect that part of the mechanism here is the "imagesize = 315x317px", which seems like it would need (albeit by the page-create bot, algorithm8cally) to be tailored to the 'input' image, not always in this ratio). I'm not technically conversant with the nature of your back-end scripting and doubtless it's all possible (scripts can do almost anything... once you know that they (may) need to do them and rewritten them to catch all the contingencies ;) ), but I don't know know if that's something you've accounted for (e.g. test with a three/four-panel wide comic, or the Earth Temperature Timeline or whatever, and see if it can facilitate them all nicely). Not to mention that if theusafBOT goes offline, the manual-add instructions (as used prior to your replacing the prior functioning bot, for which I thank you) also need this extra step of user involvement to be done, whereas usually the fallback manual method needed little thought in this direction (or indeed however much carbon or silicon there is in the 'brain' involved) except for exceptional circumstances or those rare prior slip-ups by Randall.
I'm just going through the first obvious issue (to me), didn't mean to concentrate so many words on just this before even checking everything else! 172.70.91.80 09:15, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
Basically, on the backend, the bot will fetch both the small and the large images, and measure the size of the small image, which is what it will use for the imagesize. I have actually used this system in the past for this bot, but was told to revert it due to the "click comic to enlarge" text. As for if the bot goes offline, there is no problem with falling back to the small image, and if editors want to, I can also provide instructions for using the large image. I'm mostly just waiting to see what others think about this. Are there any other problems to consider? —theusaf (talk) 14:44, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm making an App that collects web comics

My original idea was to use the rss feed present on xkcd, and other webcomic websites, but now im starting to wonder if there was a way to make a better service, that allowed users to maybe look at older comics, and explanations and such as well, and thats how i happened to come across explainxkcd.com. The RSS Feed for this website, would be pretty helpful, if it were like reddit's but apparently, the rss feed is only maintained for the home page. I was wondering if you guys provided that data through an API or something? Also are there wikis for other famous comics like this one? Any other suggestions and ideas for the app are welcome 🙌🙌.

Comics edited after their publication

many more comics have been changed than are in Category:Comics edited after their publication ! please add them (i already have done two i remember off the top of my head) 172.70.134.223 12:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

What if 2 book page creation

What if 2 has come out, but I don't know which page is to be created. There is already a comic under the same name. ClassicalGames (talk) 08:54, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Default to 3 Section Headings for Each Explanation: Non-Obvious Info, Recap, and Background Trivia

This is a proposal that all new comic explanations should, by default, have 3 Sections:

I. Explanation of the Non-Obvious (an actual explanation of the non-obvious elements of the comic for the average reader who might not understand the references/joke/relevant science)

II. Full Recap

III. Background Trivia

Most of us can agree that Category I is where the value of this website shines.

But today, all 3 of these categories of explanation are typically merged together, making it hard to find the Category I nuggets of goodness.

If we make these 3 section headings the default on every comic explanation, then this default will helpfully nudge editors to put the juiciest stuff up top, and not to clutter that section up with fluff or trivia.

——

As an example, take the recent comic #2878 about Astronomer Happiness and Supernova distance.

The main thing a lay reader would want to know — the Category I information — is…

..That the shape of the graph is probably a clever reference to a Light Curve, a type of supernova graph

..why astronomers like it when a supernova is close, and what happens when it gets too close

Everything else in the (currently) very wordy explanation gets in the way of the lay reader finding out these two things. It’s a bunch of Category II and Category III info that makes it hard to tease out the Category I info. It’s not BAD information, but it’s sandpaper. It’s friction slowing down the average reader.

Obviously I could go in and edit this particular comic, and I often do this kind of edit, but I think this issue pops up for most explanations, so I think changing the standard default interface will help everyone put their contribution into the right section.

In sum, my proposal would elevate Category I info to the top of each explanation, so instead of full recaps, we get right into the explanation that is going to be most efficiently illuminating for the average, non-expert reader, answering the most common questions.

Laser813 (talk) 10:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

In general (if I get dibs on the edit, or think I can legitimately re-edit/rearrange), I do try to go for "hook, line, sinker" format (i.e. establish the basics, relate that to what the comic shows, move on to any relevent speculations/extrapolations), very like your setup. Though it is often much too complicated (multi-layered, cross-disciplinary, etc, so that maybe it has to be interwoven 'mini explanations' per tabulated item) so I'm not sure how easy it would be to enforce a strict structure. I think there's merit to the principle, though. Assuming we can all agree what each comic needs focus on (apply that problem to the following proposal too!), as I've occasionally inserted a sort of "first you need to know <subject>" into an established cold-start explanation ("you see <foo>" only for a later editor to consider it more an afterthought and shuffle it to later ("you see <foo>" ... "<foo> is part of <subject>"), or variations on such layouts. Especially as different people have different ideas as to what's obvious/can be keyword-wikilinked and what needs more waffle to properly enlighten readers.
Also, prosaic variation is a good thing. Too formulaic and it could be (whilst accurate) considered too robotic, so some leaway should really always be allowed as we collectively bash together a community interpretation and elaboration. Within communal guidelines, clearly. 172.69.194.203 15:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

FAQ Style Editing should be the norm

Simply, we should experiment with more FAQ-style explanations.

We think of the top questions that the average reader might have about a comic, and we use those as bolded headers to explain the most curious/confusing/subtle/sciency parts of the comic.

The structure would be this (using a recent comic as an example)…

Q: Why did Randall use this shape of graph? A: It’s likely a clever reference to a Light Curve, a similarly shaped graph in the study of supernovae that…

Q: Why do astronomers prefer it when supernovae are closer? A: It makes it easier to glean information because…

Laser813 (talk) 10:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

sidebar revamp

I think that the sidebar looks plain and it should have a new design. It could be voted on by users Moderator (talk) 02:16, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

In leiu of you telling us what you think would be better, my starting vote is that I'm perfectly happy with that 'plain'. If it has the links I might need, why does it need a reskin? Or, worse, a functional revamp which probably removes the easy to use bits I was using already.
...could you do a mock-up screenshot (or render equivalents directly in markup) of before/after side by side, at least? 172.69.194.120 03:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

My biggest problem is it doesn’t scroll down with you which can be a big pain Moderator (talk) 01:43, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Don't know about anyone else, but (when not on a desktop) I read this on a tablet, in landscape, with the effective window quite short (ratio of 1:2 with width, approaching 1:3.5 with already narrowed onscreen keyboard popped up) and if I'm scrolled to the top I see nothing beyond Browse Comics.
If we assume separate scroll-control on the sidebar, setting Main Page at the top of browser pane gives What Links Here at the bottom. Now, I rarely use the next three links (or at least reach those pages using them), and separate scrolling wouldn't stop me even seeing the even lower Ad bit (but it would defeat the entire purpose of the Ad, in that position, whether or not I bother to notice it these days).
So whatever missing about you propose, I'm betting it would impact me. Perhaps not negatively, but I've seen enough awful assumptions about my screen-area in the name of scroll-free design. Including the "give us permission (or not) to give you cookies" popovers where it appears the actual buttons to confirm (or deny, or go somewhere to review and customise, if they have that option) are beyond the bottom of my screen. I can temporarily rotate the screen, of course, but often I just back out and don't bother in those cases. I wouldn't be reticent to rotate this site, on occasion, but I'd really rather not have to, if I can be so selfish and stick-in-the-mud, because websites just are not good to use (even temporarily) in narrow-portait mode. (What's worse is the websites that detect I'm on a mobile platform and redesign styles/placements on-the-fly to 'fit portrait view', assuming a vertical smartphone, regardless of my actual viewport orientation, etc.)
So, please, a hard no from me. Notwithstanding that just as solidly "always browse in portrait" people might be overjoyed at changes that would give them a better site design. But that's a tricky circle to square (or letterbox!), and not what you were suggesting anyway (now we know what it is). I just want to plea that any changes be made with a very good idea of all the knock-on effects of 'improving' certain edge-cases, especially when it comes to yet other edge-cases. 172.70.85.23 10:29, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

New Logo and Banner Proposals

I have new logo and banner proposals for this site.
They're made on Scratch, an all-ages block-based programming language, and are in the style of Right Click.
Here they are!
Logo proposal: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_proposal_for_explain_xkcd.png
Banner proposal: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banner_proposal_for_explain_xkcd.png 172.69.71.37 (talk) 01:54, 19 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I can't see the xkcdicity of the logo, really. The banner is certainly flavourful in the right way (does it scale down well? ...is that what your use of Scratch is for, as opposed to standard static Photoshop/GIMP image editing?), but not sure it'll work better for the current top-left-of-page xkcd (with three xkcd figurses idling away, sat on the letters).
Decent concept art for something else related, certainly. I could believe it was a Randall's-own interactive comic front-end of some kind (which would make sense of the "play button" that is the "►"-bit). Given that it's now in a programming system already, have you tried making a drag'n'click game of the idea of linking/looping the blue-trail, and animating the hanging-on characters? 172.70.90.29 13:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
It's an arrow, not a play button. Get it right. 172.69.71.72 (talk) 01:05, 20 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Hold your horses... I was just trying to find a good reason for the whatever-it-is triangle to be there (gave the example of a 'play' button in my speculated usefulness of it). And it isn't really obviously any more of an arrow (c.f. "→"), either. I like your(?) banner's use of xkcd-figures, just not sure where the logo exhibits any form of being xkcd-related, except by the literal reading of it.
Perhaps if it were "xkcd font" (i.e. artfully composited from actual samples of Randall's ALLCAPS comic-writing) then it wouldn't matter so much, but I just wouldn't say it was any more on-brand than the current logo/etc. This being intended as constructive criticism, I hope you understand. And there's more opinions than mine, so maybe I've indeed just missed some point that everyone else (especially named-users) have already realised. 172.70.86.5 02:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Regarding precision in the Unexplained popup

Would it be possible to add an extra decimal point for the sake of precision? Currently, it shows that 0% of comics are unexplained, which is (as of 13:21 UTC on March 27, 2024) incorrect. It's a small thing, but it's rather annoying. 162.158.158.233 (talk) 13:23, 27 March 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

With the current 2911 comics (give or take #404), 0.1% would be slightly under 3 comics. You'd need at least three before 0.1% appeared instead of the equally unuseful 0.0%.
I'm of the "at least give everyone a week before you unilaterally declare it 'done'..." camp, so right now just the latest M/W/F comic incomplete would hover at a token 0.1%.
(Actually, from two (0.06...% rounded up) to 4 (0.13...% rounded down. The good news is that it'll be almost seven years until two-rounded-up is insufficient, but also up to six-rounded-down is now "0.1%", if I've not goofed the carries/etc.)
If going to the trouble of editing it to 1DP, make it 2DP with exactly the same editing effort..?

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3102 xkcd comics, and only 99 (3.19%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

(As of time of posting, the above says "only 2 (0.07%)". From 0.0687049...% rounded up to 2DP.)
Though given that we're only going to go into the future,[citation needed] I suggest we can state the flat-out number. It's not now really going to be as scarily huge as it might have been, as the actual percentage becomes generally less significant.
And, for niceness, give it a grammatically/factually agreeable form:
General form
... and {{#ifeq: <!-- count here --> | 0 | no | <!-- count here --> }} comic{{#ifeq: <!-- count here --> | 1 | | s }} [[:Category:Incomplete explanations|{{#ifeq: <!-- count here --> | 1 | is | are }} incomplete]]. ...
Zero cases (hardcoded)
... and no comics are incomplete. ...
One case (hardcoded)
... and 1 comic is incomplete. ...
Multiple cases (hardcoded)
... and 42 comics are incomplete. ...
Current cases (dynamic)
... and 99 comics are incomplete. ...
...easy to replicate to get "Help us finish them!" to change (upon a zero-test truth) to "But they all might be improvable!". Or change the :Cat:Link to not even be a link when zero, with alternate phrasing dodged over to in order to avoid "no comics are incomplete" in other ways.
I wrote the above for minimal nesting of overlapping conditions. You might prefer just to go with {{#ifeq: <count> | 0 | <whole "zero cases" version> | {{#ifeq: <count> | 1 | <whole "single case" version> | <whole "plurality of cases" version> }} }} - both approaches involve repetitions, but maybe this other one can be given a degree of wikimarkup-readability within each case, to take pity on future editors. 172.70.160.166 16:02, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Hear me out: What If? discussion page.

That's it. That's my idea. Go crazy, everyone. Psychoticpotato (talk) 14:05, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Yup, I've been thinking the same thing. I would like a page on each What If entry. Maplestrip (talk) 07:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
I've thought about this, over the years. Having 'a page' (rather than the summary table, in the overview page, etc) does sound more completist than what we currently have but I then tend to hit the main ontological problem...
In the What-Ifs, Randall takes a 'simple' question and then explains the consequences. At length. A 'comic page' structure (starting with how we'd deal with the multiple midpoint images, so we would stray far from using the {{comic}} introduction) that followed the header(image,etc)/explanation/transcript/(trivia)/included-comments format would be silly and have many parts inappropriate. Remove the Transcript, for starters. Or need a mini-Transcript for each 'illustrative' image. (e.g. ":[Black Hat:] What if we tried more power?", several times.)
Is there an actual need to explain Randall's explanation..? Because that's the only thing 'we' can do. Which is rather silly, and seems like it would take a small (entertainingly rambling) essay and expand it into a large (pedantically rambling) one.
Or else we just straight-copy the What-If over here as a 'backup'-blag? Allowable, but not exactly a USP, there'll be Internet Archive and personal copies, should things go bad at Randall's end. Not really a noble-cause.
My suggestion, as to how to cover the remaining "explanation gap" and provide a useful 'service' that's worthwhile maintaining, is maybe two What If? (Blag) sub-pages:
  1. A place to collate all inter-text images (and hover-/title-texts), and Transcript them, for easy searching.
    • e.g. when you know you want to refer to the "bomb to the eyeball" one (internally or for something external) but think you might not realise where you need to go to (the supernova neutrinos one!) just by scrolling a bare comic list.
    • Or you'd like to see, at a glance, how many different places the Black Hat Try More Power running joke occurs.
    • Even if you don't want to open the page itself (160+ 'comics' with say 5 images each, is an 800ish-image page, less rationalising 'repeats' to a single entry), it should at least give you a search result for "dry waterfall" that points you in the direction of the "Niagra Straw" one (and maybe others?).
    • I could see these being brief Image/Titletext/Transcript/(optional explanatory context), but not enough material to make them separate comic-style-pages in their own right, right?
  2. Something of the same 'collation page mechanism' for all those superscript-popup-'footnote' bits. Though I admit I'm not entirely sure for what purpose except that it just seems like a good "collection page" to maintain. Perhaps to offer updated onward-links if any of the originals suffer link-rot? (But then, that fate can occur to all non-popupped links, so maybe I've chosen the wrong thing to highlight.)
...the question is, what do you want from it. Bear in mind that if you can creae pages here then you can set up what you think you'd like to see (e.g. for What-If#1, for starters) then get the community to assess it. Do it as a sub-page to your Userspace, maybe, as proof-of-concept.
Just because it's not been seen as necessary so far, doesn't mean it's not necessary. I've thought about it a lot (not thst I'm in a position to inplement anything), but I've only decided that I don't see a need for a straight copy (others' views may differ on that) and not enough reason to pester for my 'ideas' to be fulfilled. But I aint 'in charge' here, and happily so. 172.69.194.100 11:29, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
You make a fair point. He did already explain in great detail what would happen if [x] scenario happened. It just seems like it would be nice to have a page exclusively for discussing all the What If articles. Psychoticpotato (talk) 20:49, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
People just need to make a draft or two and see what happens. Be sure to link a draft here if one is created, I would like to help on it. "I want to learn more and explore this scenario further" is a valid feeling to have. Maplestrip (talk) 07:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Randall-ify the Captcha

Let's have some fun: Is it feasible to replace the Captcha with something "xkcd-ish" like "click on Randall's work" with a mix of XKCD stuff and generic pictures. If not, how about a replacing it with a quiz like "which of the following IS [or IS NOT] xkcd character" with one obvious correct answer. 172.68.26.75 16:11, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

are YOU able to create a CAPTCHA from scratch? 42.book.addict (talk) 15:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Choose any images that contain user-made CAPTCHAs from the following selection. Psychoticpotato (talk) 21:22, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Incomplete Tag Vote

I think each comic's discussion page should have a section to vote on whether the explanation is complete or not. How long do you think the voting period should be?PDesbeginner (talk) 03:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Rather than a voting period, I think it would be ideal if people could "vote" on the completeness of an article at any time. As I go through all the old pages, I come across lots of pages that feel a little bit incomplete. It would be nice if we had a measurement of completion that wasn't binary. Maplestrip (talk) 10:16, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Feel free to add the incomplete tag again. But don't forget to mention WHY (either in the tag or the discussion or both) you think it's incomplete. :) The tag is mainly there so you can have a list of "incomplete" comics. A comic is either on that list or it isn't. This is pretty much binary. As for voting: If I think an explanation is complete and it bothers me that it's flagged as not I generally juts make a comment in the discussion asking if someone has still something to add or actually knows WHY it's still incomplete. If there's no response after a few days I delete the tag. There's no need to make a voting out of this. And if somone strongly disagrees to you there's always the "Undo"-link ;) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:09, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Sometimes I just feel "this could use more detail," without specifically knowing what the detail would look like. This can be a problem when it's about explaining complicated science: the "completion" of a description of quantum mechanics that is readable by a novice, is very subjective. I am realizing the problem with the persistent voting idea tho: many people will vote something as "incomplete" but wouldn't come back to check on it later. Maplestrip (talk) 12:08, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm more in the "less is more" camp. Most of my recent contributions to this wiki were deleting parts of bloated explanations: You don't need to explain quantum mechanics unless it's absolutely crucial for understanding the respective comic. Of course, if you are an expert in any given field, it's hard to tell whether or not the current explanation is sufficient for a layperson and most contributors tend to write "too much". Which is totally fine. People like me take care of the "too much". ;) So, if you are an expert in quantum mechanics ignore "completed" comics about quantum mechanics. Surely you could contribute a lot to it but chances are high that most of it is unnecessary for the comic. Instead ask yourself if you need more information to understand that comic about biology. And if you do, add an incomplete and ask for that information ;) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 12:31, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I've been here a long time, effectively back to when there were missing explanations (other than the "too new to have the barebones put in" ones, these days only seen when the current BOT is tardy or offline for some reason), and I've seen the Incomplete template change from the useful 'infill marker' to become a regular joke-tag of a similar nature to the Citation Needed. Yes, I agree that both of these (and the Because You're Dumb" tag) are perhaps a bit confusing for new users (like the one who badly edited out a link, just now, apparently thinking it was spam, because of the way it mentioned viagra), but I have grown to see them as community in-jokes (of various degrees of subtlety) that many people seem to appreciate under their current incarnations.
We've recently removed the Main Page's more literal "there are # incomplete articles" announcement, which leaves the purpose of more accurately using the Incomplete tag a little less important. Apart from letting us dive into the (purported) list of Incomplete Explanations, one of the main serious purposes of the Incomplete tag is removed, leaving the now consistently employed purpose of doing a "Created by a THING OTHER THAN THE BOT" joke much more prominent.
Really, all articles are potentially incomplete, still. Some more than others. Something big, like Hoverboard or Gravity, might truly have easter-eggs or subtle details as yet not properly commented upon, but there have been edits to double-digit comics recently which might be considered improvements. As such, there are really only two 'sensible' direct courses of action:
  1. Completely remove the Incomplete tag, from use, as all pages are only ever as complete as the eye of any particular beholder, and the more recent pages are obviously incomplete by their being barely 15 minutes (or a day, or maybe a week) old. Or being so huge (or Time-like!) that they clearly still haven't been 'completely' documented. Maybe the BOT can add a Created By The Bot tag that gets wiped out by the first serious attempt at human editing, but if we wish to lose this part of our site culture so readily then why ever have it at all? A wikivote system is not really that accurate under these circumstances, for a number of reasons that I needn't explain, so go straight to assuming that any such 'vote' would pass, right from the off...
  2. Embrace it for its THING OTHER THAN A BOT usage, alone. Don't be so eager to remove them just because you have no personal changes you'd wish to see. (Votes or not, there could always be another editor along in a minute who has, unlike the rest of you, picked up on an obscure visual pun rendered in what turns out to be hieroglyphs, or similar.) If we have to cull them (not a given!), then let it be an unstated rule (or a stated one?) that if there are more than (e.g.) half a dozen then the 'least amusing' may be removed by the first editor who wishes to express a critical opinion. Just the one at a time. No reinstating, no resurrection, no adding to old articles that never ever had a 'joke Incomplete' before, no entirely new joke (but you can refine what's there, to a degree), just a rolling (and not necessarily consecutive!) set of the "finest natjve explainxkcd wit". Or at least the least objectionable surviving examples of same.
As a practical guide, the "reason why you think it is Incomplete element" could be entirely served by in-line tags (the "What?" and "Why?" and "Date?" things you might see elsewhere). Perhaps we could even do both things by instead having a "Complete" tag explicitly for BOT-REPLACEMENT-type tomfoolery (and tongue-in-cheekness about Completion, as we might currently be about Incometeness) from the off. That might confuse the newbods, of course. At least until it doesn't, and then they're not newbods anymore...
The companion tag, for Incomplete Transcript, is presumably going to serve as it currently does (as a still serious hint as to actual Incompleteness), albeit that I've noticed a trend for the first editor of a brand new published comic to (possibly after doing the BOT-replacement joke, or after the editor who did only that) go straight in and enTranscript it (to varying degrees of accuracy and completion), whether or not they also then remove that specific tag-template at the same time. It seems that some people are more comfortable at providing a Transcription-service than they are at establishing even the seed of an Explanation. (Or they only have enough time to do the latter, to the level of detail they wish to achieve in the moment open to them.)
This is, of course, a cultural issue. All the above (from me) is just my own perception of practical aspects, notwithstanding those opinions already expressed before that (and elsewhere). I don't speak for everyone. And, as a perpetual IP, technically I should say that I don't speak for anyone, either... 172.70.160.140 14:21, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I like the idea of removing the Incomplete tag. What do you think? PDesbeginner (talk) 14:57, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I greatly approve of a Template:what tag, as a Wikipedian that's actually really funny. I would want to keep the Incomplete tag, as I think it has purpose, even if it no longer represents a goal to achieve. I think this website will never reach 100.00% completeness and that is good, actually. Maplestrip (talk) 14:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Okay. If someone wants to they can just ignore the incomplete tags. PDesbeginner (talk) 14:37, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

"As of <now>"...

What would be rather useful is an {{As of now}} template (or similar wording, and perhaps an "as of now"-cased alternative for use mid-sentence). There are many articles that will have words along the lines of "this has not yet happened, as of August 2024" or "this situation is continuing, as of August 2024". Every now and then, someone will come across one of these with an older date (perhaps only just out of date, perhaps years old) and edit it accordingly. You could also seek them all out, deliberately, with a bit of effort in the search-bar.

(Note that "as of" does not always need updating, there are non-dated examples such as in 1074: Moon Landing#Trivia, static transcript versions, like 1071: Exoplanets#Transcript and other instances where the text "as of", with or without a date, really does not need to be changed... but sometimes is anyway by a well-meaning passer-by.)

Sometimes, this can be done along with another useful edit/update/revision that is spotted, or is just one of the revisions that some other need for change conveniently allows. But it seems a bit vague to rely upon occasional attention. Instead the template will implement something like "As of {{Monthyear}}" (here having to use {{#time:F Y}}, ..."As of June 2025"...), though there's the possibility that a parameter-mediated switch can let it alternatively become a to-the-day-level format option (at which point you could even implement/calcuate something like {{Yesterday}} would be) or just to the year-level. (Or add {{As of this year}}, {{As of this month}} and {{As of this day}} separately.)

This would negate the need to just poke and prod any article that happened to 'need' updating every month (or year, or possible day). And to deal with the possibility that some of these cases might actually need to be edited because "as of" does not now apply, include within it a Category:As of membership, letting anyone who is interested keep an eye on these aggregated 'As of's, ready to jump in there and change it to some straight up "Up until <fixed date>" equivalent should any one of them actually no longer apply.

...obviously, I can't even begin to create the template page required, but I'd be happy to work on the exact wikimedia code required if anyone thinks it needs anything but the most basic transcluded formatting and doesn't know how. Open to discussion, and I'll tag on more if I happen to see that discussion developing. 172.70.162.186 18:04, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

As an addendum/change to my above suggestion, considering a simpler {{as of}} (and {{As of}}) which does no automagical continuous updating (just gives the "as of" literal on its own), but still guarantees "Category:As of" membership, so that it doesn't actively give wrong (new) date+circumstance relationships in the likes of 1047: Approximations. In that, the several mentions of populations can safely stay as old years until someone rewrites the proposed value and assessment as well, but it still could be a task to pursue every new year after checking the Cat for likely comics needing a quick check'n'edit.

“Grammar Bot”

I’m working on a python based bot written with the Pywiki library that aims to use the replace.py scripts to fix simple grammatical mistakes, e.g. correcting Citation needed placements, cleaning up extra spaces, etc. I will be posting the code in a few weeks after I finish it (I’m a bit busy at the moment with school and orchestra) so the entire community can view it. Any thoughts on the idea? Thanks. 42.book.addict (talk) 21:05, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

First thoughts are that there are going to be so many exceptions. I definitely agree with the idea of {{Citation needed}}s being made consistent (if only it weren't sometimes complicated[citation needed]), as well as that of mysterious extra spaces. But that's not really grammatical. Punctuation, in the first case. I fear a full (or even fragmentary) grammar-checker is going to be complicated and give many false positives.
At least at first, perhaps have it report what it thinks it has found. You may discover definite times that it isn't necessary and it would indeed create new errors.
At the very least, run it with two checklists: One to do an automatic replace.py and one to just report. Start with the first list empty. Introduce potential ones to the latter, review all the reports carefully, then move any sensible-looking ones to former.
And have it not fighting other bots (particularly theusafBOT), perhaps selected users (e.g. the likes of Kynde, and of course yourself) or indeed itself (if it makes a change that might inadvertently trigger another 'check') by excluding such changes for a recheck/rechange. Keep a record of what it changed, so that if anybody reverts/recorrects something that seems to have gone wrong it doesn't force it 'wrong' again. At the simplest, give a whole page a decent time-out and/or number of subsequent limits before it considers a new change. Implement from the start the option of a 'whitelist' (of pages it can ignore) or 'blacklist' (of rules it shouldn't apply, or at least actively apply, to a given page), so you can quickly manually add a throttle-down by simple config-file rather than have to add in a code-kludge when something obviously (in hindsight!) needs correcting about the way it works. And also maybe throttle it to have no more than one bot-edit per hour (while starting from scratch) to not swamp the system and give the rest of us time to assess any errors it has made (and its successes!) - you can unstick that throttle later, when you consider it tested with all its backlog of microcorrections.
...there are a few other guidelines I would suggest, but the cautiousness already present in the above approaches might mean that they are left as not so important. Just consider what could go wrong before unleashing it on our world.
And all power to your elbow, it is of course something we all might have considered (I know I have... not that I have the login for it, but what really stopped me was knowing how badly I could mess it up by getting just one detail wrong if I tried it).
Among changes/alerts I would have it make would be cases of {{cn}}, {{citation needed}}, etc, instead of the 'main' template. Plus []-links to either wikipedia pages (most of them should be {{w}}-templated) or explainxkcd.com pages (most of them should be [[]]ed), although there are even then some exceptions. It'd also be nice if it can identify all Talk (and Community Portal) contributions that were not signed (more complex, as some may be after the fact, or have been after several years and further editings). I know how I'd do all this, or think I do (only upon starting to do it can I be sure I've actually theorised it correctly!), but I mention this mostly to point out how you might want to cautiously implement your ideas. HTH. 172.70.86.15 00:07, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
you have made plenty of wonderful points that I clearly have not thought about-quite the critical oversight on my part. Is anyone interested in collaborating? I don’t think that my skills are good enough to satisfy all of those points. 42.book.addict (talk) 01:06, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
hello? Anybody? Please help… 42.book.addict (talk) 17:38, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
I believe this would be a great idea and also an incredibly complicated feat. Randall is no stranger to using weird punctuation in comics or misspelled words. I think it would be neat if it weren't automated and just reported errors it found so we could manually fix them, which would make its development much easier, but at that point it's very similar to a series of search queries for misspelled words, which we can already do. I have no coding skills so I'm not going to be of help. FaviFake (talk) 17:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Update

I have found a solution to fix most grammatical mistakes, I just need to make sure that it doesn’t correct character names like “Cueball”, not edit war with other bots, come up with a system to log the edits it makes so that it doesn’t revert again, and fix Citation needed templates. I already know how to make sure that it asks me before editing, so I want to create an account to test it out. Does anybody have ideas on what to name the bot? I don’t want to call it 42.book.addictBOT, since the username would be a bit clunky. ToriBOT could work, but I’m also open to any other names. Feel free to reply to this or reply to me on my talk page! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 20:30, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

"dark mode"

add dark mode Caliban (talk) 09:54, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

See User:Certified nqh/common.css or copy/paste my old common.css page history into your common.css page: -42.book.addict 172.69.134.208 16:10, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
ha, thx tori, nqh's common.css works like a charm :) Caliban (talk) 08:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

reddit

Add reddit- Anonymous 172.71.214.80 (talk) 08:31, 21 November 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

You probably need to explain what you mean by that. Add reddit discussions to here? Add this site to reddit? Add some simple link to one from the other? Something else? 172.70.162.163 13:02, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
>Add some simple link to one from the other?
I have no idea what they meant either, but I hadn't thought of this! I could see the addition of a simple link to the comic template, like "https://reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/{{PAGETITLE}" or "https://reddit.com/r/xkcd/search/?q={{PAGETITLE}"
I don't partecipate much in the r/xkcd subreddit, so i'm not sure if they have structured post titles or even if they posted all the comics, or if it's automated, but I think this could be cool! Some people will likely come from Reddit, so it would be a straightforward way for them to go back. Thoughts? -- FaviFake (talk) 16:55, 11 January 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

viewer

i propose to add random page to comic viewer 172.71.150.14 (talk) 00:17, 25 February 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There's already a "Random Page" link.
If you mean (it's ambiguous!) a "Random Comic Page" link, then I'm not sure it's needed. There are so many "Comic pages" that it's a fairly good chance that you'll land on one of them for any given click, much more chance within two clicks. The likelihood of not getting a comic within three clicks will be tiny. Another way to do it is to just use the xkcd.com "Random" button, then (whichever comic you land on, which will be any but 404), change the "xkcd.com" bit of the URL to "expxkcd.com" and... you end up here.
If none of that really does what you want (especially if you mean something completely different from what I read it as), some more explanation would probably be appreciated. 172.69.79.164 01:02, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
If you want to make sure to land on all comics, you can go to "Special pages" on the sidebar, scroll down to "Random page in category", and enter "All comics". As far as I'm aware, there isn't really a way to automate this, so you have to keep inputting it manually. guess who (if you desire conversing | what i have done) 06:38, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
I think they meant a button on the {{comic}} template. Would it be technically possible to make it such that it works exacly like the one on the official site? --FaviFake (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
It should be a matter of using Special:RandomInCategory/All Comics, I think, but doesn't seem to work when I try that exact attempt. Perhaps mediawiki or the mediawiki extension is not updated enough, or else I'm getting my wikisyntax slightly wrong.
Functionally, though, where the website has its Random button, we have our "go to the xkcd.com original", so more thought is needed before we just "add a button". If we do, we want it where the 'mothership' website does, but we still ought to have our details-and-link-to-original given, and I like it as a (faux) button.
Perhaps the {{comic}}, where it currently has header 'buttons':
[|<<] [Prev] [#9876 (Grune 32, 2525)] [Next] [>>|]
Needs to be changed to maybe:
      [ #9876 (Grune 32, 2525) ]
[|<<] [Prev]   [Random]   [Next] [>>|]
...or equivalent. Haven't checked, but if it's a one-line table, can be easily made into a two-line one with colspan=3 (or 5?) in the right bit. If it's just centred, then it should come out Ok, in a simple way. But I'm not too keen on that change, really, and you'd need to actually have the Random->Comic link working first, anyway. So I'm giving you my opinions and (slightly lacking) knowledge, in case that can at least make for the better outcome than either nothing (though not sure that's bad!) or some half-hearted ideas from elsewhere. 172.70.86.116 21:52, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
Unless someone can figure out the requests made by the random in category, a workaround could be to use a (pseudo)random number generator (mediawiki has a template on their website) to get a random number in the range of 1 - {{LATESTCOMIC}} and put in a link to that comic number using [[number]].
Note: There already is a "Random" template, but it was just using random page and was blanked by the person who made it guess who (if you desire conversing | what i have done) 03:50, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
 ✓ Done!!!  I tried that wikimedia templaete but couldn't figure out how to make it work. I did it using Special:Random, hoping there aren't too many non-comic pages. Check 3102 for an example of how it looks and works. --FaviFake (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
thanks! (i hav an account now) me, hi (talk) 22:30, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
No problem! There's also a special custom-designed navbar for the original comics: try clicking the "|<" button! (It's not complete yet, but i'm slowly finishing it!) --FaviFake (talk) 22:36, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Misc pages

I would like to propose the creation of an additional category for "miscellaneous pages" that aren't really comics, and which generally have a URL slug that's an English word or phrase instead of a number. This includes xkcd.com/YES and xkcd.com/NO, both of which currently have articles. It also includes these ones:

[Note by User:FaviFake: I organised this section and moved the links below]

...and others as they are found or recovered. If only we could access the forum thread mentioned on the YES and NO pages! I was able to find a link to the thread here, but it's inaccessible. A It's the one labeled "Hidden pages on xkcd": [1]. I was able to find the pages above via Reddit: [2] [3] --Rumbling7145 (talk) 00:16, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Update: I got into the forum page! [4] We can now add these pages to the list: Rumbling7145 (talk) 23:37, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Pages

warning!!.png

This is not a comic, but a webpage on xkcd.com

There are many other similar xkcd webpages, some of which are explained here. Explain xkcd is trying to decide how they should be treated. You are welcome to help us decide how we should categorise, call, or present these kinds of explanations. Kindly leave a comment here.

This page should not be categorized until we decide how to explain these non-comics (see discussion above).

YOu can monitor the pages that are using this template (so the brand new webpage explanations) by going to Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:misc_page

How should we treat them?

This is great! I think we should first create an article for each of them, and after we have a few articles then we can start to figure out a good name for the category and answer some questions, like:

I love the idea! I currently don't have time, but I will create these pages eventually. If anyone else wants to chime in, please do! --FaviFake (talk) 16:11, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

"Unnumbered publications", or similar, could cover anything that wasn't xkcd.com/<digits>. Wouldn't cover replacements (2642: No One Was Hurt was originally 2642, for example), but that's a different class from deliberately off-series items. Also, given that often they are entirely non-image (the Yes and No), or straight text and multi-image (as per Blue Eyes, or other articles with a WhatIf-ish feel to them), I think calling them "comic"s is stretching the term.
Though "miscellaneous pages" sort of covers this, I've a feeling that there's at least one... 'entity'... that is built upon multiple actual 'pages', but the list of candidates above doesn't contain any that look like they're what I'm vaguely thinking of. (Neither was it anything like the xkcd survey, or other interactive (numbered) comics, but maybe I'll bring it back to mind sooner rather than later.)
As to the use of {{comic}}, I think we could spring to a (modified, 'inspired-by') template specifically for all these no-number/off-sequence explanation headers. Either explicit "prev=" and "next=" (per comic, could get quite mixed up if not kept uncontradictory) or a "position=" which could help maintain a list (and, from that, an auto-generated first/prev/next/last 'page ring') without having to subvert expectations of fitting in with the normal Template:LATESTCOMIC system.
With the Comic template already equipped to deal with "no-number 'comics'", there wouldn't (in the first instance) be much work needed to "decomic" the new copy, with the exact method of resequencing (if desired) as a parallel series being the biggest question. 172.70.85.49 17:20, 11 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the last sentenc means, but I like the idea of a new template! However, I don't think we should call the category "Unnumbered publications". Isn't that just Category:Extra comics but without comics Disappearing Sunday Update and No One Was Hurt? We should establish a criterion to add pages to this category and then figure out a name i think. --FaviFake (talk) 15:42, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

On this subject, is there any reason why it's YES and NO (currently the valid links) rather than Yes and No / yes and no (currently invalid links)? And I don't mean "why aren't there redirects?", which I don't even think is the right way of resolving this, but what was the thinking? (Which then didn't result in DOT, etc, so there's definitely some inconsistency, one way or another.) 172.68.205.92 21:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see inconsistencies. The name of the browser tab for the yes page is "YES" by Randall, same for NO. Instead, the page for dot is called "xkcd.com/dot/". We could use that, but that's likely not what Randall intended and might have been a coding oversight. --FaviFake (talk) 16:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I've created the {{misc page}} template for these pages and removed the incomplete template until we reach consensus on what to do with them. --FaviFake (talk) 14:40, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Contentious Topics Template

I propose that we create a unified template to slap on contentious and possibly controversial comics, with a warning similar to the one I (and a couple other people added on) wrote in 3073: Tariffs. Now, since I don’t know how to create a template and don’t understand how they work, this is my request for help. If you are available to help write it or have any tips for me, please contact me either in this thread or on my talk page. Thanks! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 18:01, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey, I just wanted to ask why you think a new template is needed. {{notice2}} and {{notice}} seem pretty solid. How would a new template differ from them? Btw, I switched the template in Talk:3073: Tariffs from {{notice}} to {{notice2}} so it's more like a warning, feel free to revert it if you prefer {{notice}}. --FaviFake (talk) 16:56, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I read the idea (which I'm not too enamoured with, but wouldn't argue against either) as being to create a {{contentious}}-like template in its own right that (perhaps by using {{notice2}} within it) had a standard "This comic, and its explanation, covers a particularly contentious subject. Take even more care than usual when adding to or editing this Explanation/Talk Page" (or similar) text with it.
It would probably also have the ability to add further (or alternate) info, by standard template parameters, in case you want to personalise it to the exactnature of the contention.
But, my reasons why I didn't volunteer my ideas immediately are:
  • It paints targets. Anybody who wants to can look at all "pages using the Contentious template" and then troll-bomb them specifically
  • Looking at the Tariffs-comic warning, that's huge, and catering for that with a "standard text + additional notes" would be awkward... if you really believe it should be so huge in the first place,
  • Just by being so obviously available, there'd be creep. "Hey, this comic talks disparagingly about Newton's belief in alchemy... Surely that needs a warning too!", or start off with "Well, nobody's warning about our attitude to the US Senate in this comic, so I can be disparaging" which then practically forces another contentious-tagging (possibly useful, but maybe in making a bolt for the barn door only after the horse has already made its own bolt through it) as it gets toned-down/-back again.
And, though I also imagined the Tariff comic would get some push-back (there was some minor bits, but we seem to have kept it mature enough, IMO), it seems to be quiet. Can't say for sure it would have been without the warning it now has, but it survived ok before that was added. Hence why I'm meh about the very proposal. Hard cases make hard laws, and hard situations may prompt hard solutions. But I'm dubious about the actual case for the need. (As you say, we have 'freeform' notice+notice2, and I haven't seen proof even that was necessary as it was used.)
But it would be trivial to implement, give or take some fine-tuning. I'll say that as a positive for the idea. Even if we never really use it as much as we could. 162.158.216.83 20:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. Maybe it's a good thing that we have to craft one for each comic we want to tag; this makes sure only actually contentious comics get tagged. An upside to having a specific template is that we wouldn't need to type <noinclude> every time, to avoid it displaying on the transcluded talk page.--FaviFake (talk) 21:00, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
mm. all of these are good points. now that i think about it, copy-pasting old warnings and tweaking them as needed is probably better than creating a new template. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 16:45, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Proposal for template page

I was thinking that making a template page with instructions about what should and should not be included in which sections would make it easier for new editors to help. I have no idea how I would do this, though.BobcatInABox (talk) 11:49, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Which particular template? Many templates do contain instructions (from basic to rather thorough), and some common ones are also gone into in the FAQ page. 172.70.91.245 20:25, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

The newest stuff goes at top

I’ve been thinking the newest comments should go at top and replies are under the chose comment with a colon or more. Because every time someone makes a comment but not replying to you, you still get a message. So you only get notifications when someone replies to you. And the always get notifications not related to you is kind of annoying. Aprilfoolsupdate! (talk) 04:30, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

(Ah, so you found it, before I even wrote my directions down on how to get here.)
Not sure this helps.
Firstly: Top-posting is the work of the Devil... burn it! Burn it all! very hard to read.
A: Because it's in totally the wrong order.
Q: Why is Top Posting bad?
(Yes, I know you want top-posting threads but retain bottom-posting thread replies, but can you even imagine the chaos involved with people not properly realising what's top- and what's bottom-posted. Or inter-posted into an existing hierarchy? Not with this 'flatfile' structure, anyway.)
Secondly: Does this count for headers (like == The newest stuff goes at top ==)? For 'no-colon' starter comments under a Discussion header? For both?
Thirdly: what are we doing with all the past pages and pages of things that are (more or less..) consistently chronological and bottom-posted? To make new additions work, someone (and probably before the first commentator who wants to add a brand new one-line witicism to the top of any multi-year-idle page) has to go into every Discussion page (and more?) to reshuffle it all by whatever Top(ish)-Post Criteria are adopted.
Fourthly: It wouldn't even change how frequently you get notifications. (Actually, it might make it worse, as inveterate bottom-posters have to be 'corrected' by the followers of the 'new rule', as well as for any actually idle pages that get redone as part of the "thirdly" point.) But I don't think Notifications are clever enough to imagine that a new section above what you previously wrote doesn't possibly interest your registered "watch and notify" intent upon any given page.
I have a Fifthly and Sixthly, too, but I assume I've made my general opinion quite clear. (And I noted that this is not the only Community Portal edit you made, just before arriving here. Will check the other in a moment.) 172.68.229.142 06:19, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Never mind. I don’t even need to read the whole thing to know it is complicated. To many words -- Aprilfoolsupdate (talk) 07:54, 15 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Short version: It's complicated, confusing and troublesome to change to. And won't even solve your problem. 172.70.160.197 12:22, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Agree with this message but disagree with the proposal. --FaviFake (talk) 09:28, 18 May 2025 (UTC)