explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals

Community Portal
Proposals (+post) Place for ideas and suggestions to improve the wiki's design and organization on general issues.	Technical (+post) Technical issues regarding the site, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests.	Coordination (+post) Community-managed page for coordinating content editing and maintenance tasks.	Admin requests (+post) Problems requiring assistance from an admin. User problems, changes to protected pages, etc.	Miscellaneous (+post) Place for general chit-chat about virtually anything that doesn't fit anywhere else.
View all community portal sections at once here

Spampage Rampage

Hail fellow admins, Jeff, distinguished editors all,

We've just been through a second spike of spam, (the first being around the 1110 Click and Drag comic) so as your friendly Angel of Death to such spammery, I'd like to open the floor to discussion on strategies to deal with the issue.

Personally, I don't mind the role of grim reaper for these miscreants, but I'd also prefer that it doesn't grow in magnitude; of late, I find myself almost exclusively dealing with the matter, leaving little enough time to enjoy the site, let alone contributing to it. Anything we can do to keep things under control would be appreciated.

So far, the spam comes in these flavors:

• One-timers. New users that create their own user page, oddly alike (couldn't be a spam-bot, eh?) always linking to "their" website. By far the biggest percentage of time the scythe falls, it falls on these.
  • Two-timers. A variant of above, except they create one or two additional pages, typically the user's talk page, or a page same as the username, but not in the user namespace. Here too, quickly dispatched across the Styx.
• IPersonators: IP users that create faux user (and other) pages. Second largest group, though this trend has been growing, especially during this recent onslaught.
  • A particularly insidious variant: IPersonators creating or modifying a real users' page. I've been pretty careful, so far, to track down the author, and block them (as opposed to assuming author = user) but I can see how this flavor of spam risks accidental blocking of legit contributors, which would be doubleplusungood.
• Jibberish vandal: Somebody creating content that isn't spam, but just repeated asdf or ghjkl content. Treated as above, though I don't call this spam in the logs. My guess is that this is a spam-bot under development. Fairly infrequent, and addressed using techniques as for above.

There are a few other one-off types, too, which I won't bother elaborating here.

So, the open-ended question stands: What do we do?

1. There has been a suggestion to block IP-only contributors (ie must log in) ... perhaps only on an as-needed basis.
2. Another thought would be to (by some as-yet unspecified means) prevent the creation, or cause the timely deletion, of user pages by other than said user.)
3. Restricting external links (by a similarly as-yet-unspecified means) either to a specified approved white-list, or by a specified set of contributors (must have made more than n edits, for example.)
4. Other thoughts? Let the discussion unfold...

No solution is likely to be perfect; this is a matter of raising the bar to where whatever processed meat can crest over it can be most easily managed... all without being so draconian that we compromise the appeal of the site.

All said, I have no problems with the grim reaper enterprise, but would like to spend more time in the kitchen, and less in the dumpster.

A little postscript to put the issue into perspective: the top four contributors, (as per Active Users as I write this) are as follows:

• Lcarsos [169 edits in the last 30 days]
• Davidy22 [282 edits in the last 30 days]
• Bpothier [298 edits in the last 30 days]
• IronyChef [433 edits in the last 30 days]

I can tell you that of my four-hundred plus edits, only about a dozen have not been spam related. Lcarsos and Davidy22 are two ace spam-seeking deputies, so a large part of their edits involve tagging pages with the spam template, not (as I'm sure they'd prefer) actually chiming in on matters xkcd. The rest of the field: not even close in terms of edit magnitude. -- IronyChef (talk) 15:30, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I was going to suggest a range block, but the IP addresses com from everywhere. The only pattern I can see is in the 83.<25 range. We could also change the captcha to cut into the bots for a little while. Another suggestion would be to create every explanation page, then mark the unfinished ones with the {{stub}} template, if that exists in this wiki. Then we can block anonymous page creation without having to worry about stopping anonymous users from creating new explanations. We'll have to make a few modifications to the site, to instruct users on how to find pages in need of explanations, but it'll kill all the userpage and self-help spambots. We can figure out how to deal with vandalism later - I would recommend implementing wikipedia's cluebot to automagically roll back page clearing and the like. Davidy22 (talk) 23:16, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Also, we can semi-protect important pages like categories and templates. Chances are, anonymous users aren't familiar enough with wikis to be handling those anyways, and wiki veteran anonymous users will probably make an account. Davidy22 (talk) 09:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

... Madame la Guillotine has been busy, dealing with no less than four dozen spammified pages and their attendant contributors in the last hour, to address a third spike in spam. Our hyper-contributing editors have been helping identify these malefactors, so the process has been fairly straight-forward on my part, but it's awfully quiet here....

The top five contributors, as of this writing, are:

• Divad27182 [133 edits in the last 30 days]
• Davidy22 [202 edits in the last 30 days]
• Lcarsos [207 edits in the last 30 days]
• Bpothier [267 edits in the last 30 days]
• IronyChef [537 edits in the last 30 days]

Number six is comes in at less than half of Divad's, and the curve decays precipitiously from there... so this is becoming a call to arms for admins to convene and discuss, or Jeff to anoint other, more active contributors, admin status.

Thoughts?

-- IronyChef (talk) 06:02, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Would it be possible to volunteer to be another admin to move some of the load off of IronyChef? It feels slightly cruel and unusual for him to be the only active admin, and thus ad-hoc in charge of keeping the engines running. lcarsos (talk) 06:16, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Another admin is definitely needed, given the volume of spam. It'd be nice if we could clean out the attic too. Shall we hold a vote? Davidy²²(talk) 06:41, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I only have sporadic time to do edits, so I'd likely not be an ideal choice if there can be only 1 more... --B. P. (talk) 07:19, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

This is yet again great. I'm researching SPAM prevention tools in use on other wikis. Let me know if you have something you think will work. Also, Lcarsos, you are up. Best new admin I can think of. I'm not afraid to add other admins if some (including myself) are less active. Other candidates can be submitted here. --Jeff (talk) 17:53, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm immensely honored that you trust me that much. Thank you, I'll work hard to better the wiki. lcarsos (talk) 18:00, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Redirect main-page of explainxkcd.com

I mentioned this on the old site, but I guess this is a better place. The first page most people will get to is still the main explainxkcd.com page. With no more updates there it looks at first glance like a dead place, and when I out of habit go there, I still get an instinctive feeling that the site is dead because the first place I am send is a dead place. PLEASE redirect the main-page to this wiki, since this is the place that is still alive. Carewolf (talk) 14:40, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. Will work on that soon. --Jeff (talk) 17:49, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Tagline

I haven't created MediaWiki:Tagline yet, but we need to think about what to put there. That's the familiar "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." over at Wikipedia - it appears right under the title of each page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 10:39, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
Moved from Explain XKCD:Community portal --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:09, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

I think it's pretty obvious we should keep the "It's cause you're dumb." :) --Waldir (talk) 13:20, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, since there haven't been any objections, I went ahead and added it: Mediawiki:Tagline. --Waldir (talk) 18:46, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Separate discussion page(s)

I think we should create a separate Discuss the wiki page, so that each discussion can go under its own header. I'd suggest setting up a todo list where people can help out. I'd start with a suggestion:

We should be using cleaner urls. Maybe this tool can help setting that up. --Waldir (talk) 05:46, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Whatever we do decide, I've created {{xkcd}} and {{explain}} templates to create links to the xkcd site and other explanations here on this site; that should factor at least those sites (nice central administration) as well as helping us categorize pages that use them. Was thinking of also {{wiki}} for the same benefit, even if there's already a prefix built into mediawiki... the only drawback is the bias toward the en side... IronyChef (talk) 10:31, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I'm liking the idea of creating a Discuss the wiki page - I'll start one if someone doesn't/hasn't beat me to it and add it to the sidebar. I'd asked for better URLs at User talk:Jeff#Robots.txt, though I didn't know what they were called. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:17, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I also like the idea of the {{xkcd}} tags. On a related note, I've imported {{tl}}.  :-) I also realize we don't have a secure server here, but I'd support the best practice of beginning URLs with protocol-relative links ( // instead of http:// or https:// ) anyway, especially since the xkcd website itself appears to be https-compatible.Nevermind, it doesn't seem to be. So I guess it doesn't matter. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:40, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Maybe we can create a subpage of the community portal for the wiki discussion. What do you think? --Waldir (talk) 04:32, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Also one for editing coordination (see User:SurturZ/sandbox for instance), another for mediawiki assistance (requests to admins perhaps on the same page, or on a separate one). Any other ideas? --Waldir (talk) 04:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from Explain XKCD:Community portal, may need to be broken out into new headers or sub-headers. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:12, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Great job on creating the subpages! I think the subpages can be made more intuitive for newcomers, though. Here are my subbestions:

• merge "/Design" and "/Proposals" into "/Discuss the wiki" or "/Improve the wiki" or something to that effect.
• rename "/Technical" into "/Tecnical assistance" so it is clear that it should be used for one-off issues rather than coordination of wiki-wide changes (which should go in the section above)
• merge the "/Administrator's noticeboard" above? That would reinforce that adminship is nothing but a set of technical tools to assist the wiki
• New "/Editing coordination" subpage for organizing what to do, maintenance, keeping a TODO list for newcomers to tackle, etc -- essentially like WikiProjects work at Wikipedia.

--Waldir (talk) 04:35, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

As I see this, it would involve mostly just renaming pages. I don't particularly care what the names are, so I won't comment on that.

• I'd like to keep /Administrator's noticeboard for the time being. The primary advantage of this is that administrators can watchlist this and things which need the tools are less likely to get lost in discussion. It can always be deprecated afterwards if it isn't being used enough.
• I'd sort of seen /Design as doing what you're proposing for /Editing coordination, though I didn't explain it as well.

--Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:43, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Ok, I get what you mean with the Admin page. I don't think this wiki is going to be that busy to warrant a separate page, though. But for now, let's at least simplify the name? "Admin requests", for instance :)

And yeah, Design isn't really a good name for content-related coordination. What I'm suggesting here is to have one page for meta (wiki-related) discussion, and another for content-related discussion. Does that make sense? And what name do you think would be good for the former rather than the current, too generic imo, "Proposals"? --Waldir (talk) 19:20, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

"Discuss the wiki" sounds good to me, as does "Admin requests." Or whatever, I guess.  ;-) I may not be online much for the next few days (or much this evening), so go ahead and change it how you think it should be, I guess. Having stable discussion pages sooner than later would be good. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:48, 6 August 2012 (EDT)

Ok I changed the admin page name, and merged "design" and "proposals", but for now I left it named "Proposals". I'm not quite confident about the clarity of "Discuss the wiki"... I'll wait until others comment here. --Waldir (talk) 14:06, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any further discussion and it's been a few days since the move, so I'm clearing the sitenotice. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 02:38, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Automatic Import

Hi

I created a draft for the comic pages. It's still work in progress, but I'd like to retrieve feedback.

Also, maybe we could autmatically import comics using the JSON data Randall gives us ([1]). This way, we could also include transcripts. --SlashMe (talk) 15:23, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Hm, I should add a link to my draft: User:SlashMe/Testpage ;-) --SlashMe (talk) 06:54, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I updated the page, including links to the next/previous comic similar to Template:ComicHeader. I used comic 472, because it has a lot of metadata (link, news, HTML title, etc.). --SlashMe (talk) 07:32, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Just to remind everyone, I'd be ready to import the comics, but I don't want to until I got more feedback. Please have a look at User:SlashMe/Testpage and tell me your opinion. --SlashMe (talk) 06:02, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I think your test page looks great. I'm a big fan of it. Any way to fit the text in the text box rather than having it run all the way to the right? --Jeff (talk) 18:19, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I just made a change concerning line breaks, at least it works in Firefox and Chrome. Could somebody please test it in different versions of Internet Explorer?

If you agree, I would start uploading tomorrow. I'll send you a mail. --SlashMe (talk) 18:31, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from User talk:Jeff. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:38, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

The discussion is now at Explain XKCD:Community_portal/Design#Header template. --SlashMe (talk) 04:20, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

"Random comic?"

Not to clutter the sidebar, but what would you say to adding a "Random comic" right under "Random page", linking to //dynamic.xkcd.com/random/comic/ ? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:46, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Naw, xkcd already has a random comic. I think we should have a random explanation. ;-) All kidding aside, I was wondering: generating a random member of a category...? Has that improved since the early days when I tried to do something like that. -- IronyChef (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Hi. For how to do this, we could install the Random In Category Mediawiki extension, which would allow us to use [[Special:RandomInCategory/Comics]] to point to any random explanation. Omega ^{Talk • Contribs} 22:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Or we could move the comics into a Comic namespace, and use Special:Random/comic (See for instance Special:Random/template). This doesn't require any server-side changes. --Waldir (talk) 23:58, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Header template

Hi, I've created a template called Template:ComicHeader, which might make things easier when creating comic pages (and also provide better consistency between the pages). I've used it on the Internal monologue page, to display the comic number and the date it was published. The template also adds the page to the Comics category.

You just need to add:

{{ComicHeader|1089|August 1, 2012}}

…to the start of the page (replacing the comic number and date).

I'll try to make the template look a bit nicer, but the great thing about templates of course, is that once they're updated, the changes are reflected on all the pages that include that template. --Yirba (talk) 18:46, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

By the way, I'm thinking of maybe programming something that would allow you to easily import the comic image and alt text from xkcd without having to upload the images manually and the like. You'd just have to host a single PHP file on your server and make a few changes to the MediaWiki configuration. Of course, you'd be able to see source code and everything to make sure I'm not trying to do something fishy. :-P Let me know what you think. :-) --Yirba (talk) 18:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Yirba - I like the idea. My email is [email protected] - send me what you put together and we can sort it out. --Jeff (talk) 19:37, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Ditto on the Template. Up-vote. Any thought on harvesting the pre-wiki content from ExplainXKCD with some sort of a Python, Perl, or PHP script? (That sounds more like a 'bot than something that would have to be hosted, though.) IronyChef (talk) 01:52, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I was thinking of putting it into a infobox, please see above. I also intended to automatically extract data from xkcd, which would lack descriptions, but at least we would have data like title, image and transcripts. Also, there are some other data like links (e.g. 832), news (which are displayed in xkcd's header, e.g. 739) and titles which contain HTML (259 and 472). I also extracted all those data. When we agree on a page layout, I could begin programming a bot. --SlashMe (talk) 06:54, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Hmmm… an infobox may be a good idea. And a bot that imports data from xkcd might be handy. Anyway, here's something I programmed that would allow for access to the xkcd API from the wiki itself. Essentially, you'd put this xkcdinfo.php (source, download) file somewhere on the server (e.g. at http://www.explainxkcd.com/xkcdinfo.php) and include it in MediaWiki's interwiki table (ensuring iw_trans == 1):

INSERT INTO interwiki (iw_prefix, iw_url, iw_local, iw_trans) VALUES ('xkcdinfo', 'http://www.explainxkcd.com/xkcdinfo.php?input=$1', 0, 1);

After enabling scary transclusion in LocalSettings.php, you'd then be able to send queries to the xkcd JSON API via this file. In other words, {{xkcdinfo:32-title}} would make comic 32's title appear. {{xkcdinfo:55-alt}} would make comic 55's image text appear. I've also set it so you could enter {{xkcdinfo:100-embed}}, and it would make the comic 100 image appear on the wiki page. Feel free to use it however you want (if at all), and modify the code should you wish. (Hint: Using the number 0 for the comic number will query the most recent comic, so {{xkcdinfo:0-num}} will return the current comic number. Also, adding "raw:" before "xkcdinfo:" might be more useful in some instances. E.g.: {{raw:xkcdinfo:555-title}})--Yirba (talk) 14:50, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Nice idea, altough this would mean to load all data from xkcd whenever a page is viewededited (I think this is the way MediaWiki caches the data). This is a lot of traffic for little data. I'd say to include the metadata statically, but linking the external image seems a good thing to me. Again, it'd be great if you gave me feedback for my idea. --SlashMe (talk) 15:54, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Yes, the data would be loaded from xkcd for each edit. You can, however, substitute (subst) the template for data that is unlikely to change. And therefore the data would indeed be stored statically. I like the layout you've come up with. It could perhaps do with a bit of tweaking here and there, but the general idea is good. --Yirba (talk) 17:16, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

What kind of tweaking do you mean? I know the code is a bit messy, if you have a better idea, please tell me (or do it yourself - hey, it's a wiki!). The CSS should be placed in an external file, but for now, it's ok. --SlashMe (talk) 17:51, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Looks like there is another/newer template called Template:Comic that includes prev/next buttons as well. You add it with:

{{comic
| number    = 1
| date      = September 30, 2005
| title     = {{PAGENAME}}
| image     = barrel_cropped_(1).jpg
| imagesize = 
| alttext   = Don't we all.
}}

<small>Moved from [[User talk:Jeff]]. --~~~~</small>
==Description==
xxxxxxxxxxx

No need to include the alt text separately, as the template does it for you. It also includes the comic category, but only if the first 4 fields are filled out. --B. P. (talk) 18:47, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Yes, but that is not necessarily an advantage. My template only creates the infobox, so you are still able to create an introductory text or other sections, for special comics that need a more detailed description. I can also add categories if needed. --SlashMe (talk) 19:02, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I think it is a major advantage to make the thing easier to use and more consistant site-wide.

As the creator of the new one, I'm obviously biased, but I created it because I think it's better. Not putting your work down, it was a great piece of code that I put to work in my template. But I think if there's need for pre-text of any kind (not sure there is, as the articles probably should all open with the comic itself as presented on XKCD), a pre-comment can be added into the template, but I'm not sure what that would be. Perhaps there would be a requirement for special circumstances like the comic a few weeks ago where there were a million iterations depending on locality, browser, etc. But that's the rarity. I think the new one simplifies it for users. They need only one template to post the comic, alt text title and nav buttons. What could be easier? TheHYPO (talk) 19:08, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

As the creator of the other one, I'm equally biased. What about a "main template", which then calls one or two other templates (e.g. one for the infobox, another for image and alt text? For most comics, this main template could be used, but if absolutely needed, it would still be possible to use the underlying templates with custom sections/text. --SlashMe (talk) 19:15, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I just now saw your request for feedback on your new comic page with the sidebar. I honestly am not sure which format is better. I kind of like my format for the fact that it basically presents the comic as it was originally posted, but your infobox does provide some additional stuff like 3D link (not sure what "news" is, of where the "link" comes from but...) Perhaps we could integrate the two. I like that the comic is visble right away on my template, but on your page it's down below the first header. I don't think the comic itself needs an "image" heading. No disrespect, but I think your sidebar, esp. because of the "news" field is a bit chunky - too wide for most of its content.

I think we could easily add things like a "3d" link into {{comic}} as part of the next/prev bar where a "3D" field in the template is non-blank. Similarly, original title could read something like (Originally titled: xxxxx) below the primary title in a smaller font. Other than the "link" and "news" fields (which again, I'm not sure what they are), I think that would inclde all the same info as your infobox into my template. Thoughts?

As to your other comment about compartmentalizing the template, I have nothing against that, but which parts of the template would you want to be able to use separately (and can you suggest an example where that might be necessary?) Subdividing the template can always be done later if it becomes needed; just trying to get an idea of what you have in mind by compartmentalizing it. Cheers TheHYPO (talk) 19:43, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from User talk:Jeff. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:37, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Suggestion:

• I will start by uploading all images. This will take some time and has no points to discuss. (If it has, tell me.) At a later point, maybe we could link them directly from xkcd.com.
• For the comic pages: Let's say we'll use {{Comic}}. I'll change the arguments of the template to be more like my {{Infobox comic}}, see documentation. I'll keep the alttext argument, but make image optional (file name should be guessed from the title). Do we really need imagesize?
• {{Comic}} would then call some further templates, passing the appropriate arguments. This way, we are able to use custom sections/text if needed for special comics (like Umwelt) by using these templates instead of the all-in-one {{Comic}}.
• Since we have one template doing all the work, we can easily change the page layout even after the import. (We should only keep track of the pages that don't use {{Comic}}, using a hidden category)
• For consistency, I would move all existing pages out of the way and re-create them. The moved pages could be collected by adding them to a category like Category:legacy pages, so they should easily be found. Descriptions should be moved to the new pages, afterwards the legacy pages can be deleted.

This way, I can import all comics, but we would still be able to change the layout afterwards. My 2ct concerning page layout:

• Use comic titles as page names.(See below) The title should be prominent, the number will be in the infobox.
• I'll remove Original title, news and link from the infobox and move them to a section after the description. (For details, see here)
• suggested layout:

=====page title=====
+--------------------+ +---------+
|                    | | infobox |
|       image        | |  text   |
|(no section heading)| |         |
|                    | |         |
|                    | +---------+
+--------------------+
==alt==
text
==description==
text
==transcript==
text
==original title, news and link== (if available)
text

Still open for opinions.--SlashMe (talk) 04:13, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

It might make more sense to use the comic number as the page title, and then use DISPLAYTITLE to make the comic title appear in place of the number. Just putting that out as another possibility. --Yirba (talk) 09:49, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Good point, I agree. --SlashMe (talk) 09:54, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

If anyone wants to use it, I've written a bot [2] that can upload images, create redirect pages, and create comic pages. You can change the format it uses for the comic page if you have some knowledge of python. To use it, look at [3]. --Cyanfish (talk) 10:56, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Sorry, I was faster. I'm using mwclient, and I already uploaded all images. I could also create pages and redirects, but I'm waiting until we have a consent. --SlashMe (talk) 11:02, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

A few thoughts: if you start uploading images, but don't create the comic pages with them, a user going to create a new comic page isn't going to know whether or not the comic image has already been uploaded. This could be confusing. Hopefully the uploads are going to be named the same as the original images? (when I do upload, I actually just paste the URL in my "browse" box and upload directly from my browsers cache that way so it works out), but I just want to avoid duplicating images on the server as well as wasting time by trying to upload something that's already there.

As to the page layout, I'm still of the view that the transcript should be in a collapsed frame so that it doesn't take up half the article. I don't honestly think that most people are coming to read the transcript. I could be wrong tho. Open to opinions on that. Otherwise, I do like transcript AFTER The explanation (also, the heading "explanation" vs. "description" as mentioned in another discussion in the portal. TheHYPO (talk) 14:09, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

PS: We definately need imagesize. It defaults to full size, but I think we definately need the optional argument for large comics. Remembering that this is a wiki to explain the comics, there are many large comics that ought to be restricted to a smaller size for the page (they can be clicked to enlarge - the template automatically creates a "click to enlarge" link if imagesize is used). I have generally been using a 375 or 400px size for keeping larger comics managable, but sometimes it's a comic-dependant decision. Also, notwithstanding my comment on another thread, even though I agree that the xkcd commentary is actually "title text", just as a side note, I've just noticed that the transcripts for older comics actually do call it "alt text") TheHYPO (talk) 15:40, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

As long as no one has any objections, this header looks awesome (with ImageSize as TheHYPO suggested), so feel free to work on the importation functionality. Let me know if you need anything from me in order to import from the Wordpress side of things. If we start talking importation, lets move that conversation under a different header. --Jeff (talk) 15:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Date format

I suggest to enter the date as YYYY-MM-DD and using {{#dateformat: {{date}}} in {{comic}}. This way, the date should be displayed using the personal preferences (see Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-datetime). Does anyone disagree? --SlashMe (talk) 20:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Displaying Comics ✓ Closed

For the home page, I think the comic and explanation should be displayed instead of a link to the comic.

For reasons unknown to me, I decided to create Template:Comicbox and Template:Comicbox2. Looks nice, as long as you use the correct one for the comic.

Go to User:Grep/comicbox and User:Grep/comicbox2 for examples. --grep:talk:applaud:smite

Those're wonderful! And should probably be on the main page. If you wanted, we could probably incorporate them (and maybe a third?) into a single template with a "square/vertical or horizontal" switch. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:36, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Also, you used "comicbox" for the class. Is that a class that's defined somewhere? (And if so, where?) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:36, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Good point. Removed. And merging them sounds wonderful. --grep:talk:applaud:smite

Maybe merging them into Template:comicbox? --grep:talk:applaud:smite

I think classes are defined at MediaWiki:Common.css, so if you really wanted to define the class.... And Template:Comicbox would probably be best. Did you want to merge them or should I take a look at it? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:25, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

ParserFunctions and any sort of non-XMLish markup is weird. I would rather you look at it. --grep:talk:applaud:smite

Okay, I've moved your templates to {{Comicbox square or vertical}} and {{Comicbox horizontal}} so I can work on {{Comicbox}} as the main one. It may take a while - I like to think of myself as a "master of all known wikimarkup," but I don't actually use those skills that often. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:08, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Thanks. --grep:talk:applaud:smite

I've made it at {{Comicbox}}. This actually leaves {{Comicbox square or vertical}} and {{Comicbox horizontal}} unused, though I credited you (and them) in a comment at the top of the template. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:21, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I think that the explanation should be on the right because it just looks weird as is... --grep:talk:applaud:smite

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Sure. But right now they both look like they're on the bottom? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:02, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

✓ Fixed --grep:talk:applaud:smite

Sans-serif typeface ✓ Closed

I like these, too, but the roman typeface... how do folks feel about sticking with a sans-serif typeface throughout the site? IronyChef (talk) 00:13, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

We should be able to change that wiki-wide through MediaWiki:Common.css, I think. Unfortunately, I don't know enough CSS to do it. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:23, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I believe sans serif is already the default wiki-wide. Those specific instances were deliberately coded to use a serif font. It's just a matter of removing font-family: 'Times New Roman'; from the template. --Waldir (talk) 17:01, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Oh, I'd missed that. I removed it. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:14, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from User talk:Jeff. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:37, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

comic header

Jeff, further to your previous conversation on the comic header, I've significantly rewritten Yirba's template (thanks to Yirba for the hard work. His navigation bar was very useful) and I've created a new template of {{comic}}. An example of the comic in use can be seen at T-shirts. I started a discussion on the main page discussion board, but I thought if I pointed it out to you and you like it, it can start going in the rotation for new comics.

I actually now see that Grep did a template up with intent (I think) to use for the main page. Had I known that when I started, I would have probably based my template off of his, because it looks nice, but either way, mine is intended for the actual articles. TheHYPO (talk) 14:46, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Again, may I link to my request for feedback? --SlashMe (talk) 15:52, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

The discussion is now at Explain XKCD:Community_portal/Design#Header template. --SlashMe (talk) 04:17, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from User talk:Jeff. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:37, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Bylines

In the migration from blog to wiki, I noticed a few things:

1. Visitors still seem to assume there's a single, invisible other that provides the explanations; this might be a carryover from the blog days when Jeff was the author of that content, or it may be newcomers not familiar with the license-to-create a wiki offers. You see it in comments that call out corrections, without the corrections actually being made to the explanations. Usually a more savvy editor swings in, makes the fix, and chimes in on the comments.
2. There's no visual cue on the page itself to disabuse a novice of that fact. Sure, wikiphiles will check the history; but aside from that the novice has is left in the dark, and certainly isn't led to the conclusion that they, too, can contribute to the explanation.

To that end, I was wondering: why not put a {{byline}} on each explanation, and give credit where credit is due? I know Waldir wanted to "gamify" the wiki a bit. I don't know that I'd go that far, but putting bylines does kill a few birds by raising awareness of the democratic approach to explanations, and giving kudos to the contributor(s). I've prototyped it (and of course, it's subject to revision) but here's how it would work:

• {{byline|you}} produces Authored by you.
• {{byline|you|me}} produces Authored by you, with additional contributions by me.
• {{byline|you|me|someone else}} produces Authored by you, with additional contributions by me, and someone else.
• More concretely, {{byline|Jeff|Waldir|IronyChef|Blaisepascal}} produces Authored by Jeff, with additional contributions by Waldir, IronyChef, and Blaisepascal.

(in general, the parameters are the usernames, up to about 5 or six contributors, for now.) Was thinking about having the content be automatically turned into wiki-links, but left that out while we think it over. Thotz? -- IronyChef (talk) 04:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

How would we indicate who is in the byline? The person who created the page? The person who edited the most characters? Would it be a combination of all the names? --Jeff (talk) 14:32, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I have to say, it sounds contrary to the whole wiki premise. I agree with you that there does seem to be a bit of a learning curve here, but I don't know if "crediting" the explanations is the right solution. How much editing does one have to do to get credit on an article? You might get people who want to edit just to get credits, and credits over time could get relatively lengthy. TheHYPO (talk) 14:41, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Template improvement suggestion

Can I suggest that we work on improving {{ComicHeader}} - I wish I had time to do it myself and then edit all the comic pages, but I would suggest the best way might be to start a new template (perhaps design it a bit more like an infobox) and start converting the old pages over to new ones.

The feature I think should be added is that, where the template currently includes teh comic number and date, and creates the nav header, the template really ought to include the image name, and the alt text. In that way, the template can produce the entire part of the article that displays the comic and its alt text (and the alt text, as mentioned, could be more like a caption, instead of just looking like a generic section of the article - it's part of the comic, it shouldn't look like part of the article on this site (no offence, Jeff, but that's one thing I always didn't like about explain XKCD - the image text should be bold or underlined or italics or something to signify that it's part of the comic and not the explanation.

I'll see if I can work on a prototype. TheHYPO (talk) 12:29, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

What does everyone thing of this as a better layout? Blown Apart TheHYPO (talk) 13:09, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

May I link to my request for feedback? --SlashMe (talk) 15:52, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from Talk:Main Page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:44, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

The discussion is now at #Header template. --SlashMe (talk) 04:17, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Transcripts

Do we need to add a whole section on "Transcript" for each comic? That could get very long for some comics, and basically pushes the explanations down further (which is what people generally come to explainxkcd for). If anything, perhaps the transcripts could be in a minimizable box like some navboxes do on wikipedia? I don't see a majority of users coming to read the transcripts... TheHYPO (talk) 19:15, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

What about putting the transcripts at the bottom of the page?

BTW: If you agree, this discussion should be moved to Explain XKCD:Community portal, as Waldir suggested. At least for new discussions. --SlashMe (talk) 19:19, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

No problem there. Feel free to move it. TheHYPO (talk) 19:29, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

How about having it be collapsed, with the option to expand it (TOC-like)? -- IronyChef (talk) 04:25, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Moved from Talk:Main Page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:47, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

The discussion is now at #Header template. --SlashMe (talk) 04:18, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Adding a new comic

This is the process I use to add a new comic. YMMV... Feel free to update this as/if needed to provide some consistency...--B. P. (talk) 19:22, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I start by uploading the image using the name from XKCD's page.

I create the new page using the comic number(not the name), e.g. "http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1"

I (currently) insert using the "Comic" template:

{{comic
| number    = 1
| date      = September 30, 2005
| title     = {{PAGENAME}}
| image     = barrel_cropped_(1).jpg
| imagesize = 
| alttext   = Don't we all.
}}
==Transcript==
This is the transcript from xkcd
==Description==
Wow what a cool comic!

I "Show preview" to ensure the image shows up and everything looks good.

I "Save page".

I click the "move" link on the down-arrow drop-down menu to the right of "View history" (at top of page).

I rename the page from "1" to the page title from XKCD.

This will automatically create a redirect from "1" to the correct page name without having to do it manually. --B. P. (talk) 19:22, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Please, have a break here. When we agree on a page layout, I can do this automatically. I repeat, when we agree on the layout (which should also include the direction of the redirects) --SlashMe (talk) 19:25, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from Talk:Main Page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:47, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

The discussion concerning the layout is at Explain XKCD:Community_portal/Design#Header template. --SlashMe (talk) 04:18, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

styling of xkcd links

I added code to the end of MediaWiki:Common.css to style links to the xkcd website as http://xkcd.com rather than the regular external link format, http://example.com. What do you guys think? --Waldir (talk) 05:06, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

I like it generally. Is there a way to force it to not display on individual pages, though? I don't think we should have it at Explain XKCD:Copyrights, {{XKCD file}}, or {{XKCD file derived}}, as they are more serious. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 16:27, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Sure. I've disabled it on those pages, feel free to add more as you see fit. --Waldir (talk) 17:22, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Thanks! --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:34, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

I like the idea of the graphic, too, but wonder if it could be muted a bit (medium gray vs black) so it recedes a bit into the background; the classic graphic is a very light blue for that reason, too. (Oh, and a minor quibble... overheard: "who is that short, bearded dude?" "Oh! That's megan?") ... I don't know how we could update it, and maybe it'll be less of an issue when muted... Thotz? -- IronyChef (talk) 14:16, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The image can be updated by uploading new versions of . It doesn't need to be the xkcd.com favicon; in fact, it would be good if we could make it even smaller (e.g. just cueball's head, or simply "xkcd" in the typical handwritten font, etc). Making it dimmer also seems like a good idea, btw. --Waldir (talk) 19:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

'Explanation' rather than 'Description'

Can I suggest we use the heading "Explanation" rather than "Description" on the comic pages, since that fits with the name of the wiki? --SurturZ (talk) 09:20, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

Agreed. --Waldir (talk) 14:27, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

Seconded TheHYPO (talk) 14:04, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Allow external inline images

Hi. I'd like to propose that we set $wgAllowExternalImages to true or add xkcd.com and some image hosting sites (such as imgur.com) to $wgAllowExternalImagesFrom. If the former is set to true, external images will be allowed from any host, whereas if the former is kept as false but we add some sites to the latter (obviously adding xkcd's site itself seems to be the logical choice), then only images that are from whitelisted sites can appear as inline images. What this does is it allows external images to be displayed as an actual image, rather than just a link (note that sites not in the whitelist will still appear as just the link). Why? Because there's no way to display images without uploading them. Obviously some editors may wish to use images for non-wiki purposes, such as proposing alternative logos or for their userspace, in which case uploading the images to this site isn't entirely practical. Allowing externally hosted images to be displayed will alleviate that problem.

Yes, there is the risk of... less appropriate images being displayed, however, I consider that being a null argument, as editors could just as easily upload the image here and link it as an internal image. As well, using the whitelist alternative would limit the image to being posted from a trusted site, such as imgur. Finally, if worries about nude photos being posted is really a concern (seriously, what's stopping an editor from just uploading said image here? Nothing.), it's possible to only whitelist sites which don't permit nude images from being hosted on their site (such as imageshack.us), although I think that's a bit extreme (especially considering that imgur is hands down the most popular image host these days). Omega ^{Talk • Contribs} 07:52, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I really don't see a compelling reason to have this. It's not about improper images or anything. (Note that we already have access to all images in Wikimedia Commons, by the way, which has a large variety of images and other media, with the added benefit that we're sure they can be reused without licensing concerns). A specific whitelist could be interesting (e.g. we could hotlink the images from xkcd), but having the images here allows us to do neat things like categorizing them by topic, size, etc. Also, images like logo proposals, etc. do benefit from being uploaded here (for historical interest, for a guarantee that they won't be deleted wherever they're hosted, for better control regarding how they're displayed, etc.) --Waldir (talk) 19:27, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Latest comic handling

Currently the latest comic is handled automatically by the {{LATESTCOMIC}} template, which tests the existence of pages like 1092, 1093 (supposed to be redirects to the corresponding comics), to see which is the highest-number existing page, and consider it the latest comic.

That way we can have the latest comic automatically transcluded on the main page.

But we cannot have, with that system, an automatic "Edit" link (to edit the latest comic) on the main page, nor can we have automatically the comments associated with that latest comic. The former was changed to a "Go to this comic" link, and the latter was removed. I think both of them are really useful things to have on the main page.

I've been thinking a little bit about this, and in the end I suggest that we handle manually the latest comic :

• There would be a single {{latest comic}} template, which would have to be updated manually to return the full title of the latest comic's page (such as "1092: Michael Phelps").
• Next to the "Latest comic" header, on the front page, would be appended a "[update]" link, to a page explaining that to insert the new latest comic in the wiki: one needs to 1/ create a page titled "<number>: <title>" and 2/ update the {{latest comic}} template with the new title.
• The "Edit this explanation" link could be put back on the main page, using something like [{{fullurl:{{latest comic}}|action=edit}} '''Edit this explanation''']. And I firmly believe that link is important. (*this* for instance is exactly what I'm talking about)
• The comments to the latest comic could be appended under the latest comic's transclusion, with something like {{ {{TALKPAGENAME: {{latest comic}} }} }}. They could be in a collapsible area if they take too much space. Same here than about the edit link, I believe that's really important to impel/motivate readers to leave their comments as well.
• Finally, when only the number is needed (such as in the computation of the number of missing explanations), this could be done via another template (for instance {{latest comic number}}), automatic this time, which would replace the current {{LATESTCOMIC}} by extracting the value out of {{latest comic}} (with something like {{#explode:{{latest comic}}|:}}).

So, yes there would be a value to update manually, but that's not really much and if it's part of a process I don't think that would be a big drawback, and on the other hand I think it would be less error-prone than an automatic calculation, and allow more useful things. And make less use of redirects as well. Furthermore, the current {{LATESTCOMIC}}, used quite a lot (in the sidebar, so in every page actually), makes heavy use of the {{#ifexist:...}} parser function, qualified as "expensive", so even though it may not be a big deal it could be a better option to try to avoid that...

What do you think?

Cos (talk) 16:53, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Quick interjection in the middle of this larger posting, but I've been playing around with a template that should radically simplify the exhaustive and expensive logic used by {{LATESTCOMIC}} by using date math. It's been simmering in my test kitchen, and I'm fairly sure it's robust enough to roll out... just one thing: it would be much more efficient if we had the Variables extension (ie, ADMIN REQUEST) else there would be a lot of duplicate recalculation of the date. Not terrible, but not as good as it could be. See {{LatestComicOnDate}} and the associated talk page for the guts of it. -- IronyChef (talk) 04:14, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

A few considerations:

• We can instead add the edit link directly to the comic page. It could be generated by the {{comic}} template, which already has to be provided with both the number and the title of the comic (in fact those could even be automatically extracted from the page title with some string parsing functions or clever templates). This should solve the "edit this comic" link issue.
• Actually, the discussion part was hidden from the main page on purpose (although for a different reason: it was transcluding the main page's own talk page instead). I am not sure it's a good idea to include it in the main page as it could clutter it, but I can understand the point of putting it there. I would suggest perhaps including it directly rather than inside the {{comic discussion}} box, as that would create a box on a box layout that I don't think would look too good. Note that there is no problem with needing the pagename here, since we can transclude a redirect (the same way the actual comic page is transcluded using only the number, which is a redirect).
• I did see that edit and was thinking that we could probably display a custom info message whenever someone attempts to edit main page, so they'll know they can edit the actual comic page. I'll add that to my todo list.
• Mediawiki itself will tell us when a potentially expensive parser function is being used too much, by placing the corresponding page in Category:Pages with too many expensive parser function calls. So we don't need to be concerned with premature optimization :)

--Waldir (talk) 19:16, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

The edit link can be displayed, specifically on the main page, by the {{comic}} template, that is true; it just seems wrong to me however, it's not his job to do so...

As for the comments, they cannot be displayed by the template (unless we put them before the explanation), so we still don't have a solution for them; and I still believe they would be very useful on the main page, very appealing for readers to come and comment as well.

So, problem still not solved I would say... - Cos (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the problem with {{comic}} displaying the edit link on the main page, especially since you consider using it to display the discussion as well (which, I agree, unfortunately isn't possible)

I added the discussion to the main page. It will depend on a redirect being created for the talk page as well every time a new comic is released, but it doesn't make it any harder. Compare:

1. Create comic page at [[123: title]]
2. Update {{latest comic}}
3. Redirect [[123]] to [[123: title]] (it's necessary to allow people to get to the comic with only the number)

with:

1. Create comic page at [[123: title]]
2. Redirect [[123]] to [[123: title]]
3. Redirect [[Talk:123]] to [[Talk:123: title]]

Therefore, I don't see a strong case for creating the {{latest comic}} template. --Waldir (talk) 20:31, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

You're right, the two systems are equivalent in use; but then is there a strong case to keep the current one against using the one I suggested?

Currently we cannot get an "add a comment" link on the main page, and to put the "edit this explanation" banner below the explanation one has to put it on the comic page (and manually remove it once the comic is not the latest any more). And when there is no comments yet, the main page displays a weird red link (transclusion of the redirect page to a non-existant page) instead of displaying (for instance) a nice "No comments yet".

True, the {{comic}} template could be used to, specifically on the main page, display something like "view page - edit - add a comment" on top-right, but that doesn't solve all these issues, and then the links wouldn't be at their ideal place. And one could argue that all the features I'm speaking about are not absolutely necessary, but I still think it would be better at least.

All in all, I can live with the current system, but I still believe a manually updated {{latest comic}} would allow, without cost, to set a better layout of content, navigation links and edit/comment links.

Cos (talk) 16:46, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

• I am in agreement that the goal should be to have the ability to comment directly onto the main page for the current comic.

Can all pages be formatted to look like the main page (ie header with number of comics explained/remaining and the 3 paragraphs at the end describing the site).

If this could be done (I don't think it would clutter the site as these take up very little space even on the main page), then could we just redirect the main page to the comic with the highest number? The function of the main page would not change as a new user would still see all information currently available on the main page, but it would have the added benefit of sending visitors to the desired location (the fully functional current comic page).

Shine (talk) 17:23, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

How to reference strips?

I think we need to agree on a citation style for strips in plain prose. I.e. If the Black Hat article says "Black Hat first appears in ________", how are we filling that blank? In this case, the blank is 29: Hitler. As I understand it, proper style for an "episode" name typically is quotes, so the stip is "Hitler". But there's still various options:

1. "Hitler" [quotes not linked]
2. "Hitler" [quotes linked]
3. Comic #29
4. #29
5. 29: Hitler
6. "Hitler" (29)
7. "Hitler" (#29)

etc.

Anyone have any opinions? TheHYPO (talk) 21:38, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Option 5. above seems the simplest, yet readable and informative. At most I'd prepend a # sign, like so: #29: Hitler. Being a link should be enough to differentiate it from the rest of the text (without needing quote signs). Alternatively, #7 also may be an acceptable option, but we'd need a template to make sure the formatting is maintained in all such references... I don't think it's worth the extra complexity. --Waldir (talk) 23:54, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Whatever we decide, let's encode it into the {{xkcd}} and/or {{explain}} templates, and just agree to use those templates. That allows central administration of the stylistic issues and gives editors a simple rule to follow. Minor tweaks to either would afford that flexibility. Right now, they generate the links xkcd 29 and xkcd 29 respectively, though the latter can be xkcd 29: Hitler without much fuss. -- IronyChef (talk) 05:58, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I support modifying the {{explain}} template to be along the lines of proposal number five. Omega ^{Talk • Contribs} 09:20, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Five. yes. --Jeff (talk) 18:15, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Sidebar icons

Hi all. I hope you'll forgive my enthusiasm but I went ahead and implemented an icon theme for the sidebar (as well as more spacing between the links, for extra breathing room). What do you guys think of it? --Waldir (talk) 21:45, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I like it, but I'm not sure where you added them. Was that on a MediaWiki: page or one of the .css pages? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:39, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Both :) Mediawiki:Common.css --Waldir (talk) 09:07, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Cueball/Rob

I noticed someone edited the character template to add an article for "Rob". I thought this might have just been a vandal edit, but I googled 'xkcd Rob' and discovered that indeed, a Cueball chracter has been referenced as Rob in several strips. Is there a reason Cueball hasn't been designated officially "Rob" just as Megan has been designated Megan by being named in a few strips? Do we have reason to believe that other Cueballs are non-Rob characters? PS: this might not be the right place for this discussion, but I'm not sure if anyone is reading article discussion pages at this point yet, and I thought that the name of the primary character might be a notable issue of discussion TheHYPO (talk) 14:07, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm unclear on this as well. Cueball was just a name made up (I think here on this site) for the main character of the comic. Are there separate characters for Cueball and Rob? I'm not sure. --Jeff (talk) 15:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I know that "Cueball" has now been severely grandfathered in, but I think we have to consider moving Cueball over to Rob and basically considering the Cueball character to be "Rob", in the same way as Megan, unless it's clear that the character isn't Rob, since Cueball, as noted, is not an official title. I'm somewhat leaning in this direction.

I do see some leakage of the term "Cueball" into other sites via a google search including xkcd forums. In the alternatively, I would suggest mentioning in the Cueball article that he has been referred to as "Rod" in some comics, but due to his lack of distinguishing physical traits, it is not always clear if a comic is depicting Rod, or a different character. TheHYPO (talk)

I have to agree with this. When I first heard about the page on "Rob", I was a bit skeptical, as I couldn't recall hearing the name before and the page was ridiculous at the time. However, after looking him up to try and verify the page, I found a number of "Cueball" characters that were referred to as "Rob", officially (and even an instance where the transcript referred to the character as "Rob" when the comic didn't mention a name). TL; DR: The character we've all called "Cueball" seems to be more properly known as "Rob". Omega ^{Talk • Contribs} 22:46, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Citation needed... I, for one, would oppose the migration away from Cueball.

1. Wikipedia has been silent on the matter, giving no more credibility to the apellation than Cueball.
2. Transcripts in xkcd typically (granted, with a few exceptions) refer to the various stick figures as Person 1, etc. Frequently, there are several stick figures, all essentially the same generic stick-figure shape. Rob is a specific proper noun, and it would be silly to suggest that each stick figure is named Rob. Cueball, on the other hand, while filling the role of a proper noun, is still generic enough to suggest the any-man nature of the figures. It is descriptive more than nominative.
3. Local color. That's part of what distinguishes this site from others, and part of why I've been coming back. I for one would be sad to see that replaced with MacDonalds-like sameness. I might reconsider if RM's About page definitively said "his name is Rob"... but only reluctantly.

So -1 on the proposition to migrate away from Cueball. -- IronyChef (talk) 04:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

To respond to your points, #1, Wikipedia is not official or a primary source; it's a community edit encyclopedia like this one. If you'd like me to go over there and reference "Rob", then all of a sudden Wikipedia will say Rob. Wikipedia isn't the source of credibility for xkcd imo. #2 is interesting, and I take it as a fair point (I'm not suggesting that in every case we see a Cueball it is the same character) but my interest here is consistency. Megan appears in many comic strips where she is listed as "person 2" in the transcript, such as 1084. Should she be given a generic name other than where she is named (Cuebelle?) Similarly for #3, Megan is not refernced on the xkcd About page; it's about consistency. I understand color and such, but to an extent, when you take something that's a blog and turn it into a wiki style pseudo-encyclopedia, one of the casualties sometimes is color. It became inappropriate to use phrases like "I think" in explanations just because of the way the articles are perceived. In the same way, consistency is something that I think is important when going to this style format. TheHYPO (talk) 14:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Just want to insert here that I laughed at "Cubelle" above, but though I enjoyed it, I'd have to say the visual similarity to Cueball would likely cause confusion. Props for the suggestion, though.--DanB (talk) 18:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

• Agreed that Wikipedia is not official or primary, but it is de-facto (it's likely more linked-to than even xkcd.com is on this site, for some reason.) That standing gives it a level of authority no other site has except the source itself. And agreed, one could very easily go and add Rob, or Cueball, or some other designation to the character(s). But nobody to date has (or, if they have, it may very likely have been reverted, being subject to that evolutionary force Wikipedia in aggregate exerts on subjects there, on needing to be noteworthy.) So while not an absolute authority, it caries a gravitas that other than xkcd itself, no other site really posesses on the matter, and so far, it (the collective body of contributors) has not deemed it important to settle the matter.
• I'm also not altogether convinced that, in transmogrification from blog to wiki, it necessarily follows that we must become more Wikipedia-like. The medium has afforded a democratization of information here, but not a requirement that information lose its local flavor to become some dessicated academic dissertation. "I think" is, in my opinion, as valid here as it always was, and mediawiki doesn't necessarily impose otherwise.
• As for consistency, it serves its purpose, but generally I'm not one to be ruled by hobgoblins.

Anyway, the foregoing being only my opinion, and having express it, I leave it at that. Other minds may differ. -- IronyChef (talk) 02:30, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me that this discussion has moved away from Cueball/Rob, and perhaps is deserving of it's own section now. When this site was a blog, and not a wiki, there was a clear separation between Jeff's explanations in the main body of the post, and the comments below. For the most part, Jeff wrote in an "editorial voice", and I don't recall a lot of "I think", "In my opinion", etc in the main posting (there was an occasional "I don't get this, can anyone explain it?", but that's clearly different). I know, at least, I've tried to maintain that color here: in the main page, editorial voice; in the discussion section (included at the bottom of every page, usually), personal voice. I think that works well. In my opinion, I think that "I think" and "In my opinion" have no place where it's not clear who the speaker is. The main pages are group edited, and have no identified speaker, so I wouldn't put it there. Blaisepascal (talk) 02:53, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I concur that Wikipedia has some gravitas over any other site, and there is a reason it has links here (it is easier to link to an existing encyclopedia article on quantum physics than to start from scratch explaining it here. But in the same way that this may soon be a "wikipedia" for all things xkcd, that still doesn't make explainxkcd official. It may be considered a more reliable source of information than some random blogger, but that doesn't make it an official source. Wikipedia, notably, doesn't call Cueball anything. If it called him Cueball, that would be one thing - the name would have pervaded culture outside this website; but Wikipedia takes no position; I don't see how we can take Wikipedia's failure to reference the character at all and use this as a rationale to make any decision on this site one way or another.

I will respond to BlaisePascal's editorial voice comment in a new section TheHYPO (talk) 15:40, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Default color?

Frankly, I'm not even sure this is an issue on the wiki's end vs. the browser's default, but I've noticed this with other wiki-based software. With the default of Blue links and Purple visited links, I've been noticing a lot lately that the Purple visited links are not really standing out from the otherwise black text. Not sure why this is. Is anyone else noticing this? I'm having a hard time finding wikilinks in text that I've already visited. Perhaps it's just me. TheHYPO (talk) 14:37, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

As a color blind user of explainxkcd, I'd like to put in a vote to up the contrast between visited and not links on the wiki. It doesn't need to be much, but more than it is now would be infinitely helpful. lcarsos (talk) 21:21, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Has this gone anywhere? I still find it hard to see the visited links (they now simply look like the rest of the text). And the unvisited links are hard to focus on. I'm not sure I can explain it any better. lcarsos (talk) 20:25, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments

Please let me know where the comments are for the latest comic. If I'm not the only one who can't find them, can there be a link next to the comic?

Editorial Voice

This section is split off in response to a comment by user:Blaisepascal in the Cueball/Rob discussion above.

I concur with Blaisepascal on the editorial voice issue. "first person" has no place in a wiki, as there is no single editor to be "I". I have a recollection that when the wiki started, Jeff said something about how in moving to a wiki, he had attempted to edit most of the explanations that has been moved over to remove most of the first-person references, but he invited others to continue this where he missed them. I can't, however, find this reference anywhere anymore. Assuming I am not making this up in my own mind, it's Jeff's site, so I think his style wishes are paramount.

I agree that most of the personal references on explainxkcd are things like "let's see if I get this right" or "Did I miss something?" or general bloggish comments like sorry I'm late to post; but there are other posts such as this one in which part of Jeff's post was: "This is another one of those xkcd's that I classify as "emo". [...] Since there is nothing to explain here, [...] I'll wait for the next comic that makes a joke about Lord of the Rings and wormholes or something" when moved over here.

The wiki format changes the nature of the explanations. It makes them no longer one person's opinion on the meaning of a comic. It is now a wiki where members of the public will aim to have a complete and accurate explanation built from many editors' thoughts and corrections. I don't think the articles need have encyclopedic definity. I have no issue with phrases like "it appears" or "it may be" where something is ambiguous, but "I think" or "I did a Google search" are not wikipropriate. TheHYPO (talk) 15:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

For the most part I completely agree. But I think that the explanations should not be boring. Even without personal pronouns, many of them have a congenial tone, not an overbearing one.

For example, when I brought over 1030: Keyed, I took out the personal pronouns, but I left in the comment "Oh Beret Guy, never change." I started coming to the site, in part, because of the tone. I think that that should be preserved despite the inherent non-oneness of the wiki. lcarsos (talk) 22:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

But the tone should not reflect individuals' tastes. Let the reader decide. --Smartin (talk) 04:47, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Discussion comments link?

• Does anyone else think that the {{comic discussion}} template should have an argument added for some way to display a link to the comments section of the original blog posts for older comics? TheHYPO (talk) 15:48, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that it would always be clear what the comments are referring to since the explanation may differ from the original.-Shine (talk) 21:21, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
    • I hear you, and that's a valid point; but it seems a shame to just discard the upwards of a hundred comments that sometimes took place on the old blog. I guess it also matters whether User:Jeff intends to delete the blog version at some point given the wiki. If it is going to stay up, why not link to the archived comments? The original blog post would be viewable there as well, if there were any differences relevant to those comments. TheHYPO (talk) 14:03, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
• I would, however, like something to be done about the issue of new users finding the discussion section from the explain wiki main page. A suggestion I saw recently on the old site by rewq^ suggesting changing 'go to this comic' to 'comments' would solve the problem. I think it could also be changed to 'go to comments' - Shine (talk) 21:21, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

That's an inventive answer to an intesreting question

LiveJournal content

I've noticed that people are putting content from Randall's LiveJournal account into comic articles here, which I think is good. But I'd like to make some style suggestions around that.

Let's look at xkcd 42. Now, until someone explicitly pointed it out, I had no idea xkcd started on a LiveJournal account, so comments like "Original quote" or "Original comment" or "Original title" were confusing to me. I had no idea the source of this information. Now that I know better, my suggestions are as follows:

1. These shouldn't be listed as "trivia". This is official content. I would suggest perhaps this be included in a "Background" section with any other background info on the comic (e.g. for some recent comics, it might reference Randall's fiancée's health issues for relevant comics).
2. This "Background" section contains official content and more official than the "Explanation". The Background section should therefore go first.
3. The section should be written in prose, not point form. My sample replacement for the above article would be "this comic was originally posted on Randall's LiveJournal account with the comment "No laughing, 'less you want some of this too! *hefts golf club menacingly*". Randall listed his mood at the time as "sick". The comic was actually the Xth comic posted on the LiveJournal account, and was included out-of-order when it was numbered as part of xkcd.
4. I think LiveJournal should have a brief article about the original LJ account.
5. I note that on other wiki's including, for example Memory alpha (example) and on Wikipedia, they often have boxes showing the 'previous'/'next' things on a list (prev/next songs to hit #1 on different music charts, or prev/next tv episodes produced vs. aired). Should we give thought to creating a short sub-list of the Order comics were actually posted on the Livejournal so you can prev/next through that list?

Thoughts? TheHYPO (talk) 22:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I added most of the LJ related "Trivia" just to get it into the wiki. I think expanding it would be nice, but I'm a bit lazy :) I did add a new category for the LJ posts, so they should be easier to find. There are still a few that do not (that I can find) appear in LJ, so I left as "undated" - but added the undated category that someone else had created. I was also considering creating a list ordered by LJ posting order on the LJ category page (to be created) to at least preserve some of the nostalgia. Is there another pre-xkcd site besides LJ that posts might have appeared in? Or are these "undated" posts possibly others that were just lumped into the "early posts" on xkcd? --B. P. (talk) 21:05, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

There are three undated comics that I found (and I noted them on the "big board" of all comics at list of all comics. If no one disagrees, I will start moving sections when I have time and creating any new sections as "Background" rather than "Trivia" where the sections relate to the history or backstory of the comic itself. TheHYPO (talk) 16:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The three undated comics do not appear on LiveJournal, just on the xkcd.com site. Given that (a) all of the comics on LJ from before 2006-1-1 are dated 2006-1-1 on xkcd, (b) all the ones after are dated with the same dates as on LJ, and (c) the three undated comics appear in the middle of the pre-2006 comics on LJ, I suspect that Randall posted them to the xkcd site first, and as part of a batch of comics he posted to bootstrap the site. So it's entirely likely that the 2006-1-1 date is accurate. Blaisepascal (talk) 16:18, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I added, in the "Trivia" section, a "thread" tying all the LJ comics together, in order. In doing so, I also added the half-dozen or so LJ comics not yet added. Blaisepascal (talk) 16:18, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Programmatically Accessing Comics

I think there should be a way for other websites to view* explanations, (discussions?), etc programmatically.

This could be used for the front page, or a website wanting to show an explanation of a comic that is always up-to-date and correct, etc.

* I wrote view, but it could also be edit.

--grep:talk:applaud:smite

This could be done with json responses to individual pages including the current explanation for that comic. Similar to how the xkcd json api works now. I don't know if that is feasible in php though. I'm currently on a RoR craze though, so maybe there's an easier and less over-engineered solution I don't know about. lcarsos (talk) 17:18, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

A cheap way out would be to have PHP page access the SQL DB and yank the necessary text from there. This could be useful for a naitive mobile app. Also, this site needs a mobile version. --grep:talk:applaud:smite

New Edit Explanation Image/Link (Introduced 9/22/12)

Some initial thoughts.

• Will this be a permanent part of each comic? I would not be in favor of each comic in the archives having this disclaimer/large repetitive image as part of the explanation. Instead, can this just be part of the most recent comic?
• The other issue I have is that main page now has one direct link to editing the explanation (the thing least done by users) and none to editing discussion/adding comments (the thing most done by users). I see that the talk page is now displayed on the main page, which I think is a good thing, but I hope that someone can also get the 'add a comment' link on the main page as well.
• In the end I feel there should be links for editing the explanation and adding comments/discussion on the main page and that these links should be proportional in size to their traffic by users (re the link for adding to the discussion should be equal to or larger than the link for the explanation).

--Shine (talk) 14:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

A few pointers about that:

• I introduced the "edit explanation" image/link below the explanation I gave for today's comic, mainly because I felt what I had written was indeed incomplete (I was lacking an explanation for the "[has only one review]" part and for the title text). So in a way that was some sort of calling for help with the explanation. And once done I thought it was a good idea to have a highly visible "edit" link for the latest comic explanation on the main 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", as I said here).
• Later on, I added the "may be incorrect" notion in the banner, because I saw that people having different explanations only mentioned them in the comments, instead of editing my explanation (which after all could be wrong). So I fear there's some sort of "we don't touch what has been done" effect, where the first explanation given will be more likely to stick and not be corrected by readers who are not used to the idea that they can edit it (actually, if someone has a better explanation than the one I put, I'd be happy to see it corrected!).
• That edit banner should not be a permanent part of each comic. My opinion is that it should stay on the latest comic's page (even when the explanation could be considered complete) until there is a new comic, in order to invite as much people as possible to share their explanation; and it should also, of course, be on the comic pages for which the explanation is considered incomplete, for instance this (empty) or that (partial only).
• It would be nice indeed to have also, on the main page, a direct link to add a comment (exactly like the one on the comic page), but that is currently not feasible automatically. This is one of the reasons why I suggested an other way to handle the latest comic (see #Latest comic handling above), which I actually still think would be better, and in particular which would allow to do all that (including the edit banner) nicely automatically from the main page.

Cos (talk) 15:20, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Notice templates

I would like to suggest a template for a notice saying "this page requires copy editing," and one saying "this page may be unclear in its meaning," or something of the sort for each. the comic posted on 8/22/12 could use both of these. (unsigned comment by Dave 19:11, 23 August 2012‎ )

I agree. I discussed this matter with User:Blaisepascal in respect of his template {{Incomplete}} on its talk page. I have updated that template to {{Incomplete/beta1}} and created {{ambox}} as a generic message box xkcd-style where other message templates can be created and color coded like on wikipedia, such as the ones you suggest.

Unfortunately, because of the image scaling issues, the ambox template displays two broken images at the moment which we agreed shouldn't replace the existing template until the images are unbroken. I'm not sure anyone is working on the image scaling problem, is one of the issues. In any event, I also don't see the point in creating other notice templates until the issue is fixed and we can use the standardized template. I'm really hoping someone is working on the image scaling problem... TheHYPO (talk) 16:36, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I changed the template to use the {{notice}} template that is already being used in several places. I'll delete {{ambox}} as it's redundant, but the styling of {{notice}} can be changed if such is desired. --Waldir (talk) 02:40, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Denoting comic "series"

There are several "series" of comics. Is there a better/prefered way of notating these? Currently I have been creating a "Category:Series Name", e.g. (not all of these exist yet)

• [Category:Comics featuring Barrel Boy](1-5) (Should this be just "Barrel Boy"?)
• [Category:Journal](1-5)
• [Category:The Race](1-5)
• [Category:My Hobby](random)
• [Category:1337](1-5)
• [Category:Choices](1-5)
• [Category:Parody Week](5 in this "series", but others fit the genre)
• [Category:Red Spiders](4 in this "genre", 2 explicitly numbered)
• [Category:Secretary](1-5)
• [Category:Five-Minute Comics](1-3)
• [Category: Guest Week](5 comics, but not exactly a "series").

I usually also create a REDIRECT of "Series Name" to "Category: Series Name"(breaks for "Journal", as it is also a comic title. Should we have another meta-category for series comics? What about a [Series:Series Name] "category"? or does that break wiki? --B. P. (talk) 23:33, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Categories for Proposals Page

Maybe just simply two categories, resolved and unresolved? --grep:talk:applaud:smite

Or stickers that say Open/Closed. --grep:talk:applaud:smite

Moving the Wiki ✓ Closed

What if explainxkcd.com/wiki was move to explainxkcd.com and explainxkcd.com would be moved to explainxkcd.com/blog? --grep:talk:applaud:smite

+1 (44)

-1 (0)

That's my plan long term. That might make a lot of things like shortURL possible. Just have to get some time to get it sorted out. --Jeff (talk) 19:58, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

---

Sorry if your votes don't appear immediately. I will have them update automatically soon. Hopefully. And if you clicked my signature wanting to +1 this page, sorry for the confusion. DanB and Lcarsos, your +1's have been added to the count. --grep:talk:applaud:smite

+1 from me. --DanB (talk) 14:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

+1 as well. I keep hitting the blog when I mean to go to the wiki. lcarsos (talk) 15:00, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Chart type comics

Some comics (circuit diagram, US states,eyes sights, among others) are in a characteristic chart format- where it is all based around a chart of some kind or the other. Should we have a separate template for them, for the type of comics?

And somebody should actually create all the pages in the required format without explanations, so that other users can fill on the explanation. I can give explanations, but need somebody to make the pages first

TheOriginalSoni (talk) 17:05, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

All the images have been uploaded, and a template exists at User:Blaisepascal/newcomictemplate that can be copied/pasted into a new comic page that just needs to be filled in. User:Lcarsos has written a Ruby importer script that will create an almost-ready-to-upload page for you. All you need to do is fill in the explanation, proof-read, and add useful Wiki links. You don't need special privileges to create new pages.

Personally, I find comic pages devoid of explanation counter to the intent of this site, and I try not to create them. If I put up a page, I try to make sure it has an explanation. Blaisepascal (talk) 18:22, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Blaisepascal. If a comic does not have an explanation its page should not exist so that it is easy to tell how much work there is left to be done. If suddenly all the pages are created, but none of them have explanations, a passing user won't know that there is still work to be done, and potentially won't pitch in to help complete the site.

As far as charts go, be sure to tag them with Category:Charts and I like to change the transcript into a wiki table format. Of course, if the page doesn't have a transcript section then be sure you get the transcript from xkcd's json api (There is information about how to work it in explain xkcd:Community portal/Coordination#Issue dates, as well as my Ruby script pulls in the transcript if it exists. You're still on your own to get the explanation from the blog (I'm working on that)).

lcarsos (talk) 18:57, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

New Categories

(cut from Chart Type Comics section above, as seems new topic) Blaisepascal (talk) 00:14, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Also, add a new section for proposing templates. We can have a very varied range of templates, like 'Comics with Black Hat', 'Comics with Raptor reference' etc... That will provide a useful ground for comparision of the most common themes TheOriginalSoni (talk) 16:44, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

From context, I assume that by "templates", you mean "categories"? Blaisepascal (talk) 18:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I think you'd benefit from taking a gander at Category:Comics by featured characters and Category:Comics by topic. I think we're still debating what to do about comics with actual people in them. But that will get you a good start. lcarsos (talk) 21:55, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd be okay with creating a Category:Comics featuring real people and including sub-categories for Cory Doctorow, the Firefly cast, RMS, Ron Paul, and other recurring real-life people.

But then, my general philosophy is more links, more pages, more explanation the better. One-shot fictional characters (like ponytail-Sarah in 84: National Language) probably don't need their own category/page, though.Blaisepascal (talk) 02:06, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I really like that idea. I too am of the more categories tribe, but I prefer them to be properly nested. I want to try my hand at creating categories let me see if I can do this. lcarsos (talk) 00:54, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay, the beginnings are in place. Though I used Category:Comics featuring real people as most comics that reference these people, in fact, feature them. I've also created a Playpen balls category under Category:Comics by topic as it seems to me that it's referenced enough that it's necessary.

Question: Should we mirror Featured Characters by also having a page for each character and a Category:Real people, or will the Category pages be good enough?

The categories are going to get/are getting crowded with all the categories, is there a better way to represent them rather than a list? I'm thinking something that looks like Template:navbox-characters except it needs to maintain the link on highlighted items, and it needs to be capable of multiple highlights. I think it would need sections for Featured Characters, Real people, Series (Barrel boy, Secretary, The Race), and Recurring Topics. What I mean by multiple highlights is, if they exist in that comic, i.e. if a comic features Black Hat, Cueball, Cory Doctorow, and Playpen balls, all of those should be highlighted.

lcarsos (talk) 02:37, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

It looks like a good time to resurrect this topic. So, If you are going to categorize pages into a category that doesn't exist yet. MAKE SURE that you create the category page, don't just let it be a red link. That looks so sloppy. While on the subject of sloppy, Alphabetize by type the categories on the comic page. I go: Main characters, minor characters, real people, topics, series.

My personal requirements for making a category:

• For new topics
  • For new topics, must be the central topic of at least two comics, with a few more tangentially related.
  • It should be something that someone reads and goes "I wonder if there are more comics about this?" It is not simply creating a tag cloud for a post on a blog. That metaphor is gone. These are categories, like sections in an index to a book, or rather an encyclopedia.
  • A perfect example of this is Bpothier's introduction of Category:Comics with color. I've often wanted a list of all xkcds to date that have color on them. You'll know you've hit on something when another editor starts going through the pages and adding them to the new category.
• For new recurring characters
  • They must recur. This seems obvious, but Adrian Lamo (for example, AFAIK), only appears in 1337: Part 3. This is a useless category if there are no other comics he appears in. It only goes to clutter up other, well populated categories.
• For other new categories
  • You better have a damn solid case for why you have added a category that wasn't a sub-category of Category:Comics by topic or Category:Comic series. And if you do, be polite and present it on the community portal so that the circling editors don't come in like brain-dead vultures to tear apart and re-parent your new category.

It is brain dead easy to create a page (spam bots do it all the time). It is much more complicated to get a page deleted by an admin once it has been created. You can tag it Category:Pages to delete, but non-spam pages marked this aren't often cleaned out. What I'm trying to say here is, be judicious in picking the names of pages you want to create. It's a pain to have to move Comics featuring Barrel Boy into a Barrel category.

Also, categorizing a page as something because of the explanation is not ok. These categories are here to group comics together, not as a general tag cloud for the wiki.

TL;DR: When creating a new category, create the goddamn category page (red links icky) and have at least 2 pages in the category. For big changes come here and ask first. Wil Wheaton says: "Don't be a dick!"

Questions, comments, improvements, pies to the face accepted. Being-non-useful/criticism-with-intent-to-destroy is rude.

lcarsos (talk) 21:28, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

No, Lcarsos, don't hold back; please tell us what you really think! ;-) All kidding aside, these suggestions seem really pretty good. There may be some subjectivity in terms of what constitutes contributing to a tag cloud vs the categorization you mention here. But as you point out, that understanding is likely to evolve: if one creates a category that somebody else runs with it, that's a pretty good indicator. I'm glad this categorization has been going on as it has; were it not for my de facto role as Grim Spammer-Reaper I'd be in there helping sort and categorize 'em all, too. So huge thanks! -- IronyChef (talk) 05:45, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I assume what you mean by "Alphabetize by type the categories on the comic page. I go: Main characters, minor characters, real people, topics, series." is that one should group categories by type, and then alphabetize within them? If that's the case, I don't see any major issue with that; that said, I tend to add categories by deemed 'importance', i.e. I would add comics featuring Cueball before comics featuring Black Hat or Beret Guy just because Cueball is the central character in the series. Similarly, I would also reorder so that "series" comes before topic, if not before characters as well. The first category a "My Hobby" comic comes into, in my mind, is the "My Hobby" category. Only then is it a comic that happens to feature Cueball, or happens to be on the topic of computers. That's my personal view of it. The only reason I would keep characters first is because it's the most common category type a comic will fall into. TheHYPO (talk) 14:26, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Randall in Comics

In comic 541 (TED Talk), Randall uses a Cueball character to refer to himself. How should this be included in the Wiki? Cited: http://xkcd.com/541/ AWiseGuy (talk) 21:50, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I think, since he also seems to appear as himself in 1057: Klout it would be appropriate to create a Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe and parent it to Category:Comics featuring real people. I'll let you do that. lcarsos (talk) 22:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Characters appearing only by name.

I've noticed that in several comics, known and named characters appear by name only without any physical appearance. Off the top of my head, I can think of Miss Lenhart (who actually appears twice by name before making her first real appearance: http://xkcd.com/135/ and in http://xkcd.com/416/) and Rob in comic 1102. I think these should be included as appearances, or under some other related but separate category, because they do provide character development. Thoughts on this? AWiseGuy (talk) 19:51, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I consider references to be apperances. Anyone interested in reading all comics relating to that character or looking for a specific comic featuring that character might be remmebering one where it was a mention by name, not by apperance, and they should be included in the categories for ease of reference, IMO. TheHYPO (talk) 20:13, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

There's also Cory Doctorow, and I personally would like to know more about him. I came to explainxkcd to find out who he is, and he's not even mentioned. So he should be added to this list of characters by name. -- ‎205.189.255.122 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Also explain cartoons from the XKCD book?

Hi! As many of you surely know, many comics from the main site were featured in the book xkcd: volume 0. Some of them where altered or had extra explanations. Moreover, there where quite a few riddles and new comics in the book, which should be explained here, too. The forums did a great job on solving the great big riddles which lead to the legendary "official" XKCD-meetup with Randall. --137.193.213.160 09:37, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Oops, for got to log in, this suggestion came from me: Gefrierbrand (talk) 09:48, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Just add 'explain' before the 'xkcd.com'

You know how you there are services like YouTube Repeat which let you go to the corresponding part of their site by just adding `repeat` before the `.com` of the YouTube video URL?

Likewise, let us just add `explain` before the `xkcd.com` part in any comic URL and let it redirect us to the appropriate wiki post. For example: `explainxkcd.com/1000` would redirect to `http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1000`. I think since the site is based on PHP, it'd be very easy to just send a 301 Redirect header along.

This will be of immense comfort and will probably see me and others using ExplainXKCD.com a lot mre ! Happy reading :)

 -- YatharthROCK (talk) 15:17, 16 September 2012 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

In a way, that's the plan... per #Moving the Wiki above, the `/wiki` part would disappear, and with shortURL at the same time (mentioned there and at other places as well), the `index.php?title=` would disappear as well. Therefore, explainxkcd.com/1000 would get you the 1000 page, which itself redirects to the explanation of the comic (1000: 1000 Comics). So I guess the only issue is: when will this be done?... - Cos (talk) 10:38, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd LOVE this working. I've worked on this a bunch and only succeeded in bricking the site. If anyone has any advice, I'd love the help. --Jeff (talk) 18:04, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that there is a wiki way to do this, as I've never set up mediawiki before (I should get around to it though). But from 10,000 feet it appears to me that all of the wiki software lives inside a /wiki/ directory on the server, and the blog lives in the root directory. Currently, all of mediawiki's pages are being generated by being passed GET variables, and all of WordPress' pages are being generated by its use of mod_rewrite (why the difference, I don't know. I've never set up mediawiki, and thus never had to try to get mod_rewrite working for it). This is a problem, because any url sent to the server such as explainxkcd.com/1000 is causing the server to look for a directory named 1000, and when it doesn't find it, it invokes mod_rewrite and passes 1000 to the index.php of the root directory as a search term, which activates WordPress which searches for any entries dated in the year 1000 (Wordpress treats the first "directory" as the year), naturally none exist so WordPress generates a 404 error.

While the blog exists, I think the only way to do this would be to write a .htaccess that conditionally reroutes directory misses to /wiki/ so something like explainxkcd.com/1000 would be sent to explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1000 but explainxkcd.com/2012/04 would still be sent to WordPress to find entries posted in April 2012.

As soon as we can get rid of the blog (which is not yet, because there are a lot of explanations still there that haven't been migrated over) the logic that has to be in the .htaccess becomes much simpler. Anything gets redirected to explainxkcd.com/wiki/. I say anything, and I mean anything because URI requests for anything under explainxkcd.com/wiki/ apache will find the /wiki/ directory and pass everything into there (mod_rewrite or as it currently is) and anything not matchin the /wiki/ directory can be 302'd into /wiki/ for the wiki to find it.

I hope that makes sense. If that's too long, let me sum up. TL;DR: Not very feasible until all explanations in the blog are in the wiki and we can get rid of WordPress.

--lcarsos (talk) 18:52, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Yup - I certainly would be using htaccess file and that's the approach that has NOT worked in the past. It is possible it needs some tweaking so that it works for the wiki. I'm not sure. --Jeff (talk) 19:09, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

What if you had a script to make a redirect file to the wiki with that comic. So it would make a file 1, 2, ..., 473, ..., etc. Each file (eg 1111) would redirect to /wiki/index.php?title=1111. Then when a better solution is invented, a simple regex ([0-9]+\.php or [0-9]+\.html) would remove all the unnecessary files. --grep:talk 15:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, joining the conversation: Could we perhaps also ask the original administrator of explainxkcd to redirect the address of his site here? It'll be easier to get here and it might generate more traffic as well. --Jimmy C (talk) 01:48, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The person you would want to talk about that is Jeff. The very same Jeff that started, and is bureaucrat of this wiki. So, read the conversation that happened above, and you'll see some of the technical reasons why this hasn't happened yet. And again, I ask that you please comment in chronological order, and that you don't add your comment in a place that it disrupts all of the nested conversation that's already happened. There was an entire comment thread that you put your new comment in the middle of. It was hard to tell if you wanted to reply to this section's OP or anyone else in that thread. lcarsos_a (talk) 08:22, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Add explanations for what-if.xkcd.com

A new sub-site from Randall calls for new explanations. This might not need quite as much explaining, but it is worthy of reference anyway. --Divad27182 (talk) 16:01, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

I think Randall actually does quite a good job of explaining everything in what-if. If we had a go at it, it would pretty much just be a page with a link to general and special relativity pages of wikipedia. Other than that, he provides links for almost everything he discusses. lcarsos (talk) 18:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

But we may want to discuss his topics among ourselves. I am reading the lightning topic today, and wishing I could comment on it or add fragments of my own experience to it.Noni Mausa (talk) 11:32, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

...then you have http://forums.xkcd.com, made exactly for that purpose; in particular: xkcd • View topic - What-if 0016: Lightning.

Don't want to seem unfriendly here, I'm not trying to "get you out of here", it's just that if you want to discuss his topics, comment on it or add fragments of your own experience to it, then I believe that would be the best place for you to do so; and where you could find other people to share it, as well.

Cos (talk) 17:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I will go have a look. I'm somewhat of a newbie, quod erat demonstrandum.Noni Mausa (talk) 02:37, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

News Links

Certain pages have custom news links. Many use the generic news link, which these days refers to what-if.xkcd.com. Template "comic" should probably explcitly support and display custom news. (An effort should be made at times to scan for updated news.) --Divad27182 (talk) 16:01, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

And, of course, there should be a category for anything with custom news. --Divad27182 (talk) 16:05, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

New List requests

List of comics related to cancer - (Umwelt, 818,828,836,925,931,933)

[Keep on adding new requests below this] TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:24, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Good suggestion. One observation... this is essentially a democratic institution, so feel free to put the catagory tags on each of these pages and get those editorial props due to you for recommending the category. I'm guessing [[Category:Cancer]] should be a good start. -- IronyChef (talk) 23:06, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Ok, I think we need to start considering disambiguation pages.

Off the top of my head there's

• 17: What If and what if?
• 786: Exoplanets and 1071: Exoplanets

If you search "what if" the redirect takes you to the 17: What If. I've added a note to that page that links to what if?.

Exoplanets (the title redirect) is an informal disambiguation page. But, neither comic links to the other one in case someone clicks links and gets to the wrong page.

In terms of notes on pages that there is a disambiguation page that they might be looking for, I think that the note should be made under the comic template so that people clicking the next/previous links don't have to move their cursor (I find nothing more infuriating than having a next/previous link move around as I'm browsing a website).

Anyone else? Thoughts? lcarsos (talk) 15:42, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

RSS Feed

We need a new RSS feed so people using news readers can easily be notified of new comics. -- 67.186.234.12 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

First and foremost, a disambiguation: We are not xkcd. We are a group of people who love xkcd and sometimes a joke goes over our head, and we'd go into fits of OCD rage if we don't understand every joke in xkcd.

If you want to read xkcd, subscribe to the RSS feed that Randall provides. here's a link A new xkcd is posted at midnight eastern (US East coast) of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

We are just here for the explanation, which is community based. It takes quite a few edits from many people before an explanation is really explained-to-death and every joke found and beaten with a club to extract maximum joke-explanation value. But there's usually a fairly substantial effort at an explanation by noon eastern. That's about the best we can offer you.

--lcarsos (talk) 06:19, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Comic Difficulty score

We should add a difficulty score to each page. Each XKCD comic could be awarded a score based on the number of people that have to visit explainxkcd.com on the day a comic is posted and a couple days after. Inspired by comic: http://www.xkcd.com/1137/

Jim

That is a cool idea! --St.nerol (talk) 22:06, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Contributions and revert buttons

The main vandalism comes from IP adresses, and one IP may attack more than one page when it logs on. So its best to have a contributions link show up beside user page and talk page for every page history and signature; and wherever else it is used that way.

Also a quick way to deal with vandalism is to have two buttons on the show history page- 1. Revert this edit [undo] (for all, including IP users, not just normal users) 2. Revert to this edit (Just beside every edit on the edit history)

These two buttons (links, whatever u call them) will make it much more efficient for vandal-reverters to tackle them down.

TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:08, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh and an easy template to keep tagging vandals, and vandalism affected articles, as well as a quick way to say that whatever we are doing is editing vandalism. I truly would not want to press any more than 4 buttons/clicks ideally on one page when I am trying to revert edits.

The tagging vandals and vandalism affected pages will help admins keep fast track of whos the worst vandal and block that range of IPs from editing (except to submit edit request to admins) and which are worst affected pages (to protect them) TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:15, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Subsection for title text explanation

Hey! On trial I created subsections for some longer explanations of the title text on some pages, like this: 804: Pumpkin Carving#Explanation. Do you think that is helpful? – St.nerol (talk) 22:22, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. In some cases it might be the best choice. I just did that on 1074: Moon Landing too :) --Waldir (talk) 19:01, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Making a special sub-section for the title text only makes sense for large explanations. Explanations that are maybe only 2-3 scrappy paragraphs, and then an explanation of the title text, is not so dense that it is hard to find it. I like this as an idea, but I think that only the really large explanations should have the subsection. lcarsos_a (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Explain other webcomics too?

How about we explain other webcomics too, e.g. Penny Arcade? --SurturZ (talk) 02:36, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Good god, no. We've barely even finished xkcd. All these explanations pages still need a lick of polish, and there's still heaps of red links in the list of all comics page. Also, the wiki's called explainxkcd. Davidy²²[talk] 02:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Whatever Happened to the Template? & Transcript Redirect

I've been using the template whenever I make a new page for an explanation, but I think it's been gone for a couple of weeks now. Does anyone think they could possibly resurrect it? I'm just here to explain, I'm really not a pro with the technical details, so please bear with me.

Also, I got to thinking: In the List of All Comics, there are redirects for the Number, the Title, and the Talk pages, but has anyone thought about making a redirect for the transcript? I'm pushing for transcript help in a bunch of different areas mostly because I think people have been filling it in themselves without going to the site. --Jimmy C (talk) 02:07, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Add unexplained strips

At the moment, browsing through the explanations using the previous and next buttons is interrupted whenever there's an explanation missing.

I think adding a page with the strip fr all of those with a short message like "no one has explained this yet, want to give it a shot?" would make the wiki easier to browse through and will get more strips explained faster.

I don't think that would happen. If suddenly it was much easier for people to skip over pages that had no explanation, I think they would do exactly that, skip right over it. On the same side of that coin, If suddenly there are no longer any red links on the List of all comics then everyone perusing that page assumes that all the comics have been explained and don't need to contribute any more. It's astonishing how quickly an embedded red link gets an explanation page created simply to get rid of the red link.

Secondarily, many of the pages created recently aren't being created with their numerical and titular redirects. Without the numerical redirect, the comic template can't find that there is a previous/next comic to link to. Every once in a while somebody will go through and try to notice all the pages that don't have their redirects created but it's an unscientific process that only happens occasionally. If we could get every joe blow that comes in and vomits up a poorly done explanation to create the redirects I wouldn't be quite as annoyed at their lack of show-don't-tell-manship. But, since they can't be bothered to put the date in the comic template, I doubt we'll ever get people to create the redirects.

TL;DR: No more red links, no more work gets done on the back catalog.

--lcarsos_a (talk) 14:28, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

xplainkcd.com

When I first saw this site I thought it should definitely be at xplainkcd.com or at least redirect from that url -- 115.166.22.158 (talk) 12:45, 3 January 2013 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I like that idea! --Waldir (talk) 13:28, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah! If it's possible, it would be cool! At least as a redirect. -- St.nerol (talk) 15:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Section style and usage

I am new here and I'm trying to get up to speed with the culture. I have a few questions about how and where to use sections (== this ==). I am more willing to go with (and enforce) whatever norms there are here, but I have not seen them actually discussed.

1. Is it OK to create sections in Discussion pages? I have been told no, but there are many examples extant of this usage in this Wiki and indeed in Wikipedia.
2. Section title case Wikipedia's style guide recommends sentence case, not title case. There are many title cased section headers here.
3. Links I do not have a reference for this but it seems to me putting links in section code (== [[this]] == ) is bad form.

Last note -- it's understood if these bylaws have not yet been written. I can see that a few of you have made a huge personal investment to make this Wiki what it is today, and that is a credit to you all -- this is awesome! As a long-time aficionado of xkcd I applaud your work and look forward to further collaboration. --Smartin (talk) 04:15, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

As a general rule, we stick to the standard format that existing pages follow, with an optional trivia section below the transcript. Some zealous editors like to add other sections though, which tend to be for the most part unneeded or redundant. If something you want to add doesn't help to explain the comic in some way, but the inclusion of which would somehow still add to the page, *and* it doesn't fall under the trivia category, a new section is warranted. This isn't the case most of the time though, so editors usually fold the content of extraneous sections into "Explanation" or "Trivia." We have no policy on links in titles, and they're allowed so long as they are appropriate; the link is useful and can't be folded into the section itself. And we use title case for titles cuz it just makes sense. Davidy²²[talk] 05:08, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

We generally do not (or at least, discourage) use sections on the talk/discussion pages for explanation pages. This is purely for looks. The comic discussion section of the explanation page looks/feels wrong if there are level 2 section breaks in the transclusion. Also, if the Table of Contents starts showing up on a page, such as on Click and Drag the sections created on the talk page also show up in the TOC. This gets confusing, and this is why we prefer not to use them on explanation talk pages. Everywhere else we follow standard wiki format and do use sections on the discussion pages.

Personally, I think that links in section titles looks wrong, but I choose not to be the dictator of style in this matter. :p

Please feel free to make edits. The worst that happens is someone reverts your edit. If it's a big enough issue and/or you don't seem to be learning from what people are fixing about your edits someone will leave a comment on your talk page. That's it. We might leave a nasty-gram in the edit summary, but oh well. We only ban for malicious intent. Honestly working to better the wiki is good, even if sometimes we grumble about it.

--lcarsos_a (talk) 07:00, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I just looked at your talk page. I completely forgot that that happened. Don't worry about it. Learning the ropes is part of the experience. Do make edits, and if they're wrong, we'll nudge you in the right direction. lcarsos_a (talk) 07:18, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I have been moving some trivia sections to directly below the explanation, in order to make it more consistent, and easier to survey and maintain. Often the dividing line between trivia and explanation is not entirely clear, and in articles without a trivia section the end of the explanation very often contains trivia-like information. (e.g. 1155: Kolmogorov Directions) -- St.nerol (talk) 10:13, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Protip

Anyone for adding Protip as a Comic series. I have found five so far: 653, 711, 1022, 1047 and 1156. (There are also a few comics with a protip title text.) -- St.nerol (talk) 10:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that qualifies as a recurring topic (thus worthy of a category), but not as a series, where you can see a clear sequence. In fact, My Hobby has the same limitation, for what I suggest it to be removed from Category:Comic series. --Waldir (talk) 11:42, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Seconded. Looks general and common enough to be a category. Davidy²²[talk] 14:57, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, great! Do you think that the ones with a "protip:" title text should be included? Besides, I think I might be the one responsiple for moving My Hobby from Comics by topic to Comic series. I felt that all the My Hobby comics were about different topics, but maybe i've got to narrow an interpretation of the word "topic". -- St.nerol (talk) 15:31, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Can you link to the protip-in-title-text comics?

As for My Hobby, note that categories aren't mutually exclusive. They can be in the "my hobby" topic, and each of them further categorized as appropriate: music, math, etc. Makes sense? --Waldir (talk) 03:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I just searched for protip in the xkcd search bar. Here: 1084, 427. And yes, makes sense. I've moved My Hobby back to "by topic". -- St.nerol (talk) 12:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Category: Sports

How about creating a new "Sports" category? Ekedolphin (talk) 15:31, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe. Everyone aren't so keen on new categories here. Which comics are you thinking of, for a start? –St.nerol (talk) 20:32, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

We definitely need to reach an agreement as a community on when to create new categories. Something simple like a minimum of 3 (or, say, 5) existing comics. Since we're already at the proposals' portal... what do you guys think about that? --Waldir (talk) 21:44, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

My opinion: Five would be enough to qualify. Ekedolphin (talk) 09:31, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I vote for four. But it should also be a reasonable thing to categorize, like sports, not like "sports with Cueball containing at least three anagram words". Wich sholdn't be a problem. :) But the best name choice could be tricky sometimes. e.g. "Film & television", Film & TV", "Film", "Films", or "Movies"? –St.nerol (talk) 12:59, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, five should be enough to create the category without having to discuss it. - Cos (talk) 00:50, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, let's start with 588, 1092, 904 and 1107. Should be able to find a few more. Ekedolphin (talk) 05:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a broad subject so there are probably several more. -St.nerol (talk) 12:59, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I found another one, sort of, in 929 (although it hasn't been explained yet). Should I get the ball rolling (no pun intended) on setting up the category? Don't wanna do it unilaterally and get yelled at.  ;) Ekedolphin (talk) 06:18, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you should. On a wiki, getting stuck in discussions which die without a conclusion, to the point that motivated people give up without having done anything, is definitely counter-productive, and phrases like Wikipedia:Be bold are here to remind us of that. Seems like people agreed that you could, and after a while nobody said that you shouldn't, so I'd say do it. - Cos (talk) 00:50, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Category: Sex

I think we should also create a Sex category. There's no doubt we can find more than three examples. I'll start looking for them and post the ones I find in here; again, I don't wanna create a large category by myself without community consent. Ekedolphin (talk) 09:20, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

• OK, the ones for Category: Sex that I've found so far are 443, 219, 550, 1026, 575, 468, 592, 320, 1101, 417, 713, 672, 230, 436, 940, 532, 649, 176, 1006, 596 and 717, and I'm sure there are many more. Should we create this category? Ekedolphin (talk) 23:17, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Same as above, do it. Oh, already did; well, all the better. - Cos (talk) 00:53, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

New character

As per Talk:1178: Pickup Artists, the character with hair has appeared in quite a few comics now, and he's starting to become a recurring character. Shall we go ahead with inaugurating him into our list of regular characters, and what name shall we assign him? Current candidate names include Hairy and Harry. Anyone? Davidy²²[talk] 00:07, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I like Harry :) --Waldir (talk) 01:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Cos made a point in the discussion on Talk:1178: Pickup Artists that Hairy is directly descriptive, whereas Harry is not obvious to visitors. On the other hand, not all names are descriptive (Danish) and I think this wiki is entitled to create some xkcd-in-culture, and not just describe. And Harry is quite funny.

I wonder: has Randall ever called him anything at all in the transcript? –St.nerol (talk) 21:52, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, he's not named in a any official transcripts, but he's already called Harry in quite a few comic explanations. Then again, I do like having a more descriptive name for him. Shall we hold this up to a vote? Davidy²²[talk] 23:29, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we should wait a little for a few more viewpoints to crop up. Also, can someone link to some more comics he's been featured in? I've got 1028: Communication, 1027: Pickup Artist and 1178: Pickup Artists. –St.nerol (talk) 23:41, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I actually like what that anon said: Curly. Second choice: Hairy (being descriptive, a la Black Hat, Beret, Cueball, etc.) While there's talk about in-culture, we've done that with the names Cueball, Beret, etc. It's my opinion that the only names that should be "real" proper names are those that are named in the comic. Megan, Miss Lenhart, etc. Danish (as is discussed below) isn't truly a proper name, but you could argue it's a meta-description (one attributed by Black hat.) So that's my vote: yes for Curly or Hairy, no for Harry. IronyChef (talk) 05:21, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

That's right, Danish is not descriptive, but 1/ that name was suggested because the character was called that way in the comic, which is a tiny bit like a name given by the author (at least more than Harry which we have completely made up), and 2/ in that case it's hard to find a descriptive term: use something that revolves around her black hair (her only descriptive feature), and you easily mix up with Megan; the only graphical difference is that her hair is long, but what kind of name can you make out of that?

For this new character, I suggest Hairy because it comes as the easy solution with every advantage: descriptive, easy to understand, and it's not ugly... I actually see no reason to resort to a made-up name like Harry.

Cos (talk) 22:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Alright. So the discussion's been had, and the most oft recommended name appears to be Hairy. All in favor, say aye. If more than 1/3 of editors agree and we have more than 6 votes, Hairy it is. Davidy²²[talk] 05:58, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

1. Aye Davidy²²[talk] 05:58, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
2. Aye Guru-45 (talk) 06:14, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
3. Aye to Hairy. IronyChef (talk) 15:43, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
4. Aye. Harry would be a nice nod to the fact that he's actually hairy, but indeed it's better to avoid inside jokes. --Waldir (talk) 17:05, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
5. Aye. I'm convinced! –St.nerol (talk) 17:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
6. Aye. Hairy. lcarsos_a (talk) 20:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Hooray! We now have a Category:Comics featuring Hairy, with four pages already! Does anyone feel compelled to create "Hairy", with a brief description and a nice profile pic like the other characters? –St.nerol (talk) 22:58, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Ambiguous characters

I've been thinking about the problem of the ambiguity of characters. "Is this really Cueball even though he has an eye and half a nose?", "This is very likely not x." "Darnit, these arn't Cueballs, these are Randall and his friends!", and so on. The character ambiguity is standard for xkcd (not less so in the early ones), and comes from the very loose or "free" way Randall uses his characters to be whatever he needs at the moment. It's simply often impossible for us to know whether he had e.g. "Cueball" or himself in mind, when drawing a particular comic (and I'd say: probably often both).

I want to suggest that we in general have a likewise rather loose policy towards including characters in the categories for the comics. So that reasonably ambiguous cases should be included in e.g. (does she have a ponytail?) This is not because I believe this or that to really be this or that; I just don't believe in objective truth (here!). I feel that when doing research :) on a character, the borderline cases are often the most interesting ones, and you want to be able to find them through the "Comics featuring miss x"!

I came to think this through now, when I wanted to (and did) list two comics with Miss Lenhart (?) where she was drawn but not named. Any thoughts on this in general? Other case studies? –St.nerol (talk) 21:17, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

My take has always been that Cueball, for example, has not been a specific character. There is not a cueball, per se, distinct from any other cueball... indeed, there are several comics with several cueballs in-frame, and that is the point. I see the cueball character as a wildcard character (pun intended) ready to stand in for anybody (and not necessarily just Randall; I think those readers who suggest "this is Randall" are missing the point; he's way more META than that...) Megan, while slightly less generic, still remains the female wild-card significant-other, while Curls seems to be a not-significant-other female used to illustrate a relationship that is transient. Other characters come and go, and when it's important to visually distinguish them from others in the frame, they're given additional characteristics, to wit Hairy, Ponytail, etc.

Unfortunately, that viewpoint is not commonly held, so I daresay I'm in the minority here.

-- IronyChef (talk) 14:18, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Note at the top, about the server error

This thread was moved to MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice

Category: Flowcharts

Hello, the line "Randall has made use of flowcharts before." in today's comic explanation made me want a flowcharts category to navigate into...

As it didn't exist, I proceeded to create it, but as the log says, lcarsos deleted such a category in November, saying "Insufficient differentiation from Category:Comics with charts, diluting the depth of comics tagged charts".

I don't agree with that, and I think we could profit from such a subcategory. I found those pages fitting it:

• 94: Profile Creation Flowchart
• 210: 90's Flowchart
• 488: Steal This Comic
• 627: Tech Support Cheat Sheet
• 844: Good Code
• 851: Na
• 854: Learning to Cook
• 1195: Flowchart

So? - Cos (talk) 10:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Weell if you're willing to take charge of the category and personally make sure it's added to all relevant comic explanations, go ahead. The usual objection to making new categories is that we admins can't remember all the categories when we're reviewing new explanations, but it's K if you're willing to take up that responsibility yourself. Davidy²²[talk] 11:17, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

OK. I did it without waiting for further replies, because I think it will be especially profitable today (to viewers).

It doesn't seem a big issue to me if the correct category is not added when a new explanation is made: a passing editor will do it later on... But hey, I'm OK with taking special care of adding pages to this category.

Cos (talk) 12:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I just want to add that Cos' view is indeed the appropriate way to work in wikis: there is no concept of a single author for a page, category, or piece of text, and the workload is meant to be distributed among several editors: it is not necessary that any single editor remembers all existing categories, or knows the wiki markup by heart, or knows how to work with all the features of mediawiki, etc. The reason why wikis can be edited by anyone is precisely a recognition that there *will* be errors and any page can be improved somehow. That reasoning against categories should, IMO, be abandoned, or at most only kept as the opinion of some editors. --Waldir (talk) 22:00, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Isnt there a page which lists all the categories? If not, there should be one, and it should be accessible to all. Such a page could be useful when trying to quick-add categories to comics. 117.194.83.155 13:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there is. Special:Categories. Davidy²²[talk] 14:07, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I've removed "add a comment!" from Discussion heading

This does move it to above the line, and the rule stops early. Undo my change if that's more bothering than when the TOC is displayed as "add a comment!Discussion"...

I don't know how to automatically treat level 2 headers as level 3. That may be why Discussion was a level 1 heading earlier. Mark Hurd (talk) 11:16, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually I now noticed there was a short edit war at {{comic discussion}} over whether it should be a level 1 heading, just for this reason. User:Waldir seems to have conceeded... Mark Hurd (talk) 11:25, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

No edit war, hence no (intentional) concession. I reverted a change once, and didn't notice the change being re-implemented by another user. In any case, it is irrelevant now since we actively discourage using headers in talk pages precisely so that they don't display in the TOC for the main comic page, where the discussion page is transcluded to (see the discussion above). This might not scale well for comics that generate lots of discussion. It might be worth discussing our customs (and perhaps write them down somewhere) before performing such changes. What do others think? --Waldir (talk) 11:49, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Time: The Table

Right now on the page 1190: Time, we have a whole bunch of tables in the form image-time-hash. The tables take up heaps of vertical space and all have to be collapsed to even be remotely traversible. I propose that we aggregate all the images into one table after Time ends, like so:

Image	Time	Image	Time	Image	Time	Image	Time
00:00	01/00:00	10:00	01/10:00	20:00	01/20:00	30:00	AND MOAR SAMPLE DATAS
00:30	01/00:30	10:30	01/10:30	20:30	01/20:30	30:30	AND MOAR SAMPLE DATAS

The hash values aren't really a part of the comic, they're gibberish for the most part and they take up space that could be used to compact the table, as shown above. Even if we are conservative and make the table only five columns wide to account for smaller screens, we've divided scrolling time by five and eliminated much of the need for annoying collapsed tables and section headers for each day. Constructing the table shouldn't be particularly hard either, as all our current data is in nice regular tables with clear patterns that are easy enough to parse through.

I'm putting this here because the organization of the frame entries would be unintuitive and difficult to change from the edit window, which would make it a poor choice when we're still expanding it and don't even know how long the comic will continue for. It's merely a space-saving trick for after we're sure that the comic is over. Davidy²²[talk] 09:26, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh and it'd be really nice if other people could also upload images if you're awake and a new one rolls by. There's gaps in the image record every time I wake up, and I dun likey. Davidy²²[talk] 11:34, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Good work so far; go ahead make it better! :) –St.nerol (talk) 08:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Featured Explanation, and Archival?

• Wikipedia has featured content. Now that we are close to reaching the goal of all comics explained, I think it makes more sense to have a "featured explanation" which would serve as a sort of a marker for a complete and good explanation. Many comics, and almost all charts are not fully explained/not a good quality explanation.

• We should set up archival of discussion of the most discussed pages, like this one. Its not very pleasing to see comments from July 2012 still lying around here. It becomes hectic at some point.

Just my 2 cents, feel free to discuss. Cheers, 117.194.88.180 13:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

We dedicate this wiki to explaining xkcd, and we do actually have a featured comic feature; it changes every week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and we usually manage to fill out the explanation for it within an hour or so of it going up. The most recent comic tends to be the one that most people visiting the wiki care about, so we give it prime space on the front page so they can find it easily. xkcd updates frequently enough that there isn't really that big of a time window for us to feature an article on our front page. Also, we're a volunteer project with quite a bit less manpower than Wikipedia.

We do need to archive talk pages though. Some of these are getting ridiculously long. Davidy²²[talk] 14:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Davidy22. Archiving topics can be done by anyone, by moving resolved threads to the portal section's corresponding talk page. We could start with the threads marked "✓ Closed". Waldir (talk) 17:42, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Split the list of all comics

List of all comics is getting larger and larger, which makes it hard to read and hard to edit. How about splitting into parts, say List of all comics/1-1000, List of all comics/1001-2000, etc., or something to that effect? --Waldir (talk) 17:39, 1 May 2013 (UTC)