User talk:Dgbrt

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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1190: Time

It's fine that you're helping with updating 1190: Time. I'm trying to write a script that automatically updates the hashes and uploads the images. In order to test the script, could you, at least for the next image, refrain from doing that? I can then test the script and if it works, you can continue if you want to, but least I know that my script does work.

Updating the transcript and anything else from the page is still absolutely fine, I cannot do this. --SlashMe (talk) 15:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, seems to work. If you want, you can continue updating, but my script should do this automatically within ~1 minute while I'm online. And if I'm not, it should catch up later. --SlashMe (talk) 16:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
GREAT, it's really working. My computer is online 24/7 (but not me). Since updates should be done in time maybe my computer is the better machine for your script. I am on Linux and a cron job is downloading at 00,05,20,35,50 each hour, just in case the update frequency will change again. --Dgbrt (talk) 16:31, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Might be, but I have a folder full of scripting stuff, and I would have to tidy up all that to get the important lines. And I'm not really in the mood for that. ;-) Maybe I will come back to this later. --SlashMe (talk) 16:52, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


Thank you for your comment. The reason I said "another" river is because "another" is referencing Megan's quote that "yes. there are other rivers" - implying they have arrived at "another" river, not the one they already knew about. I put quotes because as you point out, we haven't exactly seen them come across the first river. As to the water bottle, if you want to change it to "drinking bottle", I'm fine with that. The contents being water is an assumption based on what you might expect someone to do going on a long journey. TheHYPO (talk) 20:18, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not a native English speaker - so thanks for help - but I just want to be correct. And I did edit your edit...

I think a special page (i.e. "1190: Time: Pictures") with a table (description | thumb with link) or other form of separator might work. I seem to remember seeing something on using a different thumb file on a picture link. This is my first time editing wiki pages, but the thumbs and smaller images on the upload pages don't appear to be working. As a work around, I just used blind links without thumbs (e.g. :file:fname...). I can create and upload smaller pictures, but will need some help putting it all together. If this sounds good to you, give me a nod on my talk page and I'll start adding content and let the regulars help straighten it out. Also, am I doing something wrong on the uploads or is it just not working? Galois (talk) 23:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm also relatively new to wiki edits, but I'm a programmer, Linux expert (and more OS's) and also the admin for the wiki at my company. Thumbnails do not work because of a bug in the configuration or missing capabilities at the hoster. I will try to talk to the admins here, maybe I can help. --Dgbrt (talk) 16:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Redirections, and incomplete explanations

Hello there, and thank you for your work! :-)

One technical thing that you should note, when you create pages that should redirect directly to a newly created explanation page (for example 332 to redirect to 332: Gyroscopes), use the redirection syntax which goes like this: #REDIRECT [[332: Gyroscopes]]

You've done it right for 447 / Too Old For This Shit or 531 / Friends for instance, so try to do it all the time, instead of leaving pages with only a link in it, like 332 / Gyroscopes or 311 / Action Movies. Thanks :-)

Another thing, not from me, and about content this time: Davidy22 left you a couple of message in the changes he made to the pages you created, but it's fairly possible that you didn't get them, so here they are:

Try to take that into account also...

Cheers, Cos (talk) 10:45, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello Cos, here some comments by me:
Redirections - I'm sorry for the missing #REDIRECT tag. I'm using often a text editor for my own copy and paste templates. I am sure I would have figured out that error today by myself. Thanks for your help!
Incomplete explanations - I will stop on this even when I think it's good idea to have a page for each comic here and work afterwards on all those incomplete ones. The pages Help:How_to_add_a_new_comic_explanation and List_of_unexplained_comics should clarify this issue. Furthermore there are many more incomplete comics not marked as incomplete so you can't find them here: Incomplete explanations. I will also send a message to Davidy22 about this.--Dgbrt (talk) 17:35, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of incomplete explanations, do you think you could help add some text to 266: Choices: Part 3 and 267: Choices: Part 4? To my knowledge, they are the only articles on the wiki without even a stub for an explanation. In addition, the other three choice articles could use some better explanations. --Oneforfortytwo (talk) 04:02, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Ach nee,...

...schau mal einer an, noch ein Deutscher! Wollte nur mal 'nen Gruß hinterlassen... ;-) --SlashMe (talk) 21:37, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Ich grüße zurück! I am greeting you too.--Dgbrt (talk) 14:20, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations!

You worked on the last unexplained comic of xkcd at very much the same time that the article was created! Greyson (talk) 23:41, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I was working at the same time to create that explanation. After trying to save I got a warning that it's already there. So I just did add my work there.--Dgbrt (talk) 10:40, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
In that case, you also created the last explanation. You two worked on the comic at essentially the same time. Greyson (talk) 18:13, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

1190:Time frame renumbering

Apologies if I created confusion, I was under the impression that davidy22 had already made the final decision to renumber the frames. I didn't know there was someone else who made the decision. Patzer (talk) 01:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

DgbrtBOT

It took a while for me to notice your request. I think you've been quite the active figure around the wiki, so I've added the bot to the bots group.

Keep up the work and don't burn out! lcarsos_a (talk) 16:37, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks, my request was mainly for picture uploads to 1190 Time, but maybe I will use this feature in the future. I will be careful, first tests will be done at my local TestWiki.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:29, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

The right place to add 'discussion'

I don't disagree with your comment to User:Anon (although I'd say "additions" instead of "adds"), or to a number of your edits to their additions, but some of what has been added is not worthy of Trivia sections being added. They should probably have been put into the talk page, or in some cases, left where they were. Mark Hurd (talk) 05:39, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

You are right, I just did not want to delete the additions by this new user. Because I can't move a single line to the talk page by one edit I thought the Trivia section would be the best solution. I don't like links to other comics here when it doesn't explain anything to the actual one. But a sidestep to a similar joke could be worthy to the Trivia section.--Dgbrt (talk) 13:36, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Explained too much

Hello Dgbrt, I'm sorry I explained too much about comic 1255. I was under the impression that the purpose of this wiki was to explain XKCD comics for those who don't get the references, so I thought it would be helpful to explain the part about sailing in a line tangent to the surface, which wasn't previously touched on in the description. I understand now that what you guys actually do here is to describe and transcribe XKCD comics. That's not something I'm interested in so I'll leave now. Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding. Rombobjörn (talk) 12:47, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey, this site does not only "transcribe XKCD comics". The wrong stories about Columbus is the major joke here, Megan did use Tolkien's books, but she also could have used many others. The explain should point on the essentials of the comic, people should be able to read this easy in general.--Dgbrt (talk) 15:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Hello. Admin here. I don't comb through and look at every single edit that happens in this wiki, but some things flag up as significant and this scuffle qualifies. Reading the current explanation and your addition, there are a number of unexplained and unreferenced Tolkien-specific terms littered around the place. Valar and Ilúvatar will not be familiar to people who have not read the Silmarillion before. Megan appears to be drawing a direct parallel between Eärendil and Columbus here with the quote "A silmaril on his brow, he wanders the heavens as the morning star." There is no apparent evidence to show that the reformation of the earth is referenced in this comic; no mention of Akallabêth, Ilúvatar or any hint of Columbus being of elvish descent. If you can link your reference directly to the comic, feel free to add it in.
Also, Dgbrt, you only have to reply once to the original talk message. You don't have to leave disjointed messages in other people's talk pages. Davidy²²[talk] 17:05, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussions with Quicksilver

Hello! I have noticed that "In this comic" is a pet peeve to you. As a gift, I have removed it from almost all of the 60 explanations that it started, but there remain some more places where it could be removed. If you wish, you can go ahead and remove the newlines that I left in their wake.

If you need a general copy-editor for grammar, punctuation, or usage, let me know. I consider myself adequate at it, being a decently educated native American English speaker. (I am not a professional editor, though, so stuff can always be made better.)

Also, as you definitely have noticed, I can get belligerent over some things, particularly whether a page deserves its "Incomplete" status. I expect some more sparring matches in the coming future. I do hope to work with you on cutting the number of such pages down.

Anyway, thanks for the intro to the wiki! --Quicksilver (talk) 21:31, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Welcome Quicksilver! I did see that you must be an native American speaker but some of your edits are too offensive, I do reply on this, and we have to discuss until a final solution can be presented. Many updates by you are great, but please check all the links, etc. until removing the incomplete tag. This tag does not mean the explain is wrong. BTW: Please sign your discussions.--Dgbrt (talk) 22:22, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Now that I have your attention, we can begin discussing things. We have a brewing edit war over the following pages (so far): 694: Retro Virus, 54: Science, and 10: Pi Equals.

The first one I claim to be complete, while you dispute this. I cannot see how much further we can go into explanations of XP, viruses, Howard Dean, Friendster, or Kazaa. Apart from those, the comic really doesn't have anything else to explain, and its grammar and style are fair. I see no reason that the Incomplete tag should be there.

In the second one, we have different interpretations of the title text, "Bonus point if you can identify the science in question." You claim that this somehow means we should challenge science. While I understand that part of the spirit of science is questioning it, this sentence has a fairly straightforward meaning: if you can identify the science in question, you get a bonus point. In other words, if you know where this equation comes from, good for you. Randall is praising his readers who happen to know about the blackbody radiation curve, which would be a good number of them (I'd guess).

The third one is a simple issue of punctuation. You have argued, via explanations, that "one must close sentences." While I understand that it may look awkward for the quotation marks in question (those around the name of Mrs Roberts's daughter) to contain a period, not part of the name, and to have the sentence ended by a punctuation mark inside a pair of quotes, this is the English convention on quotation marks. Such a convention can be checked here. This usage clashes with that of French, German, and many other languages, but is standard in English.

As other pages turn into edit wars, I would prefer to discuss them in some central location (such as your wonderful talk page) rather than individual pages. Thank you for your consideration. --Quicksilver (talk) 22:40, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Every comic does have it's own discussion page. Here you can talk about my behave, especial on some few offensive edits I did not accept. And keep short or I will just reply tl;dr--Dgbrt (talk) 23:09, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Very well. Our agenda begins with 54: Science. The other two we will address at some point. --Quicksilver (talk) 23:14, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Allegations concerning User:Quicksilver

You have in the edit summary field claimed that Quicksilver's edits are offensive. After a quick glance through some of his recent edits, I don't find this to be the case. Do you care to explain yourself? lcarsos_a (talk) 03:26, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

200 or 300 edits within a few hours, no one can understand all that comics at this time range. I just did criticized two or three edits he did, but an edit to former content without any understandable explain I can't except. And than he reverts my criticism, that's all.
I'm not a spam hunter here, but I like CLEAR and SHORT (meaning, people will be able read) explains here. Look at 1256: Questions, just an other hell (nobody will ever read all that masturbation orgasms writers must have - sorry, put this into the sex category.)--Dgbrt (talk) 23:11, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
One add: Understand sarcasm, xkcd, romance, math, and language. Randall did publish many sarcastic comics, I just do like to point this out.--Dgbrt (talk) 23:52, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Language and writing style

Please, please stop reverting and calling editors out on language and writing style. It is not your strong point. Focus on content. When we start work on our german translations, you can go jabbing editors in their talk pages over writing too much. Here, you're only reverting and deterring valuable edits. Davidy²²[talk] 02:35, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

You know I'm not native American, many viewers are too. American English is still strange sometimes, but you are right: It's not my "strong point". But nevertheless, I always did focus on content in the past, and I will do this in the future. I was just acting on mass updates nobody can review.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

PyCon

The post saying that Randall was banned was a joke. There is no PyCon issue. See Talk:153: Cryptography. gijobarts (talk) 20:19, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Sure it was joke, so maybe it should be explained, it belongs to this comic.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:19, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

1270: Functional

Would you mind answering my actual concerns regarding 1270? The things you answered are (in my eyes) very minor points, where I would not mind to compromise. However, currently the article does not explain what functional programming is at all! I wanted to change that which you mostly edited away. I am willing to make my explanations more understandable (preferably if you or anyone else has suggestions what is/might be unclear). --Chtz (talk) 16:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I don't like edit wars. I just did try to simplify the explain for non programmer readers. And I think these facts should be mentioned:
1. Functions return a value, unlike procedures do.
2. Your wiki link says: "a style of building the structure and elements of computer programs, that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data." My sine(x) idea isn't bad according to this.
3. The part "mutable data" means that each call of the function allocates its own memory, local variables are not viewable or changeable from the outside. Recursions just use this feature.
4. Tail recursion just means that there is a clearly defined break at the end of the function. The most elegant code should be this (the else statement is removed, braces for a clear code):
factorial(n)
{
   if n > 0
   {
       n * factorial(n-1)
   }
   return 1
}
5. The wikipedia pages are a little bit confusing and inaccurate (I would mark them incomplete). But even the first reference at functional programming to this PDF is interesting. It's saying (Chapter 4): "Myth 1, that functional programming is the antithesis of conventional imperative programming,...".
This programming paradigm definitions are still confusing, but here Randall just mentions a recursion with a break at the tail. I think we have to focus on this first. --Dgbrt (talk) 19:33, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
I replaced your bullet points by numbers, so I can refer to them, I hope you don't mind.
ad 1) I agree, but I don't know why you need to introduce the (imperative) concept of a procedure at all? (There is no such thing in functional programming)
ad 2) Yes, sine is a function, also in the functional programming sense. It is not really a function one would implement using a functional language (although it is possible). Also this function is not referred to later, so I don't see any benefit from introducing it. How about using the factorial function as example for a function?
ad 3) There is no such thing as a "variable" in functional programming. Variables are mutable data, and mutable data is avoided.
ad 4) What I learned is that tail recursion means that the only recursive call happens at the tail of the function ("call" in imperative programming, or substitution in functional programming). Maybe I'm wrong and should study again, and also did not understand what tail recursion wants to say, but I doubt that.
ad 5) I agree that it is not very easy to understand, but I don't see any inaccuracy in that article. About the reference: Yes, but that does not mean imperative and functional programming is essentially the same. The section continues and describes that functional programming carries on the evolution from low-level (e.g. Assembler, allowing just simple operations) over high-level (imperative) programming which allows expressions to functional programming which says there are only expressions. (If and why and when this is useful is another story -- though actually that is essentially what White Hats wants to know from Cueball)
And w.r.t your last point: So you would prefer not to explain (or have someone explain) the parts which are confusing to you? Wasn't explaining that the whole idea of this wiki? --Chtz (talk) 20:44, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
I don't mind your edit but now I will reply in general. The most important paradigm is structured programming witch did lead to avoid statements like GOTO, but this explain can not be a comprisal on computer since. It's just a small comic mentioning functional programming and tail recursion. But maybe we should try to enhance the English Wikipedia. ;) --Dgbrt (talk) 21:04, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the article you quoted also says (concluding the Myth 1-section) that functional programming goes further from avoiding goto to also avoiding assignments and control-flow structures. I'll mostly leave enhancing the English wikipedia to English native speakers, actually de:Funktionale Programmierung is not that badly written. (Sure it also gets complicated towards the end, but intuitive and clear does not equal easy ;) ) Damn you, Randall! --Chtz (talk) 21:37, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
The German Wiki is often just a bad translation from English, lacking references. But this part is interesting: de:Funktionale_Programmierung#Abgrenzung_von_imperativer_Programmierung explains the difference of imperative and functional implementations. My example above is functional, NOT imperative, and also includes the the tail part. --Dgbrt (talk) 22:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Ok, you are right, that it is also functional (at least when written using if and else and ignoring the syntactic noise of the return (without the else part, I would consider that control flow: The second return is called after the if statement)). Only functional I would call the formula which comes before the implementation (in the de:wiki article), but the implementation is also a valid imperative function.
I still don't agree that this is tail recursive (I think our definitions of tail-recursion don't match so far). --Chtz (talk) 23:37, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

The explain is still not very helpful, and the reason is that Computer science isn't a science like physics or math, it's more like philosophy or something else. An author is defining some theories and statements with no prove as it is done in math. Chtz, we are both wrong and correct, but Randall is just joking about this science.

The details about different implementations can be shown below this general classification on computer science. I think this would be the best solution for an explain, different meanings can be shown, just like computer science does. What do you think?--Dgbrt (talk) 21:07, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Your name

I'm just a random stalker on the Internet reading XKCD, and I see your name alot. I've been reading it as "dogbert", like as in the Dilbert comics, but now I'm really curious. Where does your username come from? 173.245.55.215 02:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

That's just my secret ;) . But you can be sure I was just looking for a unique name without any vowels, like xkcd. You also can find me at the German wiki.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

1297: oort cloud: comet nuclei, asteroids, etch

Thanks for your many contributions to explainxkcd! In [1] you changed back some of my edits on the oort cloud. I've commented in the talk page about my reasoning, and tried to come up with less arguable language. If you disagree, let's discuss it on the talk page. Cheers, Nealmcb (talk) 16:56, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Uhh, that's two days ago, many edits went on that page after this. If I see my major changes correctly I did remove something like "comet at the Oort Cloud" because an object is only a comet when it's encounter the sun; and the Milky Way itself does not influence the orbit of an possible Oort Cloud object. I'm not native English, so I'm still happy for help on this, but I do know physics and more since very well. And much more sad: It still seems ISON is dead. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:28, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

1246

Hey Dgbrt,

we need to have a discussion about the latest edit on 1246. i believe that we should refrain from further edits until we have discussed this in the discussion page.

Mrarch (talk) 20:32, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I will reply soon. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:59, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

X11 Title Text Explanation

In my absence was it finally decided forever and always how title text explanations would be handled? I can't find a discussion in the Community Portal, if you have a link I'd be interested to come up to speed on the current editing policies. lcarsos_a (talk) 22:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

A BIG problem is here still that there are NO editing policies in general. I'm just following the main "feel and look". In standard explains the title text is just at the bottom of the explain, and trivia goes after transcript. You are an admin here and maybe you should talk to User:Davidy22. In general I think that X11 still needs a better layout. --Dgbrt (talk) 23:11, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Ok. I had wondered about that. My personal policy, when I was an active editor a year ago, was once a title text explanation is longer than 2 paragraphs it should get it's own subsection. I'll have to get a dialogue started with Davidy about it once more.
So you know, the English phrase is "look and feel". I know English isn't your first language, I just wanted to correct you on that. If I tried typing in German, I'd probably embarrass myself, and you'd have to help me.
lcarsos_a (talk) 23:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm happy about your latest actions here! And of course I did mix it up, it's "look and feel" and a translation of my former mistake could lead into some problems. --Dgbrt (talk) 01:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

1052

Think you may have marked this as complete a smidgen early - it needed a bit of cleanup, and a few more tweaks (the joke about theology wasn't explained, really). I've done it now, though. 141.101.99.235 16:40, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

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