explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2588: Party Quadrants

2022-03-03T09:41:59Z

172.70.230.57:

{{comic
| number = 2588
| date = March 2, 2022
| title = Party Quadrants
| image = party_quadrants.png
| titletext = Single-elimination might provide more drama, but I think we can all agree that a comprehensive numerical scoring system will let us better judge the party's winner.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE TOP LEFT QUADRANT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic there is a graph divided into quadrants to visualize the range of possibilities of fun for [[Randall]] and for guests at parties hosted by Randall. The top and bottom halves are labeled as "fun for guests" with "no" in the top quadrant and "yes" in the bottom quadrant. The left and right halves labeled as "fun for me", i.e. fun for the host Randall, with "no" in the left quadrant and "yes" in the right quadrant.

In the bottom right quadrant (which indicates fun for everyone), are two separately outlined but largely overlapping regions, like a [[:Category:Venn diagrams|Venn diagram]]. One is the appropriate zone for a party (in general) and the other other applies to Randall's own birthday party. They are both vaguely ellipsoid and both enclose a reasonable to nearly maximal amount of fun in both dimensions. The key difference is that the range of the birthday party is skewed towards being marginally more for Randall's enjoyment, as the person the attendees to the party might wish to honor/humor on this occasion, whilst any other type of party is geared slightly more towards the enjoyment of the other attendees, where the host (i.e. Randall) probably should work at ensuring the enjoyment of the various guests. Omitting the extreme edges may indicate that there are no points there because it's impossible to completely please everybody, or it may be a warning that a party should not be such extreme fun that it gets out of hand nor let the balance of fun stray too far from equal. There are no specific points labeled in this quadrant.

The joke is that the only data point, presumably Randall's latest idea for a party, is in the upper right quadrant, signifying that it is only fun for Randall! It is very far right and fairly close to the top, indicating extreme fun for Randall and not fun at all for anyone else. The point is labeled "Sporcle geography tournament with snacks! Live-updating scoreboard, no distracting music". {{w|Sporcle}} is a trivia website. Having a geography trivia contest is really fun for Randall, but not very fun for everyone else. Music is usual to include in a party and is enjoyed by many people, so excluding it is part of what makes this idea less fun for guests (although some people prefer a quiet gathering over a loud party). At least there would be snacks, which is also usual to include in a party.

In the caption it is mentioned that for some reason, Randall keeps accidentally planning parties in the Top Right Quadrant (fun for him, not for guests). Presumably he is so caught up in what is fun for himself that he doesn't realize it isn't fun for anyone else. This is regardless of which party-context, and well outside either of the appropriate zones. This diagram though indicates that he know this is the case, but maybe he is first able to place the point on the diagram after the party, when he realizes that his guest leaves early (again) out of boredom.

The title text elaborates on the Sporcle trivia game night that Randall has planned in the upper right quadrant. It makes mention of a comprehensive, and perhaps overly complicated, scoring system to determine who is the party's winner. That he's talking about "winning the party" suggests he is fundamentally misunderstanding the point of parties -- they're supposed to be fun for everyone attending, not (exclusively) a competition.

Seems like he plans for a complicated system, but that will no be a problem as long as he adds the words "For the Sake of Simplicity" now and then. See the previous comic [[2587: For the Sake of Simplicity]], which seems to be a bit related to what Randall thinks is fun, whereas other might not.

==Transcript==
:[A solid black lined square chart is divided into four quadrants with two light gray lines. Above the chart the left and right column are labeled, and above the labels there is a bracket with a label written on the bracket. Similarly there is labels to the left, of the top and bottom rows, with a bracket indicating those also with a label written on the bracket:]
:Top: Fun for me
:Top: No Yes
:Left: Fun for guests
:Left: No Yes

:[The top left quadrant is empty. The same goes for the bottom left quadrant, except labels for items in the bottom right quadrant is written in the bottom left quadrant. In the top right quadrant, there is a single black point which is almost touching the right edge of the chart, and lies about a quarter of the way down from the top towards the gray line. The point is labeled:]
:Label: Sporcle geography tournament
:Label: with snacks!
:Label: Live-updating scoreboard, no distracting music

:[In the bottom left quadrant there is a Venn diagram. It consist of two skewed ellipsoids, one with a solid line overlapping the other with a dotted line. The solid lined region goes further to the left, and the dotted line region goes further to the top, but both are mainly in the bottom right region, and the bottom right section is completely overlapping. Both regions are indicated with an arrow that goes to them from a label. The solid lined regions label is written to the left and it is entirely inside the bottom left quadrant. The dotted lined regions label is written in both of the lower quadrants, thoug mainly above the Venn diagram in the bottom right quadrant.]
:Solid lined label: Appropriate zone for a party
:Dotted lined label: Appropriate for my birthday party

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Venn diagrams]]
[[Category:Geography]]

2577: Sea Chase

2022-02-05T03:26:02Z

172.70.230.57: Made last two paragraphs more readable and added reference to 977

{{comic
| number = 2577
| date = February 4, 2022
| title = Sea Chase
| image = sea_chase.png
| titletext = There are two rules on this ship: Never gaze back into the projection abyss, and never touch the red button labeled DYMAXION.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FLATTENED OBLATE SPHEROID - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, Randall returns to one of his pet subjects: [[977: Map Projections|map projections]]. Unusually, this time it is from the perspective of people living - or, in this case, sailing - upon the world that is quite literally being mapped.

Two sailing ships, of circa 18th century design, are engaged in a close chase across the {{w|Atlantic}}, the aggressor flying the Skull And Cross-Bones of a stereotypical pirate vessel. The ship being chased, however, has a plan to escape. And the means to do so. At a crucial moment, [[Cueball]] is told to flip an incongruous large switch that (like several [[1620: Christmas Settings|other]] [[1763: Catcalling|artefacts]] in Randall's universe) alters the nature of their reality.

Whereas beforehand the world is directly represented upon a simply contiguous map, the {{w|Robinson projection}}, it is now changed to one (which is actually the new reality) known as {{w|Goode homolosine projection|Goode Homolosine}} in which the flattening of the world mitigates localised warping of angle/distance/area by introducing discontinuities in relatively 'unused' parts of the mapped world, such as the centre of the Atlantic.

By precisely timing the change (as they cross a particular {{w|meridian}}, possibly the 40°W one), they leave the pursuer now on the wrong side of the very real gap, allowing the pursued ship to escape whatever fate they were trying to avoid. Though there is still an oceanic connection, it requires sailing down the edge towards the tropics, rounding this particular rent in the planet's surface and heading back up the other side. This is vastly further than Cueball's ship needs to travel to reach (presumably) any European port in which they can safely moor.

The title text elaborates on the policies of the black-flagged ship: crewmates are never to look into the "projection abyss" and to never hit the red button labeled "DYMAXION."

The first rule suggests that changing the projection of physical reality produces a gap in reality, a void. This may be dangerous to gaze into or simply unnerving to crewmates, hence the rule.

The second rule references a button that seems to do the same thing as the lever but changes the world into a "Dymaxion" (a portmaneau of "dynamic", "maximum" and "tension") projection . The {{w|Dymaxion map|Dymaxion projection}} projects the Earth in a way that preserves land scale as much as possible. (Most maps warp land area, distance, and/or angle.) However, the preservation of scale comes at the cost of dramatically altering a map in a nearly unrecognizable and unintuitive manner.

The necessary discontinuities resulting from pressing this button would be even more strange and mind-bending than the 'interrupted' Goode Homolosine, so turning the world into this projection may be bad, and a good reason to create a rule against pressing the button in question.

Both the Dymaxion and Goode Homolosine have been referenced in [[977: Map Projections]].

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Maps]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

2577: Sea Chase

2022-02-05T02:53:02Z

172.70.230.57: clarified button's color

{{comic
| number = 2577
| date = February 4, 2022
| title = Sea Chase
| image = sea_chase.png
| titletext = There are two rules on this ship: Never gaze back into the projection abyss, and never touch the red button labeled DYMAXION.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FLATTENED OBLATE SPHEROID - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, Randall returns to one of his pet subjects: [[977: Map Projections|map projections]]. Unusually, this time it is from the perspective of people living - or, in this case, sailing - upon the world that is quite literally being mapped.

Two sailing ships, of circa 19th century design, are engaged in a close chase across the {{w|Atlantic}}, the aggressor flying the Skull And Cross-Bones of a stereotypical pirate vessel. The ship being chased, however, has a plan to escape. And the means to do so. At a crucial moment, [[Cueball]] is told to flip an incongruous large switch that (like several [[1620: Christmas Settings|other]] [[1763: Catcalling|artefacts]] in Randall's universe) alters the nature of their reality.

Whereas beforehand the world is directly represented upon a simply contiguous map, the {{w|Robinson projection}p, it is now changed to a one (which is actually the new reality) known as {{w|Goode homolosine projection|Goode Homolosine}} in which the flattening of the world mitigates localised warping of angle/distance/area by introducing discontinuities in relatively 'unused' parts of the mapped world, such as the centre of the Atlantic.

By precisely timing the change (as they cross a particular {{w|meridian}}, possibly the 40°W one), the pursuer now finds themselves on the wrong side of the very real gap, allowing the pursued ship to escape whatever fate they were trying to avoid. Though there is still an oceanic connection, it requires sailing down the edge towards the tropics, rounding this particular rent in the planet's surface and heading back up the other side. This is vastly further than Cueball's ship needs to travel to reach (presumably) any European port in which they can safely moor.

The title text elaborates on the policies of the black-flagged ship: crewmates are never to look into the "projection abyss" and to never hit the red button labeled "DYMAXION." The first rule suggests that changing the projection of physical reality produces a gap in reality, a void. This may be dangerous to gaze into or simply unnerving to crewmates, hence the rule. The second rule references a button that seems to do the same thing as the lever but changes the world into a {{w|Dymaxion map}}. The Dymaxion projection is somewhat notorious for projecting the globe of the Earth in a manner that creates sections of triangles in the effort to preserve land scale as much as possible, bucking the trend of most map projections causing land masses and their sizes relative to each other becoming warped, and therefore inaccurate. However, the formation is strange and somewhat mind-bending, so turning the world into a Dymaxion projection may be bad. This would be cause for creating a rule against pressing the button in question.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Maps]]

Talk:2557: Immunity

2022-01-19T07:08:30Z

172.70.230.57:

well, if you look at society as a whole it makes more sense. the reason we have so many mutations is that we have a significant portion of the populous with no immunity [[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.125|172.68.110.125]] 20:49, 20 December 2021 (UTC) mark ifi
:But the mutations come about from the virus replicating a lot, i.e in people with the virus. It still doesn't make sense to catch it, because you have a chance of your infection being the one that produces a terrible mutation [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.130|141.101.77.130]] 22:02, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
::That isn't how mutations work. Mutations are able to propagate strongly only in environments where there is something killing off the parent species, and where the mutation provides better survivability. Like a functioning immune system attacking the parent virus, but a mutation allows something to slip by. Thus, people with the partial immunity provided by either vaccines or infection, are the ones more likely to create a mutation than new patients with no inherent immunity, or people with natural immunity from previous bouts with related diseases.[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 14:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:::Luckily we have Randall's subtext to warn us about that middle category of people who know a little about how immune systems work, enough to be dangerous. (1) viruses are not bacteria: antibiotics killing 'ordinary' bacteria leave space for 'nasty' bateria to proliferate; unless you plan on destroying your respiratory tract, there's plenty of space for all viruses and their mutations; (2) viruses have a chance to mutate as soon as they take over a cell; no need to eliminate the parent, all you need is for the mutation to be more effectively infectious when spat out to infect the next victim; (3) anybody catching the virus will pass it on if it replicates; 'partial immunity' makes no difference to short-term reinfection, only to longer-term illness (at which point most sensible people will avoid contact) and ICU usage and death; the only possible negative to partial immunity is that people catch it, don't feel too sick and keep breathing over everybody else; (4) I suspect this comic will sound the death-knell for explainxkcd as it used to be, because even 'named' contributors are coming out with mad anti-vax arguments, and (5) editors, please feel fee to delete all of the above starting at (1) if you feel it to be necessary. I'd prefer you kept the first phrase though... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.196|141.101.69.196]] 00:25, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
:::Even immune system without vaccine or prior infection is killing Covid a lot, providing plenty of opportunities for more effective mutation. And infection typically last LONGER if patient is not vaccinated, providing more TIME for virus to mutate. So, mutation can occur in both vaccinated or unvaccinated, with hard to compare probabilities. It's true that mutation from someone vaccinated has higher CHANCE to be vaccine-resistant, but on the other hand, seems omikron is from unvaccinated population ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:32, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I can see this one annoying a lot of people. It's the lot of people who can already be annoying, so I don't think that's a big problem. (A few, who misread it as about ''vaccination'' giving immunity, may actually think it supports them. I'm not sure we can do anything about that either.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.85|162.158.159.85]] 21:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Would you kindly provide a link to the "Mount Stupid" comic for reference.{{unsigned|172.70.174.119}}

mount stupid: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2475 ˜˜˜˜

To be fair, if the vaccination would only protect you for ONE infection it wouldn't be worth it. The idea about immunity is that immunity trained by either vaccination or infection will then protect you from '''multiple''' following infections. The problem with it is that in case of covid (or flu), the immunity wanes off with time AND the virus mutates into new variants the immunity doesn't work as well against. Sure, it still makes sense to vaccinate, but just because the virus spread so much you are very likely to catch it. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 22:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
:Are you making the mistake (without the other baggage) I mentioned above about misreading the comic? This comic isn't about the vaccination at all. It's about infection. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.22|172.70.86.22]] 22:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
::Infection is the normal method of vaccination. Until recently with mRNA vaccines, almost all vaccines were about infection- either with the disease itself, a weakened version of the disease, or a related disease.[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 14:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:::As far as I know, while some vaccines do use a weakened live virus, many use essentially sliced-up spike proteins that are unable to spread. However, historically, the first true vaccination (as well as the earlier variolization), did use an unweakened live virus (smallpox for variolization, cowpox for the first vaccination). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.213|172.70.130.213]] 16:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
:(And, to add, if the vaccine just protected against ONE infection, where that one infection was sufficiently dangerous, it would indeed be worth it. Better than chancing the infection on a naïve immune system and hoping to come out the other side with a similarly infection-specific immune effect (c.f. annual flu waves) but without the QC and care given to the vector.) ((See, I knew it'd spark response, didn't intend to say much. Maybe I should just stay out of this until it blows over.)) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.79|172.70.85.79]] 23:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
::Of course it is about the vaccination - this supports Randall's earlier statements for being pro vaccine, that you should get the immunity from vaccination and not from infection! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:::Hmmm, no. It's about COVID (and that by inference). It doesn't mention the vaccine. The conversation ''might'' have been about the vaccine, but the comic (and its discussion of what it is sensible to do, or not) is vaccine free. It's "anti-infection", but not directly "pro-vaccine". (He, I and you ''are'' all sensibly pro-vaccine, I think. The comic itself is only vocal on that subject by omission and a chain of logic that will never occur to those stuck at the original fallacy.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.73|172.70.85.73]] 13:06, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

People who know a lot about the immune system could also be referring to people who are aware of possibilities like the varicella zoster virus which causes chickenpox, but stays dormant in your body after you recover and can come back later as shingles. This is less likely to happen if you get the vaccine to prevent chickenpox in the first place. --[[User:Norgaladir|Norgaladir]] ([[User talk:Norgaladir|talk]]) 00:32, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

A vaccination doesn't necessarily give you immunity, e.g. with the Covid or influenca vaccines, so you still can get infected. But being vaccinated reduces the risk of suffering complications like death that can ruin your and other peoples' life.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.94.229|162.158.94.229]] 07:59, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:...''significantly'' reduces the risk, in fact. It likely also (though it's a harder thing to establish) reduces the catch-and-transmit rate, thus yet another thing to do to help others, even those you'll never meet directly, who are unable or (ugh!) unwilling to think this far ahead. Unmitigated (and, especially, sought-after) 'natural' infection as represented in the comic just helps spread the thing further and faster and does a gross disservice to onward contacts, contacts-of-contacts, etc, etc. Excuse my preaching to the choir here, but it needs to be said. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.73|172.70.85.73]] 13:06, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
::You're not preaching to the choir exclusively, plenty of lurkers (like me) are reading along. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.143|108.162.241.143]] 17:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

While trying to update the explanation for 'neutrality of tone' and address some infectious disease history, I came across this [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7120728/#!po=44.6721|Highly Infectious Diseases in Critical Care] article
from the NIH published January 3 of 2020 which includes a comparison of smallpox, measles, SARS-1, and MERS-cov illustrating how significantly vaccination has reduced global infections. Check out the graph of measles from 1980. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.227|172.70.110.227]] 13:46, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

My hero is the person who added the citation needed to "Diseases are bad", as well as those who realize that vaccination is largely a form of infection on purpose (within one of the following five options: infection by the disease itself, infection by a weakened disease, infection by a killed and inactive version of the disease, infection by a related less dangerous disease that shares some characteristics with the original disease, infection by a laboratory created RNA strands that mimic the disease being attacked). Therefore, catching the disease on purpose, is a form of vaccination. Israel did a study on infection by the disease itself and found 6.7 times stronger immune response than other forms of COVID-19 vaccination. [https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital] [[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 14:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:This should indicate that a better (at preparing your immune system to resist future infection) vaccine (process) may be possible. Without saying that current vaccines are ineffective. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.97|108.162.241.97]] 17:06, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:I like how you make sure to use the "laboratory created" modifier for the RNA vaccine, but not the other types. As if they all grew on trees or something. Here's a hint: all vaccines were created in a lab, though many were created more directly by modifying an existing virus, in that lab. [[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] ([[User talk:PotatoGod|talk]]) 21:15, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
I would like to add that the comic criticizes only a part of ''anti-vaxxers'' population that show the circular logic presented. There are other parts, e.g. those who are not quite sure if the cost/benefit (or rather risk/risk) calculus is right for the rapidly developed and hastily officially approved (in comparison to long-established vaccines against other diseases) and/or novel (mRNA) vaccine products, fearing long-time side effects of the vaccine. On the other hand, long-term effects of the disease itself are also not known yet, even if some middle-term ones are known or being investigated already. There are still other parts like those who oppose governmental obligations or pressure to vaccinate against covid and related restrictions, and take the refusal as a personal freedom stance. There may be others. -- [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.219|198.41.242.219]] 15:09, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

This very much feels like a straw man. I get that it's a webcomic, but can we talk about this? The description says that natural immunity is "short lived" (as in, how short-lived, and how much compared to vaccination?) but meanwhile I hear like one in five COVID hospitalizations were vaccinated patients. Are there studies on reinfection with COVID in vaccinated vs non-vaccinated patients? It seems to me from the latest comics that Randall is frustrated. I think everyone is frustrated. Citation needed, haha. But I get tired of reading "haha the other side is dumb" from both sides of every damn issue these days, and the bigger the impact an issue has, the more furious the mudslinging. One could, for example, make the same "circular argument" jab at trusting the FDA in this example, or in a more agnostic case, the value of a college degree or a certification: Ex. "we're qualified to make decisions about what's right or smart for the populace because we're a bunch of people who say so, and we have a pretty looking seal to prove it, and also please keep giving us a lot of money." I mean, for those of us who have been to college, haven't we all churned our way through that just to get into the workforce and discover that it's completely different than what we actually needed to know? Would we call people "anti-uni's" and laugh at their incompetence for questioning the system? Even at the unlikely minimum of "anti-vaxxers (or x-person who disagrees with me) are 100% dumb and wrong and that's a fact", isn't the discourse important? I understand that the opposite extreme is "I'd rather let my child die of Polio than trust another human being", but isn't that just another straw man? When are we going to stop polarizing? Thoughts?[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.147|108.162.237.147]] 16:28, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:It might be Randall is (intentionally or accidentally) touching on your point by making this comic's thesis ambiguous. People who aren't thinking deeply about the topic on both sides will initially think it confirms their worldview, until they see more discussion on the matter. So the comic's ambiguity might prompt more discussion by and between both sides. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.143|108.162.241.143]] 17:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
:Re: "I hear like one in five COVID hospitalizations were vaccinated patients." ....if less than one in five people are vaccinated, this is a problem. Either it means there is a problem with the vaccine (unlikely) or that the vaccinated are putting themselves more at risk thinking they are more 'virusproof' than they are. If more (and hopefully significantly more) than 20% of the populace are vaccinated then this is actually a positive sign for the whole issue - even if there's still social hubris underestimating the precautions they still may need to take.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.73|162.158.159.73]] 17:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
::At least in the US, significantly more than 1 in 5 people are vaccinated. It's a little over 3 in 5 fully vaccinated. But I would suggest that even that isn't necessarily the statistic to look at - pretty sure covid is still more likely to be serious for older people and folks with preexisting conditions, all else being equal, and those populations have an even higher vaccination rate. 78% of folks 50-64 are fully vaccinated, and 84% 65+, per the CDC. So that makes the 1 in 5 represent *even less* risk.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.45|172.70.110.45]] 18:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

(Re: The "Why does my IP keep changing?" asked as an Edit-comment (see page history)... Because your gateway/pathway between yourself and the site goes through a limited and shared ''set'' of possible IPv4s. There's no guarantee you'll get the same IP (or even obvious range!) between edits, nor that your current IP won't be used by someone else in a few minutes. It's just a technical thing that greases the wheels of the Internet, even if it has funny repurcussions for some things like this.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.73|162.158.159.73]] 17:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

"However, what Cueball (and by extension Randall) fail to note is that bad or not, there are plenty of instances where someone has already recovered, and therefore already in possession of natural immunity." - Isn't that what the comic is about? I'm confused as to why this is on the explanation page? --[[User:Enchantedsleeper|enchantedsleeper]] ([[User talk:Enchantedsleeper|talk]]) 19:45, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I think people are overcomplicating this. A common anti-covax trope you sometimes see is that natural immunity is "better than" the immunity provided by a vaccine. But it is a total non sequitur The *only way* the vaccine could prevent you from acquiring the coveted "natural" immunity would be if it saved you from getting infected in the first place. If you never end up infected, then I guess you didn't need the natural immunity after all. If you do get infected, well now you have it. There is no sense rushing out to get infected on purpose, which is the equivalent of refusing a vaccine. Of course, people can have many other reasons for not vaccinating, but this particular "reason" truly makes no sense.

To add to the pile: if you get infected, you don't have to *worry* as much about future infections. It's over with (at least psychologically). Balloon popping is bad, but it's the anticipation that's the worst part for me. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.13|162.158.122.13]] 00:39, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
:That depends on if it's a "you only catch this once" thing. That's not so certain. Probably{{fact}} you can't catch a particular greek-letter-version twice, but you've got a dozen other (and potentially more later) greek letters to maybe/maybe-not fend off in future, with some variants clearly being able to at least possibly get past the protection (viral or vaccinal) that come from others.
:And they also say Omicron is only half as lethal (or hospitalising) as Delta, but that may just be because many Omicron-catchers had already made themselves infectees of Delta/whatever so they 'only' get the half-unsure vulnerability of the partially-naive/partially-protecting Delta-trained immume system of those that survived the prior round.
:And once you have more than twice as many Omicron infections because "it's not as bad as the other one", that still gives you more deaths than the 'more fatal' prior version. If you're thinking you're doing the Cowpox/Chickenpox thing of ''deliberately'' 'pre-infecting' yourself then you're just giving it more people to ''try'' to kill, yourself and any collateral infectees and (even if your individual chances are better, for whatever reason) it results in worse total statistics than if you'd been sensible until everyone possible had at least been able to be given a non-disease lesson in at least a similar-looking thing.
:...Oh, I don't think half the questions about all this have been answered, and won't be tied down for a while yet, but some supposed answers are clearly wishful thinking and should be easy dismiss as quackery. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.79|172.70.85.79]] 01:27, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Soooooo what's unfinished about this? It's almost a month old and the "incomplete" tag doesn't say anything descriptive about what needs to be done. And it looks pretty complete to me... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.57|172.70.230.57]] 07:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Countdown in header text

2022-01-15T22:11:40Z

172.70.230.57:

The talk on from [[2565: Latency]] and [[2566: Decorative Constants]] has been moved here by me when I created this page --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

;From Latency:
What is happening around Feb 1st, there is a countdown that appeared a few hours ago in the upper right corner of the xkcd index. There is also the directory xkcd.com/count-wimRikmef which might be an acronym, if it isnt a countdown package? {{unsigned ip|172.70.130.57}}
:Damn you beat me to it ;-). But I have made a [[2565:_Latency#Trivia|Trivia]] here on this comics page and links to more detail on the [[xkcd Header text]] page. I belie you are a day of, but someone will likely correct me if I'm wrong. As I can see it will be January 31st, 9:59 in Randall's home town Boston.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
::But damned if I can wait. Sure millions will watch the page when it goes to zero! At least it is no April 1st. :-D --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:10, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

;From Decorative Constants
Any idea what's going on with the clock that's counting downwards in the banner? Currently counting down from 20 days 16 hours? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.95|172.70.214.95]] 22:08, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
:(Simultaneous edit) What is the days-hours-minutes in the box above the comic referring to? The image itself is dated yesterday, as you can see by saving it. Worst-case-scenario, is this a countdown to the end of XKCD? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.223|108.162.245.223]] 22:11, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
:: It's going to hit zero at around midnight on Jan 31st 2022 CST? [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 22:16, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
:::'''Posted this on the previous comics discussion. But lets take it here where there will be more traffic:''' --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 22:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC) -- Copy paste from previous comics discussion:
::::Damn you beat me to it ;-). But I have made a [[2565:_Latency#Trivia|Trivia]] here on this comics page and links to more detail on the [[xkcd Header text]] page. I believe you are a day of, but someone will likely correct me if I'm wrong. As I can see it will be January 31st, 9:59 in Randall's home town Boston.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
:::::But damned if I can wait. Sure millions will watch the page when it goes to zero! At least it is no April 1st. :-D --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:10, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
::::Yeah - you're right - I messed up. So as I type this, it's Jan 10th 2022 at 4pm - 1600 hrs Mountain time - which is 1800 hours EST. At this moment, the countdown reads 20d 16h 0m - so Jan 30th + (18+16) hours = which is Jan 30th + 34 hours - which is Jan 31st + 10am in Boston (EST). [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 23:05, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
:::::Hey great, can see they agree in the link to reddit below. So happy I got it right both in UTC and Boston. It will be 15:59 here in DK. Not 16:00. ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 23:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Counting down to Backwards Day? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.88|162.158.91.88]] 23:28, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
:There's a reddit thread discussing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/s0oynl/xkcd_countdown_timer_20d_21h_49m_remaining_until/ I think the most likely guess is that Randall has a new book coming out. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:40, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
::Would still seem strange if it came out that day with only promotion before being a count down. But then again, he will have the xkcd communities boiling if he gives no other hint. So every one will see if he promotes a book. Also as they wrote at the time I looked at reddit I do not think it is the end of xkcd, or Webb related. Although Webb was the first I thought about. But I mean even if it came to L2 at that day, it is not going to any specific point but just in orbit. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 23:47, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

::The date fits the idea of it being Backwards Day (https://nationaldaycalendar.com/backward-day-january-31) but what about the choice of time? [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 03:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:::Backwards day... Never head of it until now. Is it big in the US. I mean when looking after dates so obscure they are not mentioned on wikipedia then there are probably lots of things happening on that day? But maybe it is a think in the US? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:48, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:::: I haven't heard of it until now either, so it is probably one of the bajillions of holidays no one actually cares about, and is unrelated to the countdown. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.163|108.162.221.163]] 13:22, 11 January 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

Someone has noticed the image is changing with pixels added at the bottom left corner and is keeping track of it here: https://munvoseli.github.io/xkcd-countdown/ [[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.107|198.41.238.107]] 05:49, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:Looks like an image is "moving" into the frame because at the moment you can see some white pixel in the lower left, i.e. the black part might end up as a line as part of some comic. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.8|162.158.89.8]] 08:31, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
::Thanks used that to pinpoint the start of the countdown. Have added this info to the header text page, and the original trivia. Also just added a line of trivia to this explanation with the link. This was when this comic came out most people noticed the count down. But it did came out while [[Latency]] was up. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:43, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:::Speculating on what it could be, the only thing that makes sense at that angle is a character's arm. 04:47, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The header changes page says that it's forcing "Friday" to move down to the next line. Not for me. Did he fix it, or is it browser-specific? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:58, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:It must be browser specific. But i have tried bot the old Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome and Firefox, and it does it in all cases and zooming does nothing.. Which browser do you use? I have corrected to in some browsers though, in the [[xkcd_Header_text#2022-01-10_-_Standard_text_with_countdown|explanation]] you refer to. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

This is much more likely a count down related to the James Webb Space Telescope. At approximately the day the count down indicates the telescope will be orbiting the L2 gravitational spot.Perhaps most of the mirrors will be approximate place to allow for months of fine tuning. An example of a slightly similar idea is https://www.space.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-next-steps
[[User:Punchcard|Punchcard]] ([[User talk:Punchcard|talk]]) 15:35, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:I really do not think so. There is nothing special about a specific moment for reaching L2. It will go in orbit around it, but when to day it is there or in orbit is hard to pinpoint. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:13, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
::And after I looked at it, it seems it will reach L2 several days before the countdown. See [[Countdown in header text#Theories]]. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I think the Countdown should get its own entry. What do we think? [[User:Sure|Sure]] ([[User talk:Sure|talk]]) 16:25, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
: I think it should! What with the count itself, the speculation about what it could mean, and now the slowly arriving image (?) this seems like something beyond either of the two comics since it started! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.49|108.162.219.49]] 18:00, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
: I'm surprised it doesn't have one already. This is one of the more unique situations in a long while, more speculation could happen. [[User:Thisfox|Thisfox]] ([[User talk:Thisfox|talk]]) 22:26, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
::I have now created this page and talk page for us to continue the discussion and make dedicated changes about this countdown here. And have moved all discussion from the two pages that had some already (except a few on the first talk page that was also mentioned here. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:13, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If you take a look at this [[https://xkcd.com/count-wimRikmef/state|link]] it displays this: '''{"img":"72cb154b23f959f908f5dc8eb03069c6df3f0f54aae896a0e7ed27befb2ee639.png","start":"2022-01-10T17:00:00Z","target":"2022-01-31T15:00:00Z","until":"2022-01-11T20:55:38.205303701Z"}''' [[User:Hoodiesandboba|Hoodiesandboba]] ([[User talk:Hoodiesandboba|talk]]) 20:58, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
:To correct your link:
:"...If you take a look at this [https://xkcd.com/count-wimRikmef/state link] it displays..."
:As to where the "72cb154b23f959f908f5dc8eb03069c6df3f0f54aae896a0e7ed27befb2ee639.png" is rooted, I haven't dug into that (or what transforms might be being applied), but it looks like a manipulation of browser states might be able to prematurely reveal it. (I'm on mobile at the moment, and it's significantly more fiddly to poke into the page-scripting and markup than I can be bothered with this moment, but I know what I'd do with a good acreage of screen, mouse control and a proper keyboard to rattle away at. And the combined minds here surely can do even better than myself.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.116|172.70.91.116]] 22:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
::The filename is a random number long enough to prevent brute force guessing to find future images. The state-file looks like some information for the javascript script where this URL comes from. I haven't looked into the script that much but from the values I'd say that it's telling when to start doing refreshs (2022-01-10T17:00:00Z) and when to stop doing that (2022-01-31T15:00:00Z). While these values are constant, the third value changes and is ten minutes after the time the page has been requested. I suppose this is telling the script, when to do a refresh of the image load. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.16|141.101.77.16]] 11:05, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
:::After some fiddeling, I've found the origin of the filename: It's the SHA-256 hash of the image [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.16|141.101.77.16]] 11:05, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
::::There's already a note that it would be impossible to brute-force the filenames. But as the images are very similar to each other, would it be feasible to programmatically generate images similar to the last one (extending up and to the right, different variations of the line shape), hash those files, and test to see if they match images on the server? I'd expect it to reduce the number of possibilities by orders of magnitude, but not sure if that's enough to make brute-force attempts feasible and non-destructive. (Also don't know the PNG format well enough to know if an image with the same pixels in it is guaranteed to produce the same bytes in the file across different implementations) -- [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 11:16, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
:::::Hmm… if it was pure black and white, the total number of possible images would be within the realms of sanity to brute force. But add antialiasing and the numbers rapidly become silly. Even if you only allow pixels to change within a certain distance of the previous image, and restrict greys to places between a black and a white, the numbers quickly become absurd. Although that makes me think about making 1-bit versions of all the images so far, predicting a set of "next frame" possibilities at each step, and training a CNN to pick the correct next one; and if it gets accurate enough by the time we get to the present… hmm. How predictable is antialiasing? Do we know the software he's using to create the images; and if so is there a relatively predictable algorithm applied along the edges? [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 11:41, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it counts down to Lunar New Year (the Year of the Tiger), as measured in Korea (the earliest timezone where that is celebrated). Actually, it reaches 0 one minute before the New Year, so maybe it will switch to seconds for the last minute. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.98.75|172.70.98.75]] 05:10, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
:Could be, but why. Randall has never to rarely? mentioned this new year... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:13, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I think we are seeing a zoom out of some image. Perhaps it is the arm of Cueball? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:36, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
:It looks like there's a little curve at the top left of the line entering the frame! This makes the Cueball arm hypothesis more likely. [[User:Sure|Sure]] ([[User talk:Sure|talk]]) 14:18, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
::I also noticed that (and moved your comment up here, as it is kind of a reply to that). Seems like the picture updates every four hours, and that it happened last time at noon UTC today. And thus it will also be at midnight. So 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24. But it is not certain yet and not sure it happened like that the first day or two. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:46, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I have added the first 12 images on this page: [[Countdown in header text/images]] - anyone may help uploading the new ones there. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:43, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
: Thank you! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.194|173.245.52.194]] 12:44, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone mind if I make a few spelling/grammar corrections to the article? It feels like the kind of thing that could be interpreted as rude, so I wanted to ask first. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.167|172.70.114.167]] 13:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
:No no please help me with my poor spelling. I'm Danish and not very good at spelling in English. Also anything I write is up for debate and can be changed. Just because I started this page do not give me ownership over it. As long as relevant info is not deleted the entire layout maybe changed. But better to get the page going sooner rather than later.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:46, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
::Alright!! Thank you so much for all your great work on this page! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.151|172.70.110.151]] 18:02, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I originally put this (without realising it wasn't the Talk page) in the Images sub-page, in response to the revelation it was (very probably) the SHA256 of the image data that was used to name the file:
*When I first looked at it and decided it was an obvious hash (yes SHA256 sounds about right, but nice to know someone's tried it) I personally had hoped it would be a hash of the datetime (plus a salt, maybe, to give it that extra little frisson of difficulty in reverse engineering... ;) ). But if it's as you say I think I'll refrain from getting any rainbow-tables set up and bashing through the possibilities in the rather huge phase-space it could represent. Of course, there must be a look-up table used by the server. It'd be too much to hope for that it's publically exposed though, and totally a rookie-error if it is. (That Randall, and maybe anyone he actually drafted in to implement it to save himself the worry, is surely not going to commit.)
...anyway, bringing it here, as being more conversational than informative. Still thought I should say it, but stupidly long as a comment so maybe I needn't have repasted it again! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.79|172.70.85.79]] 03:39, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

(Put this in here as it was before in the explanation --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:02, 13 January 2022 (UTC):)
Was going to say it's Hangman, but it looks like it's zooming in on the diagonal instead of continuing to make a gibbet. [[User:Thisfox|Thisfox]] ([[User talk:Thisfox|talk]]) 06:37, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I read the javascript of the countdown and noticed one thing that i didn't see mentioned anywhere on this page: the countdown text is moving upwards. When the countdown started the text was exactly in the middle of the image and at the end of the countdown the text will be at the top (you can see how it will look by changing the time in your system). The code will also make the text disappear and leave only the image after the countdown goes to zero. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.41|162.158.90.41]] 23:52, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
:Uuuh thanks that was interesting. Maybe to make more room for the image? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:09, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

The Greensboro sit-ins started on Feb 1, though the time is different.. But black history month? {{unsigned ip|172.70.135.48}}

Thanks to [[User:Theusaf|Theusaf]] for helping with putting the images up on the image page. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:09, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Anyone here that can make an animation out of the images and put it in the explanation? If it is "easy" could it be updated some times on the way towards the final image on January 31st... Like the one on [[Time]]. That would be really nice. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 17:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
:I made an animation: [https://imgur.com/a/INh77nL] (Now i realize it wasn't needed because there already is automatically updating animation linked from the page...) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.105|162.158.159.105]] 18:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

There's something else moving into the frame... We'll have to see what it is. [[User:Sure|Sure]] ([[User talk:Sure|talk]]) 19:12, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

To even find this page, I had to page backward through the comic to get to Decorative Constants, go to the discussion, and come across the link to this page from there. I suggest that there be a direct link to this page from the explanation of every comic that existed while the countdown was in progress. A second question: has anyone determined for sure whether the ‘camera’ is zooming out from a blank spot in the final image, in which case we can expect other stuff to come into view from above and right, OR is it panning onto an image that is not changing size, in which case nothing will appear except from the direction it’s moving toward? And if it’s panning, has anyone tried estimating where the current stuff will end up?[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.76|108.162.246.76]] 07:42, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
:I agree with you and have now changed the four comics that was active while the count down was active so far, so the link to this page is above their explanations. If people keep updating like this for new comics, there will be a link to the countdown page from the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page front page]. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:40, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Does Randall already have kids? If not, maybe his wife is expecting? That's something you'd announce and the last two comics are about kids. Another idea: he's going to space 🚀. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.115|162.158.233.115]] 20:47, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I noticed that it almost appears to be the tail fin of an airplane. I don’t know if it is, or if an airplane even makes sense? --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.57|172.70.230.57]] 22:11, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

2562: Formatting Meeting

2022-01-13T18:34:25Z

172.70.230.57: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2562
| date = December 31, 2021
| title = Formatting Meeting
| image = formatting_meeting.png
| titletext = Neither group uses iso 8601 because the big-endian enthusiasts were all at the meeting 20 years ago.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a LOCAL VERSION OF DR SEUSS, WHO IS NOT JONATHAN SWIFT - Needs wikification (but no overlinking) and consideration of whether there is a relation to New Year's Eve. Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic came out on New Year Eve 2021. But neither this nor the next comic from 2022 had any relation to New Year. This was the first time that happened in 11 years. See this [[2563:_Throat_and_Nasal_Passages#Trivia|Trivia]] on the next comic [[2563: Throat and Nasal Passages]], where this fact became clear.

In the {{w|United States}}, it's common to {{w|Writing|write}} {{w|Calendar dates|dates}} {{w|Numerical analysis|numerically}} in the {{w|Calendar date#Date format|format}} ''{{w|Month|month}}/{{w|Day|day}}/{{w|Year|year}}'' -- 2/3/22 means {{w|February}} 3, {{w|2022}} (the {{w|Century|century}} is often {{w|Purposeful omission|omitted}} when it's obvious that the date is around the {{w|Present|current time}}). In {{w|Europe}}, the {{w|Calendar date#Gregorian, day–month–year (DMY)|usual order}} is ''day/month/year'' - so 2/3/22 is 2nd {{w|March}}, 2022.

"{{w|Internationalization and localization|Localization}}" is the technique used in {{w|Software|software}} to make it accept {{w|Input (computer science)|input}} and display output in the formats most natural to {{w|User (computing)|users}} in their {{w|Location|locations}}. For example, in the United States {{w|Number|numbers}} use {{w|Comma|commas}} "," to separate {{w|1000 (number)|thousands}} and a {{w|Decimal separator#Countries using decimal point|decimal point}} "." to separate the decimal values, while in large areas of the EU {{w|Decimal separator#Countries using decimal comma|it is the reverse}}. And the textual output will be {{w|Translation|translated}} to the local {{w|Language|language}}. Naturally, this also includes displaying dates in the local format, as described above. Localization may also include the adoption of the {{w|Tax law|tax law}} to the location, for instance when adopting tax software made for the US to the {{w|United Kingdom|UK}}.

The {{w|Joke|joke}} in this {{w|Comics|comic}} is that two dates are shown, on the same {{w|Display device|display}}, relating to {{w|Meeting|meetings}} regarding localization. The date of the meeting of the US team is localized in the US format while the EU team's meeting is localized in the European format, and these two dates (about a month apart) happen to be formatted the same (there are 64 such pairings of dates, as long as the day of the month of one is between 1 and 12 and not equal to the presumed month of the other). [[Cueball]] needs to explain that the European meeting will be a month later than the US meeting to avoid any confusion due to the ambiguity. Which is {{w|Irony|ironic}}, since the aim of localization is to reduce such {{w|Confusion|confusion}}.

A further interpretation, which extends also into the title text, is that these groups may have been supposed to meet on the same day. But even the committee that was supposed to fix these problems messed this up. Cueball may be 'explaining' the staggered approach to cover up that the two groups are already reading the date(s) for the meeting quite differently.

{{w|ISO-8601}} (that is, standard number 8601 as promulgated by the {{w|International Organization for Standardization}} since 1988) specifies a date format of YYYY-MM-DD (e.g., 2021-12-31), which results in dates being listed in chronological order when sorted stringwise. The ISO format is called "{{w|big-endian}}", which refers to the fact that the most significant unit in the date (the year) comes first. The European format is instead "{{w|little-endian}}", as the front-end value represents the finest possible distinction the date can convey - the particular day. The American format is "{{w|middle-endian}}", or occasionally "mixed-endian", since the value given first is the one which is neither the one with greatest significance nor the most precise.

In the above, the 'value groups' are not usually internally checked for '{{w|Endianness|endianness}}', but regular numerals are also usually written with the largest place values on the left – for example, the first 2 in {{w|2021}} is the thousands place – though whether this convention is big-endian or little-endian depends on whether the writing system of such numbers is in the context of left-to-right or right-to-left text. The concept of endianness is most often used in reference to the storage order, whether of indivisible binary bits or of values built up of successive value groups. Pairs of hexadecimal values are individually usually represented in big-endian 'numeric' order, where bitwise distinctions are not necessary, but it is useful to know if a system stores a multibyte value in big-endan or little-endian packing, i.e., whether the value 0x01 0x02 (values 1 and 2, on their own) is treated as a value of 258 (0x01*256 + 0x02*1) or 513 (0x01*1 + 0x02*256). (The term was taken in inspiration from a [https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2003/ling538/Lecnotes/ADfn1.htm Jonathan Swift story] about a war over which end of a boiled egg one should cut into, a useful metaphor for many other situations where diametrically opposed self-justifications for one ''or'' another practice may lead to standing by vague principles rather than agreeing upon a unifying resolution.) This standard was also mentioned in [[1179: ISO 8601]] and used in [[1340: Unique Date]].

The joke in the title text is that it appears some people attempted to interpret the improperly formatted date as if it were expressed in the more ISO-8601 style of format of "Y/M/D". They read the date as ''20''02, March 22, so they already went to their meeting almost 20 years ago. Unless the announcement of the meetings was made 2 decades in advance, there's a {{w|Paradox|paradox}} that these participants would have taken the date from an announcement in the far future. However, a strict interpretation of the date would make this incorrect: ISO-8601 format specifies four-digit years (which also avoids having to assume the century), two-digit months, and two-digit days. Therefore "2/3/22” ''can by specification not'' be an ISO-8601 date, as "2" can only be rendered as "0002", and "3" must be "03". Even if the leading {{w|0|zeroes}} were omitted in violation of ISO-8601, the year would become {{w|AD 2|Year 2}}, not Year 2002. Since the standard always uses a 4 digit 'YYYY' format in the first field, and no common formatting uses YYYY-DD-MM, any date written in ISO-8601 is easily recognized and (comparatively) {{w|Ambiguity|unambiguously}} interpretable as YYYY-MM-DD. Dates written as if Y-M-DD or other distortions should be considered formatted improperly, and unwisely.

==Transcript==
:[A screen is shown which displays five rows of text, the top three above a dividing line. To the right of the screen the upper part of Cueball is visible as he delivers a message concerning the text on the screen:]
:Localization working group
:Upcoming meetings
:-----------------
:US Team: 2/3/22
:EU Team: 2/3/22

:Cueball: And the European formatting and localization team will meet a month later...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Calendar]]

Talk:Main Page

2022-01-13T02:31:22Z

172.70.230.57: /* Countdown Timer? */ Updated Link

{{notice|This page is for discussion of the [[Main Page]] itself. For discussion of the latest comic, see [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}#Discussion|its discussion section]]. Other issues probably belong at the [[Explain XKCD:Community portal]].}}

{{notice|This page has a sandbox, located at [[Main Page/sandbox]].}}

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

==List of comics==
I was thinking of having a quick link to the list of comics that is explained. Right know, it took me a while to even see any of them. Eventually I found the "List All Pages" (found it in Special pages) where I could find the comics that have been explained. What do you think?
:A category tag will do that for you automatically. Having a list of comics indexed by its number would be a little different.--[[User:Relic|Relic]] ([[User talk:Relic|talk]]) 05:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::Sounds like a great list - I ''think'' it'd have to be manually maintained until/unless we get someone who knows how to make a bot update it. Categories will be useful, but they only work if someone added the category to the page in the first place. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 07:21, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::A (somewhat) related question - should [[:Category:Comics]] be sorted alphabetically or by comic number? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 07:43, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::I think [[:Category:Comics]] should be sorted by comic number. If you are looking for a specific comic, you will use the search field. Is there a way to make that happen? --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::They are two different functions. For the former, instead of adding <nowiki>[[Category:Comics]]</nowiki>, add, say, <nowiki>[[Category:Comics|1]]</nowiki>. For the second, we can create redirects. Normally, I'd say just make sure the search term was in the article text, but since numbers are going to be use for other purposes than just comic titles, it may be better to create [[1]] and [[Comic 1]] as redirects to the relevant articles right off the bat. --08:24, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::We could also have a comic-list template on the Main Page, I suppose, or perhaps two - one for number and one for name? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 08:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::Here's what I was thinking of for that: {{tl|Comics navbox}} Thoughts? ''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]]
:(outdent) It's ugly, but a sortable wikitable [[User:SurturZ/sandbox|(click here for example)]] could be used as a checklist to see what has been uploaded and what hasn't. What's the project namespace here, anyway (analogue of "WP:")? --[[User:SurturZ|SurturZ]] ([[User talk:SurturZ|talk]]) 03:04, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
:OK, I've found a way to get all the titles of the comics, so I was confident enough to create <big>[[Explain XKCD:Checklist]]</big> which can be used to fill in the gaps. --[[User:SurturZ|SurturZ]] ([[User talk:SurturZ|talk]]) 03:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
::I'm liking the checklist! That should do quite nicely as a "tool for editors". (I'm linking to it at the Community Portal). We still need the "template for readers." Did you think {{tl|Comics navbox}} was on the right track or should we do something else for that? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 20:09, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
::Better idea - I'm throwing it directly onto the Main Page. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 20:10, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

==Admin list==
You can find a system-accurate list of admins [{{canonicalurl:Special:ListUsers|group=sysop}} here], so that might good to share, along with the manual list. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 07:13, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:Added to page. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 08:10, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::That's exactly what I wanted, but couldn't find the auto page for it. I knew it was somewhere. I don't see any reason to keep the link to the manual page. Do you? --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::Not unless you want it. I'll remove it. Should I add the similar link for 'crats or is that unnecessary at this point? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 08:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::To be honest, I have no idea what the Burecrats role does. Might be unnecessary now but helpful in the future? --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 11:16, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::Bureaucrats can turn other users into administrators (or indeed, other bureaucrats). That privilege isn't available to ordinary administrators. I'd keep it to yourself for the time being. :-) --[[User:Yirba|Yirba]] ([[User talk:Yirba|talk]]) 17:39, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::You can actually see a technical list of which rights each group confers at [[Special:ListGroupRights]]. As the wiki grows, you might want to spin off a few, such as the ability to grant rollbacker and autopatrolled, to admins as some other wikis have. But for the time being, at least, there's really no reason for the wiki to have more than one 'crat. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 17:07, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

== Community portal ==

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

== Direct link to latest comic ==

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

: Maybe the page [[latest]] should redirect to the most recent comic? Could that be taken care of by some sort of script/template so it doesn't have to be manually updated? Should each explination page also have "next", "previous", "random", "first" and "latest" links, possibly also generated automatically via scripts/templates? Additionally, shouldn't the number page be the canonical one? It seems like [[Internal monologue]] should redirect to [[1089]] rather than the other way around - certainly it would make a bunch of scripting types of things a lot easier. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:02, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::If you wanted, we could even use wiki-magic to show the title of the page as the Comic name, but the URL as the number - in order to parallel the actual XKCD website. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 17:09, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:: Shouldn't there be a way to programmatically find the comic with the highest number that has a page with content? That would work as long as no one puts future comic pages up. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 20:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::It's all sounding like folks are over-complicating something quite easy. All I'm suggesting is a prominent link to http://www.xkcd.com/. No need, I think, to list which number the latest is, or include the next/last/random buttons, etc. [[User:Christopher Foxx|- CFoxx]] ([[User talk:Christopher Foxx|talk]]) 11:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
::::Oh. We've got that, now, in the sidebar - labeled as "XKCD." I do think that having an internal link to the latest (explained) comic would be a great thing, though. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 16:36, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

You can transclude the latest comic on the main page like this: <nowiki>{{:pagename}} e.g. {{:Internal_monologue}} </nowiki>--[[User:SurturZ|SurturZ]] ([[User talk:SurturZ|talk]]) 00:25, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
: I've started with just a manual link to the latest comic. Ideally it will be automatic, but a manual link will work for now as I've had quite a few people ask for it. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 21:09, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Transclusion of the latest comic is great. Someone with the right permissions should add (for instance on the top-right corner of the grey transclusion area) a link to edit the corresponding wiki page, so that people seeing something they could add would feel invited to do so (wiki style). In my opinion this would be a good way to improve the quality of the user-generated explanations.
Also, all the "XKCD"s in the "New here?" section should be converted to the lowercase "xkcd"...
[[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 14:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
:Good points. I've done both. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 15:48, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Call me dumb, but... You've got a link called "prev" that goes to the explaination for the previous comic. Then a link called "comic #42" but that goes to xkcd. And then a smaller, less prominent link called "go to this comic" that doesn't go to the comic but to its explaination. Anyone else think that's a little back-to-front? [[User:Zootle|Zootle]] ([[User talk:Zootle|talk]]) 17:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
:OK, you're dumb :-). The standard template for an explanation page includes the header with "Prev", "Comic # (date)", and "Next" links. If we don't have explanation pages for the previous or next comic, we don't show the respective link. I hadn't noticed that the "Comic # (date)" bit was a link to the xkcd site before, but in context it makes sense to me. Including a link to the Explain page for the comic who's explain page you are already looking at doesn't make sense.
:The explanation page for the latest comic is "transcluded" in the main page pretty much as-is, so we get the header, the comic, the explanation, etc. We don't get the discussion, which is visible at the bottom of the Explain page. Because there is never an explanation for a comic that hasn't been released yet, there is never a "Next" link on the main page's transcluded header. So you get "Prev" and "Comic" links. The "Go to this comic" link is added by the main page above the transcluded explain page.
:I can see how the "Go to this comic" link might be poorly worded especially as it's placement seems to be within the explanation it's linking to. [[User:Blaisepascal|Blaisepascal]] ([[User talk:Blaisepascal|talk]]) 18:16, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
::Rather than "Go to this comic" maybe it could be "Go to full explanation" ? Something else? [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
::There was [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Admin_requests#.22Edit_this_explanation.22_link_on_main_page a discussion at one point] about a wittier/more descriptive link - but no one came up with anything. I do like "Go to Full Explanation" better, for what it's worth. --[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 15:31, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
:::My problem with that suggestion is that it implies that the main page explanation is not full. As of right now, the full explanation is transcluded on the main page. There's nothing more to see by clicking that link (explanation wise) Perhaps "Go to full explanation page" but that doesn't quite sound right to me... [[User:TheHYPO|TheHYPO]] ([[User talk:TheHYPO|talk]]) 15:42, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
::::How about "Go to this Comic Explanation Page"? One nice thing about the specific page rather than the [[Main_Page]] transcoding is that it nicely includes the discussion as well. I have a bookmark to the [[Main_Page]] that I look at every day, but I want to easily read the discussions, not only the explanation. Humm, maybe we could have a page [[most recent comic]] that automagically redirects to the most recent comic? [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 12:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
:::::I tried to get [[most recent comic]] to redirect to LATESTCOMIC, but can't get the syntax working - it is possible? [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:03, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
::::::Apparently it isn't. I would have tried <code><nowiki>#REDIRECT [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}]]</nowiki></code> like you did, but since that doesn't work, I'll delete the page for now. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 16:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

== Discussion of latest comic ==
Perhaps include the discussions of the latest comic here? I almost missed there was a discussion field a few times because I would only read about the latest comic on the main page. [[User:Carewolf|Carewolf]] ([[User talk:Carewolf|talk]]) 14:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

This comics's explanation is complete bollocks, I think. Of course it is NOT a "fact that such a room exists". This comics parodies trope often used in cop movies - an elderly cop goes to work for the last time before his retirement, packs things, plans fishing the next day ... only to be called to one more case (possibly with a new, young and brash partner). And despites his efforts not to screw anything and stay clear of danger, he is either mortally wounded or screws big time and is degraded. So much clichè, that if someone says "It's my last day or service", you might be sure one of the two options above happens. See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Retirony [[User:edheldil|Edheldil]] 10:17, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I believe this link maybe relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_graphics {{unsigned|Rhudi}}

I went ahead and filled out the bracket from today's (see edit date) comic: http://m.imgur.com/gallery/WyPkHx2 {{unsigned|Glaucon81}}

*rise

Btw, why wouldn't I just enter "ipconfig free" if I didn't want my IP address showing? {{unsigned ip|172.68.65.48}}

== The comic explanation count is wrong ==

The adjustment is currently 3, but there are now 6 subcategories and one list making the current correct adjustment 7.
If the wiki was upgraded to version 1.20, a form exists to automatically exclude subcategories.
--[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 09:56, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

:Looks like another week of the wiki going down then.
:But seriously, I've been noticing this too. Didn't know what was causing it, but it's going to have to be fixed sometime.[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]] ([[User talk:Davidy22|talk]]) 10:25, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

::The text reads <pre><nowiki>We already have [[:Category:Comics|'''{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-3}}''' comic explanations]]!</nowiki></pre> The -3 is to account for the subcategories and non-explanation pages in the category. There apparently used to be three such pages, and now there are seven. I would fix this myself, but the page is protected. If the wiki where upgraded to version 1.20, the categories could be explicitly excluded, but the [[List of all comics]] would still be in the category. (Note that the -3 actually appears twice.) --[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 05:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

:::Mediawiki 1.20 fixes this issue, although it'd be nice if this could be fixed in the meantime via the hack reccommended by divad. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 06:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

:Looks like Waldir updated the "Comic Correction Count" to "10" (as of 20 November 2012):
<nowiki> We already have [[:Category:Comics|'''{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-10}}''' comic explanations]]!</big>
Note: the -10 in the calculation above is to discount subcategories (there are 7 of them as of 20 November 2012),
non-comic pages (2 as of same date: [[List of all comics]] and [[Exoplanet]])
and the comic 404, which was deliberately not posted. Thus 7 + 2 + 1 = 10
(But there are still {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-10)}} to go. Come and [[List of all comics|add yours]]!)</nowiki>
:Could we possibly make this more dynamic by creating a "IGNORE_IN_COUNT" category or something? and then using something like: <nowiki>{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-{{PAGESINCAT:IGNORE_IN_COUNT}}}</nowiki>? Then any additional entries to the "Comics" category (that are 'special' entries) could just have the special category added and no main page editing would be necessary? --[[User:Bpothier|B. P.]] ([[User talk:Bpothier|talk]]) 07:50, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

==Make Jeff stop apologizing==
The apology for server downtime has been around for a while now. Can we take it down? [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]] ([[User talk:Davidy22|talk]]) 04:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

== Spambots ==

I think someone should install [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter AbuseFilter]. --[[User:Kronf|Kronf]] ([[User talk:Kronf|talk]]) 10:09, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

== Purge ==

We should regularly purge the server's cache for the main page using http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=purge to keep the explanation up to date. --[[User:Kronf|Kronf]] ([[User talk:Kronf|talk]]) 02:28, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

== Updating the Rules ==

I've been having a lovely discussion with someone who apparently thought the "edit anything you want" rule applied to the Talk pages. As we don't have any codified rules for ''here'' and can only point to "well the canonical way this is done on Wikipedia is..." I think that there are a few things we need to put into the list of Rules on the front page, and then have a link to a more in-depth talk about why the rules exist and what-not.

Specifically, I'm talking about writing "Feel free to edit any page on the wiki to be better. But, treat talk pages like you would blog comments: comments by other people ''cannot be changed by you'', you can only respond to them." as a new rule to be plastered on the front page, as there seems to be an increasing number social neophytes that seem to think that editing words that are attributed as being said by another person is perfectly legitimate and non-controversial.

Shall we discuss? [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 01:25, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

:We could add the etiquette rules as an addendum to the signature reminder at the top of the page. Just an extra note below the alert box asking people to not edit other people's comments. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 06:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

::It really should be right down with the "edited mercilessly" description, because this is an exception to that statement. Shouldn't have two sets of contradictory instructions in different places. When I made my improper edit, I had a semi-conscious moment of doubt about whether changing the other guy's comment was ok, even though this is a wiki (and even though it wasn't really clear to me that this "discussion" box held something totally separate from the page content), but that statement at the bottom put all such doubts to rest. I read it multiple times to be sure. But I did not notice that line at the top about the four tildes until ''much'' later. It's somewhat lost, visually, in the header line, when you're not looking directly at it.[[Special:Contributions/50.0.38.245|50.0.38.245]] 18:32, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

:::There's discussion to replace that message with a more noticeable alert box. The message at the bottom of the page appears for all pages, including talk pages, so a talk-page specific message there would not entirely fit. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 00:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

::::If that text at the bottom is in fact alterable, it should be written to take every case into account. It's an extremely poor user interface that has instructions appearing on a page stating rules that are the exact opposite of reality. And note that the altert box on the top looks a lot like a banner add, when you don't focus on it and read it. People will tend to habitually filter out anything written there from their perception. Also, it can easily be scrolled off the top of the screen when the discussion starts to get long, and they have a preview displayed.
::::So I think after the "...then do not submit it here.", it should add, "'''Exception''': others' comments in Discussion pages are not to be altered. See full rules at <<link to appropriate wikipedia page>>."[[Special:Contributions/50.0.38.245|50.0.38.245]] 15:46, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

== Update after changes ==

The front page explanation hasn't been updated at all day to match changes in the explanation on the comic's page. This is a major problem i think, as it is the front page explanation people visitors will most often read. --[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 20:43, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
: It might be a caching issue. Appending <code>&action=purge</code> to the URL will probably fix it. Can you confirm it looks good to you now? --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 00:29, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
::Yep, now it updates instantly! Well done, whatever you did! :) --[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 16:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

:::I've also added a link underneath the comic box that has the action embedded, so no one has to do any manual URL hacking. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 17:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

::::Just wanted to check in on this - are there issues with automated systems or spammers following this link? I know it can affect performance - caching is important on a busy site! --[[User:Overand|Overand]] ([[User talk:Overand|talk]]) 22:37, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

== Suggestion: Change "Go to this comic" to "Go to this entry" ==

Just a small suggestion. For the Main Page, I suggest changing "Go to this comic" to say "Go to this ''entry''" instead to remove any confusion for new and regular viewers. It certainly took me a while to figure how to go to each featured comic's entry from the main page.

[[Special:Contributions/69.43.114.2|69.43.114.2]] 17:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

:How about if it reads "Go to this comic explanation"? Would that be less confusing? I only quibble because the explanations aren't really entries, in wiki parlance each page is usually called an article, but that doesn't seem to fit here as we really have explanation pages. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 17:41, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

::Agreed. [[User:Ctxppc|Randy Marsh]] ([[User talk:Ctxppc|talk]]) 22:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

== Explain the Unreleased Comic? ==
:I wonder if [[http://i56.tinypic.com/a9ton8.png this comic]] is permitted to be explained, despite the double issue of Randall pulling the comic plus me finding the pulled comic through "xkcd overrated"... [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 18:21, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

== Comic 1156 ==

I don't have an account to edit the page directly, so here's an edit someone should make:
It looks like whoever wrote the existing page simply googled 'conditioning' and found the first link that came up.
Please modify the link to point to 'Classical conditioning', not 'Operant conditioning'.
Thanks. {{unsigned ip|124.191.56.91|05:26, 7 January 2013‎ (UTC)}}

:Hi. This is the talk page for the main page of the wiki. This page only has a "view" of the actual comic explanation. The actual explanation page is at [[1156: Conditioning]], and I assure you, edit permissions have not been restricted for that page. Someone has already changed the page to link to Classical conditioning, but the original editor came back stating that Operant was correct. If you would like to start a discussion about this [[Talk:1156: Conditioning|on the talk page for this explanation]] that would be much more conducive to getting this matter settled. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 05:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

== Comic Links ==

Some of the links seem to be confusing, as they're titled in a weird way. The link/button 'go to this comic', I'd expect would go to the actual comic on XKCD's page. Yet it goes to the comic's wiki page. And clicking on the comic # and date directs you to the XKCD page, yet I really feel that link should go to the wiki page, as it's right at the top center there, and has the date and everything, sort of indicating that it's a wiki page, yet it's not. And the prev and next buttons next to it don't go to the xkcd page, they go to the wiki pages. Which is really messed up, I think. Because of my confusion, every single time I visit here, I clicked on the wrong link, though now I've gotten used to it. I suggest rewording the links as 'XKCD Comic # and date' and 'go to this comic's wiki page'. And possibly switching the links' positions so that the wiki links could be in that navigation bar and the XKCD links could be off to the side. After all, we are a wiki, so putting our wiki links to the comic off to the side and the direct xkcd link in the center seems odd. Anyway, has anyone had the same thoughts and/or agree with me on this?--[[Special:Contributions/69.119.250.251|69.119.250.251]] 18:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

== Unexplained comics ==

The template that starts each explanation page should be edited to have the next and previous buttons automatically skip over pages that don't exist, rather than simply not being there if comic n+1 or n-1 doesn't exist. Preferably it would append a notice to the next page (like the redirect notices commonly found on mediawiki) telling you how many comics have been skipped. I'm not sure how feasible this would be to script, however. [[Special:Contributions/130.160.145.185|130.160.145.185]] 23:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

== Percentage of remaining comics calculation is off... ==

Okay, I hate to be "that pedantic math guy", but... Today the main page reads "We have collaboratively explained 936 xkcd comics, and only 252 (27%) remain." While I agree that 252/936 is roughly 27%, I believe we should really be calculating the percentage as "the number left to explain" divided by "the total number of comics that exist", not divided by "the number we have finished". That is (today), 252/1188=21%. Think about it. If we had completed 594 comics today, with 594 remaining, what should the percentage be? 594/594=100%? That's not right... 594/1188=50%? That's what we really want to say.

The page is protected, which makes sense. So I'll make my suggestion here.

Change this:

<pre>
and only {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)}}
({{#expr: ({{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)) / ({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9) * 100 round 0}}%)
remain.
</pre>
To this:
<pre>
and only {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)}}
({{#expr: ({{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)) / {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}}} * 100 round 0}}%)
remain.
</pre>
[[User:Imperpay|Imperpay]] ([[User talk:Imperpay|talk]]) 15:32, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

:Done and done. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|purple|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 15:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

:Thanks for the heads-up! However, notice that the #expr: around LATESTCOMIC was unnecessary. I've removed it. [[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 11:30, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

::Waldir, you have exposed me as a charlatan and a fool! (I just copied, pasted, and tinkered until I made something that worked. I don't actually understand it. No formal training, you see. It's what we used to call "hacking" back in the dawn of the digital era, before the word took on connotations of vandalism, trespassing, and fraud. Have you kids come up with another word for it?) [[User:Imperpay|Imperpay]] ([[User talk:Imperpay|talk]]) 13:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

::: Joke's on me then, 'cause you sure fooled me – I readily assumed you knew your way around those parser functions. Nice job hacking the code, it was a nearly perfect crime ;) --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 03:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

:::I've heard the cool kids call that the "Maker Mentality", usually with a reference to [http://makezine.com/ Make magazine] and [http://makerfaire.com/ Maker Faire]. But I think there's also a movement to resurrect the original meaning of hacker. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 04:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

==sidebar ads?==
''Moved to [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals]] –– [[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 08:06, 4 May 2013 (UTC)''

== Expression error on Main Page ==

Please use <code><nowiki>{{PAGESINCAT:...|R}}</nowiki></code> instead of <code><nowiki>{{PAGESINCAT:...}}</nowiki></code> to correct these errors :) --[[Special:Contributions/110.168.83.62|110.168.83.62]] 10:55, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
:Dun diddly done. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 11:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

== Compile a list of non-technical comics to non-technical readers? ==

I'm a long-time reader and fan of >< |< C |}, but my normal approach is useless when I introduce this provocative comic series to my less technical friends. They stay at the apparent level of many comics. They don't bother reading the explanations, but they would say, "it's hard to make sense". Imagine an average non-technical (and non-arts) major guy/girl, can we compile a list of state-of-the-art but less-technical, easy-to-comprehend but "ah ha!!" strips that is suitable for them? --[[User:FrenzY|W shll nvr flly xpln xkcd!]] ([[User talk:FrenzY|talk]]) 12:39, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
:Oh my god that signature.
:Gaah, derailment. Uh, pretty much anything that isn't tagged with the physics or math categories are easy enough to understand for the average English speaker, so just check the categories at the bottom of the page for that. Also, avoid comics with the incomplete tag, and that oughta be fine. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:41, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

== Quit building? ==
''This post was moved to [[Talk:1214: Geoguessr]].''

:Hello, this is the talk page for the content of the front page of the wiki, not for discussion of the most recent comic, that happens [[Talk:1214: Geoguessr|here]]. I've moved your post over there for you. Cheers, and welcome to explain xkcd! [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 05:09, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

== List of incomplete comics ==
We need a link to the "Incomplete articles" at the main page below the "Missing link". Most pages are created but many are incomplete.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:06, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

== Header message ==

'''Please don't take this seriously unless you actually think it's a good idea:'''

I think the header should be changed from "explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb." to "explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb... or still have some hope that comic [[1190]] will end." or something similar. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 14:53, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

::Nope! This page is trying to explain more than 1222 comics, not only [[1190: Time]]. The header just states the truth.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:49, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd vote for a change. People have started coming over to discuss the comic even when they've 'gotten' it. That, and the fact that this is one step ahead of Googling the references yourself. So.. maybe, "it's because you're dumb..and lazy."[[Special:Contributions/220.224.246.97|220.224.246.97]] 02:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
:I honestly don't think it either. This is the most comprehensive comic-by-comic Wiki. People don't come here because they're dumb ''or'' lazy. That's like saying I'm dumb for reading a review of an episode after I've watched it - I'm interested in seeing what other people up with or caught that I didn't. It denigrates the idea of aggregating information, which is a very un-XKCD idea.

As a regular reader of explainxkcd (who was to lazy to cotribute anything until now), I'd like to support the proposed edit. (... and lazy) It really fits to the tone of our favourite waste of otherwise productive time (which is xkcd for myself). Best wishes from Heidelberg, Germany. --[[Special:Contributions/147.142.13.86|147.142.13.86]] 14:38, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

A friend that happens to be blind hates this site because of the "It's cause you're dumb" tagline. If he wants a transcript of the comic on xkcd, his option is to come here and have his screen reader program telling him that he is dumb every single time.

How about, "explain xkcd: because sometimes we all need a little help."? -- [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.65|173.245.54.65]] 02:07, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

:Oh, hadn't thought about that. There's been recurring complaints about this over the years, though the tagline's been around since before we were a wiki. I'll write something up and put this to a vote. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 09:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

== A point of confusion ==

Why is 'Apatosaurus' a category but 'Internet Argument' no longer a category? [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 13:53, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
:Cuz people hit the random button, see an Apatosaurus feature in three comics and figure it must be a recurring theme. Same as the internet argument thing. Will get round to a category purge after we've cleared out all the incomplete tags. I think there's one for ferrets hidden away somewhere in the dark recesses of our catalog of categories. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
::On the subject, can I suggest a "Barred from Conferences" category, or similar? That's definitely a recurring theme (for a long, long time), and thus should be justified enough. I'd be happy to add various qualifying articles as I scroll through again, if I can, but first I'll leave it up to someone else to solidify the actual name. (In case it turns out not to be just conferences, for example.) [[Special:Contributions/178.98.31.27|178.98.31.27]] 16:27, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

== Incomplete comics statement ==

I suggest the minor change: "We have an explanation for all x xkcd comics, and only y (y/x %) are '''marked as''' incomplete." –[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 08:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

== 1262 is out ==

So what are you waiting for? [[Special:Contributions/75.60.27.102|75.60.27.102]] 06:25, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
:<nowiki>(diff | hist) . . N 1262: Unquote‎; 06:23, 9 September 2013 (UTC) . . (+322)‎ . . ‎Davidy22 (Talk | contribs | block)‎ (Created page with "{{comic | number = 1262 | date = September 9, 2013 | title = Unquote | image = unquote.png | titletext = I guess it's a saying from the Old Country. }} ==Expl...")</nowiki>
:Examine the time stamps. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:30, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

== Adverts ==

I am not going to disable my adblock, I hate ads. If you accept bitcoin I can make a donation though. [[Special:Contributions/184.66.160.91|184.66.160.91]] 05:24, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
:Our ads are always easy-to-load images as opposed to flash ads, they're always pointing to some valuable product of some form and we've looked at and approved all of them. They also occupy space that would otherwise have been empty, as our one ad is bound strictly to the sidebar. We used to have a paypal donation button, but it was pitifully tended to and a much less reliable source of income than ads. Ads are the only reliable business model for small sites like this one; unless our readers suddenly become willing to pay all our server costs for us, we can't feasibly afford a better hosting plan without ads. We legally aren't allowed to open a merch store, because that infringes on Randall's shop, and we haven't had a single generous benefactor yet. If you want to stop seeing our server error messages, loosening up adblock for us and contributing to our impressions count will help us massively. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:00, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't care about your server message, I wanted to make a donation. Sooo, you don't want any bitcoins? [[Special:Contributions/37.221.161.235|37.221.161.235]] 07:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
:This took a bit of digging. We're fine with bitcoin donations, it's just that at the rate donations came in, they were just not enough to pay for anything. [https://coinbase.com/checkouts/b19f921822ac962807a8f72d51509e59] '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 20:34, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Donation made! [[Special:Contributions/184.66.160.91|184.66.160.91]] 23:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
:Thanks! '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Am I the only one that feels it is "wrong" that the explainxkcd site has ads and the real xkcd doesn't have any? It feels like someone is profiting off of Randall's work. Does he officially endorse this website? Do any proceeds help go to support his ongoing publication of an awesome comic? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.19|173.245.54.19]] 16:01, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

:An admin will be able to give you more detail than me, but explainxkcd has a significant number of visitors (and thus hosting costs), and no way to generate income other than donations and ads. In contrast, Randall makes money from his comics by way of books and merchandise (and possibly public speaking), some of which will pay for his hosting. He could choose to have ads on his site to generate additional income, its his choice not to. I have no knowledge of the finances of explainxkcd, however I doubt there is much/any surplus ad revenue being pocketed by the owners/admin. As far as the site being officially endorsed, not as far as I'm aware, no.
:Also, for more discussion on adverts/income, see [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Proposals#Sidebar_ads here].--[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 16:21, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

== /wiki is returning a 403 ==

Hello, 
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ is returning a 403 now. In my eyes you should redirect it to the main-page instead :-). --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 12:41, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
:We have a new, hopefully better, server. The problem is already reported to [[User_talk:Jeff#Forbidden]] --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 14:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

== Explain Explain XKCD / Explain^2 XKCD ==

This particular comic explanation requires explanation. Way too many potential cross references with each conjecture requiring its own explanation page. Dial it back a little. {{unsigned ip|108.162.245.11}}
:Uh, sorry, could you clarify that a little? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 07:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

::He is talking about the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/] issue. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
:::Well if it's that, that's an intentional permissions setting on a URL that no-one is feasibly going to type. Unless you can come up with a better use for that URL, with a reason? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 08:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
::::A symlink to "index.php" at the root folder would solve the problem.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 09:26, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
:::::I cannot believe how many weeks that took to fix. Amazing. No one was going to type it, but everyone was going to get redirected to it from the home page! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.227|108.162.222.227]] 11:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The problem is still not solved. [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/] gives still a 403 error because "index.php" is not included in the http server configuration as a default index page. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
:: I've fixed this. Sorry about the delay. Was super busy! --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 16:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
:::Thanks Jeff, it's working. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:20, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

== Webmaster: Obtrusive video ad on your site ==

In the ad section I saw a box sticking out and blocking out the explanation. This was therefore a very obtrusive botched video ad. Please remove this ad from your site. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.188|199.27.128.188]] 22:29, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

EDIT: It's now sticking out and preventing me from clicking on the "Save page" button. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.188|199.27.128.188]] 22:29, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
:We only accept GIFs for moving ads. Ads should also be contained within the sidebar as they're techonogically restricted to standard-sized PNGs and GIFs, so an extruding ad would be a CSS error on the site end/browser error. In addition, we run ads from lots of advertisers, and "this ad" is not specific enough to tell us which ad you want us to remove. Could you provide a screenshot/link/more information? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 22:54, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

== Adding an arcs list page ==

I think there should be a page listing all webcomics arcs so far (the red spiders, the race, etc.)[[Special:Contributions/188.114.102.134|188.114.102.134]] 12:47, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

:This already exists, see [[:Category:Comic series]]. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 05:39, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

== This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: link ==

This has been bothering me for a while now. Why does the link in the info box for the main page link to editing the main page? It needs to link to the editing of the page which the comic's explanation is on. When I would like to edit the latest XKCD explanation, I click that thinking I am going to edit the explanation, but instead I am led to editing the main page. [[User:Auraxangelic|Auraxangelic]] ([[User talk:Auraxangelic|talk]]) 15:19, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
:Ooooooh, nice catch. I've actually never noticed that before, and it's definitely not intentional. It happens because the text of the explanation page is folded into the main page before mediawiki parses links and syntax, and the "Edit this page" button links to the page that the link is on. I have an idea for how to fix it though, so I'll get on that. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 01:49, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

== #1454 - bad description ==

"Curly-hair states longingly..." She comes across as disappointed (or even heartbroken), not "longing", which suggests sounding somewhat positive and energetic, rather than deflated. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.88|141.101.99.88]] 22:29, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

==Cueball/Rob merge==

It seems to me from a general reading of the comics that Randall has always intended for the character we here call "Cueball" to have the name "Rob". Much as "Cutie" was renamed "Megan" when we learned her name, and now she is identified as "Megan" even in comics where her name is not explicitly mentioned, I think we should consider merging the "Cueball" and "Rob" articles. I know there's a lot of inertia here, but it seems to me that this is Randall's intention for the character's name. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 13:38, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
: Alternatively, we should un-merge [[Megan]] and [[Cutie]] for consistency. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 14:50, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
: I'm pretty sure this is an augmentation of the author's internal characters, including the one he has developed involuntarily as to the nature of his love. His memory of his love is not his love, yet it is what he has to love. Randall seems the type to delve into this, and thus I am in support of keeping the character names as they stand. /eof [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.185|173.245.56.185]] 05:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

== Kerbal Space Program ==

I'm a schizophrenic who's been playing Kerbal Space Program for about five days with no sleep, and I'm pretty sure this is a reference to [https://www.google.com/search?q=xkcd+kerbal+space+program&oq=xkcd+kerbal+space+program&aqs=chrome..69i57.10851j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8 comic 1365] :D [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.185|173.245.56.185]] 05:39, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

== 1509 is missing ==

When will it be added? By bot, I presume.--[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 04:51, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

== Broken Date Box on comics ==

The "Comic #1511 (April 13, 2015)" textbox that appears on top of each comic breaks if you shrink the screen. I think the space after the comma needs to be replaced with a non breaking space.{{unsigned ip|108.162.238.144}}

:Is it fixed now? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 20:59, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

::It looks like it. I had pointed it out once before and it was fixed. I guess somebody reverted that change or something... --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.202|173.245.56.202]] 13:42, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

== 1515? ==

Is it correct that we have 1515 comics, as of April 15, 2015? --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.122|173.245.48.122]] 05:20, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
:It's not, but some people insist on making comic pages for things that aren't comics. I'll fix that. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:27, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

== 972 is broken ==

Look, I'm not going to make an account here or anything, but I just wanted to point out that trying to access the page for comic #972 leads to a database error, and maybe someone should check on that. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.102|173.245.48.102]] 07:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Actually a lot of other pages lead to that same error as well... Even the 'Technical Diskussions' sub-page is broken. Seems to my, like some swap-spac needs cleaning up? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.230.83|108.162.230.83]] 10:32, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
:Yep. It's a symptom of another problem, but the errors should be cleared up now. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 16:31, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
::No dice. [[997]] is still broken. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.235.119|198.41.235.119]] 00:27, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

:::Looks like they're working now. 21:01, 2016-11-27 {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.163}}

== #1567 ==

I think the current explanation is missing the connection, and the parody of, many "As Seen On TV" commercials selling kitchen products. Many of these commercials show people trying to use common kitchen equipment (pots, pans, can openers, etc) in a way that no normally functioning human would do it (for example, one has a lady draining the liquid from a pot of food into a sink in an extremely awkward manner — one that no normal person who has ever seen a kitchen would do — but then the lid flies one way, food goes another, there's a huge mess, etc; another commercial has someone trying to open a can of food using a can opener '''backwards''', with the woman looking extremely confused looking on how the can opener is supposed to be used or attached to the can [if you told someone act like they are a clueless monkey trying to use a can opener for the first time, that's basically what the commercial had the woman doing — no joke]). These commercials often begin with phrases such as "If you are like me" or "If you are like most home makers" or some other closely related "If you are like..." phrase (thus this comic is directly tieing itself to these commercials using this catch phrase). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.220.11|108.162.220.11]] 07:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
:: Other opening catch phrases for these commercials include the "Tired of [fill-in made-up frustration]" and the "Do you [fill-in made-up frustration]" kind. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.220.11|108.162.220.11]] 08:09, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

== "I used Google news BEFORE it was clickbait" ==

Go to a handful of older pages on this wiki, and it won't be long before you see this phrase in the comments - [[941: Depth Perception]], for instance has two of them. Does anyone know why this happens? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.116|108.162.221.116]] 10:59, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
:That's the signature of a person who used to post here. If you click through, it actually goes to a userpage. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

== URL ==

I notice that whenever you add "explain" to an xkcd url, it takes you here! neat! [[Special:Contributions/198.41.235.233|198.41.235.233]] 23:13, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
:Someone noticed! Finally! '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:45, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

== Should we really be using CC-BY-SA? ==

Don't get me wrong, CC-BY-SA is my favorite creative commons license. The problem is, are we really allowed? The reason I'm worried is that I'm not sure if what we are doing really counts as "fair use" with respect to XKCD. It would probably be better to do CC-NC-BY-SA, to respect XKCD, or at least put a note that CC-BY-SA only covers the wiki portion (since it's probably too late to do CC-BY-SA anyway).
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.37|173.245.54.37]] 23:38, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
:This is a tough one. Mediawiki sites generally use CC-BY-SA, even if the content they're based off is copyrighted (Wikia sites for various topics do this). The license only does apply to content ''created'' here. What should probably be done, if it isn't already, is some specification on pages in the <code>File:</code> namespace indicating that they are owned by someone other than the owners of this site. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 19:37, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

== #1663: Garden not yet added? ==

For me it's 4:30 AM, 4/4/16 - I have a sleep schedule just like [https://xkcd.com/361/], so I've been first on quite a few xkcd explanations immediately. when they came out.
I notice that usually, immediately once a new xkcd comic is released, a bot generates a corresponding bare-bones page on this wiki. However, this new comic "1663: Garden" doesn't yet have an automatically-generated page. Maybe it's because of the strange user-session hash key that appears in the URL bar when the "comic" is interacted with? Maybe this sort of interactive thing messes with the bot?
Am I just being impatient? Do I have to wait a few minutes? (I'm going to bed, and this probably won't be seen until tomorrow, but I am at least interested in knowing how the bot system works.) [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.21|173.245.54.21]] 09:01, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

== Skins broken ==

It seems both the Classic and Monobook skins are very very broken. Only Vector seems to be laid out normally. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 19:39, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
: Yes, for me too. Let me see what can be done. [[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 20:10, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
::All calls to /load.php seem to fail, which results in the broken look. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.167|162.158.86.167]] 11:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
:::Oh wow, I thought I was the only one. [[User:SuperSupermario24|Just some random derp]] 15:57, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
::::Should be fixed now. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:59, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

== #1682: Not sure about the reference for Russian meaning for Bun ==
''Also interesting to note is that in several Slavic languages (including Russian, Czech and Polish), the word for Rabbit literally means Little King''

I'm a native Russian speaker, and i've never heard of Rabbit being used for ''Little King''...

* Rabbit: ''krolik'' (кролик)
* Little King: ''korolyok'' (королёк)

Not sure if this above statement is correct for Russian language. {{unsigned ip|162.158.255.28}}
:This is the main page. You probably want to put this in [[Talk:1682: Bun]]'''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 16:36, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

== Random Button ==
The actual xkcd site has one and adding one would make it closer to the actual site and make discovering random comics and their explanations easier. It could go next to the comic # button.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.69|173.245.52.69]] 01:03, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
:There is a random page button on the left. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:36, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
::Oh. Didn't see that. Sorry.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.69|173.245.52.69]] 20:16, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

== XKCD Alignment Chart ==

A while back, I was searching for an XKCD alignment chart, with no success, so I made one. It is not perfect, so I'm wondering what other opinions on the alignment of the characters are.

Lawful Good- Beret

Neutral Good- Ponytail

Chaotic Good- Mrs. Roberts

Lawful Neutral-Cueball

Neutral Neutral- Megan

Chaotic Neutral- White hat

Lawful Evil- Hairy

Neutral Evil- Danish

Chaotic Evil- Black Hat

--[[User:Fallencrow305|Fallencrow305]] ([[User talk:Fallencrow305|talk]]) 22:10, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:What about Help I'm trapped in a drivers license factory Elaine Roberts? --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 15:48, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
::Or Hairbun? Or Science Girl? Here are my predictions: Elaine - Chaotic Good, Hairbun - Lawful Good, Science Girl - Lawful Neutral --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 16:00, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

What? How can Beret Guy be anything other than chaotic?

== 1713 cc also means carbon copy. So 50 carbon copies of either of those words could be called for. ==

1713 cc also means carbon copy. So 50 carbon copies of either of those words could be called for. {{unsigned ip|108.162.215.146}}
:Sorry, but [[User:108.162.215.146|108.162.215.146]], you need to remember to sign your work. --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 11:50, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

== Chatroom Idea... What do you guys think? ==
I have an idea. What if there was a discussion board for the wiki? (And no, I don't mean boards like this or the "comment section" of comic explanations. I mean a live chatroom plugin of sorts. We could add it to the website and enable it so we can talk to each other in real-time and make live edits with each other. This way, we can also let each other know of edits we've made, make new pages altogether, or just talk. What do you guys think? -- [[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 9:10, 13 September 2016
:The [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:RecentChanges recent changes] log already notifies all users on the site of new pages and edits. User talk pages and the community portals exist for coordination. Also, avoid creating new comment topics in the middle of a talk page in the future, comments are supposed to follow a chronological order. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 15:39, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
::Sorry. --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 13:59, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

== Copying versus embedding ==

Hi, I'm new here and I'm trying not to be an asshole. However, I just noticed that this site uses its own archive of copied xkcd comics, rather than using the image URL provided for hotlinking and embedding. I can understand this website will want to have its own archive in case xkcd.org ever goes offline, but until then, why not just embed the images instead of copying?

The reason I'm asking: I just realised I hardly ever go to xkcd.org anymore ever since my browser put explainxkcd above xkcd.org. Explanations get updated, so sometimes I check back later, which rarely happens with the comics. It makes perfect sense. But if more people experience this issue, xkcd.org is getting fewer unique visitors because of it, and this could be fixed by fetching the image directly from there, while still making and storing a copy in case it is needed in the future. Thoughts, anyone? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.33|141.101.104.33]] 17:08, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
:So, we can't do this for every comic, like [[1190]] or other april fools comics. Also, xkcd's revenue comes from merchandise sales, not ad revenue, so I believe it's not actually negatively impacting them that we're serving the images ourselves rather than making the main site serve them for us. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 05:39, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

:Embedding images is generally known as "stealing bandwidth", since it uses resources of the original site's server (may be limited) without bringing it any actual visitors (they won't see anything else of the website, like announcements, shop, other sections, ...). Also, depending on how unique visitors are counted, "visitors" through embedding might be invisible (client's side scripts won't be loaded). So no image embedding without the original site's owner express permission. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.88.106|141.101.88.106]] 12:51, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

== Other Languages ==
Are there translations of pages anywhere. It has been mentioned that they are on subdomains of this site, or a sub-page, as Main_Page/es for spanish. I can't seem to find them there. [[User:The Muffin Man|The Muffin Man]] ([[User talk:The Muffin Man|talk]]) 14:48, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
:It's a work in progress, long delayed but I really do want to get to it eventually. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

== Why are there male/female symbols in some of the entries? ==

Those symbols are not in the comic, but they're in the table. I think a vandal put them there. Can someone remove them from the Lavaball, Bladeball, Eggspotting, Merfishing, Consequence Golf and Heck Escape? (now don't act like someone who criticizes "politically correct leftist "libt++d" SJW snowflakes" just because I said "heck" or censored the derogatory term for "liberal" or not even trying to say these uncensored) -- [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.106|108.162.221.106]] 12:36, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

== How quaint ==

From the Main Page:

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

From the Rules section:

'''Don't be a jerk. '''

(Emphasis mine)

How very ,very quaint. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.100|162.158.126.100]] 21:00, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

== HTTPS? ==

Hi,
With the general trend towards HTTPS being favoured over HTTP for security and speed reasons, would it be possible to force the use of HTTPS and secure the mixed content please?

Please see [https://www.whynopadlock.com/results/7e707bfd-cd71-4b00-b95e-be226fb10fb6 Why no Padlock?] for more details.

Thanks,
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.179.202|162.158.179.202]] 10:32, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

:Browsing using HTTPS seems to just work. There's even a signed certificate.
:https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1946

:I really don't get why people are so convinced that browsing using HTTPS is so much more "secure". You even seem to claim that it's faster?
:If you love it so much, install a browser extension like https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere.

:With the exception of the login / register page, I really don't see the point for enforcing this for the whole site. I am no admin though.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.54.93|172.69.54.93]] 22:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

We are already in 2018 and this website still does not even redirect automatically to HTTPS ([https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170536-How-do-I-redirect-all-visitors-to-HTTPS-SSL- you can do it so easily with Cloudflare...]) nor enforce HTTPS with {{w|HSTS}}... I don't know, just check [https://scotthelme.co.uk/hardening-your-http-response-headers/#strict-transport-security on Scott Helme's site] why it's important. Having to rely on the user installing an extension for doing the sysadmin work is a bad joke, really. And it does not fix some issues with mixed content of course. With Let's Encrypt and Cloudflare providing certificates for free and the plethora of tutorials online on securing a website (not limited to HTTPS), there is no excuse to not do it. -- [[User:guest|guest]] ([[User talk:guest|talk]]) 11:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

== "It's 'cause you're dumb" ==
I see that there was some talk about this a while ago, in which people seemed to agree that the "It's 'cause you're dumb" tagline is unnecessarily mean and should be changed... and yet, it's still here. I'd like to add some more fuel to the fire with several reasons why I really hate this tagline:

* The tagline doesn't fit the tone of XKCD. Randall celebrates knowledge. Even Black Hat wouldn't just outright say "You're dumb", because he's a classhole who can insult way better than that.
* Many of the people who contribute to this wiki are very smart. They're not dumb.
* They're also quite amicable from what I've seen. If they wouldn't insult someone, why is the website doing so?
* Not knowing something is not the same as being dumb. Even the smartest people don't know everything.
* Having a desire to learn is smart, not dumb.
* The tagline's logic is flawed. Just because you learn a new thing, doesn't mean you were dumb to begin with.

Anyone with me on this?

[[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 14:07, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

: The first line of the "Rules" section is "Don't be a jerk" at the time of writing. The first thing this wobsite does is to break that rule. I'm not sure what else is to be said here. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.76|162.158.126.76]] 16:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

:I always thought that was weird too. But it's still there... I'll tell the admins about it, and hopefully it will be changed. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 13:18, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Explanation: ''This'' is a joke... Missing the punchline? --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:15, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Personally, I'm fine with the current tagline. I consider it a joke and don't feel offended. However, if there is consensus a) that and b) to what it should be changed, I'm ok with changing it. --[[User:SlashMe|SlashMe]] ([[User talk:SlashMe|talk]]) 16:18, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm wondering, would it be possible to temporarily (a week or so?) stop new ads from appearing in the sidebar and replace it with a poll concerning this issue? Right now it's just showing what appeared in the banners in [[1965: Background Apps]], and not a real ad. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.58.81|162.158.58.81]] 10:12, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
:The advertisement is used to pay the fees needed to run this site. Right now this wiki get's an upgrade but when it's done this discussion will get a proper placement here. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 13:37, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The first time I encountered this tagline I thought it was pretty funny. Satire can be hard to detect online but this one seems clear enough. --[[User:DKMell|DKMell]] ([[User talk:DKMell|talk]]) 20:42, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
:What is it satirizing? I'm serious; I genuinely don't know. It could well be that I just don't get the joke. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 13:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

At first I liked the joke, but now it's either annoying or I ignore it. Personally I don't feel it needs to be changed, as it's in the satirical spirit of xkcd, but I wouldn't care too much. [[User:Nyx goddess|Nyx goddess]] ([[User talk:Nyx goddess|talk]]) 22:56, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

It's satire, if it gets removed that's exactly the kind of overzealous political correctness that MAGA chuds are talking about when they accuse us of being snowflakes, howabout let's not give them ammo. - 02:03, 22 December 2018 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|162.158.63.94}}
:As above: what it is satirizing? Also, for my part, it's not about political correctness at all; it's that the tagline doesn't match my personal positive image of XKCD, nor of this wiki, and it just feels unfitting to me, for all the reasons that I laid out. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 13:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm in favor of a change. Let's drop the "dumb". Or at least modify it. I propose a "strikethrough" of dumb, then add any one of a list of possible words: confused, ignorant, curious, wondering, befuddled... (Oooh, could it randomly change each time the page is loaded? Code wizards, advance!) [[User:Imperpay|Imperpay]] ([[User talk:Imperpay|talk]]) 22:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
:A complete list of all synonyms of dumb, including dumb and all synonyms of those synonyms, according to thesaurus.com. One randomly loads each time you load the page via rng, or on a once a day system, like the incomplete page of the day. That would actually probably make it more mean on average, but more clearly a joke. Wouldn’t be impossible to code either.[[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 15:18, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

The reason I come to Explain XKCD is because I'm excited to see what other people have said about it. I agree with the above - it doesn't fit the spirit of xkcd's joy for knowledge and it really just isn't why people come here. Furthermore, it skirts demeaning people with disabilities. Please remove it. [[User:Jachra|Jachra]] ([[User talk:Jachra|talk]]) 07:43, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I also agree with Hawthorn. This tagline always was very strange for me. No, this is nothing about political correctness. I don't mind being insulted, if there is a joke, or something ironical or satirical behind it. But there just isn't. It's just not funny at all.
A random selection on every page load from a long list of completely absurd reasons would be more the XKCDs way. You could even try to create one or more "''It's because ...''" explanations for every comic and randomly display one out of those. 2206: "''... you don't know how to type capital numbers.''", 2205: "''... you don't assume Pi is one.''", 2204: "''... you didn't give us a moon.''", 2203: "''... there wasn't a really big meteor impact for a while.''" and so on. Pretty straight forward. The more frequent visitors of XKCD would probably even get many of the references and remember the corresponding comic. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.221|162.158.91.221]] 17:39, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
:I did recently raise the issue again on the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Is_the_.22It.27s_.27cause_you.27re_dumb.22_tagline_a_relic_of_the_past.3F Community Portal], explaining my case in more detail, although it seems to have garnered little interest. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 12:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

What instead, then? It's poor form to suggest half a change; if not "it's cause you're dumb," what should the tagline be? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.85|173.245.52.85]] 16:37, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

There seems a pretty clear consensus to get rid of the jarring insult, with no apparent objections. Has been for years now. What do we need to do to delete it? What's the blocker, here?
"first we need a consensus on replacement" isn't an answer. It sets too high a bar for something which is trivial, and anyway replacement is a separate task which can be performed later. Deletion is step 1, so what needs to be done to perform step 1, since none of us seems to have access to do so?
Personally, I'd argue for making it publicly editable, which then magically also resolves step 2, replacement. Any tagline that stayed for any amount of time would then only remain because it was widely considered worthy by site members. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.143|172.69.71.143]] 16:39, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
:I like that idea, it efficiently gets rid of the years-old issue, and any further issues would have their own discussion page, plus any change that's problematic, obscene or spam could easily be reversed. I can imagine that at first there would be many changes, but after a few weeks/ months it should stabilize itself. [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 14:19, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

== Editor FAQ ==
Eventually we may need that banner at the top for something else, like the incomplete explanation spotlight, or when the wiki was being upgraded, so I think we should add the Editor FAQ in the New Here? section. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 11:21, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
:It's a first draft and I'm just waiting to be convinced that it's NOT incomplete. And be sure I haven't written it without a plan how to present it on the proper places. Furthermore this "Sitenotice" on the top is only "dissmissable" for valid users, every visitor not logged in does see this always. Thanks for your participation and I'm grateful about any help. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 16:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

== Categories on Main Page ==

[[MediaWiki:Common.css]] has the following entry:
<pre>
.page-Main_Page div#catlinks ul li {
border-left: none;
position: absolute;
left: 70px;
bottom: 6px;
}
</pre>
The <code>70px</code> cause an overlap for me in Firefox, and much too small a gap in Chrome. I suggest to actually remove that line completely, just compare it with categories on other pages: The gap is quite large. In Firefox, also the <code>6px</code> are too much, but in Chrome they are required. But it might be worth to try whether setting vertical align to something else can achieve a more consistent display. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.230|162.158.88.230]] 10:22, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
:And the comment above that says: "Dirty hack to hide the categories of the current comic from main page. ...". I'm aware of this but there is much more, especially for a mobile version I'm looking forward to. Only in this case I see three problems: The component is rendered as a list (ul,li) by hiding the bullets. This then empty space is always rendered different in different browsers. Using "position: absolute" tries to circumvent this but absolute positioning is bad layout and never should be used. Furthermore mixing the units ''px'' and ''em'' in many places is also a problem when comparing it at different browsers. I'm working on this with the final goal also having a proper mobile version, not only for Firefox, Chrome, Edge,... on a desktop. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 12:12, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

== Bookmark ==

I think we should add this book mark I made to automatically transfer anything from xkcd to its explainxkcd page (I was frustrated, ok?):

javascript:x=window.location.href;x = x.replace(/\D/g,'');t=document.title.substring(5).replace(/ /g,"_");window.location.href="https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/"+x+":"+t;

I know the code could be more compact, but using this, you can just press a button and it will take you to the explain page {{unsigned ip|172.68.47.84}}
:Just changing the URL from <code>xkcd.com/2115/</code> to <code>explainxkcd.com/2115/</code> (putting the word explain to the beginning) does the same. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 16:41, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:Collecting these [[Browser helpers|here]]. – [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 04:48, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

== Non-comic explanations? ==

So I was looking at xkcd and I noticed a little jokey line near the bottom of the page in very small print that reads <pre> <nowiki> "xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing." </nowiki> </pre>
Now, I know enough to understand the joke, but it would be nice to have a page for this. Do we have one? Am I just blind? Either way, I would like to know. Thanks! [[User:Nyx goddess|Nyx goddess]] ([[User talk:Nyx goddess|talk]]) 23:39, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
:Nevermind, I just found it. Sorry! [[User:Nyx goddess|Nyx goddess]] ([[User talk:Nyx goddess|talk]]) 23:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

== Latest comic released. ==

I don't know where to post this, but the bots haven't created the page yet.
[[User:HelloWorld|HelloWorld]] ([[User talk:HelloWorld|talk]]) 19:24, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

: Probably infected by COVID-19. That's why you should wash your keyboards after visiting other websites. Until then, feel free to create the page manually (if possible). --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.19|108.162.242.19]] 21:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

== Minor edit proposal ==

Line 19 of the main page includes this sentence:
<pre>Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&contribs=newbie just joined].</pre>
That right there is not a wikilink. Could we change it to:
<pre>Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have [{{fullurl:Special:Contributions|contribs=newbie}} just joined].</pre>
Both render as follows:
{|class="wikitable"
|Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have [{{fullurl:Special:Contributions|contribs=newbie}} just joined].
|}
And I think my way is cleaner. [[User:Jacky720|That's right, Jacky720 just signed this]] ([[User talk:Jacky720|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jacky720|contribs]]) 14:52, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

==1000: 1000 Comics/1000 characters update==
I've completed the blank explanations for all the remaining characters in [[1000: 1000 Comics/1000 characters]]; however, it could really use some work in terms of verification. I offer the sweet incentive of being able to get rid of a page's 'incomplete' label as reward for people to double check my, and [[User:Kynde|Kynde's]] work on the project. [[User:BlackHat|Your favourite sociopath]] ([[User talk:BlackHat|(the one who leaves all the parentheses open]] 07:58, 25 October 2020 (UTC

==2021-02 updates to top of page==
I don't really like the changed first few lines - I think it takes up too much room and the previous info was better. I look at the main page daily, and want to see the comic and explination not all this stuff that I think would be better down below the daily comic display. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 17:50, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

: I agree, and it drives me crazy that {{tl|Welcome}} is designed for talk pages, so there is a red link to [[User:Main Page]]! [[Special:Contributions/172.68.142.213|172.68.142.213]] 15:22, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

: Since Jeff is much more involved in all this sort of stuff than myself, I would tend to defer to his judgement, but I also agree that the "Main Page" red link is pretty ugly. I will "be bold" and revert the change and then drop it if he really wants it. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 18:54, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
::I guess I cannot revert things as there are no "edit" buttons I can view for the Main Page [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 19:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
:::You need administrator privileges to edit the main page. This was done to reduce spam, which is basically non-existent now. I made the {{tl|Welcome}} template, and I certainly did not make it for it to be displayed in the main page! I made it to welcome new users to the site. — [[User:Sqrt-1|The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭]] [[User talk:Sqrt-1|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Sqrt-1|stalk]] 13:16, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
::::I see on [User:Jeff|Jeff]]'s talk page that Sqrt-1 has made a comment about this so maybe it will be taken care of. I am guessing that some automatic bot-like thing might have made an error. Today I got the {{tl|Welcome}} template added to my user page by Sqrt-1. It does seem like a useful template for user pages - less so for the Main page. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:28, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
:It looks like [[User:Jeff|Jeff]] has reverted it - Thanks! [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 11:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

== Overuse/misuse of incomplete template ==

Instead of having information on why the comic is incomplete or being removed once the explanation is finished, the incomplete template is being treated as a place to put witty comments. This overcrowds the category, making it more difficult to see articles in need of actual help or know why they need help. I have gone through the incomplete articles and posted new topics on ones with incomplete tags that do not provide information on why the template is there, asking to know why the comic is incomplete and, failing that, to have the template removed. For the full details, please see [[User:Quillathe_Siannodel|my user page]].

I would like to request that either a less obtrusive solution or compromise be found or the error of my (relatively new user) ways be explained to me by someone more experienced.

Sincerely, <s>[[406:_Venting|Summer Glau]]</s> [[User talk:Quillathe Siannodel|{)|(}]][[User:Quillathe_Siannodel|Quill]][[User talk:Quillathe Siannodel|{)|(}]]

P.S. Maybe an "incomplete incomplete template" template? I don't know.

P.P.S. I can kill you with my brain.

I don't know. I re-signed and edited so many times, March 2021 (UTC)
: In some cases, the "incomplete" tag is left on for a long time, when nobody takes the trouble to remove it from a page that has migrated out of people's attention. Sometimes, people remove it inappropriately, while a page is still actively under revision. In many cases, it's hard for anyone to say what's "incomplete" about a page because there's relevant stuff to add that isn't obvious until someone adds it. The question is more: at what point can a page be reasonably assumed to be "complete"? A week after the most recent edit to it? Some pages undergo revision for quite a while after they're first posted; other pages remain stable after only a few days. It annoys me when someone edits a page and removes its "incomplete" tag at the same time, which gives me the impression of "now that I have made my change, the page is in its final form, and nobody else should touch it!" [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 22:55, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
::Proposal: The default text of the incomplete template could be modified to include <code><nowiki>[[Category: Incomplete Incomplete (or something similar)]]</nowiki></code>. If the text is modified, the page should be removed from the category. This new category would be easily accessible from the main page, and anyone visiting it should see information about the category's meaning and how to help make said templates more informative. Possible ways to go about this:
::* Line 315 of the bot script would be changed to read: <code><nowiki>{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.[[Category: Whatever The Name Ends Up Being]]}}</nowiki></code>.
::* The main page banner would be changed to read: <code><nowiki>''Welcome to the '''explain [[xkcd]]''' wiki!'' 
We have an explanation for all [[:Category:All comics|'''{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}-1}}''' xkcd comics]],

and only {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}}
({{#expr: {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 0}}%) [[:Category:Incomplete explanations|are incomplete]]. Help us finish them! If you're looking for something easier, you could also edit one of the {{PAGESINCAT:Whatever The Name Ends Up Being|R}} pages with [[:Category:Whatever The Name Ends Up Being|incomplete explanations]], which would help other editors.</nowiki></code>.

::* The new category would read: <code><nowiki>This is the category page for incomplete pages that have no explanation for why they are incomplete in the incomplete tag. Do not add pages to this category. See also: [[:Category:Incomplete pages]] and [[:Category:Incomplete transcripts]]</nowiki></code>.
::I will not do this without first seeking community approval, because these are huge edits that could majorly change the wiki. Is this a good idea? [[User talk:Quillathe Siannodel|{)|(}]][[User:Quillathe_Siannodel|Quill]][[Special:Contributions/Quillathe_Siannodel|{)|(}]]
::: Feels a great idea. Given the dearth of opinion ventured either way, and given you've given plenty of time for people to declare an opinion, I'd argue to be bold, do it, and see if people squeal. It can always be reverted if required. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.161|172.70.178.161]] 17:02, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

== Add another digit to percentage incomplete count ==

With the large majority of comics gaining explanations, I suggest that the current expression be adjusted to the following, changing "round 0" to "round 1":

<pre>({{#expr: {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 1}}%)</pre>

Resulting in: ({{#expr: {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 1}}%)
[[User:Gamma|Gamma]] ([[User talk:Gamma|talk]])

== Problems creating account ==

I just attempted to create an account, and got the following message:
There are problems with some of your input.

I made an adjustment to the password (which seemed to be the problem), consisting of making one of the letters of my original attempt a capital. This didn't work.

There is no point telling me there are problems with my input and not telling me what the problems are. I can't read your mind at this distance.

Cheers
Copey.

== 2530: Clinical Trials ==

Maybe step 3 should come before step 2?

== add non-numbered comics ==

<nowiki> idea: for the "We have an explanation for all [number] xkcd comics..." make the number include the non-numbered comics like five minute comics part 4, Syndication, Blue Eyes, and that one book-publishing-rate one. what do you guys think? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.93|108.162.221.93]] 17:52, 22 October 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

:Good point, also as of right now even only including the numbered comics it's not up-to-date, as the newest comic is 2555 and it says "We have an explanation for all 2554 xkcd comics" -- [[User:256 256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256 256.256.256|talk]]) 09:38, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

== fix these articles please! ==

[[What If chapters]] should be a redirect, not a mirror of [[What If? chapters]] ! [[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.10|172.69.71.10]] 17:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)Bumpf
:Done. — [[User:Sqrt-1|The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭]] [[User talk:Sqrt-1|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Sqrt-1|stalk]] 07:00, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

== lol ==

https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/6xbc78/reading_xkcd_comics/ 13:14, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

== Top 10 includes no more than 9 people? ==

[[File:Top_10_but_it's_just_nine.png]]

have only nine users edited in the past seven days (unlikely) or does that top ten list really show no more than nine users? [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 09:13, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
:My guess is that it is because currently place 10 and 11 have a tie with a score of 4 due to 3 edits on 2 pages and the top 10 table can show a maximum of 10 entries and cannot "decide" which one to show as no 10.
:You can view the full list by clicking the "lots of people" below the table. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 13:19, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

::That would make sense, except right now it alternates between ElijaRock and Asdf who both have two edits, two points and two unique pages edited, and pure chance seems to decide which one of the two gets 10th place every time I hit F5 [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 14:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
:::PS: The actual 10th place right now is neither Asdf nor ElijaRock, it´s Jack (or at least it should be and sometimes, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, it even is) [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 14:34, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

== Countdown Timer? ==

What’s the timer at the top right of the xkcd site counting down to? Apologies if there’s already a page on this; I didn’t look very hard :P

See https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Talk:2566:_Decorative_Constants -- [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.39|172.70.114.39]] 02:17, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Now here: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Countdown_in_header_text.

Countdown in header text

2022-01-13T02:30:03Z

172.70.230.57: Some minor spelling/grammar changes.

*On January 10th 2022, [[Randall]] added a countdown in the top right corner of the [[xkcd Header text]] on {{xkcd}}.
**This happened while the comic [[2565: Latency]] was up.
***First the xkcd Header text was [[xkcd_Header_text#2022-01-08_-_Back_to_standard_text|changed back]] to the [[xkcd_Header_text#Header_text|standard text]] for the first time in almost three years:
****xkcd updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
***But already while this Friday-comic was still up on the following Monday the [[xkcd_Header_text#2022-01-10_-_Standard_text_with_countdown|countdown]] was added.
****This was thus up when the Monday comic [[2566: Decorative Constants]] was released, drawing more people to the xkcd page.
*The first archived version from [https://web.archive.org/web/20220110183238/https://xkcd.com/ 2022-01-10] read 20d 20h 27m.
**It looks like it started on [https://munvoseli.github.io/xkcd-countdown/ 01-10 17:00 UTC].
***At that time it would have read 20d 21h 59 min. Just two hours and 1 minute short of 3 weeks.
*This countdown will reach zero on Monday 2022-01-31 at 14:59 (2:59 PM) {{w|UTC}}, or 9:59 AM in Boston, Randall's home town.
**If seconds will be added towards the end, it seems likely that it may end exactly at 15:00 UTC (10:00 AM in Boston).
*The next day on [https://web.archive.org/web/20220111153818/https://xkcd.com/ 2022-01-11] a diagonal black bar appeared in the lower left-hand corner of the countdown box and started to move further into the image on following changes to the [[#Images|image]].
**This development called for the creation of this dedicated [[Countdown in header text]] page.
**The line had already moved further into the image at this time, but the latest version will never be available in the web archive.
***This development is reminiscent of the huge comic [[1190: Time]].
*[https://munvoseli.github.io/ Munvoseli] is keeping [https://munvoseli.github.io/xkcd-countdown/ track of the changes] to the image on the countdown.
**Although there are (at 2022-01-12 12:35 UTC) thirteen different frames we know of, the first three looks the same (because the diagonal bar was not in the frame yet) and the seventh and the eighth also seems to be the same, even though the bar had already begun moving across the frame from the fourth. This is either on purpose, a slipup or means that The FrameTM might not be zooming out of a larger image.
***However, the images that look the same all have individual addresses on the xkcd server. See more under [[#Images|Images]] below.

==Images==
*Images will be put on this separate page [[Countdown in header text/images]]
**The images can also be found [https://munvoseli.github.io/xkcd-countdown/ here].
**See more details at the top of the image page.

==Theories==
*Here different theories for what the countdown is for and what the picture is going to reveal can be added.

===The picture===
*Theories about the picture:
**It seems after two days and 12 pictures like either something is moving into the frame or that it is a zoom out from a white area of a large picture. Maybe it is the arm of Cueball the comes in to view.
***A curve seems to begin at the top left of the line in picture 13.

===Countdown===
*Theories about the countdown:
*Several have already been mentioned in the discussion:
**Randall's next book, either promoting start or it is released without other promotion than this countdown.
***Usually Randall has made month long [[:Category:Book promotion|promotions]] before release. So if is the release day it is a new way to do it. But will get a lot of attention. If it is just start of promoting it, people might get disappointed...
****For instance he began promoting his [[xkcd_Header_text#2015-05-14_-_New_book_Thing_Explainer|New book Thing Explainer]] in the header text. That was in May 2015 and the book was first released late [https://blog.xkcd.com/2015/05/13/new-book-thing-explainer/ November 2015]. Most of this time the header text was promoting the book.
**{{w|James Webb Space Telescope}} (JWST) going into orbit about L2 {{w|Lagrange point}.
***Randall has already made several comics about the telescope. The latest [[2564: Sunshield]] just five days prior to the countdown was started.
***But the telescope will not reach the point but rather go into a large orbit around it, and a precise timer counting down to it, seems a bit farfetched.
***On NASA's page on JWST is seems like it will [https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html#25 go into orbit] 29.5 days after it's [[December 25th Launch]], on Christmas Day, so already on the 23rd or 24th of January should it start the orbit - 8 days before the countdown.
**{{w|Lunar New Year}}
***In China it starts on February 1st and a [https://yourcountdown.to/chinese-new-year countdown] for China is 8 hours behind.
****The South Korean time zone is UTC+9, hence 14:59 UTC = 23:59 in South Korea, one minute to Feb 1.
*****But weird if Randall that has basically never mentioned this holiday suddenly makes a three week countdown for it, and why choose South Korea when most would think of China in this context...?
**Randall will stop making xkcd (Goodbye in the image).
***Hopefully not.
**[https://nationaldaycalendar.com/backward-day-january-31/ National Backward Day]
***This is not a day mentioned on Wikipedia at the time of release of the countdown, so seems unlikely.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Meta]]

2561: Moonfall

2022-01-09T14:54:16Z

172.70.230.57: Maths formatting, and its*

{{comic
| number = 2561
| date = December 29, 2021
| title = Moonfall
| image = moonfall.png
| titletext = Novel ideas and cool explosions are both good, but what I really want from a movie is novel ideas ABOUT cool explosions.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by COOL EXPLOSIONS. - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[Megan]] asks [[Cueball]] if he is excited for the release of the movie ''Moonfall''.

''{{w|Moonfall (film)|Moonfall}}'' is an upcoming 2022 movie scheduled for release in February. Its director, {{w|Roland Emmerich}}, is known for blowing up things in his movies (see for instance [https://www.gq.com/video/watch/explosions-the-roland-emmerich-supercut the Roland Emmerich Supercut]), as well as for factual inaccuracies in his work (mainly the scientific implausibility of his many disaster movies like ''{{w|Independence Day (1996 film)|Independence Day}}'', ''{{w|The Day After Tomorrow}}'' and ''{{w|2012 (film)|2012}}'').

The [[#Plot|plot]] of ''Moonfall'' is scientifically preposterous, making it potentially "cringe-worthy" for someone who enjoys "hard" science fiction, like Cueball.

For the moon to fall from the sky, it would have to stop orbiting. Most forces applied it to will simply change the way in which it is orbiting, making it more elliptical, larger or smaller. To stop it from orbiting entirely, a 'braking' force would need to be applied in the opposite direction of its travel, to halt it.

The moon's mass is about 0.07346×10²⁴ kg and its speed about 1.022 km/s, so the energy needed to stop it is ½''mv''² or about 3.8364×10²⁸ joules. That's about the energy of 1 trillion large nuclear explosions, centered on the leading-most point of the moon's surface. A precisely-oriented stellar body could strike the moon to do this, like a billiard ball colliding with tons of interstellar moon shrapnel instead of dust.

Less counteractive energy could make the Moon change orbit to one with a {{w|perigee}} below the surface of the Earth, close enough to (partially) enter the atmosphere or merely bring it down beneath the applicable {{w|Roche limit}}. These scenarios would be only technically less catastrophic, and whether the Moon fragments from the initially applied force, the stresses of its nearest (non-contact) distance to Earth or actually survives largely intact until there is a more direct physical interaction, the precise degree of the effect might be practically academic.

Cueball explains to Megan that he usually likes it when stories are based on good science. Maybe only bending it a bit to create the story, to expand our ideas of what is possible. But then he goes on to state that he supports giving Roland Emmerich as much money as he wants, to make cool spaceship noises and smash moons into things. In the movie it is only a moon (the {{w|Moon}}, presumably, see the [[#Plot|plot]] below). But in general Roland often uses huge explosions in his movies, something also previously said about other similarly-styled directors like [[748: Worst-Case Scenario|Michael Bay]].

Megan sums the situation for Cueball up, stating that he is excited to expand our ideas of how much stuff can explode at once.

In the title text Cueball continues by explaining that while novel ideas and explosions are good, what he really want from a movie is novel ideas about cool explosions. So new ways to explode things, or ideas about exploding more things at once. Or both.

In [[1536: The Martian]] a similar discussion of an upcoming movie is made for {{w|The Martian (film)|The Martian}}. But in that case it is the scientific accuracy that is the subject, and the lack of huge explosion that makes it hard to believe it could become a big budget movie! It is very rare that Randall makes a movie review like in those two comics.

===Plot===
'''Spoiler Alert'''
:In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving us all - but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper[,] and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman believe her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is. —Centropolis Entertainment, [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5834426/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl quoted at IMDB]

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan walking to the right]
:Megan: Are you excited for ''Moonfall''?
:Megan: Or cringing?
:Cueball: Well...

:[Closeup on Cueball]
:Cueball: I like when stories are grounded in good science because it's exciting to expand our ideas of what's possible.

:[Zoomed back out to Cueball and Megan walking to the right. Cueball has his palms raised]
:Cueball: But I also support giving Roland Emmerich as much money as he wants to make cool spaceship noises and smash moons into things.
:Megan: Excited to expand our ideas of how much stuff can explode at once.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Fiction]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category: Comics featuring real people]]