explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical

2025-11-23T00:46:18Z

2.98.77.121: /* Main page comic number */ ...

<noinclude>__NEWSECTIONLINK__
{{Community links}}

{|-
|valign="top" width="100%"|[[File:Crystal Clear app package settings blue.png|left|120px]] <big><big>Technical</big></big>

Technical issues ''about'' the [[explain xkcd]] wiki, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests. {{AddNewSection|Page=Explain XKCD:Community portal/Technical|Text=(+post)}}
|}</noinclude>
<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''RSS FEED:''' If you're here for the broken RSS feed, please see [[#RSS FEED]]!</div>

<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''Random Button Glitch:''' If you're here for the broken Random Comics button, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles|the Miscellaneous portal]]!</div>

----
==ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS==
<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#edf6ff; border:1px solid #a7d7f9; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 120%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at '''[[explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Technical]]'''.</div>

== Unable to view "what if?" page ==

The link to the page for the [[what if?]] blog displays an error: "No input file specified." [[User:JBYoshi|JBYoshi]] ([[User talk:JBYoshi|talk]]) 03:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

:This also happens to me on [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?]] Must be something with the ?s in the titles. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.66|172.69.22.66]] 15:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

::I've noticed that as well. I made a page in my userspace that redirects to the what if page, and for some reason that seems to work. ([[User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink|here is the link to the page]]) [[User:Blue screen of life|Blue screen of life]] ([[User talk:Blue screen of life|talk]]) 20:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

:::I have also noticed this but it is not just on pages with questions marks. Both [[259]] and [[1705]] show the same thing. A full list (as of 22 June 2020) of the ones i found is in the last reply to my report found here [[#2138_page_issues]] [[User:TomW1605|TomW1605]] ([[User talk:TomW1605|talk]]) 12:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

::::Both [[259]] and [[1705]] have an ({{w|E acute|e-with-accute-accent}}, Unicode U+00E9) in the URL, so for those pages, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?
::::For the "what if?" page, I had recently added a redirect from [[what if (blog)]] to get to it, and the [[What If]] disambiguation page has been updated with it, so at least we can get to it that way; and for the comic explanations, at least we can get to them by linking to their number-redirects (as [[58]] instead of [[58: Why Do You Love Me?]]); but not sure how to fix it overall. At the following page, it suggests tweaking an {{w|Apache HTTP Server|Apache}} {{w|Rewrite engine|rewrite}} directive in {{w|.htaccess}} (or a {{w|Common Gateway Interface|CGI}} setting in {{w|PHP}} if it's running on {{w|Internet Information Services|IIS}}):
::::* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Vmaw1tu5kkhyon0n
::::So maybe something about that has changed recently? Documentation:
::::* [https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule Apache mod_rewrite <code>RewriteRule</code> directive]
::::* [https://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.cgi.force-redirect php.ini <code>cgi.force_redirect</code> directive]
::::Summarizing a few points from [[User talk:SlashMe#Homeopathic Wiki|this related discussion]]:
::::* Only one of the site's [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:ListUsers?group=sysop 10 administrators] has made recent edits ([[Special:Contributions/SlashMe|SlashMe]]).
::::* Neither of the site's [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:ListUsers?group=bureaucrat 2 bureaucrats] ([[Special:Contributions/Jeff|Jeff]] and [[Special:Contributions/Lcarsos|Lcarsos]]) have made any edits recently.
::::* For admin access to the ''server'' itself, my limited understanding is that [[Special:Contributions/Jeff|Jeff]] might actually own the server, but may have also given admin access to [[Special:Contributions/Dgbrt|Dgbrt]]; however, neither of them have made edits recently.
::::But "most recent edit" might not be a good indicator, so I wonder of some of these folks are still involved in the project?
::::– [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 05:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
: Looks like it happens for any page that has a percent-encoding in the title. [[User:PoolloverNathan|PoolloverNathan]]<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Special:Contributions/PoolloverNathan|s]][[User talk:PoolloverNathan|talk]] [[Wikipedia:WP:SEAOFBLUE|the blue seas]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> 16:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

=== Known broken pages ===
(Redirects work, whereas links to the actual page are broken.)

Title containing e-accute-accent:
* [[259]] ↳ [[259: Clichéd Exchanges]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=259:_Clich%C3%A9d_Exchanges What links here])
* [[1705]] ↳ [[1705: Pokémon Go]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1705:_Pok%C3%A9mon_Go What links here])

Title ending with question mark:
* <del>[[what if (blog)]] ↳ [[what if?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=What_If%3F What links here])</del> <ins>fixed – content now exists at [[what if]], and [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if&limit=500 broken links] are in the process of being updated (see below)</ins>
* [[58]] ↳ [[58: Why Do You Love Me?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=58:_Why_Do_You_Love_Me%3F What links here])
* [[111]] ↳ [[111: Firefox and Witchcraft - The Connection?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F What links here])
* [[1205]] ↳ [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1205:_Is_It_Worth_the_Time%3F What links here])
* [[1841]] ↳ [[1841: Who?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1841:_Who%3F What links here])
* [[1913]] ↳ [[1913: A ?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1913:_A_%3F What links here])
* [[2065]] ↳ [[2065: Who Sends the First Text?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2065:_Who_Sends_the_First_Text%3F What links here])
* [[2138]] ↳ [[2138: Wanna See the Code?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2138:_Wanna_See_the_Code%3F What links here])
* [[2236]] ↳ [[2236: Is it Christmas?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2236:_Is_it_Christmas%3F What links here])

=== Moved ===
I moved the [[what if?]] page to the [[what if (blog)]] page which I then changed to simply [[what if]] to fix this issue and because anyone new to this site would type that any way to see it. — [[User:Sqrt-1|The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭]] [[User talk:Sqrt-1|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Sqrt-1|stalk]] 06:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

:Still trying to wrap my head around it – so just to summarize, we currently have:
:
:* '''[[whatif]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=whatif&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if?]]''' (see below)
:* '''[[What If?]]''' – page broken ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=What_If%3F&redirect=no no-redirect link]) ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=What_If%3F What links here])
:** ↳ ''also redirects to'' '''[[what if?]]''' – page broken ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&redirect=no no-redirect link]) ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=what_if%3F What links here])
:*** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:*** ''content manually moved from'' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&diff=198070&oldid=197859 diff]) '''[[what if?]]''' ''to'' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if&diff=198071&oldid=197486 diff]) '''[[what if (blog)]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if_(blog)&redirect=no no-redirect link]) (''[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&action=history previous revision history] remains at'' '''[[what if?]]''')
:**** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:
:For completeness, we also have...
:
:* '''[[what if book]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if_book&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if#The book]] – actual content'''
:** Suggestion: for consistency, also add a '''[[what if (book)]]''' page that redirects here?
:
:...and the disambiguation page...
:
:* '''[[What If]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=What_If&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[What If (disambiguation)]]''' – disambiguation page
:*** ''links to'' '''[[17: What If]]''' (↲ '''[[17]]''' redirects here ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=17&redirect=no no-redirect link]))
:*** ''links to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:*** Suggestion: mention the ''book'' here as well, and link to its section in the [[what if]] page?
:
:...and these troubleshooting pages from [[User:Blue screen of life]]:
:
:* '''[[User:Blue screen of life/redirecttest]]''' – test page ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Blue_screen_of_life/redirecttest&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink]]''' – test page ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Blue_screen_of_life/whatiflink&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:*** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[What If?]]''' (see above)
:
:Given that the actual content of the "what if?" article now lives at '''[[what if]]''', I've started updating pages <ins>(except for Talk pages)</ins> to link directly there instead of the other redirect pages. All that's left to do are pages that link to the '''[[what if?]]''' redirect-page (which is broken). <del>Its [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if%3F "What links here"] special page is broken too, so it's difficult to find what pages link there – but now that it redirects to the [[what if]] page, you can see them indirectly from ''that'' page's [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if&limit=500 "What links here"] special page.</del> <ins>[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=what_if%3F These] are the pages that still link there.</ins> There are still a lot of them to go.
:
:Also, should the following redirect-pages be simplified to have them redirect straight to the new [[what if]] page, instead of redirecting through the intermediate '''[[what if?]]''' page (which itself redirects there anyway)?
:* '''[[whatif]]'''
:* '''[[What If?]]'''
:– [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 17:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
:: Fixed the double redirects, don't ask me why we have so many pages for the same thing. [[User:PoolloverNathan|PoolloverNathan]]<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Special:Contributions/PoolloverNathan|s]][[User talk:PoolloverNathan|talk]] [[Wikipedia:WP:SEAOFBLUE|the blue seas]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> 16:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

== Discussion not displaying with comic ==

I am using FireFox on a Win10 machine. When I come to the site I can see the comic, explanation and transcript. But the discussion section is hidden. Even when logged in.

Any ideas?

: You say "when I come to the site". If the address bar says you are on Main_Page and you see the heading "Latest comic", then it's simply working as designed. Above the comic, click on "Go to this comic explanation" and you will see the comic plus discussion.

: Also, Steve, please sign your comments every time, with four tildes. That expands into your user name and a timestamp. Like this -- [[User:JohnB|JohnB]] ([[User talk:JohnB|talk]]) 10:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

== Random page sometimes takes me to an invalid address ==

Sometimes, when clicking on "Random page" in the left sidebar, the site will be blank apart from the text "No input file specified. ".

An example of such an URL is: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F

:I've noticed this happens for ''all'' URLs to comics that end in a question mark (or possibly any special character). Interestingly, this doesn't happen if you go to the comic from the search bar. [[User:Danish|Danish]] ([[User talk:Danish|talk]]) 23:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

== Bug on the main page ==

Bug Enviroment(Might work on other enviroments):
Ubuntu 20.04LTS
Firefox85.0
2021.2.7

Bug:
The front page reads: `Welcome, Main Page, to explain xkcd!` with `Main Page` formatted as a username,can someone fix this?

[[User:Xkcdjerry|Xkcdjerry]] ([[User talk:Xkcdjerry|talk]]) 09:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

== Occasional error via Cloudflare ==
Just a note that I'm getting Cloudflare errors of "origin not reachable" (sounds wrong to me, in my head it should be 'destination', but never mind) three times now in the last ten to fifteen minutes - of maybe a dozen general site-requests.

I've also been getting seemingly .CSSless formatted pages over the past few days, which I've been putting down to slightly dodgy wifi at my end (not unknown) but if I'm getting Cloudflare's error cleanly then perhaps it's been entirely upstream/downstream/however-you'd-describe-the-Explain-server. (Obviously CSS resource requests, as with images, are additional HTTP calls, but I still lump it into the single site-request ''per page'' in my 'dozen' estimate above. No obviously lost images, though, in incomplete pages - not that can't be explained by .CSS non-following, anyway.)

I had copy-buffered some of the exact info, but due to incompetence I recopied over it before coming here. If it happens again, I'll try to bring it over here. But (the way these things go) maybe it won't. FYI, though. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.52|141.101.98.52]] 12:04, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
: Not a Cloudfare error (looks like an error of the actual explainxkcd server) but every now and then (like just a few minutes ago) I get an error page that generally goes away if I immediately refresh. To whit:
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
: Not really a problem (occasionally happened while submitting an exit, and I have to confirm to the browser that I wish to repost the data, but this particular copied instance was through a more 'read-only' link-click, like most of the instances) but... in case someone finds this to be new and useful information... here you are! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 03:45, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
:OP, here, of the above 503 error report/casual mention. Obviously this is the same message that happened for an ''extended'' period of time over a number of days, but I've only just happened to find the site responding again and have not yet looked to see if it is explained as the same or different cause to the old intermittent issues (at root). I hope things are resolved from the major outage (server quota? bill payments? renewal/reconfiguration blips?) but wonder if I should report any future minor outages? I'm still smarting from the total loss of the fora.xkcd.com platform, a few years back, and while I'm not active enough here to consider a proper login (lurking as a freeloading anon-IP is good enough, usually, for my intellectual enjoyment, with all due apologies) I did have a slight pang of emptiness while it was out-of-order. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.79|141.101.99.79]] 15:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

== Add TemplateData ==

Add the {{mw|Extension:TemplateData|TemplateData}} extension to allow setting data for templates. This will help editors because they will be able to see the data of templates.

== MediaWiki 1.30.0?! ==

This wiki is [[Special:Version|currently]] on [[mw:MediaWiki 1.30|MediaWiki 1.30.0]] ([[mw:Release notes/1.30|release notes]]), the first of three releases of a version of MW that reached end-of-life in June of 2019 ([[mw:Version lifecycle]]). It's thus missing multiple important security updates from 1.30.1 and 1.30.2, not to mention the two years' worth of security updates since 1.30.x reached end-of-life. Even 1.31.x will be reaching end-of-life in just over a month.

If the sysadmins here update to [[mw:MediaWiki 1.35|MediaWiki 1.35.2]] ([[mw:Release_notes/1.35|release notes]]), that version will be maintained till September of 2023, with only a few security updates in the meantime. I would '''strongly''' encourage y'all to update to 1.35.2; to promptly update if there's a .3, .4, etc.; and to make sure you switch to the next LTS release (which will presumably be 1.39) well in advance of September of '23. (Note that this will also require updating to PHP 7.3.19 or later.) [[User:PinkAmpersand|PinkAmpersand]] ([[User talk:PinkAmpersand|talk]]) 07:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

== Uptime ==
Did the website just go down? [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 13:06, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

It was definitely down this weekend!
https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/nxrm65
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

== Comic template lappend breaks for standalone comic links ==

For example, https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html is changed to https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html/ which isn't valid [[Special:Contributions/172.69.90.15|172.69.90.15]] 15:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Template here, I think it needs to be changed to solve this https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Template:comic

exkcd page here https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Blue_Eyes

== May not be your problem, but FYI. ==

My typcal setup: Android tablet, with Chrome for Android (latest update), but also Firefox for Android (ditto), using default Gboard (likewise) for input.

Occasionally (notably within the last few weeks/maybe a month or so), when going in to edit an explainxkcd page through Chrome (it's how I divide up my browsing), I'm getting the cursor in the textarea box which ''can'' be used to Cut/Copy/Paste (as applicable and useful), but the on-screen keyboard isn't popping up. Page is fully loaded (can be refreshed, doesn't have the "stop loading" alternative), can go back (page viewing) and try to go back to the page editor (often to same result). Sitting and waiting doesn't pop the keyboard up, either (sat there for minutes). Happens both on home wifi and mobile connection.

If I transfer my attentions to the page to Firefox (copy URL, to use there... but I don't use that by default for expxkcd stuff) there's no problem, but then if I come back to Chrome again it seems to start working again ''anyway'' so not sure if it's just avoiding/flushing a transient problem that would also initially crop up with Firefox if I used that more.

Because editing is a different (mobile-optimised) process on Wikipedia and I can't be sure about any the equivalence of any other wiki out there (and it doesn't happen with anything else I regularly key into on Chrome) it's not something I've reproduced outwith this site, and of course desktop page-editing doesn't require touch-screen keyboard because there's a physical one.

Not getting much feedback with Chrome (really can't get on with their bugrep processes, it's too huge a project to make headway, IME), not even tried to pester the Gboard team and I've not ''seen'' anything said on here about this being a site-issue (not sure how it could be, as it's outside the remit of the core web-page rendering process and more an Android or App level of incompetence), but I thought I'd make a note of it here for future reference. Make of it what you will. Annoying but not game-breaking. And I just wanted to vent a little. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.147|172.70.162.147]] 16:54, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

== [[special:interwiki]] ==

where'd it go? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.200|172.69.68.200]] 05:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

== Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter ==

Seriously. Many scripts and such built for modern, supported versions of MW do not work here because it is so unbelievably undated. PinkAmpersand above basically covers the reason why. I also highly recommend adding the extension AbuseFilter (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter) as it immensely makes removing vandalism easier (by straight up disallowing or blocking those that do, esp if it's like the current formulaic massive-replacement vandalism.) [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 00:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

:Ditto. I feel like the main problem is that the sole person who has access to the backend either doesn't have time to update, doesn't have interest, or doesn't have the technical knowledge necessary. But yes, I agree - updating and installing an extension to help control vandalism would help this wiki tremendously. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 20:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

== ↑ ? ==

Why do some pages have ↑ at the very start? They can all be spotted by searching ↑
Is it a technical thing, vandalism, some sort of glitch? Maybe I'm just uninformed or being an idiot.
:Edit logs tell me that an IP user manually reverting vandalism somehow inserted one or more extra characters while manually reverting vandalism. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
::Should it be removed? It's not necessary and might be confusing for screenreaders... [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
:::Maybe not en-mass, I'd say. But I've dove in to delete a rogue leading <nowiki> </nowiki> tag left from a part of a prior vandalism (likewise, just before the {{template|comic}}-element) and I've promised myself that I'll remove any more that I spot (and now that arrow) in any future whole-page edit I make. Plus a small shopping-list of inessential but useful edits like making {{template|Citation needed}}s flow better when they're mispunctuated/etc.
:::But that's my solitary opinion. I'm sure hunting out and squishing this isn't a problem at all. I'm just balancing my own peculiar brand of OCD with what is somehow my also my own version of casual apathy towards other details. (Also, it probably looks better for a named account of recognised good standing to start editing potentially hundreds of pages in a session, rather than myself... potentially indistinguishable from the IP who seems to relish worn out memes in a general page-trashing.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.121|162.158.159.121]] 12:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

== Is there anything else we can do to prevent vandalism? ==

There's been quite a significant uptick in vandalism recently, and I don't feel we have any effective tools to combat it. I believe one of the biggest issues here is due to the way logged-out editing works on this wiki. Blocks are completely ineffective at slowing vandals, and IP editors can vandalize with basically nothing we can do to thwart them other than revert-warring. '''Is there a better way?'''

There's been some discussion of installing AbuseFilter, but I'm not sure anything became of it. We could disable logged-out editing, but that would likely be counterproductive as we get lots of legitimate contributions from logged-out users. If there's a way to switch to location-based IPs, we could rangeblock problematic users as well as proxies. Does anyone have any ideas? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.145|162.158.78.145]] 16:11, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:I'm sort of making server side changes via telegraph so an extension is probably going to take a while to get installed. Takes a bunch of emails and followups to get single variables changed in the mediawiki settings file. There is an email verification option, and some edit frequency variables that could be set to make spam more time consuming. Don't love range blocks but wouldn't mind getting the CDN IPs dealt with so we can actually use the IP bans again. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 17:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
::I'm very grateful that you're working on changes under the hood. What do you think is the best way to deal with disruption in the meantime? [[User:Vandalbane|Vandalbane]] ([[User talk:Vandalbane|talk]]) 17:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:::Could borrow a patrol bot like the ones people on main wikipedia have, could ask around. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
::::There's not really a drop-in solution that you can use, especially since the server's MediaWiki version is not in sync with Wikipedia's (so a lot of the APIs etc have completely changed; when initially reverting vandalism I tried importing some scripts from enwiki but they failed as a result), but also because the bots have gotten pretty complex (using machine learning provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, for example). [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 03:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::Oh I do notice mediawiki hasn't been upgraded in a while. Looks like new version of mediawiki should be dropping extremely imminently, would be nice timing for an upgrade '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

== Rollback ==

Does the rollback permission exist on this wiki? [[User:Vandalbane|Vandalbane]] ([[User talk:Vandalbane|talk]]) 17:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:The rollback permission of course exists but there's no group called "rollbacker" like you'd find on Wikipedia (limited to admins). You'd need the sysadmin to change the configuration to add one, which as established is not really an option right now. [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 03:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

== What happened to custom JavaScript? ==

I put some code in <code>[[User:Some user/common.js]]</code>, but it is not alerting 'hi' every time I load a page. Why can't we execute JavaScript anymore? Is it in response to the [[Project:Crap|crapping]] incident? [[User:Some user|Some user]] ([[User talk:Some user|talk]]) 21:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
:Entirely because of that, yeah. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:51, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

== My IP ==

Why is my IP address a Cloudflare address in Norway? Is this a joke of some kind that I'm missing?

Other wikis like Wikipedia are showing me my actual IP when I go to [[Special:MyContributions]], so I suspect this is a wiki misconfiguration. It changed again while I was typing this. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.194|162.158.222.194]] 16:55, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
:All IPs (as this one will be) are from Cloudflare gateway IPs, because that's the default IP that the Wiki understands as the source. Cloudflare mediates all the traffic, and perhaps to some advantage (not being privvy to the logs, I can only guess how much it insulates the true server from extreme problems, but I bet it does in some way).
:There have been suggestions before to change some setting (in the MediaWiki implementation? ...can't recall exactly) to have it pick up and use the IP that the gateway reports (in its meta-request) was the origin, but that's not been enacted for Idunnowhat reason.
:Because the black-box that is the Cloudflare traffic shapes in various ways, you will find that a single user will jump around 'apparent' IPs, and I've also been in the relatively embarassing situation of replying to another IP's info and finding that I've registered on the exact same IP so that it looks like I'm stooging myself, or something.
:On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they ''were'' going to try and do the necessary tweak.
:As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. ''If'' those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.24|172.70.85.24]] 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
:fyi it is supported in MediaWiki through <code>$wgCdnServers</code>. See [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Cloudflare#Integration_with_MediaWiki MediaWiki’s introduction]. {{unsigned|物灵|06:58, 6 April 2025}}

==Main page in categories==
{{notice|'''This discussion is marked as duplicate.''' See [[#Main Page|this discussion]].}}
[[Main_Page]] was found wrongly appearing in some newly-created categories, such as [[:Category:Cosmology]]. Could you fix it? --[[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 17:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
:Never noticed this myself, but I'll take it as read. Before checking myself, I'm wondering if this could be when the main page 'inherits' tags from the Current Comic that it features. And thus solve itself (whilst gaining others) upon a newer Current Comic. (Must surely inherit "Monday Comics"/etc, on schedule every week.)
:If it is that, perhaps the solution lies in the details contained within https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories#Categories_and_templates_(transcluded_pages)
:Or maybe I'm wrong about it. But I have no rights to edit (thus at least examine the 'code' of) the Main page, to check my snap theory, as with most people. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 19:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

This happened again in [[:Category:Airplane banner]]. [[User:I27.O.O.I|I27.O.O.I]] ([[User talk:I27.O.O.I|talk]]) 09:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
:Yes, and it lasted as long as the latest comic was still one with particular categories. I don't intend to worry about it. If someone goes to a category that interests them and looks at the main page, as temporarily advertised, they're likely to find (as part of it) a comic which is indeed in that category. Doesn't sound like a big problem to me, except for determinin why some cats (e.g. Friday Comics) ''don't'' link to the Main page when they might be expected to...
:(PS, I know for sure that I27.O.O.I isn't the same person as ColofulGalaxy (and various others, beyond even those with the bloomin' obvious "CG" initials or other recent spoofs on the RFC1918 addresses), and I don't think I mind too much, but faking disagreements between your various IDs isn't helping, anyone... smells too much of trying to establish alibis in advance of your next attempt to vandalise the site with stupid stuff. And doesn't impress me, so I doubt it impresses anyone else either. As long as you're just doing sane things, however, I'll accept your little idiosyncracies.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.32|162.158.74.32]] 19:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:(PPS: You left your fingerprint on this latter attempt to 'rescue' [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2659:_Unreliable_Connection&curid=25530&diff=307289&oldid=307282 this page]. - Spammer a few minutes before midnight, my IP reversion happened shortly after. A little later "Elisabeth" then re-spammed (modified), then another IP immediately jumps on it to restore it but with the modified undo-summary line clearly indicating that some sort of a game is being played. Please don't, it's not clever.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.34|172.70.90.34]] 02:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This doesn't happen to date categories, but it happens in manually added categories such as [[:Category:Statistics]]. [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 21:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

==Cannot create user page==
It says: There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page. [[2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[Talk:2659: Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 22:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
:(Removed alternative text in the link involved, to not hide behind trickery.) I think you know that there's no problem with [[2659: Unreliable Connection]] itself, except that it had become one of several pages targeted for spamming, the only one then locked down, then finding that the spammers just retargeted to its Talk page, etc.
:I'm torn between "not assuming bad faith" and "don't feed the trolls", as competing principles, so I'm spelling out the situation. However much a tribute you might think it could be, I don't think there's a future in having a new username that's directly referencing a comic which has become so frequently seen in the recent history of this wiki's edits.
:Obviously any genuine contributions are more than welcome. So prove me wrong, why don't you? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 03:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

::Could you help now? [[User:Unreliable Connection|2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[User talk:Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 09:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

: I've created your talk page. I guess that what you intended is to have a backup or mirror page for comic [[2659]]. Am I right? [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 20:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

== Fanmade comics ==
A fanmade comic appeared on xkcd. Could you edit the template? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.23.100|172.69.23.100]] 07:21, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
:You're going to have to say more about it, at least for me. Apart from the Sandbox attempt to make a page, I haven't seen the comic you're describing anywhere. Certainly not anywhere official. Link, for our benefit? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.66|172.70.85.66]] 10:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

==Why doesn't this code block work?==
Does anybody know why the code block at the end of [[Transcript on xkcd|this page]] doesn't work? I've tried everything and it still looks like plain text

== Can't add RSS feed because of pubDate value on 27 Nov 2015 ==

When I try to add the RSS feed in Nextcloud News feed reader I get an error <code>Impossible to convert date : Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</code>.

[https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexplainxkcd.com%2Frss.xml W3C Feed validation] says that <code>pubDate must be an RFC-822 date-time</code> and points "Pacific Standard Time" portion as the cause of the error: <code><pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</pubDate></code>. Can you please fix the timestap for this?

== Admin request posted here because of vandalism ==

I can not currently access the admin requests page because it has been vandalized... can someone please protect the latest comic page (2805). There is some pretty childish vandalism going on there right now. Thanks!
:It's not the latest, seems like ALL. I went back to 2804, 2803, jumped back like 15 comics, all the same thing. To me the most offensive part is doing it with a nonsensical image. And why pipe it through Archive somehow? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 02:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
::UGH. the vandals are back at it again... we need to lock xkcd pages @NiceGuy [[Special:Contributions/172.70.39.2|172.70.39.2]] 00:59, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

== Way to contact the site hosters? ==

As many have pointed out the software this wiki runs on is horribly outdated. WikiEditor also isn't here for some reason. Quite a bit of messages here have seen no action. Is there some kind of contact form to reach the hosters? {{unsigned|Aaron Liu|00:36, 10 October 2023}}
: There are various levels of admin who do intervene, as and when jecessary, but I understand that the (active) ones closest to the actual hosting level of intervention are not really ready to do the (increasingly greater) degree of uprooting necessary to get a "working" system to be "marginally better working", by way of that very dangerous middle-ground of potentially being ruined entirely.
: I appreciate and anticipate the counter-arguments regarding letting it go totally unupdated, of course, just I've personally seen enough failures (participated in some, or been the actual invokee, myself) to be very sympathetic to the "if it aint (too) broke, don't fix it" tendency. But that inertia is not the only factor, of course, and the full motivations (or lack of them) of those involved is not for a lowly IP like me to explain, even if I think I know... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.42|172.69.195.42]] 01:24, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
:: Have they posted some sort of statement? It also is most definitely not “marginally” better working, compare the source editor to that of Wikipedia and look at topic subscription etc features. Not to mention a lot of security fixes haven’t been added and this version has reached EOL long ago. Updating also would not ruin this entirely…[[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 17:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
:: Some have also said that quite a bit of assistive scripts for modern versions don’t work. Visual Editor, while horrible, is still easier for new people to get started with. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 17:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I've found a new reason: This wiki doesn't even allow loading userscripts! [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 01:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
:That might actually have been a conscious decition, after a 'certain user' caused chaos here, not so long ago. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.25|162.158.74.25]] 19:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
::It was about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.143|172.68.174.143]] 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
::Huh? What happened? Is there a place to request gadgets then? [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 02:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
:::"What happened" involved automated vandalism (from someone who been doing it manually, then found the "better way") though I couldn't tell you the exact details, there were automated 'unvandalism's made in response, and theusafBOT/etc does some of that still, in response to non-automated(/off-site scripted) vandalism/errors that it can actually catch before ordinary users (or IPs like me) can. But certainly a certain brand of scripting was turned off to curtail the 'high intensity' vandalism phase.
:::You're more or less in the best place to request things, right here. Whether updates, (re)adding functionalitu or tweaking site settings. Can't tell if those who ''can'' do these things can't or won't do them... Or are actually absent, instead of just not replying. The cavalry has been known to come running in when necessary (e.g. when "what happened" happened) so it could be any manner of non-response (until you get one). Not necessarily the best state of affairs, but better than being confirmed absentees.
::::I ran a bot to mass-edit pages by replacing their content with the word "crap" repeatedly. I was 15 then, and I thought it was funny. It wasn't. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.143|172.68.174.143]] 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
:::As an occasional but infrequent actual-Wikipedia editor, too, I must say that if the Visual Editor is what I currently have to use for that (at least as an anonIP when using a mobile device, which tends to be when I get the urge most) then I like the unaugmented editor here more. Straight up, honest, un'wizarded' interface, where you only have to get used to markup details and not a WYSIWYG editing environment (as well?). Not sure I'd be happy with an even ''more'' 'assistive' script imposed upon me, like I dislike modern generations of Windows (and 'user friendly' linux dists). So can I just ask that functional/visible changes of the kind you seem to be asking for, if made available, aren't overimposed/left as options rather than the default (or only) choice...? Ok, so I can (or would have to) adapt, but I'd rather not. Of course, I have no weight to pull in this matter, it's just an afterthought (even as I wish you good luck with raising an admin's eyebrow, in some useful manner). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.135|141.101.98.135]] 05:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
::::I am not asking for VisualEditor, which no one likes on Wikipedia either. For some blasted reason they made it edit HTML instead of Wikitext and it’s clunky and loads for a very long time.
::::I’m asking about the WikiEditor, aka Wikipedia’s source editor. In VE, click on the pen next to the publish button and click on “source editing”. That editor makes this one look like freaking Stone Age, syntax highlighting is especially a game-changer. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 16:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
: There’s also the annoying ReCaptcha v2 every single edit… it seems like it would be relatively easy to switch to v3 which only makes you do the challenge when you’ve visited a bit too much. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 16:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
:: Unfortunately, that would make things easier for someone who wanted to do mass vandalism like I did. If it didn't do it every time, someone could still edit quite quickly. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.192|172.68.174.192]] 18:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
::Well, I can tell you that it doesn't always demand that I fulfil more than a tickbox (most trouble I have is when it fails to connect to give me the tickbox (or respond with anything useful when I do), for which I'm forced into one or more Previews until it will. When it ''does'' ask me to do something about it, I do often get forced through two or more request to identify traffic lights, motorbikes, stairways, bridges, hills, tractors, buses, etc, etc, etc... But I think that's more the Tesla-training Algorithm being nust greedy for my attention than the Robot-sentry having a less casual attitude to my attempt to edit. (I believe I'm on a usually untroublesome source IP/Cloudflare gateway, but it could also depend on how many others try to do things via (part of) the same route. Very, very rarely I get Google Search requesting something similar of me ((It: "You have made a lot of searches", me: "Of course I'll have play your little game, but this is my first lookup today...")), which I'm sure isn't Cloudflared, so it might reach back to my ISP's gateway and what fellow users are currently getting up to.)
::As for the guy above (and you, Liu), can't speak for how well or badly others on your own 'choice' of gateways behave. Or yourselves. Luck of the draw? For the first part, at least. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.174|172.69.195.174]] 20:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
:::MediaWiki 1.40 automatically tags all edits that remove over 90% of page text with "mw-replaced". You could block all edits in mainspace with that tag, either if MediaWiki has it or through the AbuseFilter extension. While I can complete the CAPTCHAs, it's very annoying to need to Captcha every edit on a place where the main focus is edits. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 03:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
:::Plus, v3 doesn't just do nothing. It tracks how your cursor moves to see if it's robotic, while v2 annoyingly gives you the challenge every time. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 20:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
::::Presumably for touchscreen control (like mine, right this moment), it does something else than track a nonexistent mouse-pointer's passage across the monitored elements of the display... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.190|172.70.90.190]] 12:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
::There are a few MediaWiki plugins that help keep vandalism/spam under control without requiring users to solve a Captcha every time they make an edit. I use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Moderation on the wiki I maintain, and it works very well. However, it does require that there be enough active moderators to approve edits, as it basically requires every single edit to be approved before it's posted. Thus, it also introduces some "lag" between when stuff is written and when it can be seen by others. I think it could work if the extension could be installed (I'm not even sure if it's supported on this version of MediaWiki) and if a good list of moderators could be put together. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 20:02, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
:::I disagree with requiring edits to be approved. Unless we have extremely high vandalism, just filtering out the above tags I mentioned and using ReCAPTCHA v3 would be enough. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 23:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
::::Ok, fair point. However, that wouldn't stop human vandalism, just vandalism from bots. I'm not sure how much human vandalism there is, though, so it might not even be a problem. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 12:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::It's hard (for us 'civvies') to know how much bot-vandalism is stopped but [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Log/newusers&offset=&limit=500&type=newusers&user= probably a lot], most of which we never see, with [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2503:_Memo_Spike_Connector&diff=335487&oldid=335486 occasional ones] we might see having be dealt with. (I'm guessing these things are rare (temporarily-)successful 'bots, because flesh-and-blood vandals wouldn't be occasionally doing essentially the same insta-reverted thing on a thematically-small set of pages, over several ''years'' without moving on. It has to be a lucky unattended script-based effort that just keeps trying the same things over and over with an easily revertible but tangible result happening only infrequently.)
:::::More obvious human vandalism tends to rumble on, with occasionally a spate of it as someone gets short-term kicks for it. Though some of them seem may repeat themself after a break. Friendly humans and friendly 'bots both tend to provide the main anti-vandalism responses fairly quickly, though, depending upon what kind of a mess they caused. I've seen worse places, definitely, and it's by no means a losing battle against chaos, just regular skermishes.
:::::Not wanting to tempt fate, of course. I guarantee that there'll be some fool that takes all this as a challenge, so I just have to trust to the Good Guys keeping on keeping on. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.71|172.70.90.71]] 14:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

heyo, is there a way to add actual citations to explainxkcd instead of the template citation needed? couldn't find anything, but i'm pretty new here - thanks in advance. [[User:Nigga|Nigga]] ([[User talk:Nigga|talk]]) 21:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
:Not that I have much faith in your usernae lasting long (you're 'that guy', aren't you? ...in which case you know anyway), but for the sake of anyone else who needs to know:
:*If you mean "add an actual 'citation needed' tag", then it's {{template|Actual citation needed}} that you'll use.
:*If you mean "add an actual citation link to somewhere", then:
:** Link to URLs with [].
:*** A link such as [<url>] will give you a superscript-number link, which isn't pretty, IMO.
:*** A link such as [<url> <text>] (that's a space between the two) will link <text> to the URL, just work it into the sentence you're writing, fairly easy
:** Link to internal (or cross-wiki) pages with [[]].
:*** [[<page title>]] will make a literal link to <page title>.
:*** [[<page title>|<text>]] (with a pipe) is how you make the <text> your link.
:** You can use the last to link specifically to wikipedia's cross-site format, but for that it's best to use {{template|w}}
:*** <nowiki>{{w|<page title>}}</nowiki> (w-pipe...) uses the page title
:**** It will use the link as if the first character is uppercase, so you don't need to capitalise that. Other case-sensitivity is preserved.
:**** <nowiki>{{w|<singular page title>}}s</nowiki> will link the obvious pluralisation of the page title, just to save you effort
:*** <nowiki>{{w|<page title>|<text>}}</nowiki> (w-pipe and pipe) lets you use entirely alternate text.
:** There's also templates that shortcut (or make easier on the eye, or add appropriate warnings) for some other commonly referenced external sites, from xkcd's own what-if to TVTropes.
:...hope that helps everyone that doesn't already know these few simple bits as relate to wikis in general or this wiki in particular. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.218|172.71.242.218]] 22:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

== Confirmation Email Bug ==

Hi. I've been trying to get my email confirmed so that I can get pinged when pages are edited, but I just can't find it, even after trying multiple times. I use Gmail, and yes, I have checked my spam folder. Has anyone else had this issue? EDIT: I see that others have had this issue, but the admins haven't done any action to solve it, except for one sarcastic comment by Davidy22 back in 2014. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 00:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

== Lack of Userpage ==

Hey, I joined a few years ago, but I still do not have a Userpage. Can you make one for me? I do not have the permission to do so. [[User:GreyFox|GreyFox]] ([[User talk:GreyFox|talk]]) 22:47, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
:This is actually your very first post, after joining a bit more than a year ago ("18:35, 14 November 2023 User account GreyFox (talk | contribs) was created"). I'm sure someone can oblige (not me, for obvious reasons), but you've not done much to contribute (at least under this account), which would have then eventually brought you to the point where you ''can'' just self-create your Userpages/etc. So your request is a bit out of the blue.
:Just so long as we all know where we stand, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.227|172.69.194.227]] 09:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
::Oh, thanks! Do you know the exact number of edits I need to create it?
:::50 to be autoconfirmed. Also, please sign your comments. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 15:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

== server errors ==
is anyone else constantly getting 503 errors? [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 17:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
:yup, been seeing those all the time. Also seeing that the server is down a lot of time-it suggests me to Google for what I’m “looking for” [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 17:18, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
::503s are fairly common (often when I'm in a rush), and have been for... well, certainly years, maybe more than a decade (though more common during major vandalism/anti-vandalism surges). I had, however, noticed a recent blip (during the last day or so) of the Server Down/Try Google page that you refer to, which I haven't seen for a ''long'' time (not really sure when, but maybe five years or so ago). In fact, I probably got Cloudflare 'rejections' more, during aformentioned vandal-overloading.
::Without any access to the admin logs, I can only speculate as to what might be sparking it. But service (notwithstanding the brief page-refusals themselves) seems to be happily unaffected. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.249|172.70.160.249]] 20:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

== Allow new users to edit their own page ==

I found someone asking if we could change this in the proposals page (Community portal/Proposals: Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed (not a typo)). [[User:PDesbeginner|PDesbeginner]] ([[User talk:PDesbeginner|talk]]) 14:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

== Technical difficulties? ==

I keep getting a message that says: "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Cannot access the database)"
It's happened a lot so I was wondering if there was a specific cause behind it and perhaps a way to fix it.
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.65|172.68.54.65]] 00:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
:yeah, I’ve been getting those errors too. I can’t even log into my account before it says that there’s an error again. I’ve been steadily receiving them for a couple months, but never like today. From Recent Changes, it doesn’t look like anyone is spamming the wiki, so maybe it’s an attack of some kind. You’ll need to contact the admins who have access to the server and can poke around, but good luck getting [[User:Davidy22]] or [[User:Jeff]] online. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.130|172.69.135.130]] 17:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
::update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.129|172.69.135.129]] 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

== The site is collapsing ==
503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
:heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
::I’ve messaged Davidy22 and Jeff about it, hopefully they see it and reply. It looks fine right now, appears that it works horribly at times and fine later. Due to the on-off nature of it, I would suspect DDoS attacks, as a 503 error means that the server can’t process the request, which occurs with DDoS attacks. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 21:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
:::update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
::::October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
::Agree, the situation is not terrible but feels extremely unstable. What happens if the wiki just breaks, and nobody can even contact Jeff? I feel like these errors are happening more and more frequently. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
:::Were you around for the (hacking-enforced) sudden ending of the xkcd fora? All things end.
:::But (touch wood) the 503s/other connection refusals are a lot less frequent right now, so I'm not actually quite so worried as I might occasionally have been. What's more likely to happen is that the hosting plan, physical hardware and/or domain reaches an end and then... that's probably it unless someone with the wherewithall somehow manages to drag it back up again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.14|162.158.74.14]] 00:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
::::I really don't like the idea of this site becoming permanently unavailable :( This makes me want to contribute less! I was not around back then, no. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
:I've been getting these errors a lot as well all of a sudden. Sadly from what I've read on these pages, the sysadmin has basically left and ghosted everyone. The moment the site fully breaks for whatever reason, ExplainXKCD will be history. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.58|172.71.178.58]] 15:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
::It's probably not the site breaking (as in, it's not intrinsically failing), just that unrestrained useless traffic to it (I theorise, elsewhere that it's a sudden rise in inconsiderate AI-training has led to a rise of ungoverned degrees of site-scraping) is marginalising our more legitimate attempts to interact. ''It would help'' to get some Administrator-led process to mitigate it, but it really should be better dealt with more towards the gateway-side of the connection (or the scrapers gradually toning their scraping down, but I doubt that'll happen). It, say, Cloudflare ''itself'' gets a good solution in place to dissuade such high attempts to access all the sites it otherwise proxies for, then we'll be back to just the site bumbling along in its ''slightly'' unmaintained condition. We then still have a couple of sub-administrators, a Bot and a good population of other users to keep things running against more trivial issues (short of hardware/infrastructure/financial failures). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.186.141|172.68.186.141]] 16:55, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

== List of All Comics ==

I think that FaviFake and I have accidentally broken the All comics page. When clicked, it brings you to the page List of all comics, which displays the comics 3000-3002 (as of right now) instead of the list of all comics (oops-my bad). How do we fix this? There’s also the page List of all comics (3000-3500), but the TheusafBOT ignores it. Can someone more technical help troubleshoot this problem? Again, sorry for making a muck of things. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
:Oh I'm sorry, I created a new topic for this and I didn't see this one. I noticed the [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]] today and scheduled it for deletion because we never make such a page until we have exactly 500 comics to put there. Also, the name is wrong, it should say 3001-3500.
:The page [[List of all comics]] is supposed to display comics 3001-3005, not all comics. You might be confusing it with [[List of all comics (full)]], which would work perfectly if [[List of all comics]] displayed the last 3 comics. I have no idea why the bot stopped updating it. Maybe it will work now that the wrong page is scheduled for deletion? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:15, 31 October 2024
::Wait a second, why did you move the List of all comics to [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]]? It seemed to me like everything was working fine before you moved it [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
:::I was trying to copy the content to [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]], and accidentally broke it. Sorry! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
::::Yeah I can confirm the content and the entire edit history was moved to the incorrectly-titled page that's now scheduled for deletion. I guess maybe we didn't really need the edit history on that page, but who knows.
::::Weirdly, the bot seems to have restored the page as it was and then stopped doing its thing. Since we're the only ones here, I suggest you manually create the missing rows for the new comics and we'll see if that works when the next comic drops. If it doesn't, I'll contact the maintainer and creator of the bot myself. Sounds good? :) [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::Sir yes Sir! 🫡 [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 04:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
:::::: Great, thanks! I can also do it this afternoon if you don't have time. I realise my previous messages read like orders lol, they were supposed to be suggestions to try and fix the issue. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:18, 1 November 2024

== The [[List of all comics]] is no longer being updated automatically ==

Hey everyone, I noticed the bot isn't updating this page anymore: [[List of all comics]]. There are supposed to be five comics in it but there are only two at the moment. Is this supposed to happen? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:06, 31 October 2024

== 2034: Equations error? ==

One of the TeX math-thingies (sorry for the informal writing), is showing this error: "Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \oint". Idk why it's showing this, can someone fix this? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.48|108.162.237.48]] 19:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:It's a long-standing error, to do with the background processes that turns the TeX-style markup into embedded images. All equations (or whatever it might be that the particular MathML was being used to render) that were originally given cached-imagery ''still work fine'', but it seems a later update made it so that if you adjust it at all (even slightly), it no longer has the route to produce the embedding cleanly.
:It can probably be solved by rolling back some module(s) that got refreshed quite some time ago, though the advised fix is to actually fully update them (and/or reconfigure the backend scripting) to work with all the newest versions of the original tools. Unfortunately, the people (or maybe person) who would do this is not too active at the moment (may also not be up to speed on everything, either, if it involves a bit of more tricky administration), so we're left with the occasional problem establishing the texvc handler.
:Not sure which page you're encountering this on, but sometimes if you look back in the edit history you can find a working version of the thing you're seeing go wrong. If it's an aesthetic difference (e.g. the presence or absence of a spacing character), you might be able to just restore the render-cached version and make do with it not looking ''quite'' right.
:If it's a necessary change that was made (e.g. "''dt''" instead of "''dx''", which is definitely wrong the old way), or it seems never to have a valid render, then there's two obvious solutions:
:#Make your own image of it as it should be and (with a suitably auto-validated account, or via a handy external image hosting service and/or a more mature account here) get that embedded in place of the markup-source, or
:#Replicate its appearance in more basic (by standard) but complex (by source needed) markup. Combinations of basic wikimarkup and HTML can do most 'fiddly positional' things, see [[2614: 2]] for a numerator/denominator layout, for example.
:Not as 'simple' as TeX-markedup. But, on the other hand, the "\oint" symbol is "∮", so perhaps all you need to do is copy'n'paste that actual unicode symbol to wherever you found the problem, and use that instead, and forgo the TeX version altogether? (Might not show on some displays, but probably enough to make it a minority issue.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.105|172.70.90.105]] 22:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:Had the brainwave that I could probable ''search'' for the offending \oint, actually. Did so, found [[2034: Equations]], noted that it was the only (current) rendering issue and therefore just did the pasting over myself. Looks good for me, but obviously might not help (but not make worse) others' viewing of it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.54|172.69.195.54]] 22:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

...Why didn't I think of just pasting the Unicode equivalent. I'm dumb, but thanks for fixing it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.10|172.69.70.10]] 13:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

== Esolang wiki bug ==
The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical|the Technical Community Portal]]. Two, I saw your talk page on [https://esolangs.org/wiki/User_talk:ColorfulGalaxy%27s_CA_discoveries esolangs.org], which you brought up this “bug”, which the local admin (who’s probably just as sick and tired of you as I am) called BS on. If the server was changing your sig to my sig, it would be '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''', not the sig that you faked in. You’re obviously seeking attention and are being abusive and childish. Please see the bottom of https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esolang:Introduce_yourself to see a full list of complaints. I will be asking Kynde to ban you and all of your alt (or shared) accounts. -tori [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.98|162.158.167.98]] 05:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:I just realized that they've changed '''my''' signature as well. That's strange. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Once again they suddenly redirected my username to the Main Page. And the bug even forgot to remove "User:". [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 13:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

:It's working normally now. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 13:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:No, it has not been hacked. The error message means that the server that is hosting the wiki is under a lot of stress and load. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::Yes and no.
::;429 Too Many Requests (RFC 6585):The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. Intended for use with rate-limiting schemes.
::...it generally means that (in the opinion of the server), the person getting the 429 has been bashing the connection too much. This ''could'' be because they happen to be going through the same proxy as an actual prolific user (or several sub-prolific ones that similarly got lumped together to add up to "too much"), but load-sharing systems generally account for that already. General 'stress and load' is more likely to invoke a 500s message (depending upon what actually is happening).
::But, either way, if you get one of them then you're advised to pause, take a breath, perhaps wait a little before your next refresh/reload attempt, but if ''that'' goes wrong then wait a bit longer still (double your patience, maybe), and again more (further doubling) as necessary.
::Either it's not your fault, but you probably don't need to add to the problems, or it ''is'' your fault (e.g. you're webscraping in the background at full throttle) and you ''really'' need to stop causing those problems (and try not to do it again later). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 20:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:::Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::::Hint: even if you don't entirely trust Wikipedia not to be written (or rewritten) wrongly, you don't get the whole world of possible wrongness of a mostly uncomprehending AI repeating a load of mangled fragments put together on an "at least it looks grammatically correct" basis. If you trust AI so much that you don't go looking anywhere else (there are plenty of technical sites out there, including the actual official RFCs which say what servers ''should'' be doing and saying) but Wikipedia is also far from wrong and pretty thorough on this point.
::::Ask Google's AI for entertainment, or to start to put together a school report (but be prepared to check ''everything'', as well as edit enough not to be caught by AI-detection as well as Plagiarism-detection). But not for insta-expertise, if you've not got enough grounding in the subject to at least sanity-checking what you're being told. Truth-checking and reality-checking are always necessary, of course, no matter what the source. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.36|141.101.98.36]] 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
:::::Noted and acknowledged. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 14:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

== Total amount of accounts created on this wiki? ==

I was editing [[explain xkcd:Museum]] and I was wondering how many accounts have ever been created. Is there a way to access this? {{unsigned|DollarStoreBa'al|15:52, 17 March 2025}}
:Hey, I moved your message from the Coordination portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
:The base information you need is from the special page that is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers - although bear in mind that an overwhelming number of created accounts are spam-attempts (that get no further), so perhaps the count needs to be qualified as "users that have then gone on to post" (a few of which ''are'' still spam-only contributors, but now an insignificant amount rather than a probably overwhelming majoriy).
:How you go about counting ''and'' classifying valid accounts is up to you, of course. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.68|162.158.74.68]] 21:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
::How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
:::There's <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, that gives you the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]] (it was 142,958 when I wrote this), for the total number of registered users (including no-input pre-spammers, only-ever-spammed contributors, "I only created this account to say..."ers who didn't realised they could do as much as an IP, maybe some banned, sock-puppet/legitimate-alts/forgot-my-old-login duplicate accounts, maybe ''not'' some totally excised by top-tier-admins).
:::There's also <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, with the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]] (119, as I write this), which I think is everyone active (+registered) in the past 30 days.
:::Possibly there are other "magic word" values for more useful in-betweeny values (nearer the top end of the first), e.g. of everyone who has made at least one edit ''ever''. But not sure I know what that might off the top of my head.
:::I can think of ways to ''interrogate'' the wiki for one or other (better) counting criteria, but it would be horribly intensive. If anyone wanted to do this (it already needing a bit more technical ability than merely using inbuilt auto-value magic words, and preferably you'd need to not be a 'mere' scriptkiddie jumping in with both feet without knowing how to do it sensibly), I'd suggest ensuring a ''very'' throttled-back process that may take its time over days. Then, once 'completed', a not-quite-so-throttled-back version can just 'top up' its stats with everything from the last point you'd reached the last time round until the present (to never hammer the site).
:::Please please please, though, you should probably only try any of this if you're already sure of everything I've been suggesting. There are also far easier ways to attempt a DoS, but it would be ironic if you did this ''while trying to be helpful''... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.65|141.101.98.65]] 20:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
::::Oh neat that's exactly what we needed! Could you add these magic words to the museum, maybe calling one "total accounts" and the other one "users active in last 30 days"? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

== email confirmation ==

my email confirmation did not get sent even after a week. is there anything wrong? - [[User:Bb777|(((((((((((((([...]((((((((((((((]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 21:36, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
:been broken for a decade i think. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
::WE REALLY NEED JEFF BACK !!!!!!!! [[User:Bb777|hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 16:12, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

== MediaWiki error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]] ==

When I go to [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]], there is a MediaWiki error. This does not occur at [[1269]] or [[1271]]. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 13:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
:Could not replicate.
:[[1270]] redirects to [[1270: Functional]], so does it happen for you if you go via [[Functional]] and ''its'' redirect? How about https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1270:_Functional (as URL) rather than what you may be doing (but so did I, at first, still to find no error) in plugging the text into the "Search explain xkcd" field..?
:Unless it's an off-page edit (some template, broken and then fixed), the page itself seems to have no recent edit to explain any changes (to broken and/or to unbroken)... I think we may need more info. Including myself in "we" in case it's an error even I can fix, which isn't unknown but not guaranteed! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.160|172.71.178.160]]
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/L5icGdZ9nBzw.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/1nP1qunLk86a.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/7S3Ct5wghTIH.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] via index.php: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/HghYaRj9wA1f.png?o=1 [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:::I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
::::Anybody else? ''None'' of that happens here.
::::Could it be somehow browser-specific, or even extension-related? One thing to try is if you any further browsers handily installed (or installable) that you can use (even if just just for this one purpose, you don't need them to be the default system one). As of right now, though, I'm flumoxed and don't have any obvious other steps, and I dont believe anybody else has the means to enable the debug options.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.190|172.69.79.190]] 22:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::This occurs on a Chromebook managed by my school, so I can't install any browsers besides Chrome and I can't manage the extensions. I can see the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1270:_Functional&action=edit editing page] but I get an even less elegantly presented [https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/xQOVUQMjoF1r.png?o=1 error] when I try to preview the page.[[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:Couldn't replicate either, Windows 11 Chrome Canary. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
:Figured out the problem. This error occurs on any page using the <code><nowiki><math></nowiki></code> tag. I don't know why, though. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
::Yep, added <code><nowiki><math>This causes an error.</math></nowiki></code> to the top of [[explain xkcd:Sandbox]] and now it gives the same error. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:::This bug has been around for at least 7 years. Here's the fix: [[#Mediawiki exception on some pages]]. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 21:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

== Captcha repeat ==
When you've finished editing, there is an "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA.

But if you preview the changes before saving, that gets reset, so you can't just say "yup, looks good, go ahead and publish this change."

How hard would it be to make the CAPTCHA sticky, so that it doesn't need an extra interaction/mouse movement after previewing?

Or, alternatively, to not display either the CAPTCHA or the Save Changes until after a preview. {{unsigned|JimJJewett20:40, 14 April 2025}}

:If you're going to Preview (which can often be a good idea), don't bother ticking the "I am not a robot". Previews (also the "Show Changes") are 'free' and don't need you to feed the CAPTHA machine.
:What's wrong with 1) editing, 2) previewing, 3) going "Yup, looks good" and ticking the box, 3a) ''if'' required, fulfill the Captcha, 4) Submit..?
:It's exactly the same amount of work as having the Captcha-fulfillment at position (1a) and 'sticky'
:Also, however hard it might be to 'sticky' the CAPTCHA, there's a ''reason'' that a validated CAPTCHA isn't held over willy-nilly. Theoretically, an automated system (or semi-attended one) that relied upon finding out if it ''could'' post an edit, before it even bothered to try could benefit (if only by a smidgen) from first having a pot-shot at authorisation and only then (presumably before any 'time out' kicked in) pushing the latest spambot stuff.
:I see no value in allowing that, even if there was anybody who might have enough of an 'in' on the server code to enable such a thing. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.248|162.158.33.248]] 23:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:Moved this to technical portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

== Request for feedback about {{tl|comic}} ==

Hey, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the random button on our comic template, please see this page: [[Template talk:comic#Random button should link to Special:RandomInCategory]] --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

:Does anyone here know how to create a random link that fetches pages from two different categories? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:12, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

== Random comic/explanation glitches ==

For some reason, I can''not'' press random without being sent to either the Verizon comic-thing or comic #4 (this is one of my first times commenting, no clue how to do links). I’ve now pressed the button for random comic 8 times and keep getting these two pages, any idea for fixing this? [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

:update: it’s now added repeatedly sending me to [[1057:Klout]] and [[2875:2024]]. I can’t get it to send me to any other page through the random button. After 23 random comic presses, I got each of these four comics 6 times and the latest comic once. [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

== Incessant 503 errors ==

I cannot keep contributing to this site if the 503 errors continue. The time it takes to perform a single action is about 10 times greater than it should be, some pages never load, and almost everything is broken and outdated. The situation will get worse if we do nothing. We have to do something :(   --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
:I've not yet found any page that won't ever load, can you give an example?
:Updating the website, though useful for other reasons, also cannot help this problem much. Different hosting might help, but mostly different proxying. Site-side changes, of the kind we've perhaps been waiting for, would be minimally useful to this external issue. Maybe we'll get some changes out of this crisis, maybe we'll just get the site closed down as not worth the additional effort. (Just going read-only might not even help, and would still be gruelling loss.) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.10|172.71.178.10]] 16:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

::Can't do much better than Cloudflare for proxying, at least not on a budget. If the DDOS is from an AI-scraper or a malicious-but-not-paying-attention source, temporarily shifting everything to a new domain and having explainxkcd.com just be a placeholder with human-readable instructions to het to the temp site ''might'' help, at least until the adversary adapted. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.16|162.158.167.16]] 19:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

::Well anything would be better than the current situation, except a total shutdown. Why is nobody worried this entire wiki is dying in front of our eyes and the owner doesn't even remember it exists? Jesus --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

:Same issue. What could be causing this? {{unsigned ip|162.158.114.253|14:49, 27 May 2025}}
::The server's seemingly being hammered by a new batch of unregulated traffic, that's been hammering many other sites. Your attempts to connect are getting lost in the overload, until the instigators get bored, smarter/kinder or someone implements a better way to stop the offending connections better. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.160|172.70.162.160]] 16:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

== wtf is going on with the server?? ==

why is the site giving a db error 90% of the time? is something wrong? how/when will it be fixed? (can it be fixed at all?) update: the db crashed AGAIN while i was writing this. also its not like above section, since it currently *specifically* gives db errors. "cannot access the database." [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 16:54, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
:See the sub-header above (and other contributions by people in the last two or three comic Discussions), but imagine you're at a party, trying to talk to your friends, and people you don't know keep coming over and trying to start various inane conversations that just keep distracting you, and ''they just won't leave you alone!''
:So: 1) Too much traffic. 2) Not with the server. 3) Difficult/not quickly (it's not really a server-fix). And the DB isn't fully crashing (that'd do something else). It's just unable to reply to everyone, every time, and even saying "No I can't talk to you" takes up time.
:Ideally, you get someone else to intercept anyone coming over to talk to you. Maybe a VIP-section "red rope", and a big guy with a clipboard of guests/a personal secretary to vet newcomers. Doing that yourself is just going to distract you more. (Or you can take enough amphetamines to become enough of a party animal to comfortably be at the centre of the ''wildest'' of parties, but that takes finding a dealer with the right product, as well as other problems. And the tendency to overextend your analogies.) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.72|172.68.205.72]] 19:36, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
::That reads like the "explain" of an XKCD that I want to see. :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.131|162.158.175.131]] 21:17, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

==Special:ContributionScores on Main Page busts caching, causing load==

Long story short, the Main Page transcludes a top contributors table, [[Special:ContributionScores/10/30]], which marks the entire Main Page as dynamic (not cacheable). This means that (1) Cloudflare is not serving up a static version of this page, even to those not logged in, (2) the Main Page wikitext is getting reparsed on every hit, and (3) the parser is recreating the table from scratch on every hit, consuming a lot of database connection time, roughly between 0.5 and 1.0 second each. This is...suspicious, given the wiki's technical difficulties. I suggest an experiment with removing it to see if technical issues improve. If so, and if people wish to keep the table, I suggest creating a static version of the table that is updated only occasionally (even once every few hours by bot should be fine).

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:750px; overflow:auto;">Expand for details...
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The whole story is: While browsing overnight, I noticed that the issues with page loads seemed caching-related; pages never seemed to load on the first click, though refreshing was often successful, at least during the presumably lower-load overnight hours. Research led me to the possibility that some broken caching system was leading to the database running out of connections (even on a cache hit, one is still needed to determine whether it is a cache hit or miss), so I started looking at some technical indicators, eventually leading to the parser profiling ("NewPP") and transclusions block at the end of the parser output [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&page=Main%20Page here].

For the main page, it outputs:

<nowiki>NewPP limit report
Cached time: 20250528101640
Cache expiry: 0
Dynamic content: true
CPU time usage: 0.059 seconds
Real time usage: 2.564 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 273/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 2367/1000000
Post\u2010expand include size: 17895/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 714/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 7/40
Expensive parser function count: 4/100
-->


</div>
</nowiki>
</div></div>

From a quick search, it sounds like transclusion of a special page will always cause the parser cache to be bypassed, causing all of the parsed output to be regenerated on every hit by any visitor, logged in or not, via the API or not, etc. (While it's not technically wrong that increased number of visits may be causing issues, this would be a multiplicative exacerbation of that.) Combined with the fact that the page is recreating a pretty heavy database query to count and tabulate the last 30 days of edits, this seems Really Bad. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 11:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

: Edited for corrections and clarity. Also, one can generate and profile the cost of any bit of wikitext using the API: <nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores</nowiki> would create and time the processing time needed to generate <nowiki>{{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}</nowiki>.
: I'd noticed that there was a recent change from 7 to 30 days of scoring, but it turns out that doesn't make a big difference in processing time. In addition, the parser considering the content static doesn't seem to be enough for Cloudflare to start caching a page, so that might not be as easy to change. Still, simply allowing the parser output to be saved and regenerating the table for the vast majority of visitors' hits might be a big help. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 13:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

:: Does this affect other pages? If not, then the main DB issues aren't fixed... but if it does, then why is the contribs page loaded for EVERY page? Also, I *support* removing this... it's just a showcase that exists for no good reason if shown to every viewer, the recent contribs should probably be restricted to users only or something [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.176|162.158.8.176]] 08:30, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::: The contrib table doesn't load on every page, but the vast majority of hits are going to be to the Main Page. And (my hypothesis is) it holds database connections open while it's running, which consumes that limited resource on the server. (We could just raise the cap, but we don't have access to the server.) A lot of the lag time in the profiler above is just sitting in a queue for the next database connection, which affects everything. So in that sense, it affects the whole wiki. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::Hi. I changed to 30 days on suggestion by FaviFake. But that was in March. Just changed it back to 7 again just to try it. Of course I can also try to remove it for a period of time. But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor. So I would hate to remove it. Also it has worked with 30 days for more than two months and with the 7 days for as long as I have used the site (since 2012). So it seems weird that it should suddenly be the front page that breaks it all. It is also not the first time we have had these issues. Not sure how they where resolved last time but strange if it suddenly is the main page that causes all these problems [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:29, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::: (Un)Fortunately(?) I suspect the technical caching issue is more relevant, where naively transcluding a Special page via <code><nowiki>{{Special:...}}</nowiki></code> causes everything to re-process on every hit. That doesn't mean losing the feature entirely (or even the 30 days); I can help make a bot that can send the output (inside <code><nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/30,nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores&format=json</nowiki></code>) to a template, automatically updating once per short interval (an hour?). The delayed version can also be Main Page only; the live version can always still be linked, and/or the full page linked to.
::: You're right that perhaps this isn't necessarily ''the'' proximate "straw that broke the camel's back" cause. And there are a lot of other problems and solutions that could help - like simply raising the DB connection cap, or all the stuff about crawler traffic, and that Cloudflare doesn't seem to be caching the basically-static CSS from tool.php, etc. etc... But without admin access to diagnostics or settings for the database and Cloudflare, we can only work with the tools we have. Even this specific widget itself does some caching in a newer update, but we don't have access to updating it. (That said, I'm still keeping an eye out for other things that might have changed recently.) [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
::::As it did not help making it 7 days again I have now removed it. Seems to make no difference to begin with. But lets give it some time to work. But I'm not optimistic. Let me know if I moved the correct bit, I'm no expert just sadly the only active admin and we cannot get hold of Jeff... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Since the removal of the Rankings table, I haven't noticed a downtick of connection errors. (That said, I dislike people ''aiming'' to be in the Rankings, I consider that editing should be its own reward, so personally I'd be happier without it anywhere quite as prominent.) Haven't done a full technical analysis, but I estimate that from a prior peak of maybe 1.5 "technical difficulties" or "also, a 503 error" responses, generally varying between zero issues (straight in) and normal worstest-case scenario of three attempts (fourth attempt is Ok, ''maybe'' unstylsheeted), in the last 24 hours it's been more like 2.5:1 fail to success ratio. (i.e. reaching up to maybe 6th-attempt success, worst case.) Not nice, but survivable.

Though got a new one, just a few minutes ago. An actual Cloudflare error: "SSL handshake failed Error code 525 // Visit cloudflare.com for more information. // 2025-05-30 20:01:57 UTC". In case that interests anyone. Looks like the server was temperarily so incapacitated as to not be able to even handshake with the proxy. But I don't currently expect that to recur, just thought I'd note it as a 'new' glitch, in passing. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

: Well, ''right now'' things seem more stable. But during Friday just after the change, when pages could load at all, I noticed they were loading faster, but the availability was just as bad or worse for a while. I'm not really sure how much credit to the latest improvement goes to changing the contribution table. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 00:59, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:Everything seems to be good now. No constant DB errors, and it's now smooth! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.142|162.158.8.142]] 07:00, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

::Should I try inserting the contribution score to see if the problems return, because it would be nice to know if it was this or just random. Also even though some might dislike this score it has been there always, and should not just be removed because one person writes negatively about it. But of course if it was really the reason behind the problems it has to stay of the front page. But a link could be inserted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:44, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::To clarify, I wasn't saying I disliked the score, ''per se'', just that it encourages edits-for-the-sake-of-edits and (though I rarely see the Main Page myself) is prominent enough for the new discoverers of the site to take as a challenge (in well-meaning ways, as well as less so). I have sympathy with "But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor." Just pointing out the functional inverse that it is a motivating factor ''to make a lot of contributions''. (And that I personally abstain from that competition, buried within the contributions of various other IPers, no temptation at all to edit without decent cause.)
:::A version of the table weighted against new accounts ''might'' make me happier, but too many ways of doing that (hard threshold, to kick in at an arbitrary 'account maturity' age, so no-one appears on the list until 'old enough'; a formula that slopes from 0 to 1 at the "maturity" time, multiply the contributions by the current value; ditto, but a smoother function that becomes assymptotic to 1) that probably also involve scripted conversions and various arbitrary choices. So not something I'd imagine being done.
:::I do think it's a good idea to re-add it ''for science''. Give it a week to settle down, without it as an issue. If (as it seems) it has died down properly, add it again for a further week (or less, if it becomes obvious it has reintroduced the same DoS-like scenario). Let the outcome shape your further decision, or fine-tuning. Not mere yay/nay preferences, like mine, regarding it.
:::It's also very likely only a ''factor'' in the slow-down. It was ok (in both 7 day and 30 day versions) for aong time, but ''together with'' increased amounts of site traffic (as per anecdotal evidence from elsewhere on the 'net) it went bad on us. The improved situation could also have been due to the perpetrators turning their (accidental?) web-hammering scripts off, having finished their project, or now making them far less aggressive. The 'benefits' of the League Table might not now cause such side-effects. But also it's still possible that the problematic traffic comes back and hobbles the site gain, regardless of the absence frontpage League Tabling.
:::And you can always add the Special:ContributionScores(-slash-whatever) information as a link to go to, rather than transcluded (if you've decided that it's still trouble to have where it was). But cross that bridge if you come to it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

::PS I also gets 0-2 errors at the moment, so it is not all good, had to reload twice to get the comment above posted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:45, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::My observations: still 'terrible', maybe even slightly worse, Friday and early Saturday, UK time, noting the Friday Comic didn't get Bot-imported until well into Saturday PM (theusaf might have failure logs?), but I'm sure I saw it on xkcd.com on Saturday morning (but still had showed Wednesday as of Fri/Sat midnight, UTC+1, or thereabouts, i.e. early Friday evening Randall Time, not untypical for such updates). The table-transclusion was removed at least a full day before. Don't know if anything else caused lag in the proxy's response.
:::Since Saturday evening, more or less ok. ''Some'' errors, in line with "background levels" before this recent splurge actually hit. If I get a "technical problems", an imminent refresh sorts it (doesn't return another error), gets on with things. Not perfect, might mean a bit more RAM/swapspace might further help, or a higher quota of shared processing threads (if there are any that can be spared from whatever else is running in whatever rackspace unit it might be). Livable, if also still vulnerable to the next period of increased pressure. Keeping an eye on it, and still trying to eventually get through to the hardware-owning sysops, would be wise. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: A note for the future: the new (current) version of this extension [https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=ContribScoreCacheTTL&files=&excludeFiles=&repos= caches] data for half an hour (by default), so if we ever get an update, the bot wouldn't be necessary anymore. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 07:46, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

== What would it take to clone ExplainXKCD? ==

What would it take technically and financially to clone this web site?

Installing MediaWiki and cloning the wiki pages should be fairly straightforward. There may be some pain due to differences in MediaWiki versions.

Cloning or rewriting the bots may be a chore.

Paying for hosting and Cloudflare will take a steady stream of income.

There's also legal issues, like how to protect everyone from liability if someone wants to sue, even if it's a frivolous suit.

There will need to be multiple administrators at every level so we don't have the "if one person disappears for awhile and problems arise, we are stuck" issues.

My guess is that between the existing administrators and regular contributors, we have the technical skills to do this. It's the financial and legal issues that give me pause.

Yes, I'm an occasional contributor, and no, I haven't created an account yet. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.119|162.158.175.119]] 19:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

:It would help if we didn't want to clone ''all page history''. Already, it would bar those bits hidden behind admin-level deletions, etc, but limiting the actual depth of history scraped up and made available on a new platform would be wise from a 'start over' POV, ''especially'' if not having direct access to the core database. Possibly a 'bot could maintain an "anything new on old site gets reduplicated to new site" until a phased cut-off, with enough thought, dyluring the ''duration'' of the migratory process, but you need a solid base (maybe with further back-filled history as much as you can).
::Removing page history might violate the "attribution" part of the CC-BY-SA license (but I am not a lawyer so don't take my word for it.) [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 17:46, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
:And then there's user accounts. Maybe there's a way to confirm your rights to an original-site username on the new-site (potentially complex things, or just something to do with logins on both, posting "it's me" on the new site, then "yes, that new-site claim me of being me is indeed correct" on old-site, but you still have to deal with potential claim-jumping/identity-gazumping). Which also needs trust of the new-site admins to play fair with potential disputes.
:And it'd be a good opportunity to clean some up things (everyone can think of several inconsistecies that ''they'd'' deal with, given the opportunity), but only with a lot of hands on effort. So factor that in for potential work.
:On the whole, though, best just to 'start fresh'. A task in itself, perhaps use and acknowledge this site's "best material" (I think copyright might be not so much an issue if based upon a fair and dutiful copy, due to the details of [[explain xkcd:Copyrights]], but that's of course something that needs advice sought for any particular implementation). That, of course, needs community acceptance not to be seen as an "upstart usurper" site, perhaps, and could create a schism where some would refuse to partake in the new project at all.
:i.e. you raise good questions (and prompt others), but I'm not sure there are ''undeniably'' objective good answers to them all. Trying it and seeing how it goes is probably the ''only'' way to bash out the many details. Not an easy project. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.144|172.71.241.144]] 21:19, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

:I think it would be absolutely awesome to move to something that *isn't* self hosted, something that as far as I can tell this wiki is. If we move or clone, may we see [https://weirdgloop.org/ Weird Gloop] as an option? They have a lot of experience and will [https://weirdgloop.org/blog/why-were-helping-more-wikis-move-away-from-fandom#how-to-not-turn-into-fandom-20-with-these-2-simple-tricks probably not turn into another fandom and will not be bought by them]. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.130.250|172.69.130.250]] 15:33, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
::Oh ye gods... Yes, whatever you do, ''don't'' go anywhere near Fandom, as a solution. Not that I think this will be a convincing argument on its own, but you'll absolutely lose me as an 'explain' reader (never mind contributor) if it goes onto a Fandom/ex-Wikia hosting model. I've no experience of Weird Gloop (yet), but the URL (about why they're different) certainly does vicerally appeal to me on first glance. Do your own independant research, though, anybody tempted down that or any eqyivalent route. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
:[https://github.com/saveweb/wikiteam3/ Wikidump] can get all page content with full history (for pages that have not been deleted). It doesn't require admin privileges to use. [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 21:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
:The site seems stable now, at least for the last half-day. I'm not sure if the attack/scraping ended, or if there's a real back-end fix in place, but here's hoping it stays stable. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.73|172.68.26.73]] 02:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
::Replying to '''my''' comment of 02:11, 1 June 2025 immediately above: I spoke too soon, I got two "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties." errors in less than 5 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.67.217|172.69.67.217]] 03:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: Why should we do this in the first place? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.165|162.158.8.165]] 07:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
:: So we can manage things when someone with server-level access is required. For example, if someone with server-level access was around during the last week or two when we've been having intermittent-but-sometimes-heavy site-is-too-busy-try-again-later errors, we (or, rather, the server operator) would have more insight to the problem and would likely be able to do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.170.157|172.71.170.157]] 16:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: The resources at [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Grabbers Mediawiki/Manual:Grabbers] seem useful - they seem written for the new server administrator to have the new server save things into the new wiki. (I worry about the note regarding MediaWiki version 1.39+ since we're stuck on 1.30, but I think that might be about the version of the *new* wiki installation.) In particular, there exists a [[Special:Export]] page (and associated API) that also exports the page history. There are a few options for migrating people's accounts; [https://github.com/ciencia/mediawiki-extensions-StubUserWikiAuth Extension:StubUserWikiAuth] seems most promising so far. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 09:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

== new and exciting 522 and 524 cloudflare errors ==

everyone else saw that, right? [[user:lett‪herebedarklight|this website's domain expires in august]] 02:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
:From at least midday (UK time), yesterday. But given the lack of ''any'' recorded edits for 4/Jun (UTC), only being broken by your (and other) early-hours edits of 5/Jun, was a lengthy period of whatever-went-even-more-wrong. (I had kept notes, I probably got 522s and 524s, when I checked back every few hours. Might have been other 52Xs, but not got that bit of scrap paper with me right now.) [[Special:Contributions/82.132.234.190|82.132.234.190]] 12:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
::Expires. Will that mean that if it is not prolonged this entire site will vanish? [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 06:22, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
:::Read [[User talk:Lettherebedarklight]] (to the bottom!) for one Q&A that was done on it. I know I also ''previously'' discussed LTBDL's 'discovery' (before they decided to break their own User Page in suggesting this was going to be an issue), but they also ignored me. As they still have their alarmist signature up, despite the other explanation, thus alarming you.
:::Short version: the domain potentially expires ''every year''. Every year, so far, it has been renewed. It's not the first time. Chances are low that it'll be the last.
:::Or, to rephrase your question, this site may vanish if it ''isn't'' prolonged (the auto-renew is not auto-renewed, perhaps the person paying for it gets fed up doing it).
:::PS. is it just a coincidence that, since the 'day outage', we're now getting many IPv6 contributors? (And vastly different IPv4 ranges/submasks.) Seems like a Cloudflare-led thing, assuming that nobody has been reconfiguring the explainxkcd server in any way (which is the current 'complaint'). ...Not worth a seperate new header to mention, but thought I'd mention it in passing, as I'm here. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.213.196|82.132.213.196]] 10:32, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

== Problem Sending a Question to whatif@xkcd.com ==

I tried to send a question to whatif@xkcd.com, and I got an automatic mail from google that "It was failed to send to the group", does it means that the question was sent, or that it got blocked entirely? [[Special:Contributions/2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01]] ([[User talk:2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|talk]]) 15:16, 11 June 2025‎ (UTC) ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''

:Yup, that's a known error. See the notice on ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' for more info. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

== Monobook style categories bug ==
I recently switched to the monobook style in preferences, and I saw this on the main page:

[[File:Monobook Font Bug.png]]

Is this something that's inherent to the monobook font or something that I can fix on my end? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al |DollarStoreBa'al]][[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al |'''''Converse''''']][[Special:Contributions/DollarStoreBa'al|'''''My life choices''''']] 15:03, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

==Bug on Modern style==
I encountered this UI bug opening up the site. Is this one-time or have others experienced this? [[File:UI Bug.png|200x200px]] --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|'''''converse''''']] 16:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
:that's just broken css. if you refresh it, it should render correctly. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 16:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
:I'm sure you've occasionally had a "page cannot load" error on the HTML (a few months back, it was particularly bad, but it's fairly rare at the moment). But imagine if you luckily escaped the issue of the HTML file loading. ''It'' tells your machine to ask for the CSV, as well as things like the images it needs. And then the inability to get the CSV happens. It could have been the image that didn't load, also. The lack of stylesheet
:A refresh of the page is usually what I'd try next. Or a hard-refresh, possibly, depending upon which browser I'm using. Either it all appears fine or the HTML totally fails the second time from whatever glitch is plaguing the system at that time. If you get exactly the same.
:I'll have to admit, though, but it took me quite a few moments to find what was wrong with the UI... maybe I'm innured against the occasional version of this issue. Unless I was looking for the Recent Changes link, for example, I'd probably just read the page as normal and then move onto the next page I want to check/editing the Talk page, all of which likely loads correctly and leaves me none the wiser that I'd missed a minor reshuffle.
:Tell you what, though, the "Recent Changes" page looks quite a bit different without Stylesheet-styling. And you can even invoke that, if you want. Depending upon browser, you can either choose which (or no!) stylesheet gets applied, also useful to see a site using its "mobile" settings from your desktop. Or you may be able to use whatever the equivalent of Object Inspector is for your page code and 'break' the particular ".css"-line that governs it. Sometimes gives interesting and useful results, on more awkward sites that try to enforce "no copypasting" or selectively hide/obscure things. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 23:29, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

== Upgrading MediaWiki ==

::''Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)''

Hi! If you aren't already aware, the wiki's MediaWiki software is many years out of date, 1.30 became end of life in 2019. This likely opens up the wiki to security issues, and presumably some annoyance from the users due to lack of newer features. It seems that Jeff never got around to this. If you have access to the wiki server, please upgrade the wiki, or have someone else do it. I think the recommendation to avoid compatibility issues is to go from LTS to LTS on upward, so <s>1.30 > 1.31 > 1.35 > 1.39 > 1.43</s> (it seems that you can go straight from 1.30 > 1.35 > 1.43 although the errors may be more difficult to read, based on the FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#How_do_I_upgrade_from_a_really_old_version?_In_one_step,_or_in_several_steps? ).

If you want assistance with MediaWiki upgrades, this organization called Professional Wiki seems to also performs this service. https://professional.wiki/en/mediawiki-upgrade-services In any case, they would probably follow a form of the procedure outlined in the official MediaWiki manual.

To check the wiki's current version: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Version

Version lifecycle: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle

Upgrading procedure/manual: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading

Thank you! [[User:Cam1170|Cam1170]] ([[User talk:Cam1170|talk]]) 19:32, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
:Hi Cam1170, thank you for your proposal and thought! Unfortunately, we are unable to update this wiki's MediaWiki software because the owner has gone AWOL. He is a bureaucrat on here, and the other 'crat is also inactive. Despite multiple times to reach out to him both on-site and through other platforms, he has not responded. We are assuming that this wiki will stay frozen like this unless we migrate (which I have no idea how will be done-or if it's even possible!). '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 01:30, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
:Noting that even migrating would probably involve someone (active) taking it upon themselves to provide the 'blank' new server on a new host (and new domain!) upon which the existing available information is to be written. (N.B., possibly still to a limited degree, without the access also required to upgrade or grant a further third party the access required to upgrade, unless there are some truly weird backdoors. Everything I know indicates that even making sure that everyone can reproduce their accounts in the new system would be a tricky achievement to get right.) And then we'd probably still have this place's 'box' (or boxes, or cloud-like bundle of cooperating resources) happily but redundantpt continuing in whatever 'protected stasis' we'll have then placed it in, as we try to re-establish the SEOing/etc that leads to our new doorway.
:This isn't the first time, probably won't be the last, that we've been advised of the 'issues'. And been only able to state that our active most-priviliged users seem not to be priviliged enough to even consider the direct server-level access needed to up-patch/re-install the core backend. Nor to properly migrate everything (leaving this service running as a 'ghost' site, to a greater or lesser extent), from the box(es) it runs upon all the way to the original registered domain.
:I had written more, but it boils down to the conspicuously absent progenitor being the main hurdle, likely for reasons beyond even their control. Though ''perhaps'' there are further missing administrators who might have enough access to (if they don't entirely break everything, in the attenpt) assist us, should they be coaxed/cajoled to return.
:Personally (as if my opinion counts), I see no urgent need for (e.g.) a more visual editor. Dealing with entirely new and more complex bugs, compared to what I think is far simpler to work with, is one thing that I know will at least annoy me.
:As for security issues, I believe we're at not a bad 'stuck' stage, compared to some (newer!) stages we could be at. And 0-day exploits are an ever present (intangible) risk at the bleeding edge, of course. ;) But you'd be also right to question what I know of all this, as an effectively unknown voice from the wilderness. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.27|82.132.238.27]] 05:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::Ahem...
I see no urgent need for [...] [the] visual editor.
::'''Tables''' --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
:::Seems like others have made it clear why I cannot help. I ended up stuck as the only admin without bureaucrat powers... Also I'm not very tech minded so not the best admin you could have. but at the moment the only active. :-/ Not quite sure what Favifake means though? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::::Yes, of course! You're still unable to do anything, just like everyone else.
::::I replied to IP, which said the Visual editor wasn't necessary. Tables are incredibly hard to set up without the visual editor, so I think it's ''the'' most important feature we're missing right now.
::::''[Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)]''
:::::Easier to custom convert 'raw' tabular data to "tabular data under wikitable format" than to painstakingly arrange it in a visually-'aided' WYSYWYG table, actually. Making a casual table might be easier, but making a ''well thought out'' table with any complexity benefits from knowing the abilities and limitations of the markup.
:::::I had thought someone would object on a different sisue, actually, but that would also be something for which actually caring about the back-end markup (and using Preview judiciously) certainly doesn't hurt, with "dumbing up"/abstraction often not being an overall advantage. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.245.43|82.132.245.43]] 21:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::Sorry but I unfortunately didn't understand anything of what you just said :( ㅤ [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 11:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
:::::::I think they're saying that [https://imgur.com/gallery/i-dont-even-see-code-anymore-WqqJfNb the raw markup isn't exactly difficult]. And further that a WYSIWYG interface (which was typoed!) can often create suboptimal layouts, just because it was tweaked to 'look right' in the rather limited context of the composition editor.
:::::::And I probably agree, to an extent. Wikitables are designed to be far more simple/uncluttered, at source, than the equivalent HTML code. You can easily hand-craft them to both render nicely and be intelligable by future editors. It's not rocket science.
:::::::And then there was something about creating wikitables from non-wiki data, which might not actually be totally relevant. But is something I sometimes do, and I'd definitely consider a visual editor an impediment if I was doing that. The difference being that you can (hopefully) just toggle that option away. Or, rather, not bother toggling it on. Either way, I'd do what I think looks best for later editors, like leaving nice/logical text-spacing in monospace font by judicious use of whitespace/newlines - often lacking/badly done otherwise. If you want ''my'' opinion, too. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 21:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::::"the raw markup isn't exactly difficult" yes is is? Merging cells is a nightmare, adding new cells to the rowspan/colspan is a nightmare, moving text around is annoying, clicking preview constantly is time-consuming... i could go on and on. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::I concur. Especially with large tables, it's hard to find where you need to edit, simply because it all looks the same. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 13:09, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
: that's actually quite scary that the person who pays for the server has gone awol. That means this wiki is just 1-2 unpaid bills away from being shut down for good without any means to recover it. I think updating the software is the least of our concern. I mean, if the current admins should retire as well, then there's no one who could even appoint new admins. [[Special:Contributions/2.204.192.65|2.204.192.65]] 09:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
:: As said before, when the domain-name was "mere months from expiring" (n.b., it ''seems'' to be annually renewed, automatically, so is ''forever'' potentially mere months from expiring), there are all kinds of other ways for a site to fail. Some, like the hosting/hardware rental, might be tied to the same bill-paying cycle as the domain, so any such interruption might happen across the board as a grand-slam. (Interruptions might not mean the loss of the account-holder, and the loss of the account-holder might not mean an interruption... Would depend on how someone organises (or fails to organise) such things.)
:: Other failures could happen any time. Glad to see we're back from the outage: my initial guess was that someone ''had'' tried to update the site, somehow, but had got it horribly ''horribly'' wrong and left it unworkable. This would have been our invisible benefactor, perhaps, unless a "guerilla hacktivist" had taken a big chance and bigger risk. Probably not any of that, though, or at least it was someone who could still revoke the broken changes.
:: And then there's just a vital rapidly spinning disk shedding its magnetic coating or even fragmenting, or its circuitry develops a dry-joint/whisker of solder. The lifetime of an HDD is said to be "3 to 5 years", by one source I found (though I'm personally using ones that are >30yo, in near constant use, and I've seen far earlier failures, so I don't know how useful that is). If it's now sitting on SSD, that has read/write-cycle 'limits', instead. So, if it's not RAIDed with someone able to hotswap replacement drives, potentially some time (perhaps in a darkened but air-conditioned room) there may be the momentary shriek of metal (or silence, at least compared to the general humming of everything else) and ''at best'' we'll revert to the last valid automated backup... If there is one, and someone can fix it. (My second theory about the blackout was this. But I don't remember anything new to the site that didn't come back when it returned.)
::As for the WYSIWYG (cheers, yep!) thing, I've had to use enforced-visual editors, elsewhere. A right pain. I sure would hope it's optional, for my part. I also think it's healthy for people to not rely on too much 'wizardry' and know more about how everything works, but then I'm someone who has thirty-year-old HDDs running forty-year-old OSes. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.237.89|82.132.237.89]] 11:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
:::Based on what I'm seeing in terms of recent changes, it appears that the cloudflare errors appeared about 2:00 UTC September 11th, and left about 14:00 UTC September 12, making for around 36 hours of total downtime. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 21:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

== A precaution ==
In approximately 2 hours, MediaWiki will be switching something on the server-side, so be ready for a temporary read-only period starting 15:00 UTC. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 18:04, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
:I wonder what will happen with this wiki's old-ass MediaWiki version...I '''''hope''''' everything will go back to normal... --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
that's for wikis supported by the WMF, and we're not. unfortunately. It’s the WMF doing the thing, not the MW software. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:50, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

==RSS FEED==
I've created a megathread for the broken RSS feed since this keeps being brought up. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC)
=== RSS Feed: XML not well-formed ===

<pre>XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

Location: https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml?_SLWxoPenuRl=nOtinFEeDPREVIew

Line Number 31, Column 18:

<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^
</pre>

PHP-Fix:

$title = str_replace("&", "&amp;", $title);

or

$title = htmlspecialchars($title);

: Same problem here. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the first time an xkcd title has included an ampersand (as far as I can see from [[List_of_all_comics_(full)]]). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.85|141.101.99.85]] 14:16, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

=== rss feed ===

Hello

the rss feed is broken, could you fix it ?
<nowiki>
Error :
try{(function overrideDefaultMethods(r, g, b, a, scriptId, storedObjectPrefix) {
var scriptNode = document.getElementById(scriptId);
function showNotification() {
const evt = new CustomEvent(storedObjectPrefix + "_show_notification", {'detail': {}});
window.dispatchEvent(evt);
}
function overrideCanvasProto(root) {
function overrideCanvasInternal(name, old) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var width = this.width;
var height = this.height;
var context = this.getContext("2d");
var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
context.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0);
showNotification();
return old.apply(this, arguments);
}
}
);
}
overrideCanvasInternal("toDataURL", root.prototype.toDataURL);
overrideCanvasInternal("toBlob", root.prototype.toBlob);
//overrideCanvasInternal("mozGetAsFile", root.prototype.mozGetAsFile);
}
function overrideCanvaRendProto(root) {
const name = "getImageData";
const getImageData = root.prototype.getImageData;

root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = getImageData;

Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, "getImageData",
{
value: function () {
var imageData = getImageData.apply(this, arguments);
var height = imageData.height;
var width = imageData.width;
// console.log("getImageData " + width + " " + height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
showNotification();
return imageData;
}
}
);
}
function inject(element) {
if (element.tagName.toUpperCase() === "IFRAME" && element.contentWindow) {
try {
var hasAccess = element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement;
} catch (e) {
console.log("can't access " + e);
return;
}
overrideCanvasProto(element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(element.contentWindow.CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(element.contentWindow.Document);
}
}
function overrideDocumentProto(root) {
function doOverrideDocumentProto(old, name) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var element = old.apply(this, arguments);
// console.log(name+ " everridden call"+element);
if (element == null) {
return null;
}
if (Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object HTMLCollection]' ||
Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object NodeList]') {
for (var i = 0; i < element.length; ++i) {
var el = element[i];
// console.log("elements list inject " + name);
inject(el);
}
} else {
// console.log("element inject " + name);
inject(element);
}
return element;
}
}
);
}
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElement, "createElement");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElementNS, "createElementNS");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementById, "getElementById");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByName, "getElementsByName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByClassName, "getElementsByClassName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagName, "getElementsByTagName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagNameNS, "getElementsByTagNameNS");
}
overrideCanvasProto(HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(Document);
scriptNode.parentNode.removeChild(scriptNode);
})(24,14,-9,19,"ojkrt", "ltwvx");} catch (e) {console.error(e);}Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé
Emplacement : https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml
Numéro de ligne 63, Colonne 18 :
<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^
</nowiki>

[[Special:Contributions/172.71.130.228|172.71.130.228]] ([[User talk:172.71.130.228|talk]]) 08:58, 12 December 2024‎ ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''

=== RSS ===

RIP RSS feed yet again. 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[[User:Bb777|[insert signature here]]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]])
:Is there something new we should know? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.58.6|172.70.58.6]] 00:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

=== the rss feed seems to be broken ===

the rss feed button on the side leading to https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml throws up and error making the feed not load properly in rss readers.

"This page contains the following errors:
error on line 463 at column 18: EntityRef: expecting ';'
Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." {{unsigned ip|172.71.241.19|20:38, 5 May 2025}}
:I think this is the continuing issue as of [[#RSS Feed: XML not well-formed]], you're talking about. As far as I'm aware unfixed and (with the current smattering of active admins at their limits of admin-levels) unfixable. Because of a 'bare' ampersand (or two) being misinterpreted as a failed attempt at a character-entity reference. ''If'' that was fixed, without me noticing, then I'm sure someone will be along to try to fix your new issue too.
:People have been trying to prod other people who can prod the server back into shape (insofar as that issue), but I've not yet been privy to anything coming of that, and presume you're just trapped in the exact same glitch. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.30|172.70.91.30]] 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

::What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
:::It's unusable so long as the "I'm parsing this is an '&Thing;' ... oh, wait, it has no closing ';'... ARGH!" happens to it. If you click on the RSS feed, to the left, you can see how it shows the (not ''quite'' humanly-readable) lines of the RSS feed (most recent, chronologically backwards) until the last line it shows is the comic imediately after the most recent "D&D" entry. (Actually, depends on browser. Sorry, just checked. It does that on Android Chrome, but currently I'm on Windows Firefox and it 'only' complains. But if you'll take my word for it.)
:::Someone really needs to go into the https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml file (who can edit it directly) and find the two "D&D" instances and make them "D&amp;D". (Note to editors: Had to "amp amp" the "amp", here in this edit, to get it to appear just as amp... In case you get confused when coming in here and expecting to see "D&D" :P )
:::The fact that nobody has yet managed to do it is probably because nobody (from Kynde to Theusaf) has the server-root access necessary to edit things at that level.
:::Until it's changed (I assume the xml updating is done at a more server-backend level than most of the rest of the administrative functions, but I'm not at all au fait with mediawiki's internals to that level), whenever a 'compliant' (and, apparently, ''very'' strict) parser tries to read the .xml it'll 'quite rightly' tell you that there's a bare ampersand and then refuses to do anything more.
:::Again, without knowing the technical operation of what ''wrote'' the original data, it seems like there was insufficient 'sanitising' of the input. It applied the bare-ampersand without forward-converting it to an ampersanded ampersand-entity. That maybe also needs fixing (in case we get more), even if the existing ones get manually changed. I don't use any RSS feeds, myself, being too new-fangled ("Initial release: RSS 0.90 (Netscape), March 15, 1999; 26 years ago; Latest release: RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.11) March 30, 2009; 16 years ago"... yeah, ''to me'' that's still new-fangled! :P ) so all I know about how this one fails is what people have talked about above, and trivially clicking on the left-sidebar link to look at it myself, and venture what I think is the logical nature of the glitch (both cause and effect). Maybe somebody knows more about it, but I'm filling in until that person comes along and says oytherswise (and/or more) about it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.193|162.158.33.193]] 20:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
:::: It's not being "very strict" to reject an unescaped ampersand: it's just part of the XML spec. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.216.67|162.158.216.67]] 09:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::Now it says there's an error on line 767...--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 19:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::Same error, of the same (second of two, once it had added its influence to the first) comic that did the "&D" problem. But just with more non-invalid lines before it. Check it again after another few comics and it should be line 770+. This isn't the new <City> thing, for several reasons, if that's what you were thinking it was. (Though there appears to be ''another'' issue with it, which is masked and made moot by the &D-breakage.)[[Special:Contributions/82.132.246.227|82.132.246.227]] 04:55, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

=== RSS Feed doesn't seem to contain anything after 3 August 2025 ===

There do not seem to be any new entries in the RSS Feed after the third of August. {{unsigned ip|216.212.38.209|16:01, 23 September 2025}}
:That's been noticed. But not much chance trying to fix that (manually adding in, if necessary) until we can properly (and manually?) fix the ampersand-D issues. For which there seems to be no-one with sufficient access. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 22:12, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

May I ask why my PHP-Workaround for the broken RSS Feed has been removed without any explanation and not included in the the new RSS-Feed section? (see history) or is this another wiki edit hell not worth wasting another constructive thought?
[[Special:Contributions/2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B|2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B]] 21:36, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
:I think that FaviFake forgot to add it into this mega-thread. I've pasted it back in. Sorry! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
::Yes sorry! [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
:::Apology accepted [[Special:Contributions/2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D|2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D]] 20:01, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

=== PHP Workaround for Broken RSS Feed ===
The following PHP-Code creates a RSS-Feed from the "All comics" page on explainxkcd: (with kind help from Kimi K2)
<pre>
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

// php-xml module available
if (!class_exists('DOMDocument')) {
die("Error: DOMDocument class missing. Please install php-xml");
}

// configuration
$url = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_all_comics_(full)';
$url2 = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/';
$feedTitle = 'xkcdExplain';
$feedDescription = '';
$feedLanguage = 'en-en';
$maxItems = 40;

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36',
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 20,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => 'gzip, deflate',
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8',
'Accept-Language: de-DE,de;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7',
'Cache-Control: no-cache',
]
]);
/* */
$html = curl_exec($ch);

if (curl_errno($ch)) {
die('cURL-Fehler: ' . curl_error($ch));
}

$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($httpCode !== 200) {
die("HTTP-Fehler: $httpCode");
}

curl_close($ch);

// DOM-Verarbeitung
$dom = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTML($html);
libxml_clear_errors();
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

$items = $xpath->query('//tr[ .//a[starts-with(@href,"/wiki/index.php/") and contains(@href,":")]]');
if ($items->length === 0) {
die("Nothing found.");
}

// creat RSS
$rss = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
$rss->formatOutput = true;

$rssRoot = $rss->createElement('rss');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('version', '2.0');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('xmlns:atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$rss->appendChild($rssRoot);

$channel = $rss->createElement('channel');
$rssRoot->appendChild($channel);

$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', $feedTitle));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('description', $feedDescription));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', $url));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('language', $feedLanguage));

// Atom Self-Link
$atomLink = $rss->createElement('atom:link');
$atomLink->setAttribute('href', (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? 'https://' : 'http://') . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$atomLink->setAttribute('rel', 'self');
$atomLink->setAttribute('type', 'application/rss+xml');
$channel->appendChild($atomLink);

foreach ($items as $item) {
if ($maxItems-- <= 0) break;

$cells = $item->getElementsByTagName('td');
if ($cells->length < 4) continue; // Sicherheits-check
$number = trim($item->getElementsByTagName('th')->item(0)->textContent);
$title = trim($cells->item(0)->textContent);
$link = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com' . $cells->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->getAttribute('href');
$image = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/' . trim($cells->item(2)->textContent);
$date = trim($cells->item(3)->textContent); // YYYY-MM-DD

// RSS-Item erzeugen
$rssItem = $rss->createElement('item');
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', htmlspecialchars($number . ': ' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('description',
htmlspecialchars('<img src="' . $image . '" alt="' . $title . '" /> ' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('pubDate', date(DATE_RSS, strtotime($date))));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('guid', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$channel->appendChild($rssItem);
}

header('Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8');
echo $rss->saveXML();
?>
</pre>
{{unsigned ip|2a01:599:442:d8ec:967c:b1b4:cb3e:2bc2}} 20:08, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

----

===Can't we just rename the two pages?===
[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3028:_D%26D_Roll&diff=prev&oldid=389591 This edit made me think]: can't we just rename the two pages to something like ...DnD ... to fix our RSS feed? Would that work? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:Only if that propogated to (overwote/superseded and deleted the old entry) the RSS file. But with (for totally different reasons?) there not having been any updates since 8/Aug/2025, I don't even see that happening. And a number of reasons to think that even if it replaces the items: a) it won't remove another wrong aspect, b) it won't let us (easily!) add all the missing ones since that point.
:I think it still needs someone with server-side editing priviliges to just correct it, perhaps add some text-sanitising to the script that updates it ''and'' investigate why the updating script isn't still running.
:Though you could try renaming the first (i.e. chronologically last) page that pops up. ''If'' it makes it update that entry (revealing the other D&D error as the new stopper), then make the second change... (surely if it's kick-started to respond to that, then it's kick-started to start adding new things, but no idea if you'd ''then'' need to change/unchange everything since the current last, in order to prompt them to be added). But my guess is that you'll change the page, nothing will happen, you'll wait... eventually you'll want to undo the change back to how it currently is. (Or look for every page that references the changed page to get them pointing at the new-name... as not leaving a Redirect page on the old name might be the only way to make it 'RSS official').
:Or I'm totally wrong, and it's all much simpler. Can't test any of these hypotheticals and predictions myself. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 20:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

== Fix Random Comic RNG ==

The random comic button seems to not work properly since it wont show comics before 2022. {{unsigned ip|174.168.56.208|16:41, 17 October 2025 (UTC)}}
:This is a known issue, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles]]. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 17:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

==Main page comic number==
The main page currently states that there are 3,161 comics. However, the latest comic as of today is [[3159]], resulting in a discrepancy of three comics. Is there a reason for this? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 20:02, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:Moved from Kynde's talk, they've said enough times that they aren't a technical user. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into this, but I'm sure someone will. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 20:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
::The main page is, through the magic of the instruction <code><nowiki>{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}}</nowiki></code>, taking the number from those listed in (and as enumerated at the top of) [[:Category:All comics]]. At the time of writing, that has comics [[1]] to [[3159]] , plus [[ngram charts]] and [[verizon]], giving a total two more than the numbers would suggest.
::The possible changes are to either remove non-numbered comics from the All Comics categories or (such as when some people were wondering whether the [[404]] 'non-comic' should count in the total), make a hard-coded mathematical adjustment to the counted number within the Main Page to 'correct' it. (And be prepared to re-hardcode it if the number of non-number comics changes later.) If you think it worthwhile. An even more useful change would be to have a way to ''auto''-adjust for non-number comics via a bit of extra categorisation and counting being fed into the subtraction. Depends on how much work you want to do! ;)
::Or... you could also just add ", including non-numbered comics", or your choice of wording, to the "We have..." text and then (regardless of how many such oddities occur, and why) it might not be considered any kind of problem. Simple enough, just not within my power to do for you![[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 21:06, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:::How can people miss such a huge message, ffs.
{{misc page}}
:::Fixed by marking them as extra. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
::::They were {{diff|390190|marked as not-extra}} again...
::::Just found the other more recent suggestion(s) I saw, about this:
::::*[[explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals#Category:Extra pages]]
::::*[[Template talk:comic#Extra Page vs Extra Comic]]
::::Makes sense to me. But I couldn't implement it, even if I wanted to change how everything works (admitedly, so that it works better, after maybe a little messing around)
::::Tempted to check exactly which pages are "extra=no" (i.e. have been changed, looks like should be "extra=page") and "extra=yes" (probably candidates for "extra=comic" treatment). But anybody can find that info, especially people who can do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:45, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

==What If? Toolbar button==
The button called 'What If?' on the left-hand toolbar currently links to [[What If? Chapters]]. However, users would be clicking this link possibly to go to the article about the blog or the articles about the books. So, I think we should have that button link to [[What If (disambiguation)|the disambiguation link]] instead. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 14:41, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

==Comic number off again==
The comic number is now a full nine numbers off? What's happened? [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]]]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 00:14, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
:See the subsection two above this... [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:27, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical

2025-11-23T00:45:18Z

2.98.77.121: /* Main page comic number */

<noinclude>__NEWSECTIONLINK__
{{Community links}}

{|-
|valign="top" width="100%"|[[File:Crystal Clear app package settings blue.png|left|120px]] <big><big>Technical</big></big>

Technical issues ''about'' the [[explain xkcd]] wiki, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests. {{AddNewSection|Page=Explain XKCD:Community portal/Technical|Text=(+post)}}
|}</noinclude>
<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''RSS FEED:''' If you're here for the broken RSS feed, please see [[#RSS FEED]]!</div>

<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''Random Button Glitch:''' If you're here for the broken Random Comics button, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles|the Miscellaneous portal]]!</div>

----
==ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS==
<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#edf6ff; border:1px solid #a7d7f9; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 120%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at '''[[explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Technical]]'''.</div>

== Unable to view "what if?" page ==

The link to the page for the [[what if?]] blog displays an error: "No input file specified." [[User:JBYoshi|JBYoshi]] ([[User talk:JBYoshi|talk]]) 03:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

:This also happens to me on [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?]] Must be something with the ?s in the titles. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.66|172.69.22.66]] 15:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

::I've noticed that as well. I made a page in my userspace that redirects to the what if page, and for some reason that seems to work. ([[User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink|here is the link to the page]]) [[User:Blue screen of life|Blue screen of life]] ([[User talk:Blue screen of life|talk]]) 20:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

:::I have also noticed this but it is not just on pages with questions marks. Both [[259]] and [[1705]] show the same thing. A full list (as of 22 June 2020) of the ones i found is in the last reply to my report found here [[#2138_page_issues]] [[User:TomW1605|TomW1605]] ([[User talk:TomW1605|talk]]) 12:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

::::Both [[259]] and [[1705]] have an ({{w|E acute|e-with-accute-accent}}, Unicode U+00E9) in the URL, so for those pages, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?
::::For the "what if?" page, I had recently added a redirect from [[what if (blog)]] to get to it, and the [[What If]] disambiguation page has been updated with it, so at least we can get to it that way; and for the comic explanations, at least we can get to them by linking to their number-redirects (as [[58]] instead of [[58: Why Do You Love Me?]]); but not sure how to fix it overall. At the following page, it suggests tweaking an {{w|Apache HTTP Server|Apache}} {{w|Rewrite engine|rewrite}} directive in {{w|.htaccess}} (or a {{w|Common Gateway Interface|CGI}} setting in {{w|PHP}} if it's running on {{w|Internet Information Services|IIS}}):
::::* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Vmaw1tu5kkhyon0n
::::So maybe something about that has changed recently? Documentation:
::::* [https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule Apache mod_rewrite <code>RewriteRule</code> directive]
::::* [https://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.cgi.force-redirect php.ini <code>cgi.force_redirect</code> directive]
::::Summarizing a few points from [[User talk:SlashMe#Homeopathic Wiki|this related discussion]]:
::::* Only one of the site's [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:ListUsers?group=sysop 10 administrators] has made recent edits ([[Special:Contributions/SlashMe|SlashMe]]).
::::* Neither of the site's [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:ListUsers?group=bureaucrat 2 bureaucrats] ([[Special:Contributions/Jeff|Jeff]] and [[Special:Contributions/Lcarsos|Lcarsos]]) have made any edits recently.
::::* For admin access to the ''server'' itself, my limited understanding is that [[Special:Contributions/Jeff|Jeff]] might actually own the server, but may have also given admin access to [[Special:Contributions/Dgbrt|Dgbrt]]; however, neither of them have made edits recently.
::::But "most recent edit" might not be a good indicator, so I wonder of some of these folks are still involved in the project?
::::– [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 05:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
: Looks like it happens for any page that has a percent-encoding in the title. [[User:PoolloverNathan|PoolloverNathan]]<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Special:Contributions/PoolloverNathan|s]][[User talk:PoolloverNathan|talk]] [[Wikipedia:WP:SEAOFBLUE|the blue seas]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> 16:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

=== Known broken pages ===
(Redirects work, whereas links to the actual page are broken.)

Title containing e-accute-accent:
* [[259]] ↳ [[259: Clichéd Exchanges]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=259:_Clich%C3%A9d_Exchanges What links here])
* [[1705]] ↳ [[1705: Pokémon Go]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1705:_Pok%C3%A9mon_Go What links here])

Title ending with question mark:
* <del>[[what if (blog)]] ↳ [[what if?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=What_If%3F What links here])</del> <ins>fixed – content now exists at [[what if]], and [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if&limit=500 broken links] are in the process of being updated (see below)</ins>
* [[58]] ↳ [[58: Why Do You Love Me?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=58:_Why_Do_You_Love_Me%3F What links here])
* [[111]] ↳ [[111: Firefox and Witchcraft - The Connection?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F What links here])
* [[1205]] ↳ [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1205:_Is_It_Worth_the_Time%3F What links here])
* [[1841]] ↳ [[1841: Who?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1841:_Who%3F What links here])
* [[1913]] ↳ [[1913: A ?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1913:_A_%3F What links here])
* [[2065]] ↳ [[2065: Who Sends the First Text?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2065:_Who_Sends_the_First_Text%3F What links here])
* [[2138]] ↳ [[2138: Wanna See the Code?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2138:_Wanna_See_the_Code%3F What links here])
* [[2236]] ↳ [[2236: Is it Christmas?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2236:_Is_it_Christmas%3F What links here])

=== Moved ===
I moved the [[what if?]] page to the [[what if (blog)]] page which I then changed to simply [[what if]] to fix this issue and because anyone new to this site would type that any way to see it. — [[User:Sqrt-1|The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭]] [[User talk:Sqrt-1|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Sqrt-1|stalk]] 06:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

:Still trying to wrap my head around it – so just to summarize, we currently have:
:
:* '''[[whatif]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=whatif&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if?]]''' (see below)
:* '''[[What If?]]''' – page broken ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=What_If%3F&redirect=no no-redirect link]) ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=What_If%3F What links here])
:** ↳ ''also redirects to'' '''[[what if?]]''' – page broken ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&redirect=no no-redirect link]) ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=what_if%3F What links here])
:*** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:*** ''content manually moved from'' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&diff=198070&oldid=197859 diff]) '''[[what if?]]''' ''to'' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if&diff=198071&oldid=197486 diff]) '''[[what if (blog)]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if_(blog)&redirect=no no-redirect link]) (''[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&action=history previous revision history] remains at'' '''[[what if?]]''')
:**** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:
:For completeness, we also have...
:
:* '''[[what if book]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if_book&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if#The book]] – actual content'''
:** Suggestion: for consistency, also add a '''[[what if (book)]]''' page that redirects here?
:
:...and the disambiguation page...
:
:* '''[[What If]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=What_If&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[What If (disambiguation)]]''' – disambiguation page
:*** ''links to'' '''[[17: What If]]''' (↲ '''[[17]]''' redirects here ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=17&redirect=no no-redirect link]))
:*** ''links to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:*** Suggestion: mention the ''book'' here as well, and link to its section in the [[what if]] page?
:
:...and these troubleshooting pages from [[User:Blue screen of life]]:
:
:* '''[[User:Blue screen of life/redirecttest]]''' – test page ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Blue_screen_of_life/redirecttest&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink]]''' – test page ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Blue_screen_of_life/whatiflink&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:*** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[What If?]]''' (see above)
:
:Given that the actual content of the "what if?" article now lives at '''[[what if]]''', I've started updating pages <ins>(except for Talk pages)</ins> to link directly there instead of the other redirect pages. All that's left to do are pages that link to the '''[[what if?]]''' redirect-page (which is broken). <del>Its [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if%3F "What links here"] special page is broken too, so it's difficult to find what pages link there – but now that it redirects to the [[what if]] page, you can see them indirectly from ''that'' page's [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if&limit=500 "What links here"] special page.</del> <ins>[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=what_if%3F These] are the pages that still link there.</ins> There are still a lot of them to go.
:
:Also, should the following redirect-pages be simplified to have them redirect straight to the new [[what if]] page, instead of redirecting through the intermediate '''[[what if?]]''' page (which itself redirects there anyway)?
:* '''[[whatif]]'''
:* '''[[What If?]]'''
:– [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 17:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
:: Fixed the double redirects, don't ask me why we have so many pages for the same thing. [[User:PoolloverNathan|PoolloverNathan]]<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Special:Contributions/PoolloverNathan|s]][[User talk:PoolloverNathan|talk]] [[Wikipedia:WP:SEAOFBLUE|the blue seas]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> 16:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

== Discussion not displaying with comic ==

I am using FireFox on a Win10 machine. When I come to the site I can see the comic, explanation and transcript. But the discussion section is hidden. Even when logged in.

Any ideas?

: You say "when I come to the site". If the address bar says you are on Main_Page and you see the heading "Latest comic", then it's simply working as designed. Above the comic, click on "Go to this comic explanation" and you will see the comic plus discussion.

: Also, Steve, please sign your comments every time, with four tildes. That expands into your user name and a timestamp. Like this -- [[User:JohnB|JohnB]] ([[User talk:JohnB|talk]]) 10:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

== Random page sometimes takes me to an invalid address ==

Sometimes, when clicking on "Random page" in the left sidebar, the site will be blank apart from the text "No input file specified. ".

An example of such an URL is: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F

:I've noticed this happens for ''all'' URLs to comics that end in a question mark (or possibly any special character). Interestingly, this doesn't happen if you go to the comic from the search bar. [[User:Danish|Danish]] ([[User talk:Danish|talk]]) 23:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

== Bug on the main page ==

Bug Enviroment(Might work on other enviroments):
Ubuntu 20.04LTS
Firefox85.0
2021.2.7

Bug:
The front page reads: `Welcome, Main Page, to explain xkcd!` with `Main Page` formatted as a username,can someone fix this?

[[User:Xkcdjerry|Xkcdjerry]] ([[User talk:Xkcdjerry|talk]]) 09:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

== Occasional error via Cloudflare ==
Just a note that I'm getting Cloudflare errors of "origin not reachable" (sounds wrong to me, in my head it should be 'destination', but never mind) three times now in the last ten to fifteen minutes - of maybe a dozen general site-requests.

I've also been getting seemingly .CSSless formatted pages over the past few days, which I've been putting down to slightly dodgy wifi at my end (not unknown) but if I'm getting Cloudflare's error cleanly then perhaps it's been entirely upstream/downstream/however-you'd-describe-the-Explain-server. (Obviously CSS resource requests, as with images, are additional HTTP calls, but I still lump it into the single site-request ''per page'' in my 'dozen' estimate above. No obviously lost images, though, in incomplete pages - not that can't be explained by .CSS non-following, anyway.)

I had copy-buffered some of the exact info, but due to incompetence I recopied over it before coming here. If it happens again, I'll try to bring it over here. But (the way these things go) maybe it won't. FYI, though. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.52|141.101.98.52]] 12:04, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
: Not a Cloudfare error (looks like an error of the actual explainxkcd server) but every now and then (like just a few minutes ago) I get an error page that generally goes away if I immediately refresh. To whit:
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
: Not really a problem (occasionally happened while submitting an exit, and I have to confirm to the browser that I wish to repost the data, but this particular copied instance was through a more 'read-only' link-click, like most of the instances) but... in case someone finds this to be new and useful information... here you are! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 03:45, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
:OP, here, of the above 503 error report/casual mention. Obviously this is the same message that happened for an ''extended'' period of time over a number of days, but I've only just happened to find the site responding again and have not yet looked to see if it is explained as the same or different cause to the old intermittent issues (at root). I hope things are resolved from the major outage (server quota? bill payments? renewal/reconfiguration blips?) but wonder if I should report any future minor outages? I'm still smarting from the total loss of the fora.xkcd.com platform, a few years back, and while I'm not active enough here to consider a proper login (lurking as a freeloading anon-IP is good enough, usually, for my intellectual enjoyment, with all due apologies) I did have a slight pang of emptiness while it was out-of-order. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.79|141.101.99.79]] 15:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

== Add TemplateData ==

Add the {{mw|Extension:TemplateData|TemplateData}} extension to allow setting data for templates. This will help editors because they will be able to see the data of templates.

== MediaWiki 1.30.0?! ==

This wiki is [[Special:Version|currently]] on [[mw:MediaWiki 1.30|MediaWiki 1.30.0]] ([[mw:Release notes/1.30|release notes]]), the first of three releases of a version of MW that reached end-of-life in June of 2019 ([[mw:Version lifecycle]]). It's thus missing multiple important security updates from 1.30.1 and 1.30.2, not to mention the two years' worth of security updates since 1.30.x reached end-of-life. Even 1.31.x will be reaching end-of-life in just over a month.

If the sysadmins here update to [[mw:MediaWiki 1.35|MediaWiki 1.35.2]] ([[mw:Release_notes/1.35|release notes]]), that version will be maintained till September of 2023, with only a few security updates in the meantime. I would '''strongly''' encourage y'all to update to 1.35.2; to promptly update if there's a .3, .4, etc.; and to make sure you switch to the next LTS release (which will presumably be 1.39) well in advance of September of '23. (Note that this will also require updating to PHP 7.3.19 or later.) [[User:PinkAmpersand|PinkAmpersand]] ([[User talk:PinkAmpersand|talk]]) 07:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

== Uptime ==
Did the website just go down? [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 13:06, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

It was definitely down this weekend!
https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/nxrm65
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

== Comic template lappend breaks for standalone comic links ==

For example, https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html is changed to https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html/ which isn't valid [[Special:Contributions/172.69.90.15|172.69.90.15]] 15:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Template here, I think it needs to be changed to solve this https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Template:comic

exkcd page here https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Blue_Eyes

== May not be your problem, but FYI. ==

My typcal setup: Android tablet, with Chrome for Android (latest update), but also Firefox for Android (ditto), using default Gboard (likewise) for input.

Occasionally (notably within the last few weeks/maybe a month or so), when going in to edit an explainxkcd page through Chrome (it's how I divide up my browsing), I'm getting the cursor in the textarea box which ''can'' be used to Cut/Copy/Paste (as applicable and useful), but the on-screen keyboard isn't popping up. Page is fully loaded (can be refreshed, doesn't have the "stop loading" alternative), can go back (page viewing) and try to go back to the page editor (often to same result). Sitting and waiting doesn't pop the keyboard up, either (sat there for minutes). Happens both on home wifi and mobile connection.

If I transfer my attentions to the page to Firefox (copy URL, to use there... but I don't use that by default for expxkcd stuff) there's no problem, but then if I come back to Chrome again it seems to start working again ''anyway'' so not sure if it's just avoiding/flushing a transient problem that would also initially crop up with Firefox if I used that more.

Because editing is a different (mobile-optimised) process on Wikipedia and I can't be sure about any the equivalence of any other wiki out there (and it doesn't happen with anything else I regularly key into on Chrome) it's not something I've reproduced outwith this site, and of course desktop page-editing doesn't require touch-screen keyboard because there's a physical one.

Not getting much feedback with Chrome (really can't get on with their bugrep processes, it's too huge a project to make headway, IME), not even tried to pester the Gboard team and I've not ''seen'' anything said on here about this being a site-issue (not sure how it could be, as it's outside the remit of the core web-page rendering process and more an Android or App level of incompetence), but I thought I'd make a note of it here for future reference. Make of it what you will. Annoying but not game-breaking. And I just wanted to vent a little. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.147|172.70.162.147]] 16:54, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

== [[special:interwiki]] ==

where'd it go? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.200|172.69.68.200]] 05:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

== Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter ==

Seriously. Many scripts and such built for modern, supported versions of MW do not work here because it is so unbelievably undated. PinkAmpersand above basically covers the reason why. I also highly recommend adding the extension AbuseFilter (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter) as it immensely makes removing vandalism easier (by straight up disallowing or blocking those that do, esp if it's like the current formulaic massive-replacement vandalism.) [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 00:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

:Ditto. I feel like the main problem is that the sole person who has access to the backend either doesn't have time to update, doesn't have interest, or doesn't have the technical knowledge necessary. But yes, I agree - updating and installing an extension to help control vandalism would help this wiki tremendously. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 20:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

== ↑ ? ==

Why do some pages have ↑ at the very start? They can all be spotted by searching ↑
Is it a technical thing, vandalism, some sort of glitch? Maybe I'm just uninformed or being an idiot.
:Edit logs tell me that an IP user manually reverting vandalism somehow inserted one or more extra characters while manually reverting vandalism. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
::Should it be removed? It's not necessary and might be confusing for screenreaders... [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
:::Maybe not en-mass, I'd say. But I've dove in to delete a rogue leading <nowiki> </nowiki> tag left from a part of a prior vandalism (likewise, just before the {{template|comic}}-element) and I've promised myself that I'll remove any more that I spot (and now that arrow) in any future whole-page edit I make. Plus a small shopping-list of inessential but useful edits like making {{template|Citation needed}}s flow better when they're mispunctuated/etc.
:::But that's my solitary opinion. I'm sure hunting out and squishing this isn't a problem at all. I'm just balancing my own peculiar brand of OCD with what is somehow my also my own version of casual apathy towards other details. (Also, it probably looks better for a named account of recognised good standing to start editing potentially hundreds of pages in a session, rather than myself... potentially indistinguishable from the IP who seems to relish worn out memes in a general page-trashing.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.121|162.158.159.121]] 12:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

== Is there anything else we can do to prevent vandalism? ==

There's been quite a significant uptick in vandalism recently, and I don't feel we have any effective tools to combat it. I believe one of the biggest issues here is due to the way logged-out editing works on this wiki. Blocks are completely ineffective at slowing vandals, and IP editors can vandalize with basically nothing we can do to thwart them other than revert-warring. '''Is there a better way?'''

There's been some discussion of installing AbuseFilter, but I'm not sure anything became of it. We could disable logged-out editing, but that would likely be counterproductive as we get lots of legitimate contributions from logged-out users. If there's a way to switch to location-based IPs, we could rangeblock problematic users as well as proxies. Does anyone have any ideas? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.145|162.158.78.145]] 16:11, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:I'm sort of making server side changes via telegraph so an extension is probably going to take a while to get installed. Takes a bunch of emails and followups to get single variables changed in the mediawiki settings file. There is an email verification option, and some edit frequency variables that could be set to make spam more time consuming. Don't love range blocks but wouldn't mind getting the CDN IPs dealt with so we can actually use the IP bans again. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 17:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
::I'm very grateful that you're working on changes under the hood. What do you think is the best way to deal with disruption in the meantime? [[User:Vandalbane|Vandalbane]] ([[User talk:Vandalbane|talk]]) 17:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:::Could borrow a patrol bot like the ones people on main wikipedia have, could ask around. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
::::There's not really a drop-in solution that you can use, especially since the server's MediaWiki version is not in sync with Wikipedia's (so a lot of the APIs etc have completely changed; when initially reverting vandalism I tried importing some scripts from enwiki but they failed as a result), but also because the bots have gotten pretty complex (using machine learning provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, for example). [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 03:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::Oh I do notice mediawiki hasn't been upgraded in a while. Looks like new version of mediawiki should be dropping extremely imminently, would be nice timing for an upgrade '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

== Rollback ==

Does the rollback permission exist on this wiki? [[User:Vandalbane|Vandalbane]] ([[User talk:Vandalbane|talk]]) 17:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:The rollback permission of course exists but there's no group called "rollbacker" like you'd find on Wikipedia (limited to admins). You'd need the sysadmin to change the configuration to add one, which as established is not really an option right now. [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 03:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

== What happened to custom JavaScript? ==

I put some code in <code>[[User:Some user/common.js]]</code>, but it is not alerting 'hi' every time I load a page. Why can't we execute JavaScript anymore? Is it in response to the [[Project:Crap|crapping]] incident? [[User:Some user|Some user]] ([[User talk:Some user|talk]]) 21:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
:Entirely because of that, yeah. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:51, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

== My IP ==

Why is my IP address a Cloudflare address in Norway? Is this a joke of some kind that I'm missing?

Other wikis like Wikipedia are showing me my actual IP when I go to [[Special:MyContributions]], so I suspect this is a wiki misconfiguration. It changed again while I was typing this. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.194|162.158.222.194]] 16:55, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
:All IPs (as this one will be) are from Cloudflare gateway IPs, because that's the default IP that the Wiki understands as the source. Cloudflare mediates all the traffic, and perhaps to some advantage (not being privvy to the logs, I can only guess how much it insulates the true server from extreme problems, but I bet it does in some way).
:There have been suggestions before to change some setting (in the MediaWiki implementation? ...can't recall exactly) to have it pick up and use the IP that the gateway reports (in its meta-request) was the origin, but that's not been enacted for Idunnowhat reason.
:Because the black-box that is the Cloudflare traffic shapes in various ways, you will find that a single user will jump around 'apparent' IPs, and I've also been in the relatively embarassing situation of replying to another IP's info and finding that I've registered on the exact same IP so that it looks like I'm stooging myself, or something.
:On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they ''were'' going to try and do the necessary tweak.
:As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. ''If'' those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.24|172.70.85.24]] 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
:fyi it is supported in MediaWiki through <code>$wgCdnServers</code>. See [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Cloudflare#Integration_with_MediaWiki MediaWiki’s introduction]. {{unsigned|物灵|06:58, 6 April 2025}}

==Main page in categories==
{{notice|'''This discussion is marked as duplicate.''' See [[#Main Page|this discussion]].}}
[[Main_Page]] was found wrongly appearing in some newly-created categories, such as [[:Category:Cosmology]]. Could you fix it? --[[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 17:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
:Never noticed this myself, but I'll take it as read. Before checking myself, I'm wondering if this could be when the main page 'inherits' tags from the Current Comic that it features. And thus solve itself (whilst gaining others) upon a newer Current Comic. (Must surely inherit "Monday Comics"/etc, on schedule every week.)
:If it is that, perhaps the solution lies in the details contained within https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories#Categories_and_templates_(transcluded_pages)
:Or maybe I'm wrong about it. But I have no rights to edit (thus at least examine the 'code' of) the Main page, to check my snap theory, as with most people. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 19:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

This happened again in [[:Category:Airplane banner]]. [[User:I27.O.O.I|I27.O.O.I]] ([[User talk:I27.O.O.I|talk]]) 09:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
:Yes, and it lasted as long as the latest comic was still one with particular categories. I don't intend to worry about it. If someone goes to a category that interests them and looks at the main page, as temporarily advertised, they're likely to find (as part of it) a comic which is indeed in that category. Doesn't sound like a big problem to me, except for determinin why some cats (e.g. Friday Comics) ''don't'' link to the Main page when they might be expected to...
:(PS, I know for sure that I27.O.O.I isn't the same person as ColofulGalaxy (and various others, beyond even those with the bloomin' obvious "CG" initials or other recent spoofs on the RFC1918 addresses), and I don't think I mind too much, but faking disagreements between your various IDs isn't helping, anyone... smells too much of trying to establish alibis in advance of your next attempt to vandalise the site with stupid stuff. And doesn't impress me, so I doubt it impresses anyone else either. As long as you're just doing sane things, however, I'll accept your little idiosyncracies.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.32|162.158.74.32]] 19:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:(PPS: You left your fingerprint on this latter attempt to 'rescue' [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2659:_Unreliable_Connection&curid=25530&diff=307289&oldid=307282 this page]. - Spammer a few minutes before midnight, my IP reversion happened shortly after. A little later "Elisabeth" then re-spammed (modified), then another IP immediately jumps on it to restore it but with the modified undo-summary line clearly indicating that some sort of a game is being played. Please don't, it's not clever.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.34|172.70.90.34]] 02:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This doesn't happen to date categories, but it happens in manually added categories such as [[:Category:Statistics]]. [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 21:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

==Cannot create user page==
It says: There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page. [[2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[Talk:2659: Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 22:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
:(Removed alternative text in the link involved, to not hide behind trickery.) I think you know that there's no problem with [[2659: Unreliable Connection]] itself, except that it had become one of several pages targeted for spamming, the only one then locked down, then finding that the spammers just retargeted to its Talk page, etc.
:I'm torn between "not assuming bad faith" and "don't feed the trolls", as competing principles, so I'm spelling out the situation. However much a tribute you might think it could be, I don't think there's a future in having a new username that's directly referencing a comic which has become so frequently seen in the recent history of this wiki's edits.
:Obviously any genuine contributions are more than welcome. So prove me wrong, why don't you? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 03:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

::Could you help now? [[User:Unreliable Connection|2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[User talk:Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 09:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

: I've created your talk page. I guess that what you intended is to have a backup or mirror page for comic [[2659]]. Am I right? [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 20:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

== Fanmade comics ==
A fanmade comic appeared on xkcd. Could you edit the template? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.23.100|172.69.23.100]] 07:21, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
:You're going to have to say more about it, at least for me. Apart from the Sandbox attempt to make a page, I haven't seen the comic you're describing anywhere. Certainly not anywhere official. Link, for our benefit? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.66|172.70.85.66]] 10:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

==Why doesn't this code block work?==
Does anybody know why the code block at the end of [[Transcript on xkcd|this page]] doesn't work? I've tried everything and it still looks like plain text

== Can't add RSS feed because of pubDate value on 27 Nov 2015 ==

When I try to add the RSS feed in Nextcloud News feed reader I get an error <code>Impossible to convert date : Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</code>.

[https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexplainxkcd.com%2Frss.xml W3C Feed validation] says that <code>pubDate must be an RFC-822 date-time</code> and points "Pacific Standard Time" portion as the cause of the error: <code><pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</pubDate></code>. Can you please fix the timestap for this?

== Admin request posted here because of vandalism ==

I can not currently access the admin requests page because it has been vandalized... can someone please protect the latest comic page (2805). There is some pretty childish vandalism going on there right now. Thanks!
:It's not the latest, seems like ALL. I went back to 2804, 2803, jumped back like 15 comics, all the same thing. To me the most offensive part is doing it with a nonsensical image. And why pipe it through Archive somehow? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 02:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
::UGH. the vandals are back at it again... we need to lock xkcd pages @NiceGuy [[Special:Contributions/172.70.39.2|172.70.39.2]] 00:59, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

== Way to contact the site hosters? ==

As many have pointed out the software this wiki runs on is horribly outdated. WikiEditor also isn't here for some reason. Quite a bit of messages here have seen no action. Is there some kind of contact form to reach the hosters? {{unsigned|Aaron Liu|00:36, 10 October 2023}}
: There are various levels of admin who do intervene, as and when jecessary, but I understand that the (active) ones closest to the actual hosting level of intervention are not really ready to do the (increasingly greater) degree of uprooting necessary to get a "working" system to be "marginally better working", by way of that very dangerous middle-ground of potentially being ruined entirely.
: I appreciate and anticipate the counter-arguments regarding letting it go totally unupdated, of course, just I've personally seen enough failures (participated in some, or been the actual invokee, myself) to be very sympathetic to the "if it aint (too) broke, don't fix it" tendency. But that inertia is not the only factor, of course, and the full motivations (or lack of them) of those involved is not for a lowly IP like me to explain, even if I think I know... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.42|172.69.195.42]] 01:24, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
:: Have they posted some sort of statement? It also is most definitely not “marginally” better working, compare the source editor to that of Wikipedia and look at topic subscription etc features. Not to mention a lot of security fixes haven’t been added and this version has reached EOL long ago. Updating also would not ruin this entirely…[[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 17:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
:: Some have also said that quite a bit of assistive scripts for modern versions don’t work. Visual Editor, while horrible, is still easier for new people to get started with. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 17:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I've found a new reason: This wiki doesn't even allow loading userscripts! [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 01:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
:That might actually have been a conscious decition, after a 'certain user' caused chaos here, not so long ago. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.25|162.158.74.25]] 19:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
::It was about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.143|172.68.174.143]] 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
::Huh? What happened? Is there a place to request gadgets then? [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 02:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
:::"What happened" involved automated vandalism (from someone who been doing it manually, then found the "better way") though I couldn't tell you the exact details, there were automated 'unvandalism's made in response, and theusafBOT/etc does some of that still, in response to non-automated(/off-site scripted) vandalism/errors that it can actually catch before ordinary users (or IPs like me) can. But certainly a certain brand of scripting was turned off to curtail the 'high intensity' vandalism phase.
:::You're more or less in the best place to request things, right here. Whether updates, (re)adding functionalitu or tweaking site settings. Can't tell if those who ''can'' do these things can't or won't do them... Or are actually absent, instead of just not replying. The cavalry has been known to come running in when necessary (e.g. when "what happened" happened) so it could be any manner of non-response (until you get one). Not necessarily the best state of affairs, but better than being confirmed absentees.
::::I ran a bot to mass-edit pages by replacing their content with the word "crap" repeatedly. I was 15 then, and I thought it was funny. It wasn't. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.143|172.68.174.143]] 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
:::As an occasional but infrequent actual-Wikipedia editor, too, I must say that if the Visual Editor is what I currently have to use for that (at least as an anonIP when using a mobile device, which tends to be when I get the urge most) then I like the unaugmented editor here more. Straight up, honest, un'wizarded' interface, where you only have to get used to markup details and not a WYSIWYG editing environment (as well?). Not sure I'd be happy with an even ''more'' 'assistive' script imposed upon me, like I dislike modern generations of Windows (and 'user friendly' linux dists). So can I just ask that functional/visible changes of the kind you seem to be asking for, if made available, aren't overimposed/left as options rather than the default (or only) choice...? Ok, so I can (or would have to) adapt, but I'd rather not. Of course, I have no weight to pull in this matter, it's just an afterthought (even as I wish you good luck with raising an admin's eyebrow, in some useful manner). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.135|141.101.98.135]] 05:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
::::I am not asking for VisualEditor, which no one likes on Wikipedia either. For some blasted reason they made it edit HTML instead of Wikitext and it’s clunky and loads for a very long time.
::::I’m asking about the WikiEditor, aka Wikipedia’s source editor. In VE, click on the pen next to the publish button and click on “source editing”. That editor makes this one look like freaking Stone Age, syntax highlighting is especially a game-changer. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 16:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
: There’s also the annoying ReCaptcha v2 every single edit… it seems like it would be relatively easy to switch to v3 which only makes you do the challenge when you’ve visited a bit too much. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 16:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
:: Unfortunately, that would make things easier for someone who wanted to do mass vandalism like I did. If it didn't do it every time, someone could still edit quite quickly. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.192|172.68.174.192]] 18:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
::Well, I can tell you that it doesn't always demand that I fulfil more than a tickbox (most trouble I have is when it fails to connect to give me the tickbox (or respond with anything useful when I do), for which I'm forced into one or more Previews until it will. When it ''does'' ask me to do something about it, I do often get forced through two or more request to identify traffic lights, motorbikes, stairways, bridges, hills, tractors, buses, etc, etc, etc... But I think that's more the Tesla-training Algorithm being nust greedy for my attention than the Robot-sentry having a less casual attitude to my attempt to edit. (I believe I'm on a usually untroublesome source IP/Cloudflare gateway, but it could also depend on how many others try to do things via (part of) the same route. Very, very rarely I get Google Search requesting something similar of me ((It: "You have made a lot of searches", me: "Of course I'll have play your little game, but this is my first lookup today...")), which I'm sure isn't Cloudflared, so it might reach back to my ISP's gateway and what fellow users are currently getting up to.)
::As for the guy above (and you, Liu), can't speak for how well or badly others on your own 'choice' of gateways behave. Or yourselves. Luck of the draw? For the first part, at least. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.174|172.69.195.174]] 20:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
:::MediaWiki 1.40 automatically tags all edits that remove over 90% of page text with "mw-replaced". You could block all edits in mainspace with that tag, either if MediaWiki has it or through the AbuseFilter extension. While I can complete the CAPTCHAs, it's very annoying to need to Captcha every edit on a place where the main focus is edits. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 03:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
:::Plus, v3 doesn't just do nothing. It tracks how your cursor moves to see if it's robotic, while v2 annoyingly gives you the challenge every time. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 20:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
::::Presumably for touchscreen control (like mine, right this moment), it does something else than track a nonexistent mouse-pointer's passage across the monitored elements of the display... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.190|172.70.90.190]] 12:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
::There are a few MediaWiki plugins that help keep vandalism/spam under control without requiring users to solve a Captcha every time they make an edit. I use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Moderation on the wiki I maintain, and it works very well. However, it does require that there be enough active moderators to approve edits, as it basically requires every single edit to be approved before it's posted. Thus, it also introduces some "lag" between when stuff is written and when it can be seen by others. I think it could work if the extension could be installed (I'm not even sure if it's supported on this version of MediaWiki) and if a good list of moderators could be put together. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 20:02, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
:::I disagree with requiring edits to be approved. Unless we have extremely high vandalism, just filtering out the above tags I mentioned and using ReCAPTCHA v3 would be enough. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 23:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
::::Ok, fair point. However, that wouldn't stop human vandalism, just vandalism from bots. I'm not sure how much human vandalism there is, though, so it might not even be a problem. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 12:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::It's hard (for us 'civvies') to know how much bot-vandalism is stopped but [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Log/newusers&offset=&limit=500&type=newusers&user= probably a lot], most of which we never see, with [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2503:_Memo_Spike_Connector&diff=335487&oldid=335486 occasional ones] we might see having be dealt with. (I'm guessing these things are rare (temporarily-)successful 'bots, because flesh-and-blood vandals wouldn't be occasionally doing essentially the same insta-reverted thing on a thematically-small set of pages, over several ''years'' without moving on. It has to be a lucky unattended script-based effort that just keeps trying the same things over and over with an easily revertible but tangible result happening only infrequently.)
:::::More obvious human vandalism tends to rumble on, with occasionally a spate of it as someone gets short-term kicks for it. Though some of them seem may repeat themself after a break. Friendly humans and friendly 'bots both tend to provide the main anti-vandalism responses fairly quickly, though, depending upon what kind of a mess they caused. I've seen worse places, definitely, and it's by no means a losing battle against chaos, just regular skermishes.
:::::Not wanting to tempt fate, of course. I guarantee that there'll be some fool that takes all this as a challenge, so I just have to trust to the Good Guys keeping on keeping on. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.71|172.70.90.71]] 14:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

heyo, is there a way to add actual citations to explainxkcd instead of the template citation needed? couldn't find anything, but i'm pretty new here - thanks in advance. [[User:Nigga|Nigga]] ([[User talk:Nigga|talk]]) 21:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
:Not that I have much faith in your usernae lasting long (you're 'that guy', aren't you? ...in which case you know anyway), but for the sake of anyone else who needs to know:
:*If you mean "add an actual 'citation needed' tag", then it's {{template|Actual citation needed}} that you'll use.
:*If you mean "add an actual citation link to somewhere", then:
:** Link to URLs with [].
:*** A link such as [<url>] will give you a superscript-number link, which isn't pretty, IMO.
:*** A link such as [<url> <text>] (that's a space between the two) will link <text> to the URL, just work it into the sentence you're writing, fairly easy
:** Link to internal (or cross-wiki) pages with [[]].
:*** [[<page title>]] will make a literal link to <page title>.
:*** [[<page title>|<text>]] (with a pipe) is how you make the <text> your link.
:** You can use the last to link specifically to wikipedia's cross-site format, but for that it's best to use {{template|w}}
:*** <nowiki>{{w|<page title>}}</nowiki> (w-pipe...) uses the page title
:**** It will use the link as if the first character is uppercase, so you don't need to capitalise that. Other case-sensitivity is preserved.
:**** <nowiki>{{w|<singular page title>}}s</nowiki> will link the obvious pluralisation of the page title, just to save you effort
:*** <nowiki>{{w|<page title>|<text>}}</nowiki> (w-pipe and pipe) lets you use entirely alternate text.
:** There's also templates that shortcut (or make easier on the eye, or add appropriate warnings) for some other commonly referenced external sites, from xkcd's own what-if to TVTropes.
:...hope that helps everyone that doesn't already know these few simple bits as relate to wikis in general or this wiki in particular. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.218|172.71.242.218]] 22:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

== Confirmation Email Bug ==

Hi. I've been trying to get my email confirmed so that I can get pinged when pages are edited, but I just can't find it, even after trying multiple times. I use Gmail, and yes, I have checked my spam folder. Has anyone else had this issue? EDIT: I see that others have had this issue, but the admins haven't done any action to solve it, except for one sarcastic comment by Davidy22 back in 2014. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 00:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

== Lack of Userpage ==

Hey, I joined a few years ago, but I still do not have a Userpage. Can you make one for me? I do not have the permission to do so. [[User:GreyFox|GreyFox]] ([[User talk:GreyFox|talk]]) 22:47, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
:This is actually your very first post, after joining a bit more than a year ago ("18:35, 14 November 2023 User account GreyFox (talk | contribs) was created"). I'm sure someone can oblige (not me, for obvious reasons), but you've not done much to contribute (at least under this account), which would have then eventually brought you to the point where you ''can'' just self-create your Userpages/etc. So your request is a bit out of the blue.
:Just so long as we all know where we stand, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.227|172.69.194.227]] 09:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
::Oh, thanks! Do you know the exact number of edits I need to create it?
:::50 to be autoconfirmed. Also, please sign your comments. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 15:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

== server errors ==
is anyone else constantly getting 503 errors? [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 17:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
:yup, been seeing those all the time. Also seeing that the server is down a lot of time-it suggests me to Google for what I’m “looking for” [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 17:18, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
::503s are fairly common (often when I'm in a rush), and have been for... well, certainly years, maybe more than a decade (though more common during major vandalism/anti-vandalism surges). I had, however, noticed a recent blip (during the last day or so) of the Server Down/Try Google page that you refer to, which I haven't seen for a ''long'' time (not really sure when, but maybe five years or so ago). In fact, I probably got Cloudflare 'rejections' more, during aformentioned vandal-overloading.
::Without any access to the admin logs, I can only speculate as to what might be sparking it. But service (notwithstanding the brief page-refusals themselves) seems to be happily unaffected. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.249|172.70.160.249]] 20:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

== Allow new users to edit their own page ==

I found someone asking if we could change this in the proposals page (Community portal/Proposals: Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed (not a typo)). [[User:PDesbeginner|PDesbeginner]] ([[User talk:PDesbeginner|talk]]) 14:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

== Technical difficulties? ==

I keep getting a message that says: "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Cannot access the database)"
It's happened a lot so I was wondering if there was a specific cause behind it and perhaps a way to fix it.
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.65|172.68.54.65]] 00:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
:yeah, I’ve been getting those errors too. I can’t even log into my account before it says that there’s an error again. I’ve been steadily receiving them for a couple months, but never like today. From Recent Changes, it doesn’t look like anyone is spamming the wiki, so maybe it’s an attack of some kind. You’ll need to contact the admins who have access to the server and can poke around, but good luck getting [[User:Davidy22]] or [[User:Jeff]] online. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.130|172.69.135.130]] 17:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
::update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.129|172.69.135.129]] 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

== The site is collapsing ==
503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
:heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
::I’ve messaged Davidy22 and Jeff about it, hopefully they see it and reply. It looks fine right now, appears that it works horribly at times and fine later. Due to the on-off nature of it, I would suspect DDoS attacks, as a 503 error means that the server can’t process the request, which occurs with DDoS attacks. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 21:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
:::update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
::::October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
::Agree, the situation is not terrible but feels extremely unstable. What happens if the wiki just breaks, and nobody can even contact Jeff? I feel like these errors are happening more and more frequently. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
:::Were you around for the (hacking-enforced) sudden ending of the xkcd fora? All things end.
:::But (touch wood) the 503s/other connection refusals are a lot less frequent right now, so I'm not actually quite so worried as I might occasionally have been. What's more likely to happen is that the hosting plan, physical hardware and/or domain reaches an end and then... that's probably it unless someone with the wherewithall somehow manages to drag it back up again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.14|162.158.74.14]] 00:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
::::I really don't like the idea of this site becoming permanently unavailable :( This makes me want to contribute less! I was not around back then, no. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
:I've been getting these errors a lot as well all of a sudden. Sadly from what I've read on these pages, the sysadmin has basically left and ghosted everyone. The moment the site fully breaks for whatever reason, ExplainXKCD will be history. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.58|172.71.178.58]] 15:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
::It's probably not the site breaking (as in, it's not intrinsically failing), just that unrestrained useless traffic to it (I theorise, elsewhere that it's a sudden rise in inconsiderate AI-training has led to a rise of ungoverned degrees of site-scraping) is marginalising our more legitimate attempts to interact. ''It would help'' to get some Administrator-led process to mitigate it, but it really should be better dealt with more towards the gateway-side of the connection (or the scrapers gradually toning their scraping down, but I doubt that'll happen). It, say, Cloudflare ''itself'' gets a good solution in place to dissuade such high attempts to access all the sites it otherwise proxies for, then we'll be back to just the site bumbling along in its ''slightly'' unmaintained condition. We then still have a couple of sub-administrators, a Bot and a good population of other users to keep things running against more trivial issues (short of hardware/infrastructure/financial failures). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.186.141|172.68.186.141]] 16:55, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

== List of All Comics ==

I think that FaviFake and I have accidentally broken the All comics page. When clicked, it brings you to the page List of all comics, which displays the comics 3000-3002 (as of right now) instead of the list of all comics (oops-my bad). How do we fix this? There’s also the page List of all comics (3000-3500), but the TheusafBOT ignores it. Can someone more technical help troubleshoot this problem? Again, sorry for making a muck of things. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
:Oh I'm sorry, I created a new topic for this and I didn't see this one. I noticed the [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]] today and scheduled it for deletion because we never make such a page until we have exactly 500 comics to put there. Also, the name is wrong, it should say 3001-3500.
:The page [[List of all comics]] is supposed to display comics 3001-3005, not all comics. You might be confusing it with [[List of all comics (full)]], which would work perfectly if [[List of all comics]] displayed the last 3 comics. I have no idea why the bot stopped updating it. Maybe it will work now that the wrong page is scheduled for deletion? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:15, 31 October 2024
::Wait a second, why did you move the List of all comics to [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]]? It seemed to me like everything was working fine before you moved it [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
:::I was trying to copy the content to [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]], and accidentally broke it. Sorry! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
::::Yeah I can confirm the content and the entire edit history was moved to the incorrectly-titled page that's now scheduled for deletion. I guess maybe we didn't really need the edit history on that page, but who knows.
::::Weirdly, the bot seems to have restored the page as it was and then stopped doing its thing. Since we're the only ones here, I suggest you manually create the missing rows for the new comics and we'll see if that works when the next comic drops. If it doesn't, I'll contact the maintainer and creator of the bot myself. Sounds good? :) [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::Sir yes Sir! 🫡 [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 04:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
:::::: Great, thanks! I can also do it this afternoon if you don't have time. I realise my previous messages read like orders lol, they were supposed to be suggestions to try and fix the issue. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:18, 1 November 2024

== The [[List of all comics]] is no longer being updated automatically ==

Hey everyone, I noticed the bot isn't updating this page anymore: [[List of all comics]]. There are supposed to be five comics in it but there are only two at the moment. Is this supposed to happen? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:06, 31 October 2024

== 2034: Equations error? ==

One of the TeX math-thingies (sorry for the informal writing), is showing this error: "Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \oint". Idk why it's showing this, can someone fix this? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.48|108.162.237.48]] 19:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:It's a long-standing error, to do with the background processes that turns the TeX-style markup into embedded images. All equations (or whatever it might be that the particular MathML was being used to render) that were originally given cached-imagery ''still work fine'', but it seems a later update made it so that if you adjust it at all (even slightly), it no longer has the route to produce the embedding cleanly.
:It can probably be solved by rolling back some module(s) that got refreshed quite some time ago, though the advised fix is to actually fully update them (and/or reconfigure the backend scripting) to work with all the newest versions of the original tools. Unfortunately, the people (or maybe person) who would do this is not too active at the moment (may also not be up to speed on everything, either, if it involves a bit of more tricky administration), so we're left with the occasional problem establishing the texvc handler.
:Not sure which page you're encountering this on, but sometimes if you look back in the edit history you can find a working version of the thing you're seeing go wrong. If it's an aesthetic difference (e.g. the presence or absence of a spacing character), you might be able to just restore the render-cached version and make do with it not looking ''quite'' right.
:If it's a necessary change that was made (e.g. "''dt''" instead of "''dx''", which is definitely wrong the old way), or it seems never to have a valid render, then there's two obvious solutions:
:#Make your own image of it as it should be and (with a suitably auto-validated account, or via a handy external image hosting service and/or a more mature account here) get that embedded in place of the markup-source, or
:#Replicate its appearance in more basic (by standard) but complex (by source needed) markup. Combinations of basic wikimarkup and HTML can do most 'fiddly positional' things, see [[2614: 2]] for a numerator/denominator layout, for example.
:Not as 'simple' as TeX-markedup. But, on the other hand, the "\oint" symbol is "∮", so perhaps all you need to do is copy'n'paste that actual unicode symbol to wherever you found the problem, and use that instead, and forgo the TeX version altogether? (Might not show on some displays, but probably enough to make it a minority issue.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.105|172.70.90.105]] 22:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:Had the brainwave that I could probable ''search'' for the offending \oint, actually. Did so, found [[2034: Equations]], noted that it was the only (current) rendering issue and therefore just did the pasting over myself. Looks good for me, but obviously might not help (but not make worse) others' viewing of it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.54|172.69.195.54]] 22:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

...Why didn't I think of just pasting the Unicode equivalent. I'm dumb, but thanks for fixing it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.10|172.69.70.10]] 13:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

== Esolang wiki bug ==
The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical|the Technical Community Portal]]. Two, I saw your talk page on [https://esolangs.org/wiki/User_talk:ColorfulGalaxy%27s_CA_discoveries esolangs.org], which you brought up this “bug”, which the local admin (who’s probably just as sick and tired of you as I am) called BS on. If the server was changing your sig to my sig, it would be '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''', not the sig that you faked in. You’re obviously seeking attention and are being abusive and childish. Please see the bottom of https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esolang:Introduce_yourself to see a full list of complaints. I will be asking Kynde to ban you and all of your alt (or shared) accounts. -tori [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.98|162.158.167.98]] 05:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:I just realized that they've changed '''my''' signature as well. That's strange. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Once again they suddenly redirected my username to the Main Page. And the bug even forgot to remove "User:". [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 13:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

:It's working normally now. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 13:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:No, it has not been hacked. The error message means that the server that is hosting the wiki is under a lot of stress and load. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::Yes and no.
::;429 Too Many Requests (RFC 6585):The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. Intended for use with rate-limiting schemes.
::...it generally means that (in the opinion of the server), the person getting the 429 has been bashing the connection too much. This ''could'' be because they happen to be going through the same proxy as an actual prolific user (or several sub-prolific ones that similarly got lumped together to add up to "too much"), but load-sharing systems generally account for that already. General 'stress and load' is more likely to invoke a 500s message (depending upon what actually is happening).
::But, either way, if you get one of them then you're advised to pause, take a breath, perhaps wait a little before your next refresh/reload attempt, but if ''that'' goes wrong then wait a bit longer still (double your patience, maybe), and again more (further doubling) as necessary.
::Either it's not your fault, but you probably don't need to add to the problems, or it ''is'' your fault (e.g. you're webscraping in the background at full throttle) and you ''really'' need to stop causing those problems (and try not to do it again later). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 20:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:::Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::::Hint: even if you don't entirely trust Wikipedia not to be written (or rewritten) wrongly, you don't get the whole world of possible wrongness of a mostly uncomprehending AI repeating a load of mangled fragments put together on an "at least it looks grammatically correct" basis. If you trust AI so much that you don't go looking anywhere else (there are plenty of technical sites out there, including the actual official RFCs which say what servers ''should'' be doing and saying) but Wikipedia is also far from wrong and pretty thorough on this point.
::::Ask Google's AI for entertainment, or to start to put together a school report (but be prepared to check ''everything'', as well as edit enough not to be caught by AI-detection as well as Plagiarism-detection). But not for insta-expertise, if you've not got enough grounding in the subject to at least sanity-checking what you're being told. Truth-checking and reality-checking are always necessary, of course, no matter what the source. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.36|141.101.98.36]] 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
:::::Noted and acknowledged. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 14:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

== Total amount of accounts created on this wiki? ==

I was editing [[explain xkcd:Museum]] and I was wondering how many accounts have ever been created. Is there a way to access this? {{unsigned|DollarStoreBa'al|15:52, 17 March 2025}}
:Hey, I moved your message from the Coordination portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
:The base information you need is from the special page that is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers - although bear in mind that an overwhelming number of created accounts are spam-attempts (that get no further), so perhaps the count needs to be qualified as "users that have then gone on to post" (a few of which ''are'' still spam-only contributors, but now an insignificant amount rather than a probably overwhelming majoriy).
:How you go about counting ''and'' classifying valid accounts is up to you, of course. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.68|162.158.74.68]] 21:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
::How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
:::There's <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, that gives you the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]] (it was 142,958 when I wrote this), for the total number of registered users (including no-input pre-spammers, only-ever-spammed contributors, "I only created this account to say..."ers who didn't realised they could do as much as an IP, maybe some banned, sock-puppet/legitimate-alts/forgot-my-old-login duplicate accounts, maybe ''not'' some totally excised by top-tier-admins).
:::There's also <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, with the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]] (119, as I write this), which I think is everyone active (+registered) in the past 30 days.
:::Possibly there are other "magic word" values for more useful in-betweeny values (nearer the top end of the first), e.g. of everyone who has made at least one edit ''ever''. But not sure I know what that might off the top of my head.
:::I can think of ways to ''interrogate'' the wiki for one or other (better) counting criteria, but it would be horribly intensive. If anyone wanted to do this (it already needing a bit more technical ability than merely using inbuilt auto-value magic words, and preferably you'd need to not be a 'mere' scriptkiddie jumping in with both feet without knowing how to do it sensibly), I'd suggest ensuring a ''very'' throttled-back process that may take its time over days. Then, once 'completed', a not-quite-so-throttled-back version can just 'top up' its stats with everything from the last point you'd reached the last time round until the present (to never hammer the site).
:::Please please please, though, you should probably only try any of this if you're already sure of everything I've been suggesting. There are also far easier ways to attempt a DoS, but it would be ironic if you did this ''while trying to be helpful''... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.65|141.101.98.65]] 20:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
::::Oh neat that's exactly what we needed! Could you add these magic words to the museum, maybe calling one "total accounts" and the other one "users active in last 30 days"? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

== email confirmation ==

my email confirmation did not get sent even after a week. is there anything wrong? - [[User:Bb777|(((((((((((((([...]((((((((((((((]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 21:36, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
:been broken for a decade i think. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
::WE REALLY NEED JEFF BACK !!!!!!!! [[User:Bb777|hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 16:12, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

== MediaWiki error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]] ==

When I go to [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]], there is a MediaWiki error. This does not occur at [[1269]] or [[1271]]. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 13:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
:Could not replicate.
:[[1270]] redirects to [[1270: Functional]], so does it happen for you if you go via [[Functional]] and ''its'' redirect? How about https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1270:_Functional (as URL) rather than what you may be doing (but so did I, at first, still to find no error) in plugging the text into the "Search explain xkcd" field..?
:Unless it's an off-page edit (some template, broken and then fixed), the page itself seems to have no recent edit to explain any changes (to broken and/or to unbroken)... I think we may need more info. Including myself in "we" in case it's an error even I can fix, which isn't unknown but not guaranteed! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.160|172.71.178.160]]
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/L5icGdZ9nBzw.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/1nP1qunLk86a.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/7S3Ct5wghTIH.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] via index.php: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/HghYaRj9wA1f.png?o=1 [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:::I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
::::Anybody else? ''None'' of that happens here.
::::Could it be somehow browser-specific, or even extension-related? One thing to try is if you any further browsers handily installed (or installable) that you can use (even if just just for this one purpose, you don't need them to be the default system one). As of right now, though, I'm flumoxed and don't have any obvious other steps, and I dont believe anybody else has the means to enable the debug options.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.190|172.69.79.190]] 22:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::This occurs on a Chromebook managed by my school, so I can't install any browsers besides Chrome and I can't manage the extensions. I can see the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1270:_Functional&action=edit editing page] but I get an even less elegantly presented [https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/xQOVUQMjoF1r.png?o=1 error] when I try to preview the page.[[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:Couldn't replicate either, Windows 11 Chrome Canary. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
:Figured out the problem. This error occurs on any page using the <code><nowiki><math></nowiki></code> tag. I don't know why, though. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
::Yep, added <code><nowiki><math>This causes an error.</math></nowiki></code> to the top of [[explain xkcd:Sandbox]] and now it gives the same error. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:::This bug has been around for at least 7 years. Here's the fix: [[#Mediawiki exception on some pages]]. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 21:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

== Captcha repeat ==
When you've finished editing, there is an "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA.

But if you preview the changes before saving, that gets reset, so you can't just say "yup, looks good, go ahead and publish this change."

How hard would it be to make the CAPTCHA sticky, so that it doesn't need an extra interaction/mouse movement after previewing?

Or, alternatively, to not display either the CAPTCHA or the Save Changes until after a preview. {{unsigned|JimJJewett20:40, 14 April 2025}}

:If you're going to Preview (which can often be a good idea), don't bother ticking the "I am not a robot". Previews (also the "Show Changes") are 'free' and don't need you to feed the CAPTHA machine.
:What's wrong with 1) editing, 2) previewing, 3) going "Yup, looks good" and ticking the box, 3a) ''if'' required, fulfill the Captcha, 4) Submit..?
:It's exactly the same amount of work as having the Captcha-fulfillment at position (1a) and 'sticky'
:Also, however hard it might be to 'sticky' the CAPTCHA, there's a ''reason'' that a validated CAPTCHA isn't held over willy-nilly. Theoretically, an automated system (or semi-attended one) that relied upon finding out if it ''could'' post an edit, before it even bothered to try could benefit (if only by a smidgen) from first having a pot-shot at authorisation and only then (presumably before any 'time out' kicked in) pushing the latest spambot stuff.
:I see no value in allowing that, even if there was anybody who might have enough of an 'in' on the server code to enable such a thing. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.248|162.158.33.248]] 23:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:Moved this to technical portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

== Request for feedback about {{tl|comic}} ==

Hey, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the random button on our comic template, please see this page: [[Template talk:comic#Random button should link to Special:RandomInCategory]] --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

:Does anyone here know how to create a random link that fetches pages from two different categories? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:12, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

== Random comic/explanation glitches ==

For some reason, I can''not'' press random without being sent to either the Verizon comic-thing or comic #4 (this is one of my first times commenting, no clue how to do links). I’ve now pressed the button for random comic 8 times and keep getting these two pages, any idea for fixing this? [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

:update: it’s now added repeatedly sending me to [[1057:Klout]] and [[2875:2024]]. I can’t get it to send me to any other page through the random button. After 23 random comic presses, I got each of these four comics 6 times and the latest comic once. [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

== Incessant 503 errors ==

I cannot keep contributing to this site if the 503 errors continue. The time it takes to perform a single action is about 10 times greater than it should be, some pages never load, and almost everything is broken and outdated. The situation will get worse if we do nothing. We have to do something :(   --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
:I've not yet found any page that won't ever load, can you give an example?
:Updating the website, though useful for other reasons, also cannot help this problem much. Different hosting might help, but mostly different proxying. Site-side changes, of the kind we've perhaps been waiting for, would be minimally useful to this external issue. Maybe we'll get some changes out of this crisis, maybe we'll just get the site closed down as not worth the additional effort. (Just going read-only might not even help, and would still be gruelling loss.) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.10|172.71.178.10]] 16:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

::Can't do much better than Cloudflare for proxying, at least not on a budget. If the DDOS is from an AI-scraper or a malicious-but-not-paying-attention source, temporarily shifting everything to a new domain and having explainxkcd.com just be a placeholder with human-readable instructions to het to the temp site ''might'' help, at least until the adversary adapted. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.16|162.158.167.16]] 19:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

::Well anything would be better than the current situation, except a total shutdown. Why is nobody worried this entire wiki is dying in front of our eyes and the owner doesn't even remember it exists? Jesus --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

:Same issue. What could be causing this? {{unsigned ip|162.158.114.253|14:49, 27 May 2025}}
::The server's seemingly being hammered by a new batch of unregulated traffic, that's been hammering many other sites. Your attempts to connect are getting lost in the overload, until the instigators get bored, smarter/kinder or someone implements a better way to stop the offending connections better. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.160|172.70.162.160]] 16:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

== wtf is going on with the server?? ==

why is the site giving a db error 90% of the time? is something wrong? how/when will it be fixed? (can it be fixed at all?) update: the db crashed AGAIN while i was writing this. also its not like above section, since it currently *specifically* gives db errors. "cannot access the database." [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 16:54, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
:See the sub-header above (and other contributions by people in the last two or three comic Discussions), but imagine you're at a party, trying to talk to your friends, and people you don't know keep coming over and trying to start various inane conversations that just keep distracting you, and ''they just won't leave you alone!''
:So: 1) Too much traffic. 2) Not with the server. 3) Difficult/not quickly (it's not really a server-fix). And the DB isn't fully crashing (that'd do something else). It's just unable to reply to everyone, every time, and even saying "No I can't talk to you" takes up time.
:Ideally, you get someone else to intercept anyone coming over to talk to you. Maybe a VIP-section "red rope", and a big guy with a clipboard of guests/a personal secretary to vet newcomers. Doing that yourself is just going to distract you more. (Or you can take enough amphetamines to become enough of a party animal to comfortably be at the centre of the ''wildest'' of parties, but that takes finding a dealer with the right product, as well as other problems. And the tendency to overextend your analogies.) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.72|172.68.205.72]] 19:36, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
::That reads like the "explain" of an XKCD that I want to see. :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.131|162.158.175.131]] 21:17, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

==Special:ContributionScores on Main Page busts caching, causing load==

Long story short, the Main Page transcludes a top contributors table, [[Special:ContributionScores/10/30]], which marks the entire Main Page as dynamic (not cacheable). This means that (1) Cloudflare is not serving up a static version of this page, even to those not logged in, (2) the Main Page wikitext is getting reparsed on every hit, and (3) the parser is recreating the table from scratch on every hit, consuming a lot of database connection time, roughly between 0.5 and 1.0 second each. This is...suspicious, given the wiki's technical difficulties. I suggest an experiment with removing it to see if technical issues improve. If so, and if people wish to keep the table, I suggest creating a static version of the table that is updated only occasionally (even once every few hours by bot should be fine).

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:750px; overflow:auto;">Expand for details...
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The whole story is: While browsing overnight, I noticed that the issues with page loads seemed caching-related; pages never seemed to load on the first click, though refreshing was often successful, at least during the presumably lower-load overnight hours. Research led me to the possibility that some broken caching system was leading to the database running out of connections (even on a cache hit, one is still needed to determine whether it is a cache hit or miss), so I started looking at some technical indicators, eventually leading to the parser profiling ("NewPP") and transclusions block at the end of the parser output [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&page=Main%20Page here].

For the main page, it outputs:

<nowiki>NewPP limit report
Cached time: 20250528101640
Cache expiry: 0
Dynamic content: true
CPU time usage: 0.059 seconds
Real time usage: 2.564 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 273/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 2367/1000000
Post\u2010expand include size: 17895/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 714/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 7/40
Expensive parser function count: 4/100
-->


</div>
</nowiki>
</div></div>

From a quick search, it sounds like transclusion of a special page will always cause the parser cache to be bypassed, causing all of the parsed output to be regenerated on every hit by any visitor, logged in or not, via the API or not, etc. (While it's not technically wrong that increased number of visits may be causing issues, this would be a multiplicative exacerbation of that.) Combined with the fact that the page is recreating a pretty heavy database query to count and tabulate the last 30 days of edits, this seems Really Bad. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 11:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

: Edited for corrections and clarity. Also, one can generate and profile the cost of any bit of wikitext using the API: <nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores</nowiki> would create and time the processing time needed to generate <nowiki>{{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}</nowiki>.
: I'd noticed that there was a recent change from 7 to 30 days of scoring, but it turns out that doesn't make a big difference in processing time. In addition, the parser considering the content static doesn't seem to be enough for Cloudflare to start caching a page, so that might not be as easy to change. Still, simply allowing the parser output to be saved and regenerating the table for the vast majority of visitors' hits might be a big help. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 13:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

:: Does this affect other pages? If not, then the main DB issues aren't fixed... but if it does, then why is the contribs page loaded for EVERY page? Also, I *support* removing this... it's just a showcase that exists for no good reason if shown to every viewer, the recent contribs should probably be restricted to users only or something [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.176|162.158.8.176]] 08:30, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::: The contrib table doesn't load on every page, but the vast majority of hits are going to be to the Main Page. And (my hypothesis is) it holds database connections open while it's running, which consumes that limited resource on the server. (We could just raise the cap, but we don't have access to the server.) A lot of the lag time in the profiler above is just sitting in a queue for the next database connection, which affects everything. So in that sense, it affects the whole wiki. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::Hi. I changed to 30 days on suggestion by FaviFake. But that was in March. Just changed it back to 7 again just to try it. Of course I can also try to remove it for a period of time. But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor. So I would hate to remove it. Also it has worked with 30 days for more than two months and with the 7 days for as long as I have used the site (since 2012). So it seems weird that it should suddenly be the front page that breaks it all. It is also not the first time we have had these issues. Not sure how they where resolved last time but strange if it suddenly is the main page that causes all these problems [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:29, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::: (Un)Fortunately(?) I suspect the technical caching issue is more relevant, where naively transcluding a Special page via <code><nowiki>{{Special:...}}</nowiki></code> causes everything to re-process on every hit. That doesn't mean losing the feature entirely (or even the 30 days); I can help make a bot that can send the output (inside <code><nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/30,nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores&format=json</nowiki></code>) to a template, automatically updating once per short interval (an hour?). The delayed version can also be Main Page only; the live version can always still be linked, and/or the full page linked to.
::: You're right that perhaps this isn't necessarily ''the'' proximate "straw that broke the camel's back" cause. And there are a lot of other problems and solutions that could help - like simply raising the DB connection cap, or all the stuff about crawler traffic, and that Cloudflare doesn't seem to be caching the basically-static CSS from tool.php, etc. etc... But without admin access to diagnostics or settings for the database and Cloudflare, we can only work with the tools we have. Even this specific widget itself does some caching in a newer update, but we don't have access to updating it. (That said, I'm still keeping an eye out for other things that might have changed recently.) [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
::::As it did not help making it 7 days again I have now removed it. Seems to make no difference to begin with. But lets give it some time to work. But I'm not optimistic. Let me know if I moved the correct bit, I'm no expert just sadly the only active admin and we cannot get hold of Jeff... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Since the removal of the Rankings table, I haven't noticed a downtick of connection errors. (That said, I dislike people ''aiming'' to be in the Rankings, I consider that editing should be its own reward, so personally I'd be happier without it anywhere quite as prominent.) Haven't done a full technical analysis, but I estimate that from a prior peak of maybe 1.5 "technical difficulties" or "also, a 503 error" responses, generally varying between zero issues (straight in) and normal worstest-case scenario of three attempts (fourth attempt is Ok, ''maybe'' unstylsheeted), in the last 24 hours it's been more like 2.5:1 fail to success ratio. (i.e. reaching up to maybe 6th-attempt success, worst case.) Not nice, but survivable.

Though got a new one, just a few minutes ago. An actual Cloudflare error: "SSL handshake failed Error code 525 // Visit cloudflare.com for more information. // 2025-05-30 20:01:57 UTC". In case that interests anyone. Looks like the server was temperarily so incapacitated as to not be able to even handshake with the proxy. But I don't currently expect that to recur, just thought I'd note it as a 'new' glitch, in passing. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

: Well, ''right now'' things seem more stable. But during Friday just after the change, when pages could load at all, I noticed they were loading faster, but the availability was just as bad or worse for a while. I'm not really sure how much credit to the latest improvement goes to changing the contribution table. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 00:59, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:Everything seems to be good now. No constant DB errors, and it's now smooth! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.142|162.158.8.142]] 07:00, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

::Should I try inserting the contribution score to see if the problems return, because it would be nice to know if it was this or just random. Also even though some might dislike this score it has been there always, and should not just be removed because one person writes negatively about it. But of course if it was really the reason behind the problems it has to stay of the front page. But a link could be inserted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:44, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::To clarify, I wasn't saying I disliked the score, ''per se'', just that it encourages edits-for-the-sake-of-edits and (though I rarely see the Main Page myself) is prominent enough for the new discoverers of the site to take as a challenge (in well-meaning ways, as well as less so). I have sympathy with "But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor." Just pointing out the functional inverse that it is a motivating factor ''to make a lot of contributions''. (And that I personally abstain from that competition, buried within the contributions of various other IPers, no temptation at all to edit without decent cause.)
:::A version of the table weighted against new accounts ''might'' make me happier, but too many ways of doing that (hard threshold, to kick in at an arbitrary 'account maturity' age, so no-one appears on the list until 'old enough'; a formula that slopes from 0 to 1 at the "maturity" time, multiply the contributions by the current value; ditto, but a smoother function that becomes assymptotic to 1) that probably also involve scripted conversions and various arbitrary choices. So not something I'd imagine being done.
:::I do think it's a good idea to re-add it ''for science''. Give it a week to settle down, without it as an issue. If (as it seems) it has died down properly, add it again for a further week (or less, if it becomes obvious it has reintroduced the same DoS-like scenario). Let the outcome shape your further decision, or fine-tuning. Not mere yay/nay preferences, like mine, regarding it.
:::It's also very likely only a ''factor'' in the slow-down. It was ok (in both 7 day and 30 day versions) for aong time, but ''together with'' increased amounts of site traffic (as per anecdotal evidence from elsewhere on the 'net) it went bad on us. The improved situation could also have been due to the perpetrators turning their (accidental?) web-hammering scripts off, having finished their project, or now making them far less aggressive. The 'benefits' of the League Table might not now cause such side-effects. But also it's still possible that the problematic traffic comes back and hobbles the site gain, regardless of the absence frontpage League Tabling.
:::And you can always add the Special:ContributionScores(-slash-whatever) information as a link to go to, rather than transcluded (if you've decided that it's still trouble to have where it was). But cross that bridge if you come to it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

::PS I also gets 0-2 errors at the moment, so it is not all good, had to reload twice to get the comment above posted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:45, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::My observations: still 'terrible', maybe even slightly worse, Friday and early Saturday, UK time, noting the Friday Comic didn't get Bot-imported until well into Saturday PM (theusaf might have failure logs?), but I'm sure I saw it on xkcd.com on Saturday morning (but still had showed Wednesday as of Fri/Sat midnight, UTC+1, or thereabouts, i.e. early Friday evening Randall Time, not untypical for such updates). The table-transclusion was removed at least a full day before. Don't know if anything else caused lag in the proxy's response.
:::Since Saturday evening, more or less ok. ''Some'' errors, in line with "background levels" before this recent splurge actually hit. If I get a "technical problems", an imminent refresh sorts it (doesn't return another error), gets on with things. Not perfect, might mean a bit more RAM/swapspace might further help, or a higher quota of shared processing threads (if there are any that can be spared from whatever else is running in whatever rackspace unit it might be). Livable, if also still vulnerable to the next period of increased pressure. Keeping an eye on it, and still trying to eventually get through to the hardware-owning sysops, would be wise. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: A note for the future: the new (current) version of this extension [https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=ContribScoreCacheTTL&files=&excludeFiles=&repos= caches] data for half an hour (by default), so if we ever get an update, the bot wouldn't be necessary anymore. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 07:46, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

== What would it take to clone ExplainXKCD? ==

What would it take technically and financially to clone this web site?

Installing MediaWiki and cloning the wiki pages should be fairly straightforward. There may be some pain due to differences in MediaWiki versions.

Cloning or rewriting the bots may be a chore.

Paying for hosting and Cloudflare will take a steady stream of income.

There's also legal issues, like how to protect everyone from liability if someone wants to sue, even if it's a frivolous suit.

There will need to be multiple administrators at every level so we don't have the "if one person disappears for awhile and problems arise, we are stuck" issues.

My guess is that between the existing administrators and regular contributors, we have the technical skills to do this. It's the financial and legal issues that give me pause.

Yes, I'm an occasional contributor, and no, I haven't created an account yet. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.119|162.158.175.119]] 19:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

:It would help if we didn't want to clone ''all page history''. Already, it would bar those bits hidden behind admin-level deletions, etc, but limiting the actual depth of history scraped up and made available on a new platform would be wise from a 'start over' POV, ''especially'' if not having direct access to the core database. Possibly a 'bot could maintain an "anything new on old site gets reduplicated to new site" until a phased cut-off, with enough thought, dyluring the ''duration'' of the migratory process, but you need a solid base (maybe with further back-filled history as much as you can).
::Removing page history might violate the "attribution" part of the CC-BY-SA license (but I am not a lawyer so don't take my word for it.) [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 17:46, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
:And then there's user accounts. Maybe there's a way to confirm your rights to an original-site username on the new-site (potentially complex things, or just something to do with logins on both, posting "it's me" on the new site, then "yes, that new-site claim me of being me is indeed correct" on old-site, but you still have to deal with potential claim-jumping/identity-gazumping). Which also needs trust of the new-site admins to play fair with potential disputes.
:And it'd be a good opportunity to clean some up things (everyone can think of several inconsistecies that ''they'd'' deal with, given the opportunity), but only with a lot of hands on effort. So factor that in for potential work.
:On the whole, though, best just to 'start fresh'. A task in itself, perhaps use and acknowledge this site's "best material" (I think copyright might be not so much an issue if based upon a fair and dutiful copy, due to the details of [[explain xkcd:Copyrights]], but that's of course something that needs advice sought for any particular implementation). That, of course, needs community acceptance not to be seen as an "upstart usurper" site, perhaps, and could create a schism where some would refuse to partake in the new project at all.
:i.e. you raise good questions (and prompt others), but I'm not sure there are ''undeniably'' objective good answers to them all. Trying it and seeing how it goes is probably the ''only'' way to bash out the many details. Not an easy project. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.144|172.71.241.144]] 21:19, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

:I think it would be absolutely awesome to move to something that *isn't* self hosted, something that as far as I can tell this wiki is. If we move or clone, may we see [https://weirdgloop.org/ Weird Gloop] as an option? They have a lot of experience and will [https://weirdgloop.org/blog/why-were-helping-more-wikis-move-away-from-fandom#how-to-not-turn-into-fandom-20-with-these-2-simple-tricks probably not turn into another fandom and will not be bought by them]. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.130.250|172.69.130.250]] 15:33, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
::Oh ye gods... Yes, whatever you do, ''don't'' go anywhere near Fandom, as a solution. Not that I think this will be a convincing argument on its own, but you'll absolutely lose me as an 'explain' reader (never mind contributor) if it goes onto a Fandom/ex-Wikia hosting model. I've no experience of Weird Gloop (yet), but the URL (about why they're different) certainly does vicerally appeal to me on first glance. Do your own independant research, though, anybody tempted down that or any eqyivalent route. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
:[https://github.com/saveweb/wikiteam3/ Wikidump] can get all page content with full history (for pages that have not been deleted). It doesn't require admin privileges to use. [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 21:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
:The site seems stable now, at least for the last half-day. I'm not sure if the attack/scraping ended, or if there's a real back-end fix in place, but here's hoping it stays stable. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.73|172.68.26.73]] 02:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
::Replying to '''my''' comment of 02:11, 1 June 2025 immediately above: I spoke too soon, I got two "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties." errors in less than 5 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.67.217|172.69.67.217]] 03:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: Why should we do this in the first place? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.165|162.158.8.165]] 07:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
:: So we can manage things when someone with server-level access is required. For example, if someone with server-level access was around during the last week or two when we've been having intermittent-but-sometimes-heavy site-is-too-busy-try-again-later errors, we (or, rather, the server operator) would have more insight to the problem and would likely be able to do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.170.157|172.71.170.157]] 16:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: The resources at [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Grabbers Mediawiki/Manual:Grabbers] seem useful - they seem written for the new server administrator to have the new server save things into the new wiki. (I worry about the note regarding MediaWiki version 1.39+ since we're stuck on 1.30, but I think that might be about the version of the *new* wiki installation.) In particular, there exists a [[Special:Export]] page (and associated API) that also exports the page history. There are a few options for migrating people's accounts; [https://github.com/ciencia/mediawiki-extensions-StubUserWikiAuth Extension:StubUserWikiAuth] seems most promising so far. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 09:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

== new and exciting 522 and 524 cloudflare errors ==

everyone else saw that, right? [[user:lett‪herebedarklight|this website's domain expires in august]] 02:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
:From at least midday (UK time), yesterday. But given the lack of ''any'' recorded edits for 4/Jun (UTC), only being broken by your (and other) early-hours edits of 5/Jun, was a lengthy period of whatever-went-even-more-wrong. (I had kept notes, I probably got 522s and 524s, when I checked back every few hours. Might have been other 52Xs, but not got that bit of scrap paper with me right now.) [[Special:Contributions/82.132.234.190|82.132.234.190]] 12:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
::Expires. Will that mean that if it is not prolonged this entire site will vanish? [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 06:22, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
:::Read [[User talk:Lettherebedarklight]] (to the bottom!) for one Q&A that was done on it. I know I also ''previously'' discussed LTBDL's 'discovery' (before they decided to break their own User Page in suggesting this was going to be an issue), but they also ignored me. As they still have their alarmist signature up, despite the other explanation, thus alarming you.
:::Short version: the domain potentially expires ''every year''. Every year, so far, it has been renewed. It's not the first time. Chances are low that it'll be the last.
:::Or, to rephrase your question, this site may vanish if it ''isn't'' prolonged (the auto-renew is not auto-renewed, perhaps the person paying for it gets fed up doing it).
:::PS. is it just a coincidence that, since the 'day outage', we're now getting many IPv6 contributors? (And vastly different IPv4 ranges/submasks.) Seems like a Cloudflare-led thing, assuming that nobody has been reconfiguring the explainxkcd server in any way (which is the current 'complaint'). ...Not worth a seperate new header to mention, but thought I'd mention it in passing, as I'm here. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.213.196|82.132.213.196]] 10:32, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

== Problem Sending a Question to whatif@xkcd.com ==

I tried to send a question to whatif@xkcd.com, and I got an automatic mail from google that "It was failed to send to the group", does it means that the question was sent, or that it got blocked entirely? [[Special:Contributions/2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01]] ([[User talk:2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|talk]]) 15:16, 11 June 2025‎ (UTC) ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''

:Yup, that's a known error. See the notice on ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' for more info. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

== Monobook style categories bug ==
I recently switched to the monobook style in preferences, and I saw this on the main page:

[[File:Monobook Font Bug.png]]

Is this something that's inherent to the monobook font or something that I can fix on my end? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al |DollarStoreBa'al]][[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al |'''''Converse''''']][[Special:Contributions/DollarStoreBa'al|'''''My life choices''''']] 15:03, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

==Bug on Modern style==
I encountered this UI bug opening up the site. Is this one-time or have others experienced this? [[File:UI Bug.png|200x200px]] --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|'''''converse''''']] 16:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
:that's just broken css. if you refresh it, it should render correctly. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 16:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
:I'm sure you've occasionally had a "page cannot load" error on the HTML (a few months back, it was particularly bad, but it's fairly rare at the moment). But imagine if you luckily escaped the issue of the HTML file loading. ''It'' tells your machine to ask for the CSV, as well as things like the images it needs. And then the inability to get the CSV happens. It could have been the image that didn't load, also. The lack of stylesheet
:A refresh of the page is usually what I'd try next. Or a hard-refresh, possibly, depending upon which browser I'm using. Either it all appears fine or the HTML totally fails the second time from whatever glitch is plaguing the system at that time. If you get exactly the same.
:I'll have to admit, though, but it took me quite a few moments to find what was wrong with the UI... maybe I'm innured against the occasional version of this issue. Unless I was looking for the Recent Changes link, for example, I'd probably just read the page as normal and then move onto the next page I want to check/editing the Talk page, all of which likely loads correctly and leaves me none the wiser that I'd missed a minor reshuffle.
:Tell you what, though, the "Recent Changes" page looks quite a bit different without Stylesheet-styling. And you can even invoke that, if you want. Depending upon browser, you can either choose which (or no!) stylesheet gets applied, also useful to see a site using its "mobile" settings from your desktop. Or you may be able to use whatever the equivalent of Object Inspector is for your page code and 'break' the particular ".css"-line that governs it. Sometimes gives interesting and useful results, on more awkward sites that try to enforce "no copypasting" or selectively hide/obscure things. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 23:29, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

== Upgrading MediaWiki ==

::''Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)''

Hi! If you aren't already aware, the wiki's MediaWiki software is many years out of date, 1.30 became end of life in 2019. This likely opens up the wiki to security issues, and presumably some annoyance from the users due to lack of newer features. It seems that Jeff never got around to this. If you have access to the wiki server, please upgrade the wiki, or have someone else do it. I think the recommendation to avoid compatibility issues is to go from LTS to LTS on upward, so <s>1.30 > 1.31 > 1.35 > 1.39 > 1.43</s> (it seems that you can go straight from 1.30 > 1.35 > 1.43 although the errors may be more difficult to read, based on the FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#How_do_I_upgrade_from_a_really_old_version?_In_one_step,_or_in_several_steps? ).

If you want assistance with MediaWiki upgrades, this organization called Professional Wiki seems to also performs this service. https://professional.wiki/en/mediawiki-upgrade-services In any case, they would probably follow a form of the procedure outlined in the official MediaWiki manual.

To check the wiki's current version: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Version

Version lifecycle: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle

Upgrading procedure/manual: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading

Thank you! [[User:Cam1170|Cam1170]] ([[User talk:Cam1170|talk]]) 19:32, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
:Hi Cam1170, thank you for your proposal and thought! Unfortunately, we are unable to update this wiki's MediaWiki software because the owner has gone AWOL. He is a bureaucrat on here, and the other 'crat is also inactive. Despite multiple times to reach out to him both on-site and through other platforms, he has not responded. We are assuming that this wiki will stay frozen like this unless we migrate (which I have no idea how will be done-or if it's even possible!). '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 01:30, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
:Noting that even migrating would probably involve someone (active) taking it upon themselves to provide the 'blank' new server on a new host (and new domain!) upon which the existing available information is to be written. (N.B., possibly still to a limited degree, without the access also required to upgrade or grant a further third party the access required to upgrade, unless there are some truly weird backdoors. Everything I know indicates that even making sure that everyone can reproduce their accounts in the new system would be a tricky achievement to get right.) And then we'd probably still have this place's 'box' (or boxes, or cloud-like bundle of cooperating resources) happily but redundantpt continuing in whatever 'protected stasis' we'll have then placed it in, as we try to re-establish the SEOing/etc that leads to our new doorway.
:This isn't the first time, probably won't be the last, that we've been advised of the 'issues'. And been only able to state that our active most-priviliged users seem not to be priviliged enough to even consider the direct server-level access needed to up-patch/re-install the core backend. Nor to properly migrate everything (leaving this service running as a 'ghost' site, to a greater or lesser extent), from the box(es) it runs upon all the way to the original registered domain.
:I had written more, but it boils down to the conspicuously absent progenitor being the main hurdle, likely for reasons beyond even their control. Though ''perhaps'' there are further missing administrators who might have enough access to (if they don't entirely break everything, in the attenpt) assist us, should they be coaxed/cajoled to return.
:Personally (as if my opinion counts), I see no urgent need for (e.g.) a more visual editor. Dealing with entirely new and more complex bugs, compared to what I think is far simpler to work with, is one thing that I know will at least annoy me.
:As for security issues, I believe we're at not a bad 'stuck' stage, compared to some (newer!) stages we could be at. And 0-day exploits are an ever present (intangible) risk at the bleeding edge, of course. ;) But you'd be also right to question what I know of all this, as an effectively unknown voice from the wilderness. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.27|82.132.238.27]] 05:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::Ahem...
I see no urgent need for [...] [the] visual editor.
::'''Tables''' --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
:::Seems like others have made it clear why I cannot help. I ended up stuck as the only admin without bureaucrat powers... Also I'm not very tech minded so not the best admin you could have. but at the moment the only active. :-/ Not quite sure what Favifake means though? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::::Yes, of course! You're still unable to do anything, just like everyone else.
::::I replied to IP, which said the Visual editor wasn't necessary. Tables are incredibly hard to set up without the visual editor, so I think it's ''the'' most important feature we're missing right now.
::::''[Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)]''
:::::Easier to custom convert 'raw' tabular data to "tabular data under wikitable format" than to painstakingly arrange it in a visually-'aided' WYSYWYG table, actually. Making a casual table might be easier, but making a ''well thought out'' table with any complexity benefits from knowing the abilities and limitations of the markup.
:::::I had thought someone would object on a different sisue, actually, but that would also be something for which actually caring about the back-end markup (and using Preview judiciously) certainly doesn't hurt, with "dumbing up"/abstraction often not being an overall advantage. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.245.43|82.132.245.43]] 21:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::Sorry but I unfortunately didn't understand anything of what you just said :( ㅤ [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 11:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
:::::::I think they're saying that [https://imgur.com/gallery/i-dont-even-see-code-anymore-WqqJfNb the raw markup isn't exactly difficult]. And further that a WYSIWYG interface (which was typoed!) can often create suboptimal layouts, just because it was tweaked to 'look right' in the rather limited context of the composition editor.
:::::::And I probably agree, to an extent. Wikitables are designed to be far more simple/uncluttered, at source, than the equivalent HTML code. You can easily hand-craft them to both render nicely and be intelligable by future editors. It's not rocket science.
:::::::And then there was something about creating wikitables from non-wiki data, which might not actually be totally relevant. But is something I sometimes do, and I'd definitely consider a visual editor an impediment if I was doing that. The difference being that you can (hopefully) just toggle that option away. Or, rather, not bother toggling it on. Either way, I'd do what I think looks best for later editors, like leaving nice/logical text-spacing in monospace font by judicious use of whitespace/newlines - often lacking/badly done otherwise. If you want ''my'' opinion, too. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 21:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::::"the raw markup isn't exactly difficult" yes is is? Merging cells is a nightmare, adding new cells to the rowspan/colspan is a nightmare, moving text around is annoying, clicking preview constantly is time-consuming... i could go on and on. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::I concur. Especially with large tables, it's hard to find where you need to edit, simply because it all looks the same. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 13:09, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
: that's actually quite scary that the person who pays for the server has gone awol. That means this wiki is just 1-2 unpaid bills away from being shut down for good without any means to recover it. I think updating the software is the least of our concern. I mean, if the current admins should retire as well, then there's no one who could even appoint new admins. [[Special:Contributions/2.204.192.65|2.204.192.65]] 09:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
:: As said before, when the domain-name was "mere months from expiring" (n.b., it ''seems'' to be annually renewed, automatically, so is ''forever'' potentially mere months from expiring), there are all kinds of other ways for a site to fail. Some, like the hosting/hardware rental, might be tied to the same bill-paying cycle as the domain, so any such interruption might happen across the board as a grand-slam. (Interruptions might not mean the loss of the account-holder, and the loss of the account-holder might not mean an interruption... Would depend on how someone organises (or fails to organise) such things.)
:: Other failures could happen any time. Glad to see we're back from the outage: my initial guess was that someone ''had'' tried to update the site, somehow, but had got it horribly ''horribly'' wrong and left it unworkable. This would have been our invisible benefactor, perhaps, unless a "guerilla hacktivist" had taken a big chance and bigger risk. Probably not any of that, though, or at least it was someone who could still revoke the broken changes.
:: And then there's just a vital rapidly spinning disk shedding its magnetic coating or even fragmenting, or its circuitry develops a dry-joint/whisker of solder. The lifetime of an HDD is said to be "3 to 5 years", by one source I found (though I'm personally using ones that are >30yo, in near constant use, and I've seen far earlier failures, so I don't know how useful that is). If it's now sitting on SSD, that has read/write-cycle 'limits', instead. So, if it's not RAIDed with someone able to hotswap replacement drives, potentially some time (perhaps in a darkened but air-conditioned room) there may be the momentary shriek of metal (or silence, at least compared to the general humming of everything else) and ''at best'' we'll revert to the last valid automated backup... If there is one, and someone can fix it. (My second theory about the blackout was this. But I don't remember anything new to the site that didn't come back when it returned.)
::As for the WYSIWYG (cheers, yep!) thing, I've had to use enforced-visual editors, elsewhere. A right pain. I sure would hope it's optional, for my part. I also think it's healthy for people to not rely on too much 'wizardry' and know more about how everything works, but then I'm someone who has thirty-year-old HDDs running forty-year-old OSes. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.237.89|82.132.237.89]] 11:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
:::Based on what I'm seeing in terms of recent changes, it appears that the cloudflare errors appeared about 2:00 UTC September 11th, and left about 14:00 UTC September 12, making for around 36 hours of total downtime. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 21:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

== A precaution ==
In approximately 2 hours, MediaWiki will be switching something on the server-side, so be ready for a temporary read-only period starting 15:00 UTC. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 18:04, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
:I wonder what will happen with this wiki's old-ass MediaWiki version...I '''''hope''''' everything will go back to normal... --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
that's for wikis supported by the WMF, and we're not. unfortunately. It’s the WMF doing the thing, not the MW software. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:50, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

==RSS FEED==
I've created a megathread for the broken RSS feed since this keeps being brought up. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC)
=== RSS Feed: XML not well-formed ===

<pre>XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

Location: https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml?_SLWxoPenuRl=nOtinFEeDPREVIew

Line Number 31, Column 18:

<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^
</pre>

PHP-Fix:

$title = str_replace("&", "&amp;", $title);

or

$title = htmlspecialchars($title);

: Same problem here. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the first time an xkcd title has included an ampersand (as far as I can see from [[List_of_all_comics_(full)]]). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.85|141.101.99.85]] 14:16, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

=== rss feed ===

Hello

the rss feed is broken, could you fix it ?
<nowiki>
Error :
try{(function overrideDefaultMethods(r, g, b, a, scriptId, storedObjectPrefix) {
var scriptNode = document.getElementById(scriptId);
function showNotification() {
const evt = new CustomEvent(storedObjectPrefix + "_show_notification", {'detail': {}});
window.dispatchEvent(evt);
}
function overrideCanvasProto(root) {
function overrideCanvasInternal(name, old) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var width = this.width;
var height = this.height;
var context = this.getContext("2d");
var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
context.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0);
showNotification();
return old.apply(this, arguments);
}
}
);
}
overrideCanvasInternal("toDataURL", root.prototype.toDataURL);
overrideCanvasInternal("toBlob", root.prototype.toBlob);
//overrideCanvasInternal("mozGetAsFile", root.prototype.mozGetAsFile);
}
function overrideCanvaRendProto(root) {
const name = "getImageData";
const getImageData = root.prototype.getImageData;

root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = getImageData;

Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, "getImageData",
{
value: function () {
var imageData = getImageData.apply(this, arguments);
var height = imageData.height;
var width = imageData.width;
// console.log("getImageData " + width + " " + height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
showNotification();
return imageData;
}
}
);
}
function inject(element) {
if (element.tagName.toUpperCase() === "IFRAME" && element.contentWindow) {
try {
var hasAccess = element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement;
} catch (e) {
console.log("can't access " + e);
return;
}
overrideCanvasProto(element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(element.contentWindow.CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(element.contentWindow.Document);
}
}
function overrideDocumentProto(root) {
function doOverrideDocumentProto(old, name) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var element = old.apply(this, arguments);
// console.log(name+ " everridden call"+element);
if (element == null) {
return null;
}
if (Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object HTMLCollection]' ||
Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object NodeList]') {
for (var i = 0; i < element.length; ++i) {
var el = element[i];
// console.log("elements list inject " + name);
inject(el);
}
} else {
// console.log("element inject " + name);
inject(element);
}
return element;
}
}
);
}
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElement, "createElement");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElementNS, "createElementNS");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementById, "getElementById");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByName, "getElementsByName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByClassName, "getElementsByClassName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagName, "getElementsByTagName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagNameNS, "getElementsByTagNameNS");
}
overrideCanvasProto(HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(Document);
scriptNode.parentNode.removeChild(scriptNode);
})(24,14,-9,19,"ojkrt", "ltwvx");} catch (e) {console.error(e);}Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé
Emplacement : https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml
Numéro de ligne 63, Colonne 18 :
<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^
</nowiki>

[[Special:Contributions/172.71.130.228|172.71.130.228]] ([[User talk:172.71.130.228|talk]]) 08:58, 12 December 2024‎ ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''

=== RSS ===

RIP RSS feed yet again. 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[[User:Bb777|[insert signature here]]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]])
:Is there something new we should know? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.58.6|172.70.58.6]] 00:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

=== the rss feed seems to be broken ===

the rss feed button on the side leading to https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml throws up and error making the feed not load properly in rss readers.

"This page contains the following errors:
error on line 463 at column 18: EntityRef: expecting ';'
Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." {{unsigned ip|172.71.241.19|20:38, 5 May 2025}}
:I think this is the continuing issue as of [[#RSS Feed: XML not well-formed]], you're talking about. As far as I'm aware unfixed and (with the current smattering of active admins at their limits of admin-levels) unfixable. Because of a 'bare' ampersand (or two) being misinterpreted as a failed attempt at a character-entity reference. ''If'' that was fixed, without me noticing, then I'm sure someone will be along to try to fix your new issue too.
:People have been trying to prod other people who can prod the server back into shape (insofar as that issue), but I've not yet been privy to anything coming of that, and presume you're just trapped in the exact same glitch. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.30|172.70.91.30]] 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

::What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
:::It's unusable so long as the "I'm parsing this is an '&Thing;' ... oh, wait, it has no closing ';'... ARGH!" happens to it. If you click on the RSS feed, to the left, you can see how it shows the (not ''quite'' humanly-readable) lines of the RSS feed (most recent, chronologically backwards) until the last line it shows is the comic imediately after the most recent "D&D" entry. (Actually, depends on browser. Sorry, just checked. It does that on Android Chrome, but currently I'm on Windows Firefox and it 'only' complains. But if you'll take my word for it.)
:::Someone really needs to go into the https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml file (who can edit it directly) and find the two "D&D" instances and make them "D&amp;D". (Note to editors: Had to "amp amp" the "amp", here in this edit, to get it to appear just as amp... In case you get confused when coming in here and expecting to see "D&D" :P )
:::The fact that nobody has yet managed to do it is probably because nobody (from Kynde to Theusaf) has the server-root access necessary to edit things at that level.
:::Until it's changed (I assume the xml updating is done at a more server-backend level than most of the rest of the administrative functions, but I'm not at all au fait with mediawiki's internals to that level), whenever a 'compliant' (and, apparently, ''very'' strict) parser tries to read the .xml it'll 'quite rightly' tell you that there's a bare ampersand and then refuses to do anything more.
:::Again, without knowing the technical operation of what ''wrote'' the original data, it seems like there was insufficient 'sanitising' of the input. It applied the bare-ampersand without forward-converting it to an ampersanded ampersand-entity. That maybe also needs fixing (in case we get more), even if the existing ones get manually changed. I don't use any RSS feeds, myself, being too new-fangled ("Initial release: RSS 0.90 (Netscape), March 15, 1999; 26 years ago; Latest release: RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.11) March 30, 2009; 16 years ago"... yeah, ''to me'' that's still new-fangled! :P ) so all I know about how this one fails is what people have talked about above, and trivially clicking on the left-sidebar link to look at it myself, and venture what I think is the logical nature of the glitch (both cause and effect). Maybe somebody knows more about it, but I'm filling in until that person comes along and says oytherswise (and/or more) about it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.193|162.158.33.193]] 20:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
:::: It's not being "very strict" to reject an unescaped ampersand: it's just part of the XML spec. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.216.67|162.158.216.67]] 09:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::Now it says there's an error on line 767...--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 19:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::Same error, of the same (second of two, once it had added its influence to the first) comic that did the "&D" problem. But just with more non-invalid lines before it. Check it again after another few comics and it should be line 770+. This isn't the new <City> thing, for several reasons, if that's what you were thinking it was. (Though there appears to be ''another'' issue with it, which is masked and made moot by the &D-breakage.)[[Special:Contributions/82.132.246.227|82.132.246.227]] 04:55, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

=== RSS Feed doesn't seem to contain anything after 3 August 2025 ===

There do not seem to be any new entries in the RSS Feed after the third of August. {{unsigned ip|216.212.38.209|16:01, 23 September 2025}}
:That's been noticed. But not much chance trying to fix that (manually adding in, if necessary) until we can properly (and manually?) fix the ampersand-D issues. For which there seems to be no-one with sufficient access. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 22:12, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

May I ask why my PHP-Workaround for the broken RSS Feed has been removed without any explanation and not included in the the new RSS-Feed section? (see history) or is this another wiki edit hell not worth wasting another constructive thought?
[[Special:Contributions/2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B|2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B]] 21:36, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
:I think that FaviFake forgot to add it into this mega-thread. I've pasted it back in. Sorry! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
::Yes sorry! [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
:::Apology accepted [[Special:Contributions/2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D|2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D]] 20:01, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

=== PHP Workaround for Broken RSS Feed ===
The following PHP-Code creates a RSS-Feed from the "All comics" page on explainxkcd: (with kind help from Kimi K2)
<pre>
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

// php-xml module available
if (!class_exists('DOMDocument')) {
die("Error: DOMDocument class missing. Please install php-xml");
}

// configuration
$url = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_all_comics_(full)';
$url2 = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/';
$feedTitle = 'xkcdExplain';
$feedDescription = '';
$feedLanguage = 'en-en';
$maxItems = 40;

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36',
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 20,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => 'gzip, deflate',
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8',
'Accept-Language: de-DE,de;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7',
'Cache-Control: no-cache',
]
]);
/* */
$html = curl_exec($ch);

if (curl_errno($ch)) {
die('cURL-Fehler: ' . curl_error($ch));
}

$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($httpCode !== 200) {
die("HTTP-Fehler: $httpCode");
}

curl_close($ch);

// DOM-Verarbeitung
$dom = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTML($html);
libxml_clear_errors();
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

$items = $xpath->query('//tr[ .//a[starts-with(@href,"/wiki/index.php/") and contains(@href,":")]]');
if ($items->length === 0) {
die("Nothing found.");
}

// creat RSS
$rss = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
$rss->formatOutput = true;

$rssRoot = $rss->createElement('rss');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('version', '2.0');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('xmlns:atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$rss->appendChild($rssRoot);

$channel = $rss->createElement('channel');
$rssRoot->appendChild($channel);

$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', $feedTitle));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('description', $feedDescription));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', $url));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('language', $feedLanguage));

// Atom Self-Link
$atomLink = $rss->createElement('atom:link');
$atomLink->setAttribute('href', (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? 'https://' : 'http://') . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$atomLink->setAttribute('rel', 'self');
$atomLink->setAttribute('type', 'application/rss+xml');
$channel->appendChild($atomLink);

foreach ($items as $item) {
if ($maxItems-- <= 0) break;

$cells = $item->getElementsByTagName('td');
if ($cells->length < 4) continue; // Sicherheits-check
$number = trim($item->getElementsByTagName('th')->item(0)->textContent);
$title = trim($cells->item(0)->textContent);
$link = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com' . $cells->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->getAttribute('href');
$image = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/' . trim($cells->item(2)->textContent);
$date = trim($cells->item(3)->textContent); // YYYY-MM-DD

// RSS-Item erzeugen
$rssItem = $rss->createElement('item');
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', htmlspecialchars($number . ': ' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('description',
htmlspecialchars('<img src="' . $image . '" alt="' . $title . '" /> ' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('pubDate', date(DATE_RSS, strtotime($date))));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('guid', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$channel->appendChild($rssItem);
}

header('Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8');
echo $rss->saveXML();
?>
</pre>
{{unsigned ip|2a01:599:442:d8ec:967c:b1b4:cb3e:2bc2}} 20:08, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

----

===Can't we just rename the two pages?===
[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3028:_D%26D_Roll&diff=prev&oldid=389591 This edit made me think]: can't we just rename the two pages to something like ...DnD ... to fix our RSS feed? Would that work? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:Only if that propogated to (overwote/superseded and deleted the old entry) the RSS file. But with (for totally different reasons?) there not having been any updates since 8/Aug/2025, I don't even see that happening. And a number of reasons to think that even if it replaces the items: a) it won't remove another wrong aspect, b) it won't let us (easily!) add all the missing ones since that point.
:I think it still needs someone with server-side editing priviliges to just correct it, perhaps add some text-sanitising to the script that updates it ''and'' investigate why the updating script isn't still running.
:Though you could try renaming the first (i.e. chronologically last) page that pops up. ''If'' it makes it update that entry (revealing the other D&D error as the new stopper), then make the second change... (surely if it's kick-started to respond to that, then it's kick-started to start adding new things, but no idea if you'd ''then'' need to change/unchange everything since the current last, in order to prompt them to be added). But my guess is that you'll change the page, nothing will happen, you'll wait... eventually you'll want to undo the change back to how it currently is. (Or look for every page that references the changed page to get them pointing at the new-name... as not leaving a Redirect page on the old name might be the only way to make it 'RSS official').
:Or I'm totally wrong, and it's all much simpler. Can't test any of these hypotheticals and predictions myself. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 20:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

== Fix Random Comic RNG ==

The random comic button seems to not work properly since it wont show comics before 2022. {{unsigned ip|174.168.56.208|16:41, 17 October 2025 (UTC)}}
:This is a known issue, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles]]. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 17:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

==Main page comic number==
The main page currently states that there are 3,161 comics. However, the latest comic as of today is [[3159]], resulting in a discrepancy of three comics. Is there a reason for this? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 20:02, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:Moved from Kynde's talk, they've said enough times that they aren't a technical user. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into this, but I'm sure someone will. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 20:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
::The main page is, through the magic of the instruction <code><nowiki>{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}}</nowiki></code>, taking the number from those listed in (and as enumerated at the top of) [[:Category:All comics]]. At the time of writing, that has comics [[1]] to [[3159]] , plus [[ngram charts]] and [[verizon]], giving a total two more than the numbers would suggest.
::The possible changes are to either remove non-numbered comics from the All Comics categories or (such as when some people were wondering whether the [[404]] 'non-comic' should count in the total), make a hard-coded mathematical adjustment to the counted number within the Main Page to 'correct' it. (And be prepared to re-hardcode it if the number of non-number comics changes later.) If you think it worthwhile. An even more useful change would be to have a way to ''auto''-adjust for non-number comics via a bit of extra categorisation and counting being fed into the subtraction. Depends on how much work you want to do! ;)
::Or... you could also just add ", including non-numbered comics", or your choice of wording, to the "We have..." text and then (regardless of how many such oddities occur, and why) it might not be considered any kind of problem. Simple enough, just not within my power to do for you![[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 21:06, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:::How can people miss such a huge message, ffs.
{{misc page}}
:::Fixed by marking them as extra. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
::::They were {{diff|390190|marked as not-extra again...
::::Just found the other more recent suggestion(s) I saw, about this:
::::*[[explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals#Category:Extra pages]]
::::*[[Template talk:comic#Extra Page vs Extra Comic]]
::::Makes sense to me. But I couldn't implement it, even if I wanted to change how everything works (admitedly, so that it works better, after maybe a little messing around)
::::Tempted to check exactly which pages are "extra=no" (i.e. have been changed, looks like should be "extra=page") and "extra=yes" (probably candidates for "extra=comic" treatment). But anybody can find that info, especially people who can do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:45, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

==What If? Toolbar button==
The button called 'What If?' on the left-hand toolbar currently links to [[What If? Chapters]]. However, users would be clicking this link possibly to go to the article about the blog or the articles about the books. So, I think we should have that button link to [[What If (disambiguation)|the disambiguation link]] instead. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 14:41, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

==Comic number off again==
The comic number is now a full nine numbers off? What's happened? [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]]]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 00:14, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
:See the subsection two above this... [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:27, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Main Page

2025-11-23T00:29:11Z

2.98.77.121: /* The comic explanation count is wrong */

{{TOC}}{{notice2|<big>'''To discuss the latest comic #{{LATESTCOMIC}}, [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}#Discussion|go to its own discussion]].'''</big> This page is for discussion of the [[Main Page]] itself. Other issues belong in the [[explain xkcd:Community portal|Community Portals]].}}

==New discussion page==
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)

Can someone get this to display the redirected page instead of the original? For example, I just moved the page [[2865: the Wrong Stuff]] to [[2865: The Wrong Stuff]], but it still shows the origional (wrong) page. Can someone change that? [[User:B for brain|B for brain]] ([[User talk:B for brain|talk]]) 19:17, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
:The problem seemds to have been (and was proven to be solved through) the way the template for the "newest comic" (re)redirects through the [[2865]] page, which was still pointing at the original place. Maybe there's a "two redirection limit", or a lower limit on top of the one(s) the wikicode already knew that it would (ordinarily) have to deal with to make the transclusion end up at the right place... I haven't delved too far into the mechanics, as I rarely visit the Main Page off my own back, so would never have noticed without your informative bugrep.
:Also, the 2865 redirect page probably needed changing, anyway, to keep track with everything else. I then made [[the Wrong Stuff]] redirect to the new name, too. And, just checking, it looks like someone (who has page-creation priviliges) needs to make a duplicate redirection page/valid target for [[The Wrong Stuff]], which right now will be a red-link. Or rename the "the" version to "The", but it depends upon how/if you want to cover all the bases for potentially valid (FCVO 'valid') searchig options. Wouldn't suggest wrong-case copies of anything else, but future searching using (external) historical data certainly could get caught up in this slight muddle... ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.49|162.158.74.49]] 20:20, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

==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)

I don't know if this is related, but the current comic count is off by 9.--[[User:1234231587678|1234231587678]] ([[User talk:1234231587678|talk]]) 22:56, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:The [[:Category:All comics]] page includes nine 'non-comics' due to recent changes. "extre=no" is being used, which makes it the exact same as a number-comic for those purposes (by not being "extra=yes", which would have put it in a different category). It's been discussed elsewhere, but nothing's been done about it yet.
:See [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical#Main page comic number]] for more info, but I think someone else talked about it elsewhere too. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:29, 23 November 2025 (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)

Now that we've been hacked, that doesn't seem like a very good idea. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.167.209|172.71.167.209]] 02:55, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
:We've really [[932: CIA|not been hacked]], and even I can undo the vandalism (though there are other ways to proof us from a recurrance of this latest laughable attempt, that proper admins might use). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.80|172.70.90.80]] 07:46, 25 July 2023 (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 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)


== 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)


== 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)

It's been 12.5 years now since Randall advised us to stop making fun of people who aren't in the loop: [[1053: Ten Thousand]]. For an inside joke, we could change it to "explain xkcd: now you're one of today's ten thousand." Alternatively, I like the semi-honest/semi-self-deprecating "explain xkcd: because jokes are always funnier with an explanation." -- [[Special:Contributions/103.111.183.139|103.111.183.139]] 19:54, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I go with the notion that there's nothing at all wrong with starting off less informed. It makes it easier to learn something new. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.165|172.69.79.165]] 23:53, 15 December 2024 (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)

I hope you kept your Bitcoins ;) --[[User:192·168·0·1|192·168·0·1]] ([[User talk:192·168·0·1|talk]]) 21:43, 5 May 2022 (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)


== 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)


==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)


== 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}}


== 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)


== 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)
:I think that a random button next to the XKCD button would make sense too, but also with the link on the sidebar. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.78|172.71.151.78]] 22:50, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
{{Done|Done!!!}}  Check [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}]] for an example of how it looks and works. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:54, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Is it just me, or do the random buttons seem to be biased towards the newer comics (particularly comics after 3000)? I've clicked it a whole bunch of times, and almost every time it's been one of the newer comics. Of course this could all be a fluke, but when I go to the Special:Random link I have saved to my bookmarks, it gives me what feels like a truely random one, and the one that the Random Comic links go to is the Special:RandomInCategory/All_pages link. ANy ideas for why any of this would be the case? [[User:Willintendo|Willintendo]] ([[User talk:Willintendo|talk]]) 19:20, 22 August 2025 (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)
:2865: "... you built a spaceship out of bricks" [[User:B for brain|B for brain]] ([[User talk:B for brain|talk]]) 12:56, 10 December 2023 (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)

In my opinion it is not an issue of political correctness, or any related flavour of woke nonsense. It is much simpler. Problem is, ''"It's 'cause you're dumb"'' is extremely pretentious and high-horsed, while simultaneously having absolutely no business being so. It feels like it is said by someone who unironically refers to him/herself in third person. Someone whose professional CV includes the fact that he/she used to be a class leader in second grade of primary school. Someone who used to remind a teacher about homework that the teacher was supposed to check, but forgot. Someone who still asks his/her mom to cut the crust off his/her sandwiches. I am not offended nor insulted by this line, I am just cringing because of that line's author being too socially inept to realize that he/she is not in the place to judge and attempt insulting readers' intellectual capabilities. Understanding Munroe's poorly drawn stick figures, diatribes, and diagrams originating from his neurotic turmoil does not come with an added bonus of entering the supposed high echelons of intelligence, and certainly not comedy nor humour. Munroe's "humour" actually requires only the superficial sliver of knowledge from any given domain to understand and thus does not really come with too many prerequisites, while at the same time it succeeds in making readers feel rare and exceptional as a result of being able to understand said "humour", and makes them feel much smarter than they actually are. That's why those comics were able to find quite a large audience within their niche. It is quite smart in itself, actually: while Munroe may be poor quality comedian, he seems to be self-aware enough to realize the existence of his own shortcomings, and compensate by "bribing" his readers via appeasing their egos. In return, the readers are willing to overlook poor comedic value of virtually all Munroe's content, as long as they are being deluded to feel exceptionally intelligent and sophisticated for understanding the comics' supposedly hyperintellectual subtle references. Meanwhile, doing what this website does: insulting that audience is basically, in principle, going in the completely opposite direction to what actually made Munroe's content successful in the first place, and hence is quite self-destructive from this website's point of view. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.207|172.70.242.207]] 00:20, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Sometimes you're dumb, sometimes it's the joke that's dumb.

It's been 12.5 years now since Randall advised us to stop making fun of people who aren't in the loop: [[1053: Ten Thousand]]. For an inside joke, we could change it to "explain xkcd: now you're one of today's ten thousand." Alternatively, I propose the semi-honest/semi-self-deprecating "explain xkcd: because jokes are always funnier with an explanation." Or we could just get rid of it altogether. It's long overdue. -- [[Special:Contributions/103.111.183.139|103.111.183.139]] 19:54, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

You know what, I'm glad it's stayed through all these years. It really dosen't feel insulting really at all, and sometimes it seems quite ironic because of the obscurity of some of Randall's jokes. I vote for it to stay, as I simply do not agree with the statement that it feels insulting and it adds a bunch of personality and wryness to the wobsite that wouldn't be there otherwise. [[User:Willintendo|Willintendo]] ([[User talk:Willintendo|talk]]) 14:07, 23 April 2025 (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)
::Where? [[User:B_for_brain|B for brain]] ([[User_talk:B_for_brain|talk]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4bo-hj-mDyOOUp_Yp0pug youtube channel] [https://bforbrain.weebly.com/ wobsite (supposed to be a blag)] 21:47, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
:::Whether or not it's the only place, you'll see this dealt with in the current [[Footnote]] page. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.6|172.70.86.6]] 00:37, 13 December 2023 (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)
:Done --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:04, 7 February 2025 (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]])
:Done --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:04, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

== 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.


== add non-numbered comics ==

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)

:: That is likely due to:
<nowiki></nowiki>
:: -- [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.65|108.162.237.65]] 17:21, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
::: Can we remove that? Randall catagorises it as a comic. So we should too. [[User:B_for_brain|B for brain]] ([[User_talk:B_for_brain|talk]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4bo-hj-mDyOOUp_Yp0pug youtube channel] [https://bforbrain.weebly.com/ wobsite (supposed to be a blag)]) 14:27, 14 August 2024 (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)
::The redirect page now deleted --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:10, 23 May 2022 (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)

... maybe it's because everyone else is dumb... ^_^ [[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]])

== 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 {{unsigned|Szeth Pancakes|01:37, 11 January 2022}}
: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. -- {{unsigned ip|172.70.230.57|02:31, 13 January 2022}}

== Set up X-Forwarded-For for correct IP address reporting ==

(I already posted this on David's talk, but I noticed he's no longer active... Hopefully an admin will read this here) This should be done server-side, as right now (and for a very long time) it's been reporting load balancer / cache IP addresses for all the users. With recent vandalism, it'd help. [[User:BytEfLUSh|BytEfLUSh]] ([[User talk:BytEfLUSh|talk]]) 22:27, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

== It says "all 2626 xkcd comics"?? ==

so i get that there are one less than the category, so it should be 2627 (at the time of writing, [[2628]] is the most recent) right? where is the extra one being removed from?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.33|162.158.78.33]] 21:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
:Backend counting error that'll be refreshed when whichever page is missing from the count is updated '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:39, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
:: Still not fixed. [[User:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e]] ([[User talk:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|talk]]) 23:32, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

== wait what ==

category:google doesn't exist yet, it links to its preview, but edit box is empty.
:can you fix the issue? thx [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 16:07, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

== How Long the Bot Takes to Update When New Comics are Released ==

I was wondering how long it takes the bot to scrape new comics from https://xkcd.com.
This is the second time I've seen a brand new comic appear there and it bugs me knowing that the explaination page is yet to be made.
I know it's a silly thing so I feel like maybe, if I know how long the bot takes to update the comic list then I might be able to bring myself to wait.
Thanks, --[[User:OmniDoom|OmniDoom]] ([[User talk:OmniDoom|talk]]) 03:55, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

==Escape speed is no longer incomplete==
Can someone delete the text at the top that says ''"We still need to complete some explanations like this one: [[2765: Escape Speed]]. All incomplete explanations are here."''? Escape speed is no longer incomplete, so that is wrong. [[User:B_for_brain|B for brain]] ([[User_talk:B_for_brain|talk]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4bo-hj-mDyOOUp_Yp0pug youtube channel] [https://bforbrain.weebly.com/ wobsite (supposed to be a blag)] 20:30, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
:I'm also going to raise the question on the community portal. [[User:B_for_brain|B for brain]] ([[User_talk:B_for_brain|talk]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4bo-hj-mDyOOUp_Yp0pug youtube channel] [https://bforbrain.weebly.com/ wobsite (supposed to be a blag)] 11:59, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

== Is the "incomplete explanations" listing still necessary? ==

The "Incomplete explanations" category used to be used for a lot of past comics that didn't have their explanations fully filled in, and the front page has encouraged people to help out with finishing those past comics. However, as of now, the only explanations marked incomplete are the three most recent comics; the last long-standing "incomplete" label I'm aware of was on [[1547: Solar System Questions]], and [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1547:_Solar_System_Questions&diff=prev&oldid=337545 its incomplete tag was removed about a week ago]. If going forward the only incomplete explanations will be the few most recent ones, it might make sense to finally remove the "incomplete explanations" banner and most of the mentions from the front page. Essentially like taking the beta labels off.

We don't "''need''" "explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between" anymore; we ''have'' those explanations. We have explanations for all 2910 xkcd comics; we don't need to say the latest three are incomplete. I'd assume the fact that this is a wiki would still imply contributions are encouraged (and we could keep the incomplete label on the newest comics, as well as the link to the incomplete category in the "New here?" section).

The only main thing I could see against this is when particularly detailed comics come out. For example, April 1 is a week away, and those comics are usually pretty big, so that might still warrant a banner asking for people to fill in the explanations. [[User:JBYoshi|JBYoshi]] ([[User talk:JBYoshi|talk]]) 21:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, I was just about to ask the same thing. We could replace the banner with a generic call to action linking to the list of incomplete explanations, but certainly I would say it should not call out [[1547: Solar System Questions]] specifically, because it's not actually incomplete anymore. [[User:Raxod502|Raxod502]] ([[User talk:Raxod502|talk]]) 22:13, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

== What in the world is going on? ==

See title. [[User:DeemDeem52|DeemDeem52]] ([[User talk:DeemDeem52|talk]]) 15:45, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

== Main Page Deleted ==

The Main Page was deleted at 15:39 by Markhurd. I thought he had passed? Posted an Admin Request to undo this action. Perhaps the account was hacked? [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 15:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
: why would they delete the main page--[[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.222|172.69.43.222]] 16:20, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don't_delete_the_main_page --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.233|172.70.211.233]] 11:59, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

== Petition to add comic #404 into equation ==

In the equation at the top of the main page, there is a -1 to discount comic #404, because it's "not really a comic". But it is a comic, even randall calls it that. So, can we add it back in? [[User:B_for_brain|B for brain]] ([[User_talk:B_for_brain|talk]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4bo-hj-mDyOOUp_Yp0pug youtube channel] [https://bforbrain.weebly.com/ wobsite (supposed to be a blag)]) 10:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

== Create my user page ==
User:Hipdict suggested entries
Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page. ???? I want to have my page set up for entry suggestions for hipdict. Got banned from twitter and wikipedia for illicit nationality. Don't ban me. [[User:Hipdict suggested entries|Hipdict suggested entries]] ([[User talk:Hipdict suggested entries|talk]]) 10:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
:You're not banned, you've just not yet passed the (astoundingly low) level of interactions that the site asks of you before you get to do more than (the already quite 'dangerous') editing of existing pages.
:But...
:#I have no idea how what you want to do is related to xkcd (and explaining it),
:#If you get banned from ''Twitter'' (as in 'X', these days, under the notoriously "Hey, anyone can say anything, even if it's totally wrong or defaatory!" attitude of Elon Musk) then you're clearly doing something wrong. Forgive me if I consider this an issue that is improbable (or improbable to be trivial).
:Now, I can't create User Pages (I have marginally less influence than you), but ''my'' instinct is that you really haven't proven why someone should help you out here. Even before we start to actively doubt whether someone should. If you're serious, bide your time and just contribute (...sensibly!) and... ...one day you ''shall'' go to the ball, Cinderella! (Not that I have any say in this, but I felt that I should at least comment.) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.138|172.69.79.138]] 17:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
:If you check [[explain_xkcd:Editor_FAQ#Why_can.27t_I_upload_pictures_or_create_pages.3F|This part of The Editor FAQ]], you'll have a good idea on why. [[User:B for brain|B for brain]] ([[User talk:B for brain|talk]]) 08:55, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
::Total edits by [[User:Hipdict suggested entries]], to date: one. The above edit. I could probably have predicted that, before any further discussion ensued. But it's ''only'' been a couple of weeks. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.179|172.68.205.179]] 09:49, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

:: Hey, I'm having the same issue. What exactly is the number of edits I must make before I can edit my own page? [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 17:13, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
:::I created it for you! You can now edit it. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:31, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
::: The actual requirements are [[explain_xkcd:Autoconfirmed_users|here]] [[User:Firestar233|guess who]] ([[User talk:Firestar233|if you desire conversing]] | [[Special:Contributions/Firestar233|what i have done]]) 19:34, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

== Subtle trolling? ==

I get the impression that over the past months, someone has been intentionally trying to make good explanations more pedantic and far more convoluted than they should be, undermining the basic goal of explaining the comics to those who don't understand them, and requiring in-depth knowlege of the subject matter to even begin to understand our explanations. Does anyone else have that impression? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.33|162.158.186.33]] 17:41, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
:As a long time reader (and tweaker), I'm not sure I've seen anything particularly like that. Unless it's ''me'' who you're seeing (but then I've not so recently ramped up, and certainly not intentionally more so).
:One person's pedantry is another's [[386: Duty Calls|making sure it's not wrong]], of course. Although I'm more likely to leave it it with good basic links (to avoid the need for prior in-depth prior knowledge), such as when I added a bit that linked to a thermostat's use of the bimetal coil in a recent one (which has now been edited out, courtesy of the supposedly explanatory AI version being splurged over all of it) in case someone ''didn't'' even know what this style of control normally did. Yes, mildly convoluted, but not leaving anybody wondering (if they cared to follow the link).
:What I think is a bad Explanation is one that cold opens with the very first paragraph being something like "The humour of this comic is due to the impracticality of using a Heisenfram terminal to access the upper five bilateral kelilactirals of your typical starship's FTL nanoprocessor", without leading into that sort of thing by introducing the context. (In that case, it would be ST:TNG's episode ''Rascals'', by the way.) Several times recently, I've been writing a lead-in paragraph so that the (original) first paragraph doesn't just hit the unwary reader in the face.
:That adds length, yes, but is surely for a good reason. Similarly I've moved subclauses (or parenethesised text) out of the sentence that has obviously had several points inserted within by several editors. Tried to make the flow work better. And, I would hope, reduces convolution.
:So... I'm no sure if I'm the cause of what you're suggesting, or am I the ''cure'' for it? Maybe a bit of both. But every editor has their own thresholds and ideas. I think the problem is when everyone tweaks things their way (inherent in the whole wiki-documenting process) and it comes out a bit spaghetti-ish. Satisfying nobody. Neither the simplifiers nor those who desire comprehensiveness. It's always going to be a possible problem! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.220|172.70.162.220]] 19:24, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

::I looked at the history of [[2989: Physics Lab Thermostat]], and I think you may be letting yourself go wild a little. I wikilinked the first use of the term "thermostat" there. People can look there if they want to learn how they ordinarily work. But these are things most people use every day. Shoving a bimetal strip in their face before they've gotten to any actual explanation of the comic is going to make them lose interest. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.183|172.70.207.183]] 09:06, 1 October 2024 (UTC)
:::If that was ''my'' edit, that sparked that, I remember shoving the bimetal coil in their face only ''part way down the explanation'', when it seemed to actually made narrative sense to let the reader go into the detail (if they wanted to) about bow this kind of thermostat might (normally) work. (Then someone went and wiped it all out for something else, and I noted even the basic lack of link to 'Thermostat' but... well, editing opinions were still being banded around so I let everyone get on with it...) Always improving, of course. Except when it's completely ruined by someone else who thinks they're improving things. ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.151|172.68.205.151]] 12:16, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

:{{w|Hanlon's razor}}. "So fix it." [[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.222|172.71.147.222]] 09:00, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

== Vsbattles wiki pages ==
[https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Xkcd There's Vsbattles Wiki profiles about XKCD]. Are they accurate? --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.183.65|172.68.183.65]] 19:41, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
* Though sincerely, the fact what [https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Hat_(xkcd) Black Hat] has [https://vsbattles.com/threads/10-a-9-c-with-weapons-tournament-round-1-match-8-black-hat-vs-aahw.133928/ managed to loose] to [https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Agency_Against_Hank_Wimbleton#Grunt Madness Combat Grunts] is strange. After all, Black Hat could just fly upwards and use ranged attacks (ranged weapons, crossbow, random words, lightning, head-cannon, etc). Besides, they forgot to add blowtorch, circular saw, crossbow, head-cannon and other things to the profile (at least as "Optimal Equipment"). --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.182.238|172.68.182.238]] 20:08, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
** About hypothetical rematch: Everything higher than 9-C was restricted - so, blowtorch and other things are for match with someone else. Black Hat and AAHW Grunts have roughly same speed ("Athletic Human"). Therefore, in the time AAHW Grunt can move 10 meters forwards, Black Hat can fly 10 meters upwards. If he moves upwards, he can bombard AAHW Grunts with variety of ranged attacks - eventually winning. AAHW Grunts can move faster in short bursts - but they can't cover 10 meters in said burst. Therefore, Black Hat should be able to defeat melee AAHW Grunts. AAHW Grunts with guns, on the other hand, would instantly shoot Black Hat down - as he has seemingly no means to deflect or block bullets. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.182.238|172.68.182.238]] 20:19, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
* And submarine ''could'' be instead put to "Optimal Equipment". After all, who would take a submarine to Colosseum? --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.182.239|172.68.182.239]] 20:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
* In case of match with someone else - Black Hat had [[496: Secretary: Part 3|fokker, nuclear submarine, and death ray capable of vaporizing human]] (what is [https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/References_for_Common_Feats#Vaporization_Feats "Small Building Level"]). --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.98.145|172.71.98.145]] 20:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

== Removing the Twitter link ==
Do y'all think it might be time to take down the twitter page and remove the link from this website? Considering recent events, it might be wise to disassociate from that platform and its nazi owner. Agree? [[User:Beret|Beret]] ([[User talk:Beret|talk]]) 07:44, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
:Caveat: I don't myself have a twitter account (nor reddit, instagram, mastadon, discord, facebook, geocities or... as you'll see... even here), and I ''used'' to lurk on tweet-threads (from those I was interested in, and/or to see what others were respinding about them), until they made the interface lurker-unfriendly. I have no doubt that twitter (or X, or xwitter/twix, whatever we should call it now) is now as much a wretched hive of scum and villainy as anywhere else I listed, perhaps still better than TruthSocial, and hopefully more than 4chan can be (depending on if you avoid /pol/, I suppose).
:The question is, does it help to not have Twitter/X/whatever? Is Randall still using it? (Genuine question... as an ex-lurker who now can't easily lurk, I don't know either way.) Are we either at risk of violating the current nebulous UA of the platform, whatever twisted version of Free Speech now applies whereby you can perhaps say anything ''except'' question the philosophical principles of its owner, or are we at risk of associating with it (which is a different think from the guy 'at the top')? Would we be enough conspicuously absent to make anyone think twice about their own presence?
:We can probably appreciate a good rocket, without having to condemn Starship on behalf of the guy who is paying for its engineers. We might even have a certain brand of electric car (I don't, as it happens but not for the above kind of reason). In the wide web of patronage, or association, I don't think that severing such a thin thread is going to do much good. But maybe whoever has the ability to actually do that may have other ideas.
:Like his 'boss', I'm not even sure he's an ''actual'' Nazi, either, just going with the pragmatic viewpoint/image that gets more vocal support. Actually being kind to people is out of fashion, "socialism is bad" as a mantra from an echo-chamber that wouldn't know actual socialism (let alone differentiate it from communism/marxism/etc) if it came up and waved a Republican-party-coloured flag in its face. Nor naziism.
:I do think you're right about the optics of their personal situations, and there's a definite slide into nazi-like policies by Elon's 'boss', but I believe the motives of both are both pure capitalism/saving their own legacies (and/or skin) in a ham-fisted and (at least in one case) neuro-atypical manner that would deserve sympathy if they hadn't grabbed so much privilege on the way there. But let's establish what alternatives there are (for those who feel the need to have such channels of communication), before throwing the baby out with the bathwater. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.159|172.70.91.159]] 13:05, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
::He literally did the nazi salute at the inauguration, and the whole essence of the campaign he supports has been predicated on blood libel about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets. The point is not that our single action will do something, but that the collective impact of millions of people and organizations deleting their accounts will make our grievance clear. [[User:Beret|Beret]] ([[User talk:Beret|talk]]) 21:12, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
:I think I'd be great if it's removed, but good luck finding a way to contact Jeff! He isn't even active enough to promote new admins, let alone change the site's HTML. {{unsigned|FaviFake|18:33, 30 January 2025‎ (UTC)}}
::I’ve tried to reach out to him via Twitter and email, but he hasn’t responded. Hell, I’ve even reached out to his friends about it on Bluseky and Reddit, but nobody has responded. There is nothing that we can do. Besides, can we try to keep politics out of this environment? I personally agree with your statements, but I want to try to prevent arguments breaking out, or providing trolls and vandals a target. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 19:03, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

== Incomplete Explanations ==

A few months ago, as I recall, there were only a few (~10-20) incomplete explanations on the site. Since that time, that number has ballooned substantially, with much of the bulk being taken up by old comics that had previously been removed from the incomplete list. Now, some of these additions are valid. However, many of them are either trivial (e.g. the precise date that a comic was uploaded) or easy enough to fix that one wonders why the person who went to the trouble of adding the incomplete tag didn't just fix the issue themself. Regardless, this creates an inaccurate impression of the amount of work that needs to be done. I propose that the incomplete tag be reserved for new comics and comics with glaring, difficult to fix issues. For trivialities (things not relevant to understanding the comic) and minor, easy to fix details, I suggest doing it yourself. Why else do you have an account here? [[User:Beret|Beret]] ([[User talk:Beret|talk]]) 04:39, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:Hey, you're talking about me! I agree a small portion of the comics i mark as incomplete could be edited by me directly, but almost all of them require more effort, either because:
:* I don't understand something that other, more skilled people might ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1393:_Timeghost&diff=prev&oldid=374706 like this edit you made.] I didn't initially understand what the 4 distinctions meant!)

:* I can't access the thing that's needed, like [[1561: Water Phase Diagram#Trivia]]. In that case you seem to have misunderstood the task: we need the original, non-edited version of the original image. For some reason, someone didn't update the OG filename and instead created a new file it seems? The image you see there is a modified version of the comic, not the oroginal.

:* I just don't have time to do things like research (e.g. [[Blue Eyes]], [[Title text]]) or repetitive tasks (like [[2288: Collector's Edition]])
:*''"many of them are either trivial (e.g. the precise date that a comic was uploaded)"''. I don't really think this is "not valid", the purpose of this wiki is to catalogue everything about xkcd, and the date a comoc is uploaded seems very important.

:* ''"Regardless, this creates an inaccurate impression of the amount of work that needs to be done."''. I'm not sure the representation is inaccurate, there are so many things left to do that one person could likely never finish them all on their own in a reasonable timeframe.

:Hope this addresses your concern! --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:24, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

== Side navigation menu ==

I'm convinced the navigation menu has changed. Didn't Latest comic used to be 2nd or 3rd down the list? I don't know if the inconsistent icons is new. [[User:Xseo|Xseo]] ([[User talk:Xseo|talk]]) 12:19, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
:It has been changed, yes, over the last week or so. Things were shuffled around, other background changes made, some icons 'lost' along the way. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.59|172.69.194.59]] 13:42, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

== Random comic button ==

I'm not sure, but the random comic button sure does love sending me to comics from 3000 and later. I've clicked it 20 times and it sent me once to 1506. Other than that, it has only sent me to the more recent comics. Maybe there's a problem? ¯\:)/¯ --[[User:1234231587678|1234231587678]] ([[User talk:1234231587678|talk]]) 00:58, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
:Yes there is a problem, see [[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles]] for more info. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:39, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical

2025-11-23T00:27:05Z

2.98.77.121: /* Comic number off again */

<noinclude>__NEWSECTIONLINK__
{{Community links}}

{|-
|valign="top" width="100%"|[[File:Crystal Clear app package settings blue.png|left|120px]] <big><big>Technical</big></big>

Technical issues ''about'' the [[explain xkcd]] wiki, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests. {{AddNewSection|Page=Explain XKCD:Community portal/Technical|Text=(+post)}}
|}</noinclude>
<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''RSS FEED:''' If you're here for the broken RSS feed, please see [[#RSS FEED]]!</div>

<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''Random Button Glitch:''' If you're here for the broken Random Comics button, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles|the Miscellaneous portal]]!</div>

----
==ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS==
<div class="plainlinks" style="background:#edf6ff; border:1px solid #a7d7f9; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 120%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at '''[[explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Technical]]'''.</div>

== Unable to view "what if?" page ==

The link to the page for the [[what if?]] blog displays an error: "No input file specified." [[User:JBYoshi|JBYoshi]] ([[User talk:JBYoshi|talk]]) 03:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

:This also happens to me on [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?]] Must be something with the ?s in the titles. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.66|172.69.22.66]] 15:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

::I've noticed that as well. I made a page in my userspace that redirects to the what if page, and for some reason that seems to work. ([[User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink|here is the link to the page]]) [[User:Blue screen of life|Blue screen of life]] ([[User talk:Blue screen of life|talk]]) 20:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

:::I have also noticed this but it is not just on pages with questions marks. Both [[259]] and [[1705]] show the same thing. A full list (as of 22 June 2020) of the ones i found is in the last reply to my report found here [[#2138_page_issues]] [[User:TomW1605|TomW1605]] ([[User talk:TomW1605|talk]]) 12:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

::::Both [[259]] and [[1705]] have an ({{w|E acute|e-with-accute-accent}}, Unicode U+00E9) in the URL, so for those pages, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?
::::For the "what if?" page, I had recently added a redirect from [[what if (blog)]] to get to it, and the [[What If]] disambiguation page has been updated with it, so at least we can get to it that way; and for the comic explanations, at least we can get to them by linking to their number-redirects (as [[58]] instead of [[58: Why Do You Love Me?]]); but not sure how to fix it overall. At the following page, it suggests tweaking an {{w|Apache HTTP Server|Apache}} {{w|Rewrite engine|rewrite}} directive in {{w|.htaccess}} (or a {{w|Common Gateway Interface|CGI}} setting in {{w|PHP}} if it's running on {{w|Internet Information Services|IIS}}):
::::* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Vmaw1tu5kkhyon0n
::::So maybe something about that has changed recently? Documentation:
::::* [https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule Apache mod_rewrite <code>RewriteRule</code> directive]
::::* [https://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.cgi.force-redirect php.ini <code>cgi.force_redirect</code> directive]
::::Summarizing a few points from [[User talk:SlashMe#Homeopathic Wiki|this related discussion]]:
::::* Only one of the site's [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:ListUsers?group=sysop 10 administrators] has made recent edits ([[Special:Contributions/SlashMe|SlashMe]]).
::::* Neither of the site's [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:ListUsers?group=bureaucrat 2 bureaucrats] ([[Special:Contributions/Jeff|Jeff]] and [[Special:Contributions/Lcarsos|Lcarsos]]) have made any edits recently.
::::* For admin access to the ''server'' itself, my limited understanding is that [[Special:Contributions/Jeff|Jeff]] might actually own the server, but may have also given admin access to [[Special:Contributions/Dgbrt|Dgbrt]]; however, neither of them have made edits recently.
::::But "most recent edit" might not be a good indicator, so I wonder of some of these folks are still involved in the project?
::::– [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 05:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
: Looks like it happens for any page that has a percent-encoding in the title. [[User:PoolloverNathan|PoolloverNathan]]<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Special:Contributions/PoolloverNathan|s]][[User talk:PoolloverNathan|talk]] [[Wikipedia:WP:SEAOFBLUE|the blue seas]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> 16:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

=== Known broken pages ===
(Redirects work, whereas links to the actual page are broken.)

Title containing e-accute-accent:
* [[259]] ↳ [[259: Clichéd Exchanges]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=259:_Clich%C3%A9d_Exchanges What links here])
* [[1705]] ↳ [[1705: Pokémon Go]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1705:_Pok%C3%A9mon_Go What links here])

Title ending with question mark:
* <del>[[what if (blog)]] ↳ [[what if?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=What_If%3F What links here])</del> <ins>fixed – content now exists at [[what if]], and [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if&limit=500 broken links] are in the process of being updated (see below)</ins>
* [[58]] ↳ [[58: Why Do You Love Me?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=58:_Why_Do_You_Love_Me%3F What links here])
* [[111]] ↳ [[111: Firefox and Witchcraft - The Connection?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F What links here])
* [[1205]] ↳ [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1205:_Is_It_Worth_the_Time%3F What links here])
* [[1841]] ↳ [[1841: Who?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1841:_Who%3F What links here])
* [[1913]] ↳ [[1913: A ?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=1913:_A_%3F What links here])
* [[2065]] ↳ [[2065: Who Sends the First Text?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2065:_Who_Sends_the_First_Text%3F What links here])
* [[2138]] ↳ [[2138: Wanna See the Code?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2138:_Wanna_See_the_Code%3F What links here])
* [[2236]] ↳ [[2236: Is it Christmas?]] ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=2236:_Is_it_Christmas%3F What links here])

=== Moved ===
I moved the [[what if?]] page to the [[what if (blog)]] page which I then changed to simply [[what if]] to fix this issue and because anyone new to this site would type that any way to see it. — [[User:Sqrt-1|The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭]] [[User talk:Sqrt-1|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Sqrt-1|stalk]] 06:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

:Still trying to wrap my head around it – so just to summarize, we currently have:
:
:* '''[[whatif]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=whatif&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if?]]''' (see below)
:* '''[[What If?]]''' – page broken ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=What_If%3F&redirect=no no-redirect link]) ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=What_If%3F What links here])
:** ↳ ''also redirects to'' '''[[what if?]]''' – page broken ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&redirect=no no-redirect link]) ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=what_if%3F What links here])
:*** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:*** ''content manually moved from'' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&diff=198070&oldid=197859 diff]) '''[[what if?]]''' ''to'' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if&diff=198071&oldid=197486 diff]) '''[[what if (blog)]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if_(blog)&redirect=no no-redirect link]) (''[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if%3F&action=history previous revision history] remains at'' '''[[what if?]]''')
:**** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:
:For completeness, we also have...
:
:* '''[[what if book]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if_book&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[what if#The book]] – actual content'''
:** Suggestion: for consistency, also add a '''[[what if (book)]]''' page that redirects here?
:
:...and the disambiguation page...
:
:* '''[[What If]]''' ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=What_If&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[What If (disambiguation)]]''' – disambiguation page
:*** ''links to'' '''[[17: What If]]''' (↲ '''[[17]]''' redirects here ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=17&redirect=no no-redirect link]))
:*** ''links to'' '''[[what if]] – actual content'''
:*** Suggestion: mention the ''book'' here as well, and link to its section in the [[what if]] page?
:
:...and these troubleshooting pages from [[User:Blue screen of life]]:
:
:* '''[[User:Blue screen of life/redirecttest]]''' – test page ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Blue_screen_of_life/redirecttest&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:** ⇒ ''moved to'' '''[[User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink]]''' – test page ([https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Blue_screen_of_life/whatiflink&redirect=no no-redirect link])
:*** ↳ ''redirects to'' '''[[What If?]]''' (see above)
:
:Given that the actual content of the "what if?" article now lives at '''[[what if]]''', I've started updating pages <ins>(except for Talk pages)</ins> to link directly there instead of the other redirect pages. All that's left to do are pages that link to the '''[[what if?]]''' redirect-page (which is broken). <del>Its [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if%3F "What links here"] special page is broken too, so it's difficult to find what pages link there – but now that it redirects to the [[what if]] page, you can see them indirectly from ''that'' page's [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/what_if&limit=500 "What links here"] special page.</del> <ins>[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=what_if%3F These] are the pages that still link there.</ins> There are still a lot of them to go.
:
:Also, should the following redirect-pages be simplified to have them redirect straight to the new [[what if]] page, instead of redirecting through the intermediate '''[[what if?]]''' page (which itself redirects there anyway)?
:* '''[[whatif]]'''
:* '''[[What If?]]'''
:– [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 17:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
:: Fixed the double redirects, don't ask me why we have so many pages for the same thing. [[User:PoolloverNathan|PoolloverNathan]]<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Special:Contributions/PoolloverNathan|s]][[User talk:PoolloverNathan|talk]] [[Wikipedia:WP:SEAOFBLUE|the blue seas]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> 16:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

== Discussion not displaying with comic ==

I am using FireFox on a Win10 machine. When I come to the site I can see the comic, explanation and transcript. But the discussion section is hidden. Even when logged in.

Any ideas?

: You say "when I come to the site". If the address bar says you are on Main_Page and you see the heading "Latest comic", then it's simply working as designed. Above the comic, click on "Go to this comic explanation" and you will see the comic plus discussion.

: Also, Steve, please sign your comments every time, with four tildes. That expands into your user name and a timestamp. Like this -- [[User:JohnB|JohnB]] ([[User talk:JohnB|talk]]) 10:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

== Random page sometimes takes me to an invalid address ==

Sometimes, when clicking on "Random page" in the left sidebar, the site will be blank apart from the text "No input file specified. ".

An example of such an URL is: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F

:I've noticed this happens for ''all'' URLs to comics that end in a question mark (or possibly any special character). Interestingly, this doesn't happen if you go to the comic from the search bar. [[User:Danish|Danish]] ([[User talk:Danish|talk]]) 23:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

== Bug on the main page ==

Bug Enviroment(Might work on other enviroments):
Ubuntu 20.04LTS
Firefox85.0
2021.2.7

Bug:
The front page reads: `Welcome, Main Page, to explain xkcd!` with `Main Page` formatted as a username,can someone fix this?

[[User:Xkcdjerry|Xkcdjerry]] ([[User talk:Xkcdjerry|talk]]) 09:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

== Occasional error via Cloudflare ==
Just a note that I'm getting Cloudflare errors of "origin not reachable" (sounds wrong to me, in my head it should be 'destination', but never mind) three times now in the last ten to fifteen minutes - of maybe a dozen general site-requests.

I've also been getting seemingly .CSSless formatted pages over the past few days, which I've been putting down to slightly dodgy wifi at my end (not unknown) but if I'm getting Cloudflare's error cleanly then perhaps it's been entirely upstream/downstream/however-you'd-describe-the-Explain-server. (Obviously CSS resource requests, as with images, are additional HTTP calls, but I still lump it into the single site-request ''per page'' in my 'dozen' estimate above. No obviously lost images, though, in incomplete pages - not that can't be explained by .CSS non-following, anyway.)

I had copy-buffered some of the exact info, but due to incompetence I recopied over it before coming here. If it happens again, I'll try to bring it over here. But (the way these things go) maybe it won't. FYI, though. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.52|141.101.98.52]] 12:04, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
: Not a Cloudfare error (looks like an error of the actual explainxkcd server) but every now and then (like just a few minutes ago) I get an error page that generally goes away if I immediately refresh. To whit:
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
: Not really a problem (occasionally happened while submitting an exit, and I have to confirm to the browser that I wish to repost the data, but this particular copied instance was through a more 'read-only' link-click, like most of the instances) but... in case someone finds this to be new and useful information... here you are! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 03:45, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
:OP, here, of the above 503 error report/casual mention. Obviously this is the same message that happened for an ''extended'' period of time over a number of days, but I've only just happened to find the site responding again and have not yet looked to see if it is explained as the same or different cause to the old intermittent issues (at root). I hope things are resolved from the major outage (server quota? bill payments? renewal/reconfiguration blips?) but wonder if I should report any future minor outages? I'm still smarting from the total loss of the fora.xkcd.com platform, a few years back, and while I'm not active enough here to consider a proper login (lurking as a freeloading anon-IP is good enough, usually, for my intellectual enjoyment, with all due apologies) I did have a slight pang of emptiness while it was out-of-order. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.79|141.101.99.79]] 15:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

== Add TemplateData ==

Add the {{mw|Extension:TemplateData|TemplateData}} extension to allow setting data for templates. This will help editors because they will be able to see the data of templates.

== MediaWiki 1.30.0?! ==

This wiki is [[Special:Version|currently]] on [[mw:MediaWiki 1.30|MediaWiki 1.30.0]] ([[mw:Release notes/1.30|release notes]]), the first of three releases of a version of MW that reached end-of-life in June of 2019 ([[mw:Version lifecycle]]). It's thus missing multiple important security updates from 1.30.1 and 1.30.2, not to mention the two years' worth of security updates since 1.30.x reached end-of-life. Even 1.31.x will be reaching end-of-life in just over a month.

If the sysadmins here update to [[mw:MediaWiki 1.35|MediaWiki 1.35.2]] ([[mw:Release_notes/1.35|release notes]]), that version will be maintained till September of 2023, with only a few security updates in the meantime. I would '''strongly''' encourage y'all to update to 1.35.2; to promptly update if there's a .3, .4, etc.; and to make sure you switch to the next LTS release (which will presumably be 1.39) well in advance of September of '23. (Note that this will also require updating to PHP 7.3.19 or later.) [[User:PinkAmpersand|PinkAmpersand]] ([[User talk:PinkAmpersand|talk]]) 07:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

== Uptime ==
Did the website just go down? [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 13:06, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

It was definitely down this weekend!
https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/nxrm65
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

== Comic template lappend breaks for standalone comic links ==

For example, https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html is changed to https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html/ which isn't valid [[Special:Contributions/172.69.90.15|172.69.90.15]] 15:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Template here, I think it needs to be changed to solve this https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Template:comic

exkcd page here https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Blue_Eyes

== May not be your problem, but FYI. ==

My typcal setup: Android tablet, with Chrome for Android (latest update), but also Firefox for Android (ditto), using default Gboard (likewise) for input.

Occasionally (notably within the last few weeks/maybe a month or so), when going in to edit an explainxkcd page through Chrome (it's how I divide up my browsing), I'm getting the cursor in the textarea box which ''can'' be used to Cut/Copy/Paste (as applicable and useful), but the on-screen keyboard isn't popping up. Page is fully loaded (can be refreshed, doesn't have the "stop loading" alternative), can go back (page viewing) and try to go back to the page editor (often to same result). Sitting and waiting doesn't pop the keyboard up, either (sat there for minutes). Happens both on home wifi and mobile connection.

If I transfer my attentions to the page to Firefox (copy URL, to use there... but I don't use that by default for expxkcd stuff) there's no problem, but then if I come back to Chrome again it seems to start working again ''anyway'' so not sure if it's just avoiding/flushing a transient problem that would also initially crop up with Firefox if I used that more.

Because editing is a different (mobile-optimised) process on Wikipedia and I can't be sure about any the equivalence of any other wiki out there (and it doesn't happen with anything else I regularly key into on Chrome) it's not something I've reproduced outwith this site, and of course desktop page-editing doesn't require touch-screen keyboard because there's a physical one.

Not getting much feedback with Chrome (really can't get on with their bugrep processes, it's too huge a project to make headway, IME), not even tried to pester the Gboard team and I've not ''seen'' anything said on here about this being a site-issue (not sure how it could be, as it's outside the remit of the core web-page rendering process and more an Android or App level of incompetence), but I thought I'd make a note of it here for future reference. Make of it what you will. Annoying but not game-breaking. And I just wanted to vent a little. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.147|172.70.162.147]] 16:54, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

== [[special:interwiki]] ==

where'd it go? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.200|172.69.68.200]] 05:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

== Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter ==

Seriously. Many scripts and such built for modern, supported versions of MW do not work here because it is so unbelievably undated. PinkAmpersand above basically covers the reason why. I also highly recommend adding the extension AbuseFilter (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter) as it immensely makes removing vandalism easier (by straight up disallowing or blocking those that do, esp if it's like the current formulaic massive-replacement vandalism.) [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 00:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

:Ditto. I feel like the main problem is that the sole person who has access to the backend either doesn't have time to update, doesn't have interest, or doesn't have the technical knowledge necessary. But yes, I agree - updating and installing an extension to help control vandalism would help this wiki tremendously. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 20:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

== ↑ ? ==

Why do some pages have ↑ at the very start? They can all be spotted by searching ↑
Is it a technical thing, vandalism, some sort of glitch? Maybe I'm just uninformed or being an idiot.
:Edit logs tell me that an IP user manually reverting vandalism somehow inserted one or more extra characters while manually reverting vandalism. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
::Should it be removed? It's not necessary and might be confusing for screenreaders... [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
:::Maybe not en-mass, I'd say. But I've dove in to delete a rogue leading <nowiki> </nowiki> tag left from a part of a prior vandalism (likewise, just before the {{template|comic}}-element) and I've promised myself that I'll remove any more that I spot (and now that arrow) in any future whole-page edit I make. Plus a small shopping-list of inessential but useful edits like making {{template|Citation needed}}s flow better when they're mispunctuated/etc.
:::But that's my solitary opinion. I'm sure hunting out and squishing this isn't a problem at all. I'm just balancing my own peculiar brand of OCD with what is somehow my also my own version of casual apathy towards other details. (Also, it probably looks better for a named account of recognised good standing to start editing potentially hundreds of pages in a session, rather than myself... potentially indistinguishable from the IP who seems to relish worn out memes in a general page-trashing.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.121|162.158.159.121]] 12:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

== Is there anything else we can do to prevent vandalism? ==

There's been quite a significant uptick in vandalism recently, and I don't feel we have any effective tools to combat it. I believe one of the biggest issues here is due to the way logged-out editing works on this wiki. Blocks are completely ineffective at slowing vandals, and IP editors can vandalize with basically nothing we can do to thwart them other than revert-warring. '''Is there a better way?'''

There's been some discussion of installing AbuseFilter, but I'm not sure anything became of it. We could disable logged-out editing, but that would likely be counterproductive as we get lots of legitimate contributions from logged-out users. If there's a way to switch to location-based IPs, we could rangeblock problematic users as well as proxies. Does anyone have any ideas? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.145|162.158.78.145]] 16:11, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:I'm sort of making server side changes via telegraph so an extension is probably going to take a while to get installed. Takes a bunch of emails and followups to get single variables changed in the mediawiki settings file. There is an email verification option, and some edit frequency variables that could be set to make spam more time consuming. Don't love range blocks but wouldn't mind getting the CDN IPs dealt with so we can actually use the IP bans again. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 17:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
::I'm very grateful that you're working on changes under the hood. What do you think is the best way to deal with disruption in the meantime? [[User:Vandalbane|Vandalbane]] ([[User talk:Vandalbane|talk]]) 17:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:::Could borrow a patrol bot like the ones people on main wikipedia have, could ask around. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
::::There's not really a drop-in solution that you can use, especially since the server's MediaWiki version is not in sync with Wikipedia's (so a lot of the APIs etc have completely changed; when initially reverting vandalism I tried importing some scripts from enwiki but they failed as a result), but also because the bots have gotten pretty complex (using machine learning provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, for example). [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 03:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::Oh I do notice mediawiki hasn't been upgraded in a while. Looks like new version of mediawiki should be dropping extremely imminently, would be nice timing for an upgrade '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

== Rollback ==

Does the rollback permission exist on this wiki? [[User:Vandalbane|Vandalbane]] ([[User talk:Vandalbane|talk]]) 17:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:The rollback permission of course exists but there's no group called "rollbacker" like you'd find on Wikipedia (limited to admins). You'd need the sysadmin to change the configuration to add one, which as established is not really an option right now. [[User:CRLF|CRLF]] ([[User talk:CRLF|talk]]) 03:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

== What happened to custom JavaScript? ==

I put some code in <code>[[User:Some user/common.js]]</code>, but it is not alerting 'hi' every time I load a page. Why can't we execute JavaScript anymore? Is it in response to the [[Project:Crap|crapping]] incident? [[User:Some user|Some user]] ([[User talk:Some user|talk]]) 21:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
:Entirely because of that, yeah. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:51, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

== My IP ==

Why is my IP address a Cloudflare address in Norway? Is this a joke of some kind that I'm missing?

Other wikis like Wikipedia are showing me my actual IP when I go to [[Special:MyContributions]], so I suspect this is a wiki misconfiguration. It changed again while I was typing this. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.194|162.158.222.194]] 16:55, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
:All IPs (as this one will be) are from Cloudflare gateway IPs, because that's the default IP that the Wiki understands as the source. Cloudflare mediates all the traffic, and perhaps to some advantage (not being privvy to the logs, I can only guess how much it insulates the true server from extreme problems, but I bet it does in some way).
:There have been suggestions before to change some setting (in the MediaWiki implementation? ...can't recall exactly) to have it pick up and use the IP that the gateway reports (in its meta-request) was the origin, but that's not been enacted for Idunnowhat reason.
:Because the black-box that is the Cloudflare traffic shapes in various ways, you will find that a single user will jump around 'apparent' IPs, and I've also been in the relatively embarassing situation of replying to another IP's info and finding that I've registered on the exact same IP so that it looks like I'm stooging myself, or something.
:On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they ''were'' going to try and do the necessary tweak.
:As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. ''If'' those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.24|172.70.85.24]] 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
:fyi it is supported in MediaWiki through <code>$wgCdnServers</code>. See [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Cloudflare#Integration_with_MediaWiki MediaWiki’s introduction]. {{unsigned|物灵|06:58, 6 April 2025}}

==Main page in categories==
{{notice|'''This discussion is marked as duplicate.''' See [[#Main Page|this discussion]].}}
[[Main_Page]] was found wrongly appearing in some newly-created categories, such as [[:Category:Cosmology]]. Could you fix it? --[[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 17:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
:Never noticed this myself, but I'll take it as read. Before checking myself, I'm wondering if this could be when the main page 'inherits' tags from the Current Comic that it features. And thus solve itself (whilst gaining others) upon a newer Current Comic. (Must surely inherit "Monday Comics"/etc, on schedule every week.)
:If it is that, perhaps the solution lies in the details contained within https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories#Categories_and_templates_(transcluded_pages)
:Or maybe I'm wrong about it. But I have no rights to edit (thus at least examine the 'code' of) the Main page, to check my snap theory, as with most people. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 19:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

This happened again in [[:Category:Airplane banner]]. [[User:I27.O.O.I|I27.O.O.I]] ([[User talk:I27.O.O.I|talk]]) 09:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
:Yes, and it lasted as long as the latest comic was still one with particular categories. I don't intend to worry about it. If someone goes to a category that interests them and looks at the main page, as temporarily advertised, they're likely to find (as part of it) a comic which is indeed in that category. Doesn't sound like a big problem to me, except for determinin why some cats (e.g. Friday Comics) ''don't'' link to the Main page when they might be expected to...
:(PS, I know for sure that I27.O.O.I isn't the same person as ColofulGalaxy (and various others, beyond even those with the bloomin' obvious "CG" initials or other recent spoofs on the RFC1918 addresses), and I don't think I mind too much, but faking disagreements between your various IDs isn't helping, anyone... smells too much of trying to establish alibis in advance of your next attempt to vandalise the site with stupid stuff. And doesn't impress me, so I doubt it impresses anyone else either. As long as you're just doing sane things, however, I'll accept your little idiosyncracies.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.32|162.158.74.32]] 19:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:(PPS: You left your fingerprint on this latter attempt to 'rescue' [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2659:_Unreliable_Connection&curid=25530&diff=307289&oldid=307282 this page]. - Spammer a few minutes before midnight, my IP reversion happened shortly after. A little later "Elisabeth" then re-spammed (modified), then another IP immediately jumps on it to restore it but with the modified undo-summary line clearly indicating that some sort of a game is being played. Please don't, it's not clever.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.34|172.70.90.34]] 02:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This doesn't happen to date categories, but it happens in manually added categories such as [[:Category:Statistics]]. [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 21:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

==Cannot create user page==
It says: There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page. [[2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[Talk:2659: Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 22:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
:(Removed alternative text in the link involved, to not hide behind trickery.) I think you know that there's no problem with [[2659: Unreliable Connection]] itself, except that it had become one of several pages targeted for spamming, the only one then locked down, then finding that the spammers just retargeted to its Talk page, etc.
:I'm torn between "not assuming bad faith" and "don't feed the trolls", as competing principles, so I'm spelling out the situation. However much a tribute you might think it could be, I don't think there's a future in having a new username that's directly referencing a comic which has become so frequently seen in the recent history of this wiki's edits.
:Obviously any genuine contributions are more than welcome. So prove me wrong, why don't you? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 03:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

::Could you help now? [[User:Unreliable Connection|2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[User talk:Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 09:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

: I've created your talk page. I guess that what you intended is to have a backup or mirror page for comic [[2659]]. Am I right? [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 20:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

== Fanmade comics ==
A fanmade comic appeared on xkcd. Could you edit the template? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.23.100|172.69.23.100]] 07:21, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
:You're going to have to say more about it, at least for me. Apart from the Sandbox attempt to make a page, I haven't seen the comic you're describing anywhere. Certainly not anywhere official. Link, for our benefit? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.66|172.70.85.66]] 10:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

==Why doesn't this code block work?==
Does anybody know why the code block at the end of [[Transcript on xkcd|this page]] doesn't work? I've tried everything and it still looks like plain text

== Can't add RSS feed because of pubDate value on 27 Nov 2015 ==

When I try to add the RSS feed in Nextcloud News feed reader I get an error <code>Impossible to convert date : Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</code>.

[https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexplainxkcd.com%2Frss.xml W3C Feed validation] says that <code>pubDate must be an RFC-822 date-time</code> and points "Pacific Standard Time" portion as the cause of the error: <code><pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</pubDate></code>. Can you please fix the timestap for this?

== Admin request posted here because of vandalism ==

I can not currently access the admin requests page because it has been vandalized... can someone please protect the latest comic page (2805). There is some pretty childish vandalism going on there right now. Thanks!
:It's not the latest, seems like ALL. I went back to 2804, 2803, jumped back like 15 comics, all the same thing. To me the most offensive part is doing it with a nonsensical image. And why pipe it through Archive somehow? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 02:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
::UGH. the vandals are back at it again... we need to lock xkcd pages @NiceGuy [[Special:Contributions/172.70.39.2|172.70.39.2]] 00:59, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

== Way to contact the site hosters? ==

As many have pointed out the software this wiki runs on is horribly outdated. WikiEditor also isn't here for some reason. Quite a bit of messages here have seen no action. Is there some kind of contact form to reach the hosters? {{unsigned|Aaron Liu|00:36, 10 October 2023}}
: There are various levels of admin who do intervene, as and when jecessary, but I understand that the (active) ones closest to the actual hosting level of intervention are not really ready to do the (increasingly greater) degree of uprooting necessary to get a "working" system to be "marginally better working", by way of that very dangerous middle-ground of potentially being ruined entirely.
: I appreciate and anticipate the counter-arguments regarding letting it go totally unupdated, of course, just I've personally seen enough failures (participated in some, or been the actual invokee, myself) to be very sympathetic to the "if it aint (too) broke, don't fix it" tendency. But that inertia is not the only factor, of course, and the full motivations (or lack of them) of those involved is not for a lowly IP like me to explain, even if I think I know... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.42|172.69.195.42]] 01:24, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
:: Have they posted some sort of statement? It also is most definitely not “marginally” better working, compare the source editor to that of Wikipedia and look at topic subscription etc features. Not to mention a lot of security fixes haven’t been added and this version has reached EOL long ago. Updating also would not ruin this entirely…[[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 17:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
:: Some have also said that quite a bit of assistive scripts for modern versions don’t work. Visual Editor, while horrible, is still easier for new people to get started with. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 17:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I've found a new reason: This wiki doesn't even allow loading userscripts! [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 01:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
:That might actually have been a conscious decition, after a 'certain user' caused chaos here, not so long ago. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.25|162.158.74.25]] 19:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
::It was about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.143|172.68.174.143]] 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
::Huh? What happened? Is there a place to request gadgets then? [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 02:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
:::"What happened" involved automated vandalism (from someone who been doing it manually, then found the "better way") though I couldn't tell you the exact details, there were automated 'unvandalism's made in response, and theusafBOT/etc does some of that still, in response to non-automated(/off-site scripted) vandalism/errors that it can actually catch before ordinary users (or IPs like me) can. But certainly a certain brand of scripting was turned off to curtail the 'high intensity' vandalism phase.
:::You're more or less in the best place to request things, right here. Whether updates, (re)adding functionalitu or tweaking site settings. Can't tell if those who ''can'' do these things can't or won't do them... Or are actually absent, instead of just not replying. The cavalry has been known to come running in when necessary (e.g. when "what happened" happened) so it could be any manner of non-response (until you get one). Not necessarily the best state of affairs, but better than being confirmed absentees.
::::I ran a bot to mass-edit pages by replacing their content with the word "crap" repeatedly. I was 15 then, and I thought it was funny. It wasn't. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.143|172.68.174.143]] 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
:::As an occasional but infrequent actual-Wikipedia editor, too, I must say that if the Visual Editor is what I currently have to use for that (at least as an anonIP when using a mobile device, which tends to be when I get the urge most) then I like the unaugmented editor here more. Straight up, honest, un'wizarded' interface, where you only have to get used to markup details and not a WYSIWYG editing environment (as well?). Not sure I'd be happy with an even ''more'' 'assistive' script imposed upon me, like I dislike modern generations of Windows (and 'user friendly' linux dists). So can I just ask that functional/visible changes of the kind you seem to be asking for, if made available, aren't overimposed/left as options rather than the default (or only) choice...? Ok, so I can (or would have to) adapt, but I'd rather not. Of course, I have no weight to pull in this matter, it's just an afterthought (even as I wish you good luck with raising an admin's eyebrow, in some useful manner). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.135|141.101.98.135]] 05:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
::::I am not asking for VisualEditor, which no one likes on Wikipedia either. For some blasted reason they made it edit HTML instead of Wikitext and it’s clunky and loads for a very long time.
::::I’m asking about the WikiEditor, aka Wikipedia’s source editor. In VE, click on the pen next to the publish button and click on “source editing”. That editor makes this one look like freaking Stone Age, syntax highlighting is especially a game-changer. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 16:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
: There’s also the annoying ReCaptcha v2 every single edit… it seems like it would be relatively easy to switch to v3 which only makes you do the challenge when you’ve visited a bit too much. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 16:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
:: Unfortunately, that would make things easier for someone who wanted to do mass vandalism like I did. If it didn't do it every time, someone could still edit quite quickly. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.192|172.68.174.192]] 18:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
::Well, I can tell you that it doesn't always demand that I fulfil more than a tickbox (most trouble I have is when it fails to connect to give me the tickbox (or respond with anything useful when I do), for which I'm forced into one or more Previews until it will. When it ''does'' ask me to do something about it, I do often get forced through two or more request to identify traffic lights, motorbikes, stairways, bridges, hills, tractors, buses, etc, etc, etc... But I think that's more the Tesla-training Algorithm being nust greedy for my attention than the Robot-sentry having a less casual attitude to my attempt to edit. (I believe I'm on a usually untroublesome source IP/Cloudflare gateway, but it could also depend on how many others try to do things via (part of) the same route. Very, very rarely I get Google Search requesting something similar of me ((It: "You have made a lot of searches", me: "Of course I'll have play your little game, but this is my first lookup today...")), which I'm sure isn't Cloudflared, so it might reach back to my ISP's gateway and what fellow users are currently getting up to.)
::As for the guy above (and you, Liu), can't speak for how well or badly others on your own 'choice' of gateways behave. Or yourselves. Luck of the draw? For the first part, at least. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.174|172.69.195.174]] 20:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
:::MediaWiki 1.40 automatically tags all edits that remove over 90% of page text with "mw-replaced". You could block all edits in mainspace with that tag, either if MediaWiki has it or through the AbuseFilter extension. While I can complete the CAPTCHAs, it's very annoying to need to Captcha every edit on a place where the main focus is edits. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 03:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
:::Plus, v3 doesn't just do nothing. It tracks how your cursor moves to see if it's robotic, while v2 annoyingly gives you the challenge every time. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 20:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
::::Presumably for touchscreen control (like mine, right this moment), it does something else than track a nonexistent mouse-pointer's passage across the monitored elements of the display... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.190|172.70.90.190]] 12:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
::There are a few MediaWiki plugins that help keep vandalism/spam under control without requiring users to solve a Captcha every time they make an edit. I use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Moderation on the wiki I maintain, and it works very well. However, it does require that there be enough active moderators to approve edits, as it basically requires every single edit to be approved before it's posted. Thus, it also introduces some "lag" between when stuff is written and when it can be seen by others. I think it could work if the extension could be installed (I'm not even sure if it's supported on this version of MediaWiki) and if a good list of moderators could be put together. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 20:02, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
:::I disagree with requiring edits to be approved. Unless we have extremely high vandalism, just filtering out the above tags I mentioned and using ReCAPTCHA v3 would be enough. [[User:Aaron Liu|Aaron Liu]] ([[User talk:Aaron Liu|talk]]) 23:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
::::Ok, fair point. However, that wouldn't stop human vandalism, just vandalism from bots. I'm not sure how much human vandalism there is, though, so it might not even be a problem. [[User:Obwankenobi|Obwankenobi]] ([[User talk:Obwankenobi|talk]]) 12:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
:::::It's hard (for us 'civvies') to know how much bot-vandalism is stopped but [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Log/newusers&offset=&limit=500&type=newusers&user= probably a lot], most of which we never see, with [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2503:_Memo_Spike_Connector&diff=335487&oldid=335486 occasional ones] we might see having be dealt with. (I'm guessing these things are rare (temporarily-)successful 'bots, because flesh-and-blood vandals wouldn't be occasionally doing essentially the same insta-reverted thing on a thematically-small set of pages, over several ''years'' without moving on. It has to be a lucky unattended script-based effort that just keeps trying the same things over and over with an easily revertible but tangible result happening only infrequently.)
:::::More obvious human vandalism tends to rumble on, with occasionally a spate of it as someone gets short-term kicks for it. Though some of them seem may repeat themself after a break. Friendly humans and friendly 'bots both tend to provide the main anti-vandalism responses fairly quickly, though, depending upon what kind of a mess they caused. I've seen worse places, definitely, and it's by no means a losing battle against chaos, just regular skermishes.
:::::Not wanting to tempt fate, of course. I guarantee that there'll be some fool that takes all this as a challenge, so I just have to trust to the Good Guys keeping on keeping on. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.71|172.70.90.71]] 14:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

heyo, is there a way to add actual citations to explainxkcd instead of the template citation needed? couldn't find anything, but i'm pretty new here - thanks in advance. [[User:Nigga|Nigga]] ([[User talk:Nigga|talk]]) 21:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
:Not that I have much faith in your usernae lasting long (you're 'that guy', aren't you? ...in which case you know anyway), but for the sake of anyone else who needs to know:
:*If you mean "add an actual 'citation needed' tag", then it's {{template|Actual citation needed}} that you'll use.
:*If you mean "add an actual citation link to somewhere", then:
:** Link to URLs with [].
:*** A link such as [<url>] will give you a superscript-number link, which isn't pretty, IMO.
:*** A link such as [<url> <text>] (that's a space between the two) will link <text> to the URL, just work it into the sentence you're writing, fairly easy
:** Link to internal (or cross-wiki) pages with [[]].
:*** [[<page title>]] will make a literal link to <page title>.
:*** [[<page title>|<text>]] (with a pipe) is how you make the <text> your link.
:** You can use the last to link specifically to wikipedia's cross-site format, but for that it's best to use {{template|w}}
:*** <nowiki>{{w|<page title>}}</nowiki> (w-pipe...) uses the page title
:**** It will use the link as if the first character is uppercase, so you don't need to capitalise that. Other case-sensitivity is preserved.
:**** <nowiki>{{w|<singular page title>}}s</nowiki> will link the obvious pluralisation of the page title, just to save you effort
:*** <nowiki>{{w|<page title>|<text>}}</nowiki> (w-pipe and pipe) lets you use entirely alternate text.
:** There's also templates that shortcut (or make easier on the eye, or add appropriate warnings) for some other commonly referenced external sites, from xkcd's own what-if to TVTropes.
:...hope that helps everyone that doesn't already know these few simple bits as relate to wikis in general or this wiki in particular. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.218|172.71.242.218]] 22:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

== Confirmation Email Bug ==

Hi. I've been trying to get my email confirmed so that I can get pinged when pages are edited, but I just can't find it, even after trying multiple times. I use Gmail, and yes, I have checked my spam folder. Has anyone else had this issue? EDIT: I see that others have had this issue, but the admins haven't done any action to solve it, except for one sarcastic comment by Davidy22 back in 2014. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 00:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

== Lack of Userpage ==

Hey, I joined a few years ago, but I still do not have a Userpage. Can you make one for me? I do not have the permission to do so. [[User:GreyFox|GreyFox]] ([[User talk:GreyFox|talk]]) 22:47, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
:This is actually your very first post, after joining a bit more than a year ago ("18:35, 14 November 2023 User account GreyFox (talk | contribs) was created"). I'm sure someone can oblige (not me, for obvious reasons), but you've not done much to contribute (at least under this account), which would have then eventually brought you to the point where you ''can'' just self-create your Userpages/etc. So your request is a bit out of the blue.
:Just so long as we all know where we stand, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.227|172.69.194.227]] 09:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
::Oh, thanks! Do you know the exact number of edits I need to create it?
:::50 to be autoconfirmed. Also, please sign your comments. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 15:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

== server errors ==
is anyone else constantly getting 503 errors? [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 17:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
:yup, been seeing those all the time. Also seeing that the server is down a lot of time-it suggests me to Google for what I’m “looking for” [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 17:18, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
::503s are fairly common (often when I'm in a rush), and have been for... well, certainly years, maybe more than a decade (though more common during major vandalism/anti-vandalism surges). I had, however, noticed a recent blip (during the last day or so) of the Server Down/Try Google page that you refer to, which I haven't seen for a ''long'' time (not really sure when, but maybe five years or so ago). In fact, I probably got Cloudflare 'rejections' more, during aformentioned vandal-overloading.
::Without any access to the admin logs, I can only speculate as to what might be sparking it. But service (notwithstanding the brief page-refusals themselves) seems to be happily unaffected. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.249|172.70.160.249]] 20:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

== Allow new users to edit their own page ==

I found someone asking if we could change this in the proposals page (Community portal/Proposals: Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed (not a typo)). [[User:PDesbeginner|PDesbeginner]] ([[User talk:PDesbeginner|talk]]) 14:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

== Technical difficulties? ==

I keep getting a message that says: "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Cannot access the database)"
It's happened a lot so I was wondering if there was a specific cause behind it and perhaps a way to fix it.
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.65|172.68.54.65]] 00:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
:yeah, I’ve been getting those errors too. I can’t even log into my account before it says that there’s an error again. I’ve been steadily receiving them for a couple months, but never like today. From Recent Changes, it doesn’t look like anyone is spamming the wiki, so maybe it’s an attack of some kind. You’ll need to contact the admins who have access to the server and can poke around, but good luck getting [[User:Davidy22]] or [[User:Jeff]] online. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.130|172.69.135.130]] 17:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
::update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.129|172.69.135.129]] 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

== The site is collapsing ==
503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
:heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
::I’ve messaged Davidy22 and Jeff about it, hopefully they see it and reply. It looks fine right now, appears that it works horribly at times and fine later. Due to the on-off nature of it, I would suspect DDoS attacks, as a 503 error means that the server can’t process the request, which occurs with DDoS attacks. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 21:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
:::update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
::::October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
::Agree, the situation is not terrible but feels extremely unstable. What happens if the wiki just breaks, and nobody can even contact Jeff? I feel like these errors are happening more and more frequently. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
:::Were you around for the (hacking-enforced) sudden ending of the xkcd fora? All things end.
:::But (touch wood) the 503s/other connection refusals are a lot less frequent right now, so I'm not actually quite so worried as I might occasionally have been. What's more likely to happen is that the hosting plan, physical hardware and/or domain reaches an end and then... that's probably it unless someone with the wherewithall somehow manages to drag it back up again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.14|162.158.74.14]] 00:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
::::I really don't like the idea of this site becoming permanently unavailable :( This makes me want to contribute less! I was not around back then, no. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
:I've been getting these errors a lot as well all of a sudden. Sadly from what I've read on these pages, the sysadmin has basically left and ghosted everyone. The moment the site fully breaks for whatever reason, ExplainXKCD will be history. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.58|172.71.178.58]] 15:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
::It's probably not the site breaking (as in, it's not intrinsically failing), just that unrestrained useless traffic to it (I theorise, elsewhere that it's a sudden rise in inconsiderate AI-training has led to a rise of ungoverned degrees of site-scraping) is marginalising our more legitimate attempts to interact. ''It would help'' to get some Administrator-led process to mitigate it, but it really should be better dealt with more towards the gateway-side of the connection (or the scrapers gradually toning their scraping down, but I doubt that'll happen). It, say, Cloudflare ''itself'' gets a good solution in place to dissuade such high attempts to access all the sites it otherwise proxies for, then we'll be back to just the site bumbling along in its ''slightly'' unmaintained condition. We then still have a couple of sub-administrators, a Bot and a good population of other users to keep things running against more trivial issues (short of hardware/infrastructure/financial failures). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.186.141|172.68.186.141]] 16:55, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

== List of All Comics ==

I think that FaviFake and I have accidentally broken the All comics page. When clicked, it brings you to the page List of all comics, which displays the comics 3000-3002 (as of right now) instead of the list of all comics (oops-my bad). How do we fix this? There’s also the page List of all comics (3000-3500), but the TheusafBOT ignores it. Can someone more technical help troubleshoot this problem? Again, sorry for making a muck of things. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
:Oh I'm sorry, I created a new topic for this and I didn't see this one. I noticed the [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]] today and scheduled it for deletion because we never make such a page until we have exactly 500 comics to put there. Also, the name is wrong, it should say 3001-3500.
:The page [[List of all comics]] is supposed to display comics 3001-3005, not all comics. You might be confusing it with [[List of all comics (full)]], which would work perfectly if [[List of all comics]] displayed the last 3 comics. I have no idea why the bot stopped updating it. Maybe it will work now that the wrong page is scheduled for deletion? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:15, 31 October 2024
::Wait a second, why did you move the List of all comics to [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]]? It seemed to me like everything was working fine before you moved it [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
:::I was trying to copy the content to [[List of all comics (3000-3500)]], and accidentally broke it. Sorry! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
::::Yeah I can confirm the content and the entire edit history was moved to the incorrectly-titled page that's now scheduled for deletion. I guess maybe we didn't really need the edit history on that page, but who knows.
::::Weirdly, the bot seems to have restored the page as it was and then stopped doing its thing. Since we're the only ones here, I suggest you manually create the missing rows for the new comics and we'll see if that works when the next comic drops. If it doesn't, I'll contact the maintainer and creator of the bot myself. Sounds good? :) [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
:::::Sir yes Sir! 🫡 [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 04:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
:::::: Great, thanks! I can also do it this afternoon if you don't have time. I realise my previous messages read like orders lol, they were supposed to be suggestions to try and fix the issue. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:18, 1 November 2024

== The [[List of all comics]] is no longer being updated automatically ==

Hey everyone, I noticed the bot isn't updating this page anymore: [[List of all comics]]. There are supposed to be five comics in it but there are only two at the moment. Is this supposed to happen? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 05:06, 31 October 2024

== 2034: Equations error? ==

One of the TeX math-thingies (sorry for the informal writing), is showing this error: "Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \oint". Idk why it's showing this, can someone fix this? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.48|108.162.237.48]] 19:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:It's a long-standing error, to do with the background processes that turns the TeX-style markup into embedded images. All equations (or whatever it might be that the particular MathML was being used to render) that were originally given cached-imagery ''still work fine'', but it seems a later update made it so that if you adjust it at all (even slightly), it no longer has the route to produce the embedding cleanly.
:It can probably be solved by rolling back some module(s) that got refreshed quite some time ago, though the advised fix is to actually fully update them (and/or reconfigure the backend scripting) to work with all the newest versions of the original tools. Unfortunately, the people (or maybe person) who would do this is not too active at the moment (may also not be up to speed on everything, either, if it involves a bit of more tricky administration), so we're left with the occasional problem establishing the texvc handler.
:Not sure which page you're encountering this on, but sometimes if you look back in the edit history you can find a working version of the thing you're seeing go wrong. If it's an aesthetic difference (e.g. the presence or absence of a spacing character), you might be able to just restore the render-cached version and make do with it not looking ''quite'' right.
:If it's a necessary change that was made (e.g. "''dt''" instead of "''dx''", which is definitely wrong the old way), or it seems never to have a valid render, then there's two obvious solutions:
:#Make your own image of it as it should be and (with a suitably auto-validated account, or via a handy external image hosting service and/or a more mature account here) get that embedded in place of the markup-source, or
:#Replicate its appearance in more basic (by standard) but complex (by source needed) markup. Combinations of basic wikimarkup and HTML can do most 'fiddly positional' things, see [[2614: 2]] for a numerator/denominator layout, for example.
:Not as 'simple' as TeX-markedup. But, on the other hand, the "\oint" symbol is "∮", so perhaps all you need to do is copy'n'paste that actual unicode symbol to wherever you found the problem, and use that instead, and forgo the TeX version altogether? (Might not show on some displays, but probably enough to make it a minority issue.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.105|172.70.90.105]] 22:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:Had the brainwave that I could probable ''search'' for the offending \oint, actually. Did so, found [[2034: Equations]], noted that it was the only (current) rendering issue and therefore just did the pasting over myself. Looks good for me, but obviously might not help (but not make worse) others' viewing of it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.54|172.69.195.54]] 22:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

...Why didn't I think of just pasting the Unicode equivalent. I'm dumb, but thanks for fixing it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.10|172.69.70.10]] 13:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

== Esolang wiki bug ==
The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical|the Technical Community Portal]]. Two, I saw your talk page on [https://esolangs.org/wiki/User_talk:ColorfulGalaxy%27s_CA_discoveries esolangs.org], which you brought up this “bug”, which the local admin (who’s probably just as sick and tired of you as I am) called BS on. If the server was changing your sig to my sig, it would be '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''', not the sig that you faked in. You’re obviously seeking attention and are being abusive and childish. Please see the bottom of https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esolang:Introduce_yourself to see a full list of complaints. I will be asking Kynde to ban you and all of your alt (or shared) accounts. -tori [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.98|162.158.167.98]] 05:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:I just realized that they've changed '''my''' signature as well. That's strange. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Once again they suddenly redirected my username to the Main Page. And the bug even forgot to remove "User:". [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 13:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

:It's working normally now. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 13:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:No, it has not been hacked. The error message means that the server that is hosting the wiki is under a lot of stress and load. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::Yes and no.
::;429 Too Many Requests (RFC 6585):The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. Intended for use with rate-limiting schemes.
::...it generally means that (in the opinion of the server), the person getting the 429 has been bashing the connection too much. This ''could'' be because they happen to be going through the same proxy as an actual prolific user (or several sub-prolific ones that similarly got lumped together to add up to "too much"), but load-sharing systems generally account for that already. General 'stress and load' is more likely to invoke a 500s message (depending upon what actually is happening).
::But, either way, if you get one of them then you're advised to pause, take a breath, perhaps wait a little before your next refresh/reload attempt, but if ''that'' goes wrong then wait a bit longer still (double your patience, maybe), and again more (further doubling) as necessary.
::Either it's not your fault, but you probably don't need to add to the problems, or it ''is'' your fault (e.g. you're webscraping in the background at full throttle) and you ''really'' need to stop causing those problems (and try not to do it again later). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 20:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
:::Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
::::Hint: even if you don't entirely trust Wikipedia not to be written (or rewritten) wrongly, you don't get the whole world of possible wrongness of a mostly uncomprehending AI repeating a load of mangled fragments put together on an "at least it looks grammatically correct" basis. If you trust AI so much that you don't go looking anywhere else (there are plenty of technical sites out there, including the actual official RFCs which say what servers ''should'' be doing and saying) but Wikipedia is also far from wrong and pretty thorough on this point.
::::Ask Google's AI for entertainment, or to start to put together a school report (but be prepared to check ''everything'', as well as edit enough not to be caught by AI-detection as well as Plagiarism-detection). But not for insta-expertise, if you've not got enough grounding in the subject to at least sanity-checking what you're being told. Truth-checking and reality-checking are always necessary, of course, no matter what the source. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.36|141.101.98.36]] 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
:::::Noted and acknowledged. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 14:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

== Total amount of accounts created on this wiki? ==

I was editing [[explain xkcd:Museum]] and I was wondering how many accounts have ever been created. Is there a way to access this? {{unsigned|DollarStoreBa'al|15:52, 17 March 2025}}
:Hey, I moved your message from the Coordination portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
:The base information you need is from the special page that is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers - although bear in mind that an overwhelming number of created accounts are spam-attempts (that get no further), so perhaps the count needs to be qualified as "users that have then gone on to post" (a few of which ''are'' still spam-only contributors, but now an insignificant amount rather than a probably overwhelming majoriy).
:How you go about counting ''and'' classifying valid accounts is up to you, of course. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.68|162.158.74.68]] 21:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
::How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
:::There's <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, that gives you the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]] (it was 142,958 when I wrote this), for the total number of registered users (including no-input pre-spammers, only-ever-spammed contributors, "I only created this account to say..."ers who didn't realised they could do as much as an IP, maybe some banned, sock-puppet/legitimate-alts/forgot-my-old-login duplicate accounts, maybe ''not'' some totally excised by top-tier-admins).
:::There's also <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, with the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]] (119, as I write this), which I think is everyone active (+registered) in the past 30 days.
:::Possibly there are other "magic word" values for more useful in-betweeny values (nearer the top end of the first), e.g. of everyone who has made at least one edit ''ever''. But not sure I know what that might off the top of my head.
:::I can think of ways to ''interrogate'' the wiki for one or other (better) counting criteria, but it would be horribly intensive. If anyone wanted to do this (it already needing a bit more technical ability than merely using inbuilt auto-value magic words, and preferably you'd need to not be a 'mere' scriptkiddie jumping in with both feet without knowing how to do it sensibly), I'd suggest ensuring a ''very'' throttled-back process that may take its time over days. Then, once 'completed', a not-quite-so-throttled-back version can just 'top up' its stats with everything from the last point you'd reached the last time round until the present (to never hammer the site).
:::Please please please, though, you should probably only try any of this if you're already sure of everything I've been suggesting. There are also far easier ways to attempt a DoS, but it would be ironic if you did this ''while trying to be helpful''... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.65|141.101.98.65]] 20:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
::::Oh neat that's exactly what we needed! Could you add these magic words to the museum, maybe calling one "total accounts" and the other one "users active in last 30 days"? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

== email confirmation ==

my email confirmation did not get sent even after a week. is there anything wrong? - [[User:Bb777|(((((((((((((([...]((((((((((((((]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 21:36, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
:been broken for a decade i think. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
::WE REALLY NEED JEFF BACK !!!!!!!! [[User:Bb777|hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 16:12, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

== MediaWiki error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]] ==

When I go to [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]], there is a MediaWiki error. This does not occur at [[1269]] or [[1271]]. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 13:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
:Could not replicate.
:[[1270]] redirects to [[1270: Functional]], so does it happen for you if you go via [[Functional]] and ''its'' redirect? How about https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1270:_Functional (as URL) rather than what you may be doing (but so did I, at first, still to find no error) in plugging the text into the "Search explain xkcd" field..?
:Unless it's an off-page edit (some template, broken and then fixed), the page itself seems to have no recent edit to explain any changes (to broken and/or to unbroken)... I think we may need more info. Including myself in "we" in case it's an error even I can fix, which isn't unknown but not guaranteed! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.160|172.71.178.160]]
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/L5icGdZ9nBzw.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/1nP1qunLk86a.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/7S3Ct5wghTIH.png?o=1
::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] via index.php: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/HghYaRj9wA1f.png?o=1 [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:::I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
::::Anybody else? ''None'' of that happens here.
::::Could it be somehow browser-specific, or even extension-related? One thing to try is if you any further browsers handily installed (or installable) that you can use (even if just just for this one purpose, you don't need them to be the default system one). As of right now, though, I'm flumoxed and don't have any obvious other steps, and I dont believe anybody else has the means to enable the debug options.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.190|172.69.79.190]] 22:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::This occurs on a Chromebook managed by my school, so I can't install any browsers besides Chrome and I can't manage the extensions. I can see the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1270:_Functional&action=edit editing page] but I get an even less elegantly presented [https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/xQOVUQMjoF1r.png?o=1 error] when I try to preview the page.[[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:Couldn't replicate either, Windows 11 Chrome Canary. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
:Figured out the problem. This error occurs on any page using the <code><nowiki><math></nowiki></code> tag. I don't know why, though. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
::Yep, added <code><nowiki><math>This causes an error.</math></nowiki></code> to the top of [[explain xkcd:Sandbox]] and now it gives the same error. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:::This bug has been around for at least 7 years. Here's the fix: [[#Mediawiki exception on some pages]]. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 21:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

== Captcha repeat ==
When you've finished editing, there is an "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA.

But if you preview the changes before saving, that gets reset, so you can't just say "yup, looks good, go ahead and publish this change."

How hard would it be to make the CAPTCHA sticky, so that it doesn't need an extra interaction/mouse movement after previewing?

Or, alternatively, to not display either the CAPTCHA or the Save Changes until after a preview. {{unsigned|JimJJewett20:40, 14 April 2025}}

:If you're going to Preview (which can often be a good idea), don't bother ticking the "I am not a robot". Previews (also the "Show Changes") are 'free' and don't need you to feed the CAPTHA machine.
:What's wrong with 1) editing, 2) previewing, 3) going "Yup, looks good" and ticking the box, 3a) ''if'' required, fulfill the Captcha, 4) Submit..?
:It's exactly the same amount of work as having the Captcha-fulfillment at position (1a) and 'sticky'
:Also, however hard it might be to 'sticky' the CAPTCHA, there's a ''reason'' that a validated CAPTCHA isn't held over willy-nilly. Theoretically, an automated system (or semi-attended one) that relied upon finding out if it ''could'' post an edit, before it even bothered to try could benefit (if only by a smidgen) from first having a pot-shot at authorisation and only then (presumably before any 'time out' kicked in) pushing the latest spambot stuff.
:I see no value in allowing that, even if there was anybody who might have enough of an 'in' on the server code to enable such a thing. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.248|162.158.33.248]] 23:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
:Moved this to technical portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

== Request for feedback about {{tl|comic}} ==

Hey, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the random button on our comic template, please see this page: [[Template talk:comic#Random button should link to Special:RandomInCategory]] --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

:Does anyone here know how to create a random link that fetches pages from two different categories? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:12, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

== Random comic/explanation glitches ==

For some reason, I can''not'' press random without being sent to either the Verizon comic-thing or comic #4 (this is one of my first times commenting, no clue how to do links). I’ve now pressed the button for random comic 8 times and keep getting these two pages, any idea for fixing this? [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

:update: it’s now added repeatedly sending me to [[1057:Klout]] and [[2875:2024]]. I can’t get it to send me to any other page through the random button. After 23 random comic presses, I got each of these four comics 6 times and the latest comic once. [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

== Incessant 503 errors ==

I cannot keep contributing to this site if the 503 errors continue. The time it takes to perform a single action is about 10 times greater than it should be, some pages never load, and almost everything is broken and outdated. The situation will get worse if we do nothing. We have to do something :(   --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
:I've not yet found any page that won't ever load, can you give an example?
:Updating the website, though useful for other reasons, also cannot help this problem much. Different hosting might help, but mostly different proxying. Site-side changes, of the kind we've perhaps been waiting for, would be minimally useful to this external issue. Maybe we'll get some changes out of this crisis, maybe we'll just get the site closed down as not worth the additional effort. (Just going read-only might not even help, and would still be gruelling loss.) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.10|172.71.178.10]] 16:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

::Can't do much better than Cloudflare for proxying, at least not on a budget. If the DDOS is from an AI-scraper or a malicious-but-not-paying-attention source, temporarily shifting everything to a new domain and having explainxkcd.com just be a placeholder with human-readable instructions to het to the temp site ''might'' help, at least until the adversary adapted. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.16|162.158.167.16]] 19:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

::Well anything would be better than the current situation, except a total shutdown. Why is nobody worried this entire wiki is dying in front of our eyes and the owner doesn't even remember it exists? Jesus --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

:Same issue. What could be causing this? {{unsigned ip|162.158.114.253|14:49, 27 May 2025}}
::The server's seemingly being hammered by a new batch of unregulated traffic, that's been hammering many other sites. Your attempts to connect are getting lost in the overload, until the instigators get bored, smarter/kinder or someone implements a better way to stop the offending connections better. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.160|172.70.162.160]] 16:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

== wtf is going on with the server?? ==

why is the site giving a db error 90% of the time? is something wrong? how/when will it be fixed? (can it be fixed at all?) update: the db crashed AGAIN while i was writing this. also its not like above section, since it currently *specifically* gives db errors. "cannot access the database." [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 16:54, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
:See the sub-header above (and other contributions by people in the last two or three comic Discussions), but imagine you're at a party, trying to talk to your friends, and people you don't know keep coming over and trying to start various inane conversations that just keep distracting you, and ''they just won't leave you alone!''
:So: 1) Too much traffic. 2) Not with the server. 3) Difficult/not quickly (it's not really a server-fix). And the DB isn't fully crashing (that'd do something else). It's just unable to reply to everyone, every time, and even saying "No I can't talk to you" takes up time.
:Ideally, you get someone else to intercept anyone coming over to talk to you. Maybe a VIP-section "red rope", and a big guy with a clipboard of guests/a personal secretary to vet newcomers. Doing that yourself is just going to distract you more. (Or you can take enough amphetamines to become enough of a party animal to comfortably be at the centre of the ''wildest'' of parties, but that takes finding a dealer with the right product, as well as other problems. And the tendency to overextend your analogies.) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.72|172.68.205.72]] 19:36, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
::That reads like the "explain" of an XKCD that I want to see. :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.131|162.158.175.131]] 21:17, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

==Special:ContributionScores on Main Page busts caching, causing load==

Long story short, the Main Page transcludes a top contributors table, [[Special:ContributionScores/10/30]], which marks the entire Main Page as dynamic (not cacheable). This means that (1) Cloudflare is not serving up a static version of this page, even to those not logged in, (2) the Main Page wikitext is getting reparsed on every hit, and (3) the parser is recreating the table from scratch on every hit, consuming a lot of database connection time, roughly between 0.5 and 1.0 second each. This is...suspicious, given the wiki's technical difficulties. I suggest an experiment with removing it to see if technical issues improve. If so, and if people wish to keep the table, I suggest creating a static version of the table that is updated only occasionally (even once every few hours by bot should be fine).

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:750px; overflow:auto;">Expand for details...
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The whole story is: While browsing overnight, I noticed that the issues with page loads seemed caching-related; pages never seemed to load on the first click, though refreshing was often successful, at least during the presumably lower-load overnight hours. Research led me to the possibility that some broken caching system was leading to the database running out of connections (even on a cache hit, one is still needed to determine whether it is a cache hit or miss), so I started looking at some technical indicators, eventually leading to the parser profiling ("NewPP") and transclusions block at the end of the parser output [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&page=Main%20Page here].

For the main page, it outputs:

<nowiki>NewPP limit report
Cached time: 20250528101640
Cache expiry: 0
Dynamic content: true
CPU time usage: 0.059 seconds
Real time usage: 2.564 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 273/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 2367/1000000
Post\u2010expand include size: 17895/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 714/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 7/40
Expensive parser function count: 4/100
-->


</div>
</nowiki>
</div></div>

From a quick search, it sounds like transclusion of a special page will always cause the parser cache to be bypassed, causing all of the parsed output to be regenerated on every hit by any visitor, logged in or not, via the API or not, etc. (While it's not technically wrong that increased number of visits may be causing issues, this would be a multiplicative exacerbation of that.) Combined with the fact that the page is recreating a pretty heavy database query to count and tabulate the last 30 days of edits, this seems Really Bad. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 11:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

: Edited for corrections and clarity. Also, one can generate and profile the cost of any bit of wikitext using the API: <nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores</nowiki> would create and time the processing time needed to generate <nowiki>{{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}</nowiki>.
: I'd noticed that there was a recent change from 7 to 30 days of scoring, but it turns out that doesn't make a big difference in processing time. In addition, the parser considering the content static doesn't seem to be enough for Cloudflare to start caching a page, so that might not be as easy to change. Still, simply allowing the parser output to be saved and regenerating the table for the vast majority of visitors' hits might be a big help. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 13:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

:: Does this affect other pages? If not, then the main DB issues aren't fixed... but if it does, then why is the contribs page loaded for EVERY page? Also, I *support* removing this... it's just a showcase that exists for no good reason if shown to every viewer, the recent contribs should probably be restricted to users only or something [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.176|162.158.8.176]] 08:30, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::: The contrib table doesn't load on every page, but the vast majority of hits are going to be to the Main Page. And (my hypothesis is) it holds database connections open while it's running, which consumes that limited resource on the server. (We could just raise the cap, but we don't have access to the server.) A lot of the lag time in the profiler above is just sitting in a queue for the next database connection, which affects everything. So in that sense, it affects the whole wiki. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::Hi. I changed to 30 days on suggestion by FaviFake. But that was in March. Just changed it back to 7 again just to try it. Of course I can also try to remove it for a period of time. But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor. So I would hate to remove it. Also it has worked with 30 days for more than two months and with the 7 days for as long as I have used the site (since 2012). So it seems weird that it should suddenly be the front page that breaks it all. It is also not the first time we have had these issues. Not sure how they where resolved last time but strange if it suddenly is the main page that causes all these problems [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:29, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

::: (Un)Fortunately(?) I suspect the technical caching issue is more relevant, where naively transcluding a Special page via <code><nowiki>{{Special:...}}</nowiki></code> causes everything to re-process on every hit. That doesn't mean losing the feature entirely (or even the 30 days); I can help make a bot that can send the output (inside <code><nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/30,nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores&format=json</nowiki></code>) to a template, automatically updating once per short interval (an hour?). The delayed version can also be Main Page only; the live version can always still be linked, and/or the full page linked to.
::: You're right that perhaps this isn't necessarily ''the'' proximate "straw that broke the camel's back" cause. And there are a lot of other problems and solutions that could help - like simply raising the DB connection cap, or all the stuff about crawler traffic, and that Cloudflare doesn't seem to be caching the basically-static CSS from tool.php, etc. etc... But without admin access to diagnostics or settings for the database and Cloudflare, we can only work with the tools we have. Even this specific widget itself does some caching in a newer update, but we don't have access to updating it. (That said, I'm still keeping an eye out for other things that might have changed recently.) [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
::::As it did not help making it 7 days again I have now removed it. Seems to make no difference to begin with. But lets give it some time to work. But I'm not optimistic. Let me know if I moved the correct bit, I'm no expert just sadly the only active admin and we cannot get hold of Jeff... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Since the removal of the Rankings table, I haven't noticed a downtick of connection errors. (That said, I dislike people ''aiming'' to be in the Rankings, I consider that editing should be its own reward, so personally I'd be happier without it anywhere quite as prominent.) Haven't done a full technical analysis, but I estimate that from a prior peak of maybe 1.5 "technical difficulties" or "also, a 503 error" responses, generally varying between zero issues (straight in) and normal worstest-case scenario of three attempts (fourth attempt is Ok, ''maybe'' unstylsheeted), in the last 24 hours it's been more like 2.5:1 fail to success ratio. (i.e. reaching up to maybe 6th-attempt success, worst case.) Not nice, but survivable.

Though got a new one, just a few minutes ago. An actual Cloudflare error: "SSL handshake failed Error code 525 // Visit cloudflare.com for more information. // 2025-05-30 20:01:57 UTC". In case that interests anyone. Looks like the server was temperarily so incapacitated as to not be able to even handshake with the proxy. But I don't currently expect that to recur, just thought I'd note it as a 'new' glitch, in passing. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

: Well, ''right now'' things seem more stable. But during Friday just after the change, when pages could load at all, I noticed they were loading faster, but the availability was just as bad or worse for a while. I'm not really sure how much credit to the latest improvement goes to changing the contribution table. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 00:59, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:Everything seems to be good now. No constant DB errors, and it's now smooth! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.142|162.158.8.142]] 07:00, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

::Should I try inserting the contribution score to see if the problems return, because it would be nice to know if it was this or just random. Also even though some might dislike this score it has been there always, and should not just be removed because one person writes negatively about it. But of course if it was really the reason behind the problems it has to stay of the front page. But a link could be inserted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:44, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::To clarify, I wasn't saying I disliked the score, ''per se'', just that it encourages edits-for-the-sake-of-edits and (though I rarely see the Main Page myself) is prominent enough for the new discoverers of the site to take as a challenge (in well-meaning ways, as well as less so). I have sympathy with "But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor." Just pointing out the functional inverse that it is a motivating factor ''to make a lot of contributions''. (And that I personally abstain from that competition, buried within the contributions of various other IPers, no temptation at all to edit without decent cause.)
:::A version of the table weighted against new accounts ''might'' make me happier, but too many ways of doing that (hard threshold, to kick in at an arbitrary 'account maturity' age, so no-one appears on the list until 'old enough'; a formula that slopes from 0 to 1 at the "maturity" time, multiply the contributions by the current value; ditto, but a smoother function that becomes assymptotic to 1) that probably also involve scripted conversions and various arbitrary choices. So not something I'd imagine being done.
:::I do think it's a good idea to re-add it ''for science''. Give it a week to settle down, without it as an issue. If (as it seems) it has died down properly, add it again for a further week (or less, if it becomes obvious it has reintroduced the same DoS-like scenario). Let the outcome shape your further decision, or fine-tuning. Not mere yay/nay preferences, like mine, regarding it.
:::It's also very likely only a ''factor'' in the slow-down. It was ok (in both 7 day and 30 day versions) for aong time, but ''together with'' increased amounts of site traffic (as per anecdotal evidence from elsewhere on the 'net) it went bad on us. The improved situation could also have been due to the perpetrators turning their (accidental?) web-hammering scripts off, having finished their project, or now making them far less aggressive. The 'benefits' of the League Table might not now cause such side-effects. But also it's still possible that the problematic traffic comes back and hobbles the site gain, regardless of the absence frontpage League Tabling.
:::And you can always add the Special:ContributionScores(-slash-whatever) information as a link to go to, rather than transcluded (if you've decided that it's still trouble to have where it was). But cross that bridge if you come to it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

::PS I also gets 0-2 errors at the moment, so it is not all good, had to reload twice to get the comment above posted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:45, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::My observations: still 'terrible', maybe even slightly worse, Friday and early Saturday, UK time, noting the Friday Comic didn't get Bot-imported until well into Saturday PM (theusaf might have failure logs?), but I'm sure I saw it on xkcd.com on Saturday morning (but still had showed Wednesday as of Fri/Sat midnight, UTC+1, or thereabouts, i.e. early Friday evening Randall Time, not untypical for such updates). The table-transclusion was removed at least a full day before. Don't know if anything else caused lag in the proxy's response.
:::Since Saturday evening, more or less ok. ''Some'' errors, in line with "background levels" before this recent splurge actually hit. If I get a "technical problems", an imminent refresh sorts it (doesn't return another error), gets on with things. Not perfect, might mean a bit more RAM/swapspace might further help, or a higher quota of shared processing threads (if there are any that can be spared from whatever else is running in whatever rackspace unit it might be). Livable, if also still vulnerable to the next period of increased pressure. Keeping an eye on it, and still trying to eventually get through to the hardware-owning sysops, would be wise. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: A note for the future: the new (current) version of this extension [https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=ContribScoreCacheTTL&files=&excludeFiles=&repos= caches] data for half an hour (by default), so if we ever get an update, the bot wouldn't be necessary anymore. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 07:46, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

== What would it take to clone ExplainXKCD? ==

What would it take technically and financially to clone this web site?

Installing MediaWiki and cloning the wiki pages should be fairly straightforward. There may be some pain due to differences in MediaWiki versions.

Cloning or rewriting the bots may be a chore.

Paying for hosting and Cloudflare will take a steady stream of income.

There's also legal issues, like how to protect everyone from liability if someone wants to sue, even if it's a frivolous suit.

There will need to be multiple administrators at every level so we don't have the "if one person disappears for awhile and problems arise, we are stuck" issues.

My guess is that between the existing administrators and regular contributors, we have the technical skills to do this. It's the financial and legal issues that give me pause.

Yes, I'm an occasional contributor, and no, I haven't created an account yet. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.119|162.158.175.119]] 19:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

:It would help if we didn't want to clone ''all page history''. Already, it would bar those bits hidden behind admin-level deletions, etc, but limiting the actual depth of history scraped up and made available on a new platform would be wise from a 'start over' POV, ''especially'' if not having direct access to the core database. Possibly a 'bot could maintain an "anything new on old site gets reduplicated to new site" until a phased cut-off, with enough thought, dyluring the ''duration'' of the migratory process, but you need a solid base (maybe with further back-filled history as much as you can).
::Removing page history might violate the "attribution" part of the CC-BY-SA license (but I am not a lawyer so don't take my word for it.) [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 17:46, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
:And then there's user accounts. Maybe there's a way to confirm your rights to an original-site username on the new-site (potentially complex things, or just something to do with logins on both, posting "it's me" on the new site, then "yes, that new-site claim me of being me is indeed correct" on old-site, but you still have to deal with potential claim-jumping/identity-gazumping). Which also needs trust of the new-site admins to play fair with potential disputes.
:And it'd be a good opportunity to clean some up things (everyone can think of several inconsistecies that ''they'd'' deal with, given the opportunity), but only with a lot of hands on effort. So factor that in for potential work.
:On the whole, though, best just to 'start fresh'. A task in itself, perhaps use and acknowledge this site's "best material" (I think copyright might be not so much an issue if based upon a fair and dutiful copy, due to the details of [[explain xkcd:Copyrights]], but that's of course something that needs advice sought for any particular implementation). That, of course, needs community acceptance not to be seen as an "upstart usurper" site, perhaps, and could create a schism where some would refuse to partake in the new project at all.
:i.e. you raise good questions (and prompt others), but I'm not sure there are ''undeniably'' objective good answers to them all. Trying it and seeing how it goes is probably the ''only'' way to bash out the many details. Not an easy project. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.144|172.71.241.144]] 21:19, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

:I think it would be absolutely awesome to move to something that *isn't* self hosted, something that as far as I can tell this wiki is. If we move or clone, may we see [https://weirdgloop.org/ Weird Gloop] as an option? They have a lot of experience and will [https://weirdgloop.org/blog/why-were-helping-more-wikis-move-away-from-fandom#how-to-not-turn-into-fandom-20-with-these-2-simple-tricks probably not turn into another fandom and will not be bought by them]. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.130.250|172.69.130.250]] 15:33, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
::Oh ye gods... Yes, whatever you do, ''don't'' go anywhere near Fandom, as a solution. Not that I think this will be a convincing argument on its own, but you'll absolutely lose me as an 'explain' reader (never mind contributor) if it goes onto a Fandom/ex-Wikia hosting model. I've no experience of Weird Gloop (yet), but the URL (about why they're different) certainly does vicerally appeal to me on first glance. Do your own independant research, though, anybody tempted down that or any eqyivalent route. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
:[https://github.com/saveweb/wikiteam3/ Wikidump] can get all page content with full history (for pages that have not been deleted). It doesn't require admin privileges to use. [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 21:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
:The site seems stable now, at least for the last half-day. I'm not sure if the attack/scraping ended, or if there's a real back-end fix in place, but here's hoping it stays stable. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.73|172.68.26.73]] 02:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
::Replying to '''my''' comment of 02:11, 1 June 2025 immediately above: I spoke too soon, I got two "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties." errors in less than 5 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.67.217|172.69.67.217]] 03:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: Why should we do this in the first place? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.165|162.158.8.165]] 07:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
:: So we can manage things when someone with server-level access is required. For example, if someone with server-level access was around during the last week or two when we've been having intermittent-but-sometimes-heavy site-is-too-busy-try-again-later errors, we (or, rather, the server operator) would have more insight to the problem and would likely be able to do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.170.157|172.71.170.157]] 16:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

: The resources at [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Grabbers Mediawiki/Manual:Grabbers] seem useful - they seem written for the new server administrator to have the new server save things into the new wiki. (I worry about the note regarding MediaWiki version 1.39+ since we're stuck on 1.30, but I think that might be about the version of the *new* wiki installation.) In particular, there exists a [[Special:Export]] page (and associated API) that also exports the page history. There are a few options for migrating people's accounts; [https://github.com/ciencia/mediawiki-extensions-StubUserWikiAuth Extension:StubUserWikiAuth] seems most promising so far. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 09:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

== new and exciting 522 and 524 cloudflare errors ==

everyone else saw that, right? [[user:lett‪herebedarklight|this website's domain expires in august]] 02:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
:From at least midday (UK time), yesterday. But given the lack of ''any'' recorded edits for 4/Jun (UTC), only being broken by your (and other) early-hours edits of 5/Jun, was a lengthy period of whatever-went-even-more-wrong. (I had kept notes, I probably got 522s and 524s, when I checked back every few hours. Might have been other 52Xs, but not got that bit of scrap paper with me right now.) [[Special:Contributions/82.132.234.190|82.132.234.190]] 12:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
::Expires. Will that mean that if it is not prolonged this entire site will vanish? [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 06:22, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
:::Read [[User talk:Lettherebedarklight]] (to the bottom!) for one Q&A that was done on it. I know I also ''previously'' discussed LTBDL's 'discovery' (before they decided to break their own User Page in suggesting this was going to be an issue), but they also ignored me. As they still have their alarmist signature up, despite the other explanation, thus alarming you.
:::Short version: the domain potentially expires ''every year''. Every year, so far, it has been renewed. It's not the first time. Chances are low that it'll be the last.
:::Or, to rephrase your question, this site may vanish if it ''isn't'' prolonged (the auto-renew is not auto-renewed, perhaps the person paying for it gets fed up doing it).
:::PS. is it just a coincidence that, since the 'day outage', we're now getting many IPv6 contributors? (And vastly different IPv4 ranges/submasks.) Seems like a Cloudflare-led thing, assuming that nobody has been reconfiguring the explainxkcd server in any way (which is the current 'complaint'). ...Not worth a seperate new header to mention, but thought I'd mention it in passing, as I'm here. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.213.196|82.132.213.196]] 10:32, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

== Problem Sending a Question to whatif@xkcd.com ==

I tried to send a question to whatif@xkcd.com, and I got an automatic mail from google that "It was failed to send to the group", does it means that the question was sent, or that it got blocked entirely? [[Special:Contributions/2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01]] ([[User talk:2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|talk]]) 15:16, 11 June 2025‎ (UTC) ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''

:Yup, that's a known error. See the notice on ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' for more info. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

== Monobook style categories bug ==
I recently switched to the monobook style in preferences, and I saw this on the main page:

[[File:Monobook Font Bug.png]]

Is this something that's inherent to the monobook font or something that I can fix on my end? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al |DollarStoreBa'al]][[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al |'''''Converse''''']][[Special:Contributions/DollarStoreBa'al|'''''My life choices''''']] 15:03, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

==Bug on Modern style==
I encountered this UI bug opening up the site. Is this one-time or have others experienced this? [[File:UI Bug.png|200x200px]] --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|'''''converse''''']] 16:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
:that's just broken css. if you refresh it, it should render correctly. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 16:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
:I'm sure you've occasionally had a "page cannot load" error on the HTML (a few months back, it was particularly bad, but it's fairly rare at the moment). But imagine if you luckily escaped the issue of the HTML file loading. ''It'' tells your machine to ask for the CSV, as well as things like the images it needs. And then the inability to get the CSV happens. It could have been the image that didn't load, also. The lack of stylesheet
:A refresh of the page is usually what I'd try next. Or a hard-refresh, possibly, depending upon which browser I'm using. Either it all appears fine or the HTML totally fails the second time from whatever glitch is plaguing the system at that time. If you get exactly the same.
:I'll have to admit, though, but it took me quite a few moments to find what was wrong with the UI... maybe I'm innured against the occasional version of this issue. Unless I was looking for the Recent Changes link, for example, I'd probably just read the page as normal and then move onto the next page I want to check/editing the Talk page, all of which likely loads correctly and leaves me none the wiser that I'd missed a minor reshuffle.
:Tell you what, though, the "Recent Changes" page looks quite a bit different without Stylesheet-styling. And you can even invoke that, if you want. Depending upon browser, you can either choose which (or no!) stylesheet gets applied, also useful to see a site using its "mobile" settings from your desktop. Or you may be able to use whatever the equivalent of Object Inspector is for your page code and 'break' the particular ".css"-line that governs it. Sometimes gives interesting and useful results, on more awkward sites that try to enforce "no copypasting" or selectively hide/obscure things. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 23:29, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

== Upgrading MediaWiki ==

::''Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)''

Hi! If you aren't already aware, the wiki's MediaWiki software is many years out of date, 1.30 became end of life in 2019. This likely opens up the wiki to security issues, and presumably some annoyance from the users due to lack of newer features. It seems that Jeff never got around to this. If you have access to the wiki server, please upgrade the wiki, or have someone else do it. I think the recommendation to avoid compatibility issues is to go from LTS to LTS on upward, so <s>1.30 > 1.31 > 1.35 > 1.39 > 1.43</s> (it seems that you can go straight from 1.30 > 1.35 > 1.43 although the errors may be more difficult to read, based on the FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#How_do_I_upgrade_from_a_really_old_version?_In_one_step,_or_in_several_steps? ).

If you want assistance with MediaWiki upgrades, this organization called Professional Wiki seems to also performs this service. https://professional.wiki/en/mediawiki-upgrade-services In any case, they would probably follow a form of the procedure outlined in the official MediaWiki manual.

To check the wiki's current version: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Version

Version lifecycle: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle

Upgrading procedure/manual: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading

Thank you! [[User:Cam1170|Cam1170]] ([[User talk:Cam1170|talk]]) 19:32, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
:Hi Cam1170, thank you for your proposal and thought! Unfortunately, we are unable to update this wiki's MediaWiki software because the owner has gone AWOL. He is a bureaucrat on here, and the other 'crat is also inactive. Despite multiple times to reach out to him both on-site and through other platforms, he has not responded. We are assuming that this wiki will stay frozen like this unless we migrate (which I have no idea how will be done-or if it's even possible!). '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 01:30, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
:Noting that even migrating would probably involve someone (active) taking it upon themselves to provide the 'blank' new server on a new host (and new domain!) upon which the existing available information is to be written. (N.B., possibly still to a limited degree, without the access also required to upgrade or grant a further third party the access required to upgrade, unless there are some truly weird backdoors. Everything I know indicates that even making sure that everyone can reproduce their accounts in the new system would be a tricky achievement to get right.) And then we'd probably still have this place's 'box' (or boxes, or cloud-like bundle of cooperating resources) happily but redundantpt continuing in whatever 'protected stasis' we'll have then placed it in, as we try to re-establish the SEOing/etc that leads to our new doorway.
:This isn't the first time, probably won't be the last, that we've been advised of the 'issues'. And been only able to state that our active most-priviliged users seem not to be priviliged enough to even consider the direct server-level access needed to up-patch/re-install the core backend. Nor to properly migrate everything (leaving this service running as a 'ghost' site, to a greater or lesser extent), from the box(es) it runs upon all the way to the original registered domain.
:I had written more, but it boils down to the conspicuously absent progenitor being the main hurdle, likely for reasons beyond even their control. Though ''perhaps'' there are further missing administrators who might have enough access to (if they don't entirely break everything, in the attenpt) assist us, should they be coaxed/cajoled to return.
:Personally (as if my opinion counts), I see no urgent need for (e.g.) a more visual editor. Dealing with entirely new and more complex bugs, compared to what I think is far simpler to work with, is one thing that I know will at least annoy me.
:As for security issues, I believe we're at not a bad 'stuck' stage, compared to some (newer!) stages we could be at. And 0-day exploits are an ever present (intangible) risk at the bleeding edge, of course. ;) But you'd be also right to question what I know of all this, as an effectively unknown voice from the wilderness. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.27|82.132.238.27]] 05:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::Ahem...
I see no urgent need for [...] [the] visual editor.
::'''Tables''' --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
:::Seems like others have made it clear why I cannot help. I ended up stuck as the only admin without bureaucrat powers... Also I'm not very tech minded so not the best admin you could have. but at the moment the only active. :-/ Not quite sure what Favifake means though? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::::Yes, of course! You're still unable to do anything, just like everyone else.
::::I replied to IP, which said the Visual editor wasn't necessary. Tables are incredibly hard to set up without the visual editor, so I think it's ''the'' most important feature we're missing right now.
::::''[Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)]''
:::::Easier to custom convert 'raw' tabular data to "tabular data under wikitable format" than to painstakingly arrange it in a visually-'aided' WYSYWYG table, actually. Making a casual table might be easier, but making a ''well thought out'' table with any complexity benefits from knowing the abilities and limitations of the markup.
:::::I had thought someone would object on a different sisue, actually, but that would also be something for which actually caring about the back-end markup (and using Preview judiciously) certainly doesn't hurt, with "dumbing up"/abstraction often not being an overall advantage. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.245.43|82.132.245.43]] 21:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::Sorry but I unfortunately didn't understand anything of what you just said :( ㅤ [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 11:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
:::::::I think they're saying that [https://imgur.com/gallery/i-dont-even-see-code-anymore-WqqJfNb the raw markup isn't exactly difficult]. And further that a WYSIWYG interface (which was typoed!) can often create suboptimal layouts, just because it was tweaked to 'look right' in the rather limited context of the composition editor.
:::::::And I probably agree, to an extent. Wikitables are designed to be far more simple/uncluttered, at source, than the equivalent HTML code. You can easily hand-craft them to both render nicely and be intelligable by future editors. It's not rocket science.
:::::::And then there was something about creating wikitables from non-wiki data, which might not actually be totally relevant. But is something I sometimes do, and I'd definitely consider a visual editor an impediment if I was doing that. The difference being that you can (hopefully) just toggle that option away. Or, rather, not bother toggling it on. Either way, I'd do what I think looks best for later editors, like leaving nice/logical text-spacing in monospace font by judicious use of whitespace/newlines - often lacking/badly done otherwise. If you want ''my'' opinion, too. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 21:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::::"the raw markup isn't exactly difficult" yes is is? Merging cells is a nightmare, adding new cells to the rowspan/colspan is a nightmare, moving text around is annoying, clicking preview constantly is time-consuming... i could go on and on. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::I concur. Especially with large tables, it's hard to find where you need to edit, simply because it all looks the same. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 13:09, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
: that's actually quite scary that the person who pays for the server has gone awol. That means this wiki is just 1-2 unpaid bills away from being shut down for good without any means to recover it. I think updating the software is the least of our concern. I mean, if the current admins should retire as well, then there's no one who could even appoint new admins. [[Special:Contributions/2.204.192.65|2.204.192.65]] 09:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
:: As said before, when the domain-name was "mere months from expiring" (n.b., it ''seems'' to be annually renewed, automatically, so is ''forever'' potentially mere months from expiring), there are all kinds of other ways for a site to fail. Some, like the hosting/hardware rental, might be tied to the same bill-paying cycle as the domain, so any such interruption might happen across the board as a grand-slam. (Interruptions might not mean the loss of the account-holder, and the loss of the account-holder might not mean an interruption... Would depend on how someone organises (or fails to organise) such things.)
:: Other failures could happen any time. Glad to see we're back from the outage: my initial guess was that someone ''had'' tried to update the site, somehow, but had got it horribly ''horribly'' wrong and left it unworkable. This would have been our invisible benefactor, perhaps, unless a "guerilla hacktivist" had taken a big chance and bigger risk. Probably not any of that, though, or at least it was someone who could still revoke the broken changes.
:: And then there's just a vital rapidly spinning disk shedding its magnetic coating or even fragmenting, or its circuitry develops a dry-joint/whisker of solder. The lifetime of an HDD is said to be "3 to 5 years", by one source I found (though I'm personally using ones that are >30yo, in near constant use, and I've seen far earlier failures, so I don't know how useful that is). If it's now sitting on SSD, that has read/write-cycle 'limits', instead. So, if it's not RAIDed with someone able to hotswap replacement drives, potentially some time (perhaps in a darkened but air-conditioned room) there may be the momentary shriek of metal (or silence, at least compared to the general humming of everything else) and ''at best'' we'll revert to the last valid automated backup... If there is one, and someone can fix it. (My second theory about the blackout was this. But I don't remember anything new to the site that didn't come back when it returned.)
::As for the WYSIWYG (cheers, yep!) thing, I've had to use enforced-visual editors, elsewhere. A right pain. I sure would hope it's optional, for my part. I also think it's healthy for people to not rely on too much 'wizardry' and know more about how everything works, but then I'm someone who has thirty-year-old HDDs running forty-year-old OSes. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.237.89|82.132.237.89]] 11:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
:::Based on what I'm seeing in terms of recent changes, it appears that the cloudflare errors appeared about 2:00 UTC September 11th, and left about 14:00 UTC September 12, making for around 36 hours of total downtime. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 21:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

== A precaution ==
In approximately 2 hours, MediaWiki will be switching something on the server-side, so be ready for a temporary read-only period starting 15:00 UTC. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 18:04, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
:I wonder what will happen with this wiki's old-ass MediaWiki version...I '''''hope''''' everything will go back to normal... --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
that's for wikis supported by the WMF, and we're not. unfortunately. It’s the WMF doing the thing, not the MW software. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:50, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

==RSS FEED==
I've created a megathread for the broken RSS feed since this keeps being brought up. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC)
=== RSS Feed: XML not well-formed ===

<pre>XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

Location: https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml?_SLWxoPenuRl=nOtinFEeDPREVIew

Line Number 31, Column 18:

<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^
</pre>

PHP-Fix:

$title = str_replace("&", "&amp;", $title);

or

$title = htmlspecialchars($title);

: Same problem here. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the first time an xkcd title has included an ampersand (as far as I can see from [[List_of_all_comics_(full)]]). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.85|141.101.99.85]] 14:16, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

=== rss feed ===

Hello

the rss feed is broken, could you fix it ?
<nowiki>
Error :
try{(function overrideDefaultMethods(r, g, b, a, scriptId, storedObjectPrefix) {
var scriptNode = document.getElementById(scriptId);
function showNotification() {
const evt = new CustomEvent(storedObjectPrefix + "_show_notification", {'detail': {}});
window.dispatchEvent(evt);
}
function overrideCanvasProto(root) {
function overrideCanvasInternal(name, old) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var width = this.width;
var height = this.height;
var context = this.getContext("2d");
var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
context.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0);
showNotification();
return old.apply(this, arguments);
}
}
);
}
overrideCanvasInternal("toDataURL", root.prototype.toDataURL);
overrideCanvasInternal("toBlob", root.prototype.toBlob);
//overrideCanvasInternal("mozGetAsFile", root.prototype.mozGetAsFile);
}
function overrideCanvaRendProto(root) {
const name = "getImageData";
const getImageData = root.prototype.getImageData;

root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = getImageData;

Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, "getImageData",
{
value: function () {
var imageData = getImageData.apply(this, arguments);
var height = imageData.height;
var width = imageData.width;
// console.log("getImageData " + width + " " + height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
showNotification();
return imageData;
}
}
);
}
function inject(element) {
if (element.tagName.toUpperCase() === "IFRAME" && element.contentWindow) {
try {
var hasAccess = element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement;
} catch (e) {
console.log("can't access " + e);
return;
}
overrideCanvasProto(element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(element.contentWindow.CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(element.contentWindow.Document);
}
}
function overrideDocumentProto(root) {
function doOverrideDocumentProto(old, name) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var element = old.apply(this, arguments);
// console.log(name+ " everridden call"+element);
if (element == null) {
return null;
}
if (Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object HTMLCollection]' ||
Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object NodeList]') {
for (var i = 0; i < element.length; ++i) {
var el = element[i];
// console.log("elements list inject " + name);
inject(el);
}
} else {
// console.log("element inject " + name);
inject(element);
}
return element;
}
}
);
}
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElement, "createElement");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElementNS, "createElementNS");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementById, "getElementById");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByName, "getElementsByName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByClassName, "getElementsByClassName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagName, "getElementsByTagName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagNameNS, "getElementsByTagNameNS");
}
overrideCanvasProto(HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(Document);
scriptNode.parentNode.removeChild(scriptNode);
})(24,14,-9,19,"ojkrt", "ltwvx");} catch (e) {console.error(e);}Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé
Emplacement : https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml
Numéro de ligne 63, Colonne 18 :
<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^
</nowiki>

[[Special:Contributions/172.71.130.228|172.71.130.228]] ([[User talk:172.71.130.228|talk]]) 08:58, 12 December 2024‎ ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''

=== RSS ===

RIP RSS feed yet again. 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[[User:Bb777|[insert signature here]]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]])
:Is there something new we should know? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.58.6|172.70.58.6]] 00:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

=== the rss feed seems to be broken ===

the rss feed button on the side leading to https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml throws up and error making the feed not load properly in rss readers.

"This page contains the following errors:
error on line 463 at column 18: EntityRef: expecting ';'
Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." {{unsigned ip|172.71.241.19|20:38, 5 May 2025}}
:I think this is the continuing issue as of [[#RSS Feed: XML not well-formed]], you're talking about. As far as I'm aware unfixed and (with the current smattering of active admins at their limits of admin-levels) unfixable. Because of a 'bare' ampersand (or two) being misinterpreted as a failed attempt at a character-entity reference. ''If'' that was fixed, without me noticing, then I'm sure someone will be along to try to fix your new issue too.
:People have been trying to prod other people who can prod the server back into shape (insofar as that issue), but I've not yet been privy to anything coming of that, and presume you're just trapped in the exact same glitch. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.30|172.70.91.30]] 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

::What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
:::It's unusable so long as the "I'm parsing this is an '&Thing;' ... oh, wait, it has no closing ';'... ARGH!" happens to it. If you click on the RSS feed, to the left, you can see how it shows the (not ''quite'' humanly-readable) lines of the RSS feed (most recent, chronologically backwards) until the last line it shows is the comic imediately after the most recent "D&D" entry. (Actually, depends on browser. Sorry, just checked. It does that on Android Chrome, but currently I'm on Windows Firefox and it 'only' complains. But if you'll take my word for it.)
:::Someone really needs to go into the https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml file (who can edit it directly) and find the two "D&D" instances and make them "D&amp;D". (Note to editors: Had to "amp amp" the "amp", here in this edit, to get it to appear just as amp... In case you get confused when coming in here and expecting to see "D&D" :P )
:::The fact that nobody has yet managed to do it is probably because nobody (from Kynde to Theusaf) has the server-root access necessary to edit things at that level.
:::Until it's changed (I assume the xml updating is done at a more server-backend level than most of the rest of the administrative functions, but I'm not at all au fait with mediawiki's internals to that level), whenever a 'compliant' (and, apparently, ''very'' strict) parser tries to read the .xml it'll 'quite rightly' tell you that there's a bare ampersand and then refuses to do anything more.
:::Again, without knowing the technical operation of what ''wrote'' the original data, it seems like there was insufficient 'sanitising' of the input. It applied the bare-ampersand without forward-converting it to an ampersanded ampersand-entity. That maybe also needs fixing (in case we get more), even if the existing ones get manually changed. I don't use any RSS feeds, myself, being too new-fangled ("Initial release: RSS 0.90 (Netscape), March 15, 1999; 26 years ago; Latest release: RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.11) March 30, 2009; 16 years ago"... yeah, ''to me'' that's still new-fangled! :P ) so all I know about how this one fails is what people have talked about above, and trivially clicking on the left-sidebar link to look at it myself, and venture what I think is the logical nature of the glitch (both cause and effect). Maybe somebody knows more about it, but I'm filling in until that person comes along and says oytherswise (and/or more) about it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.193|162.158.33.193]] 20:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
:::: It's not being "very strict" to reject an unescaped ampersand: it's just part of the XML spec. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.216.67|162.158.216.67]] 09:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::Now it says there's an error on line 767...--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 19:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::Same error, of the same (second of two, once it had added its influence to the first) comic that did the "&D" problem. But just with more non-invalid lines before it. Check it again after another few comics and it should be line 770+. This isn't the new <City> thing, for several reasons, if that's what you were thinking it was. (Though there appears to be ''another'' issue with it, which is masked and made moot by the &D-breakage.)[[Special:Contributions/82.132.246.227|82.132.246.227]] 04:55, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

=== RSS Feed doesn't seem to contain anything after 3 August 2025 ===

There do not seem to be any new entries in the RSS Feed after the third of August. {{unsigned ip|216.212.38.209|16:01, 23 September 2025}}
:That's been noticed. But not much chance trying to fix that (manually adding in, if necessary) until we can properly (and manually?) fix the ampersand-D issues. For which there seems to be no-one with sufficient access. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 22:12, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

May I ask why my PHP-Workaround for the broken RSS Feed has been removed without any explanation and not included in the the new RSS-Feed section? (see history) or is this another wiki edit hell not worth wasting another constructive thought?
[[Special:Contributions/2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B|2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B]] 21:36, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
:I think that FaviFake forgot to add it into this mega-thread. I've pasted it back in. Sorry! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 22:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
::Yes sorry! [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
:::Apology accepted [[Special:Contributions/2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D|2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D]] 20:01, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

=== PHP Workaround for Broken RSS Feed ===
The following PHP-Code creates a RSS-Feed from the "All comics" page on explainxkcd: (with kind help from Kimi K2)
<pre>
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

// php-xml module available
if (!class_exists('DOMDocument')) {
die("Error: DOMDocument class missing. Please install php-xml");
}

// configuration
$url = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_all_comics_(full)';
$url2 = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/';
$feedTitle = 'xkcdExplain';
$feedDescription = '';
$feedLanguage = 'en-en';
$maxItems = 40;

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36',
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 20,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => 'gzip, deflate',
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8',
'Accept-Language: de-DE,de;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7',
'Cache-Control: no-cache',
]
]);
/* */
$html = curl_exec($ch);

if (curl_errno($ch)) {
die('cURL-Fehler: ' . curl_error($ch));
}

$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($httpCode !== 200) {
die("HTTP-Fehler: $httpCode");
}

curl_close($ch);

// DOM-Verarbeitung
$dom = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTML($html);
libxml_clear_errors();
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

$items = $xpath->query('//tr[ .//a[starts-with(@href,"/wiki/index.php/") and contains(@href,":")]]');
if ($items->length === 0) {
die("Nothing found.");
}

// creat RSS
$rss = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
$rss->formatOutput = true;

$rssRoot = $rss->createElement('rss');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('version', '2.0');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('xmlns:atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$rss->appendChild($rssRoot);

$channel = $rss->createElement('channel');
$rssRoot->appendChild($channel);

$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', $feedTitle));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('description', $feedDescription));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', $url));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('language', $feedLanguage));

// Atom Self-Link
$atomLink = $rss->createElement('atom:link');
$atomLink->setAttribute('href', (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? 'https://' : 'http://') . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$atomLink->setAttribute('rel', 'self');
$atomLink->setAttribute('type', 'application/rss+xml');
$channel->appendChild($atomLink);

foreach ($items as $item) {
if ($maxItems-- <= 0) break;

$cells = $item->getElementsByTagName('td');
if ($cells->length < 4) continue; // Sicherheits-check
$number = trim($item->getElementsByTagName('th')->item(0)->textContent);
$title = trim($cells->item(0)->textContent);
$link = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com' . $cells->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->getAttribute('href');
$image = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/' . trim($cells->item(2)->textContent);
$date = trim($cells->item(3)->textContent); // YYYY-MM-DD

// RSS-Item erzeugen
$rssItem = $rss->createElement('item');
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', htmlspecialchars($number . ': ' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('description',
htmlspecialchars('<img src="' . $image . '" alt="' . $title . '" /> ' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('pubDate', date(DATE_RSS, strtotime($date))));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('guid', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$channel->appendChild($rssItem);
}

header('Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8');
echo $rss->saveXML();
?>
</pre>
{{unsigned ip|2a01:599:442:d8ec:967c:b1b4:cb3e:2bc2}} 20:08, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

----

===Can't we just rename the two pages?===
[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3028:_D%26D_Roll&diff=prev&oldid=389591 This edit made me think]: can't we just rename the two pages to something like ...DnD ... to fix our RSS feed? Would that work? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:Only if that propogated to (overwote/superseded and deleted the old entry) the RSS file. But with (for totally different reasons?) there not having been any updates since 8/Aug/2025, I don't even see that happening. And a number of reasons to think that even if it replaces the items: a) it won't remove another wrong aspect, b) it won't let us (easily!) add all the missing ones since that point.
:I think it still needs someone with server-side editing priviliges to just correct it, perhaps add some text-sanitising to the script that updates it ''and'' investigate why the updating script isn't still running.
:Though you could try renaming the first (i.e. chronologically last) page that pops up. ''If'' it makes it update that entry (revealing the other D&D error as the new stopper), then make the second change... (surely if it's kick-started to respond to that, then it's kick-started to start adding new things, but no idea if you'd ''then'' need to change/unchange everything since the current last, in order to prompt them to be added). But my guess is that you'll change the page, nothing will happen, you'll wait... eventually you'll want to undo the change back to how it currently is. (Or look for every page that references the changed page to get them pointing at the new-name... as not leaving a Redirect page on the old name might be the only way to make it 'RSS official').
:Or I'm totally wrong, and it's all much simpler. Can't test any of these hypotheticals and predictions myself. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 20:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

== Fix Random Comic RNG ==

The random comic button seems to not work properly since it wont show comics before 2022. {{unsigned ip|174.168.56.208|16:41, 17 October 2025 (UTC)}}
:This is a known issue, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles]]. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 17:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

==Main page comic number==
The main page currently states that there are 3,161 comics. However, the latest comic as of today is [[3159]], resulting in a discrepancy of three comics. Is there a reason for this? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|converse]] 20:02, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:Moved from Kynde's talk, they've said enough times that they aren't a technical user. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into this, but I'm sure someone will. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 20:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
::The main page is, through the magic of the instruction <code><nowiki>{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}}</nowiki></code>, taking the number from those listed in (and as enumerated at the top of) [[:Category:All comics]]. At the time of writing, that has comics [[1]] to [[3159]] , plus [[ngram charts]] and [[verizon]], giving a total two more than the numbers would suggest.
::The possible changes are to either remove non-numbered comics from the All Comics categories or (such as when some people were wondering whether the [[404]] 'non-comic' should count in the total), make a hard-coded mathematical adjustment to the counted number within the Main Page to 'correct' it. (And be prepared to re-hardcode it if the number of non-number comics changes later.) If you think it worthwhile. An even more useful change would be to have a way to ''auto''-adjust for non-number comics via a bit of extra categorisation and counting being fed into the subtraction. Depends on how much work you want to do! ;)
::Or... you could also just add ", including non-numbered comics", or your choice of wording, to the "We have..." text and then (regardless of how many such oddities occur, and why) it might not be considered any kind of problem. Simple enough, just not within my power to do for you![[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 21:06, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
:::How can people miss such a huge message, ffs.
{{misc page}}
:::Fixed by marking them as extra. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

==What If? Toolbar button==
The button called 'What If?' on the left-hand toolbar currently links to [[What If? Chapters]]. However, users would be clicking this link possibly to go to the article about the blog or the articles about the books. So, I think we should have that button link to [[What If (disambiguation)|the disambiguation link]] instead. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 14:41, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

==Comic number off again==
The comic number is now a full nine numbers off? What's happened? [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]]]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 00:14, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
:See the subsection two above this... [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:27, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3171: Geologic Core Sample

2025-11-22T20:19:01Z

2.98.77.121: You've not lived until you've built an entire aboveground fortress with pitchblende... Of course, first you have to find enough of it for it to be worthwhile, though you at least used to get the occasional Adventure Mode human castle of the stuff.

F1R5T P0ST [[User:Slothscript|Slothscript]] ([[User talk:Slothscript|talk]]) 23:51, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

How do I add a category? It needs to be in the LOTR category. (Wow it’s hard to edit this thing on a phone) [[User:Kirinhatchi|Kirinhatchi]] ([[User talk:Kirinhatchi|talk]])

is netherrack a typo? {{unsigned ip|151.197.190.53|00:24, 22 November 2025}}
:No, it's an extremely weak, dark red rock from Minecraft. [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 00:39, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

andalite is not a rock it's an alien from Animorphs which the author is a fan of. Maybe I'll add it to the Animorphs category page [[User:Whoservelt|Whoservelt]] ([[User talk:Whoservelt|talk]]) 00:28, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

They’re just normal rock types, so perhaps not, but I was wondering if the back-to-back references to granite and diorite is a secondary Minecraft reference, since they were added in the same update (which I always associate with them in general.) [[User:KelOfTheStars!|KelOfTheStars!]] ([[User talk:KelOfTheStars!|talk]]) 01:23, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:I think it IS another Minecraft reference. Along with granite and diorite, there’s a third in that triad: andesite — which is spelled and pronounced similarly enough to “Andalite” that the two could quite possibly be conflated, especially by someone who is familiar with the latter and “always has to look up” the former.
::Well, it's 'andalite' in the comic, not andesite. I think that's just a passing reference. [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]]]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 02:29, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:It's been a long time since I Minecrafted, but I don't recall any (stock) inclusion of anything so realistic. Raw 'generic' stone (which became cobblestone once mined, unless it was an ore-holding version), sandstone, obsidian (which I'd usually cast) and the indestrutable bedrock - in the 'normal' world. Netherack (I keep wanting to type "nethack"!) in the Nether and maybe something else (other than the general igneous theme, fire and hostiles) ...glowstone? I know there are (were) 'real rock patches', as with many other mods, but I hadn't heard of this being put into vanilla editions (Bedrock, or whatever). Whether it's happened since the Ender got put in, I don't know. I was playing (solo-survival mode, mostly) when there were Endermen, but not yet their own domain for them/the dragon, and basically forgot about it before Microsoft took it on (then had too many other new time-sinks to even consider selling my soul to them)...
:But something like Dwarf Fortress ''does'' have plenty of rock-types (plain 'granite', but also diorite, gabbro, slate, limestone, mudstone, etc, etc, etc, even before getting to ores and gem clusters), for longer even than Minecraft had been around, and I linked into that where I thought appropriate. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.186|82.132.236.186]] 17:26, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:: You've not minecraft in a long time then friend, it's been over a decade since Endermen were added. Here are some more stone types in vanilla minecraft other than the ones you listed: Granite, Andesite, Diorite, Sandstone, Red Sandstone, Tuff, Deepslate, Calcite, Dripstone, Basalt, Blackstone, and End Stone. [[Special:Contributions/199.247.247.123|199.247.247.123]] 19:20, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
::: As another long-lapsed minecrafter, that's news to me. (Could I colour stone, back then, or was that just wool blocks and maybe some modded-in 'concrete'?) Also reminded me more of [https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Stone DF stones], though, there being a lot of those, and MC looks like it's still not quite as complexity. I love being able to build entire castles in olivine, or cinnabar/[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Pitchblende whatever's plentiful enough] (and not ore/flux, or the limited amount best saved for other purposes like colour-coded magmasafe floodgates/levers), without 'cheating' by applying my own hues to them. Mind you, I also prefer pre-Steam ASCII-style (vanilla) DF, as well, easier to understand, sometimes, than trying to understand some of the artwork. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 20:08, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Do we make this a table? This comic seems perfect for a table. Maybe 'layer', whether it's real or not, and explanation? [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]]]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 01:36, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:I'll try to work on a a table (given that someone else doesn't beat me to the chase). Also-what happened to your sig? '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 06:31, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
::I was pondering a ";term:definition" approach, and someone beat me to it (but without the definition-indent) and I ran my changes with it. I don't think a table would need more than two columns (excluding "Real?", being "Yes", "No" or "Technically Yes/No, '''but...'''"), so, with the predicted division of vertical space in a table, I think I'd stick with the '''header'''+explanation of the ";:" method. (Can always add a Real/Not Real {{template|Yes}}/{{template|No}}/{{template|Maybe}}-''like'' appending/prepending note to the term-header...) It's not really going to need sortable-table use, etc. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.186|82.132.236.186]] 17:26, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Should reference somewhere that Balrogs having wings is controversial to begin with (see here)[https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs/Wings] [[Special:Contributions/2601:241:8002:3E0:89D3:137:DFC1:D5B4|2601:241:8002:3E0:89D3:137:DFC1:D5B4]] 04:41, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:Hadn't read this, when I puut my own thing about it in there. The actual "did they have wings?" bit, in the {{w|Balrog}} page I linked to a section of, is buried within a multiparagraph section, so ''maybe'' your link is better (or a better one in that part, straight-link Balrog on the first mention for the general wikipedia entry).
:Certainly, when I was young (long before Wikipedia, and indeed the Web... Not sure when alt.fan.tolkien started, but I didn't have usenet access before I had academic internet access, but it was already an FAQ when I finally got into that scene), the questions were:
:#So, did a (or 'the', or ''any'', depending on tye context) Balrog have actual wings?
:#If they did, why? Given they were subterranean denizens? (Probably not the exact words, maybe "...living underground".)
:#So how could it be made to fall like that? (Typical answer: "A wizard did it"... Namely Gandalf kept it falling/distracted. Because that was the point.)
:...I may check to see if the collected wisdom of the current ubiquitous fan-led website has any better answers than we would come up with, after our countless geek-hours of discussion after/before/during tabletop RPGing (even if it wasn't LOTR-based, someone could easily have mentioned the balrog, in the context of a viking attack over a narrow bridge, or whatever). [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.186|82.132.236.186]] 17:26, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Actually, coring previous drilling equipment ''can'' happen. The southern German town of [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebungsrisse_in_Staufen_im_Breisgau Staufen] suffered a geothermal drilling gone wrong (they inserted ground water into anhydrite, which swelled, causing the town to rise). During the investigations, the original drilling equipment was hit in the new core, showing the errors made in the first place. [[Special:Contributions/2001:16B8:A875:DC00:3068:165E:B396:DE72|2001:16B8:A875:DC00:3068:165E:B396:DE72]] 07:33, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3171: Geologic Core Sample

2025-11-22T20:08:48Z

2.98.77.121:

F1R5T P0ST [[User:Slothscript|Slothscript]] ([[User talk:Slothscript|talk]]) 23:51, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

How do I add a category? It needs to be in the LOTR category. (Wow it’s hard to edit this thing on a phone) [[User:Kirinhatchi|Kirinhatchi]] ([[User talk:Kirinhatchi|talk]])

is netherrack a typo? {{unsigned ip|151.197.190.53|00:24, 22 November 2025}}
:No, it's an extremely weak, dark red rock from Minecraft. [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 00:39, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

andalite is not a rock it's an alien from Animorphs which the author is a fan of. Maybe I'll add it to the Animorphs category page [[User:Whoservelt|Whoservelt]] ([[User talk:Whoservelt|talk]]) 00:28, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

They’re just normal rock types, so perhaps not, but I was wondering if the back-to-back references to granite and diorite is a secondary Minecraft reference, since they were added in the same update (which I always associate with them in general.) [[User:KelOfTheStars!|KelOfTheStars!]] ([[User talk:KelOfTheStars!|talk]]) 01:23, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:I think it IS another Minecraft reference. Along with granite and diorite, there’s a third in that triad: andesite — which is spelled and pronounced similarly enough to “Andalite” that the two could quite possibly be conflated, especially by someone who is familiar with the latter and “always has to look up” the former.
::Well, it's 'andalite' in the comic, not andesite. I think that's just a passing reference. [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]]]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 02:29, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:It's been a long time since I Minecrafted, but I don't recall any (stock) inclusion of anything so realistic. Raw 'generic' stone (which became cobblestone once mined, unless it was an ore-holding version), sandstone, obsidian (which I'd usually cast) and the indestrutable bedrock - in the 'normal' world. Netherack (I keep wanting to type "nethack"!) in the Nether and maybe something else (other than the general igneous theme, fire and hostiles) ...glowstone? I know there are (were) 'real rock patches', as with many other mods, but I hadn't heard of this being put into vanilla editions (Bedrock, or whatever). Whether it's happened since the Ender got put in, I don't know. I was playing (solo-survival mode, mostly) when there were Endermen, but not yet their own domain for them/the dragon, and basically forgot about it before Microsoft took it on (then had too many other new time-sinks to even consider selling my soul to them)...
:But something like Dwarf Fortress ''does'' have plenty of rock-types (plain 'granite', but also diorite, gabbro, slate, limestone, mudstone, etc, etc, etc, even before getting to ores and gem clusters), for longer even than Minecraft had been around, and I linked into that where I thought appropriate. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.186|82.132.236.186]] 17:26, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:: You've not minecraft in a long time then friend, it's been over a decade since Endermen were added. Here are some more stone types in vanilla minecraft other than the ones you listed: Granite, Andesite, Diorite, Sandstone, Red Sandstone, Tuff, Deepslate, Calcite, Dripstone, Basalt, Blackstone, and End Stone. [[Special:Contributions/199.247.247.123|199.247.247.123]] 19:20, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
::: As another long-lapsed minecrafter, that's news to me. (Could I colour stone, back then, or was that just wool blocks and maybe some modded-in 'concrete'?) Also reminded me more of [https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Stone DF stones], though, there being a lot of those, and MC looks like it's still not quite as complexity. I love being able to build entire castles in olivine, or cinnabar/whatever's plentiful enough (and not ore/flux, or the limited amount best saved for other purposes like colour-coded magmasafe floodgates/levers), without 'cheating' by applying my own hues to them. Mind you, I also prefer pre-Steam ASCII-style (vanilla) DF, as well, easier to understand, sometimes, than trying to understand some of the artwork. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 20:08, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Do we make this a table? This comic seems perfect for a table. Maybe 'layer', whether it's real or not, and explanation? [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]]]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 01:36, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:I'll try to work on a a table (given that someone else doesn't beat me to the chase). Also-what happened to your sig? '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 06:31, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
::I was pondering a ";term:definition" approach, and someone beat me to it (but without the definition-indent) and I ran my changes with it. I don't think a table would need more than two columns (excluding "Real?", being "Yes", "No" or "Technically Yes/No, '''but...'''"), so, with the predicted division of vertical space in a table, I think I'd stick with the '''header'''+explanation of the ";:" method. (Can always add a Real/Not Real {{template|Yes}}/{{template|No}}/{{template|Maybe}}-''like'' appending/prepending note to the term-header...) It's not really going to need sortable-table use, etc. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.186|82.132.236.186]] 17:26, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Should reference somewhere that Balrogs having wings is controversial to begin with (see here)[https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs/Wings] [[Special:Contributions/2601:241:8002:3E0:89D3:137:DFC1:D5B4|2601:241:8002:3E0:89D3:137:DFC1:D5B4]] 04:41, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
:Hadn't read this, when I puut my own thing about it in there. The actual "did they have wings?" bit, in the {{w|Balrog}} page I linked to a section of, is buried within a multiparagraph section, so ''maybe'' your link is better (or a better one in that part, straight-link Balrog on the first mention for the general wikipedia entry).
:Certainly, when I was young (long before Wikipedia, and indeed the Web... Not sure when alt.fan.tolkien started, but I didn't have usenet access before I had academic internet access, but it was already an FAQ when I finally got into that scene), the questions were:
:#So, did a (or 'the', or ''any'', depending on tye context) Balrog have actual wings?
:#If they did, why? Given they were subterranean denizens? (Probably not the exact words, maybe "...living underground".)
:#So how could it be made to fall like that? (Typical answer: "A wizard did it"... Namely Gandalf kept it falling/distracted. Because that was the point.)
:...I may check to see if the collected wisdom of the current ubiquitous fan-led website has any better answers than we would come up with, after our countless geek-hours of discussion after/before/during tabletop RPGing (even if it wasn't LOTR-based, someone could easily have mentioned the balrog, in the context of a viking attack over a narrow bridge, or whatever). [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.186|82.132.236.186]] 17:26, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Actually, coring previous drilling equipment ''can'' happen. The southern German town of [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebungsrisse_in_Staufen_im_Breisgau Staufen] suffered a geothermal drilling gone wrong (they inserted ground water into anhydrite, which swelled, causing the town to rise). During the investigations, the original drilling equipment was hit in the new core, showing the errors made in the first place. [[Special:Contributions/2001:16B8:A875:DC00:3068:165E:B396:DE72|2001:16B8:A875:DC00:3068:165E:B396:DE72]] 07:33, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

3171: Geologic Core Sample

2025-11-22T19:48:46Z

2.98.77.121: /* Transcript */ Tried to fill out the Transcript with descriptions of what we see. (Note, some assumptions made *only* on what the label actually announces that it shoud be...)

{{comic
| number = 3171
| date = November 21, 2025
| title = Geologic Core Sample
| image = geologic_core_sample_2x.png
| imagesize = 493x789px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you drill at the right angle and time things perfectly, your core sample can include a section of a rival team's coring equipment.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created BY A RIVAL GEOLOGY TEAM. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This image presents a core sample taken by a slightly chaotic team of geologists.

A {{w|core sample}} is a cylindrical piece of something's core, in this case the rock of Earth's crust, obtained with special drills in order to see the layers within. In typical xkcd fashion, the core sample depicted here contains a mix of real rocks found in core samples alongside many humorous or fictional additives. In addition it's shown that the coring drills have hit many, many obstacles on the way down they really shouldn't have impacted, culminating in a punchline the geologists have drilled straight through the Earth to the opposite hemisphere, far deeper than any core sample could be taken in reality.

;Topsoil :{{w|Topsoil}} is the uppermost layer of the typical {{w|pedosphere}}, which often needs to be dug through before reaching actual rock. Whether the soil-core would actually be retained, and counted, is up to the nature of the study being made, but it will become clear that this core-sample wasn't obtained with much thought of finesse.
;Till :{{w|Till}} is unsorted glacial sediment, which might underlie the soil layer and form the transition to the foundation rock below.
;Granite bedrock :{{w|Bedrock}} is solid rock, and there may normally be nothing but more bedrock beneath it until the Earth's mantle. {{w|Granite}} is a very common igneous rock that could normally form such bedrock.
:There are suggestions, from what is seen beneath it, that this particular layer of bedrock (though being a natural material, at source) has been placed here as a construction base, infilled over with the above layers in this particular spot.
;Bottomsoil :This is a presumably fictional counterpart of topsoil, on the basis that they are both soil somehow sandwiching the bedrock layer. Theoretically, however, the above granite (as a slab) could have been laid upon the lowest layers of the excavated area, later to be sampled by this corer ''as if'' a natural layer.
;Roof of subway car
;Floor of subway car :These two layers are indications that the drill has broken into a subway tunnel and through a subway train, possibly from amongst those shown in [[1196: Subways]], which will have been dug deep into the rock or perhaps {{w|Tunnel#Cut-and-cover|cut'n'covered}} into the ground (hence the anomalous granite added above later). The drill has essentially compressed the 'void' that is the interior of the car and the rest of the tunnel, which may seem to be good luck (given a later layer), but this still doesn't bode well for the subway train that may have been trying to move when the drill started to pierce it.
;More granite :{{w|Granite}} ''is'' a very common igneous rock.
;Municipal water main:A pipe has been partly sliced through (enough to one side to not force the collapse of its void). Most water pipes of this size would not normally be forced through rock, only the loose material above it, relying upon pressure to carry water upwards, where necessary.
:However, {{w|combined sewer|drainage systems}} (that rely upon gravity for most of the route) may need at times to be dug deeper to maximize the natural flow. Some {{w|Thames Tideway Tunnel|particularly large projects}} may be excavated deeply through rock, even below some subway lines, though they'll be tunnels/pipes with a far larger bore than seen here, for both construction and capacity reasons.
;Slightly different granite:There are potentially {{w|QAPF diagram|''many'' subtypes}} of granite, as well as being a lot of it.
;Piece of screaming spelunker's arm:Cave systems exist underground in many places, though more usually within rock-types more likely to dissolve than granite layers are. The main exception might be from {{w|Lava tube|volcanic tunnels}} left in {{w|basalt}}, but that's technically ''still'' not granite, meaning that any cave system here would need explaining.
:{{w|Spelunkers}} (also known as cavers) explore caves, and one must have been in the wrong place when the corer passed through, being inflicted a clear injury possibly greater than any that the unknown (but not ''directly'' impacted) subway users might have already suffered. If the spelunker was not already screaming ''before'' the drill came through (perhaps for help, if they were stuck, the size of the cave is unknown with the open space closed up as with the subway), losing a chunk of arm will have definitely prompted screams.
;Cool crystals with no resale value:There are many geological processes that can concentrate elements and compounds in a way that form crystalline minerals. Some are useful as ores, others as just the crystals themselves (for aesthetic reasons or otherwise).
:Whatever these crystals are, as a small seam within the granitic layer just below the spelunker's location, they look nice (or are otherwise interesting), but either have little further application or are just so common that there's no point trying to make use of this deposit. Even if they could perhaps be more 'easily' reached by any spelunker not put off by the threat of drillbits.
;Mangled fragments of drillbit from previous attempt
:When coring rock, it's possible for the tip of the coring drill to encounter problems (like particularly dense and hard rock) that damage it, perhaps by bending its track too much and shearing off the head.
:This latest attempt, probably sent down slightly to the side of the prior one (unless it had managed to gouge out ''just'' the remains of the previous drillpipe, and retain the rock/subway/spelunker layers previously cored out) has encountered the tip of the prior attempt.
:If there's one thing guaranteed to be as tough as a drill-bit, it's ''another'' drill-bit, which must necessarily be hard enough to cut through the expected rock-types. So it's lucky that the first one was clearly damaged enough, by its prior encounter, that it didn't thwart this next attempt and (perhaps literally) grind it to a halt. Nor, apparently, was there a repeat of whatever issue left that first drill like this.
;Some boring intrusive rock that's basically granite but has a name like "diorite" or "andalite" that you always have to look up
:Again, it's perhaps one of those granites. Diorite is a real type of igneous rock, an intermediate between actual granite and {{w|gabbro}}, but an Andalite is an alien from the Animorphs book series, which Randall enjoys and has [[:Category:Animorphs|referenced before]]. Perhaps Randall is "misremembering" the name of {{w|andesite}}, another type of igneous rock, from his [[1223: Dwarf Fortress|knowledge of]] the complex set of reaility-inspired rock-types encountered in the game {{w|Dwarf Fortress}}. As the sample appears right before the Netherrack sample, it may also be referencing {{w|Minecraft}} as well, as Granite, Diorite, and Andesite exist in-game as a mineable stone type, but all three types are often infamous for clogging up inventories whilst mining, due to their exclusively decorative use.
;Netherrack:A dark red, and entirely fictional, stone appearing in the Nether in Minecraft, with which Randall is [[861: Wisdom Teeth|also well acquainted]].
;Balrog wing:The balrog is a creature in {{w|Lord of the Rings}}, found deep beneath the world, awakened when the dwarves delved too deep and too greedily, and previously encountered in [[730: Circuit Diagram]]. The {{w|Balrog#Characteristics|balrog's wings}} are often discussed upon, in the context of whether it had them, therefore whether they could or should have helped it escape the fall that was forced upon it in the books. At least one balrog, however, now appears to have at least one less wing than those it previously had, without us knowing if there was also any screaming involved.

;Granite:This label is applied to rock that appears to cover both ends of a 'height' of rock-core that is simplified by a diagrammatic cut. From the context of later layers, this would include a very long length of drilled-material that passes into the {{w|Earth's mantle}}, and [[3145: Piercing|perhaps]] at least some of its core, before coming back up through the granite to be found somewhere on the other side of the planet.

; Topsoil:Beyond the indeterminate length of granite, it transitions back into the loose upper layers, indicating that it the exploratory core is now being taken from ascening layers, albeit in a location lacking subways, etc, or just managing to miss everything originally seen.
;Cement:This indicates and heralds the presence of a building, starting with its foundations.
;Floorboards
;Carpet:These two layers are typical of a reasonably well-equipped residential building, probably the ground floor without any basement level. The core is coming up inside a furnished room.
;Possesions of a confused and angry homeowner in the other hemisphere
:The core sample has tunneled up into somebody's house, probably while they are there, and has traveled through some of the furniture, fixtures and/or fittings, to their clear unsettled annoyance.

Apart from the less expected elements to the core that was cut and retrieved (and the sheer impossibility of drilling the necessary several thousand miles 'down' through the Earth, and then drawing that sample back out again), the comic heavily plays upon the fact that someone with the ability and equipment to take this sample is yet not as sure about geology as they perhaps ought to be, with almost all rock just being considered 'granite', without any better (or more accurate) qualification.

The title text humorously refers to a "rival team" and their coring equipment — implying that (with the correct angle) you can meddle with their own coring experiment. This is, outside of cold war-type pettiness, not considered a constructive approach to science.{{Citation needed}}

Only about 15% of the earth's land surface is directly antipodal to other land, which would making this sample less than "typical" if it was aimed directly down through the exact centre of the Earth and back up again (a distance of almost 8,000 miles or more than 12,000 km). If one were to do this, from a random spot of land, one would be much more likely to have the sample terminate in an ocean and the chances of ending up in given house would be even lower. Though considering that the title text mentions drilling at an angle, the 'other hemisphere' point might be not necessarily be at the antipodal point, and there also seems to be the capacity to aim at a more desirable target. In which case, this is a "typical" core under ''deliberately'' chosen circumstances. The exact nature of reaching "the other hemisphere" is not expanded upon, it could be as simple as drilling (mostly sideways) a short distance across the {{w|equator}}, or {{w|prime meridian}}, or have to go at least a quarter of the way under the planet's surface (slightly over 1.4 times the Earth's radius, by the most direct route), in any direction, such that the two ends cannot be counted as being in any single arbitrary hemisphere.

This comic comes not long after [[3162: Heart Mountain]], which involved strange stratification, so may be part of the same thought process about the nature, and occasional oddities, of the geologic column.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[This shows a drill sample with various labels, in order from the top of the panel toward the bottom.]
:[Against a short section of core:] Topsoil
:[A more obviously granular shorter section with a diagonal transition:] Till
:[A light and lightly-marked phase:] Granite bedrock
:[Repeating the Topsoil appearance:] Bottomsoil
:[A short/squat and possibly squeezed 'lump':] Roof of subway car
:[A similar squeezed-out lump:] Floor of subway car
:[A longer length of the 'granite' texture, within which...:] More granite
:[Not quite half of a pipe-width, cut out as a gap perpendicular and not quite all the way across the core:] Municipal water main
:[Slightly more grainy version of the 'granite':] Slightly different granite
:[In a junction between 'granites', an squat, unidentifiable lump:] Piece of screaming spelunker's arm
:[Within a longer granite layer, a short stretch of spiky/crystalline features:] Cool crystals with no resale value
:[The same granite, an intrusion of mechanical-looking junk:] Mangled fragments of drillbit from previous attempt
:[As per granite, but slightly more grainy:] Some boring intrusive rock that's basically granite but has a name like "diorite" or "andalite" that you always have to look up
:[Dark, cobbly textured stone:] Netherrack
:[Within a stretch of granite, a short, dark but otherwise unidentifiable lump:] Balrog wing
:[At this point, there is a discontinuity indicating that an arbitrary length has been omitted. The sample then resumes:]
:[Still 'granite': Granite
:[Dark soil texture:] Topsoil
:[Light, fine and sparse 'grains':] Cement
:[Two very short cross-sections, each with contrasting wood-grain stripes:] Floorboards
:[Two very short sections with a textile-base plus piles appearance:] Carpet
:[A mish-mash of 'stuff', possibly including cloth, metal components, grainy wood and 'topped' at the lowst end by something equally puzzling at an angle:] Possesions of a confused and angry homeowner in the other hemisphere

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:LOTR]]
[[Category:Animorphs]]
[[Category:Minecraft]]

3171: Geologic Core Sample

2025-11-22T00:56:24Z

2.98.77.121: /* Explanation */

3171: Geologic Core Sample

2025-11-22T00:49:46Z

2.98.77.121: /* Explanation */

Talk:3171: Geologic Core Sample

2025-11-22T00:48:37Z

2.98.77.121:

Talk:987: Potential

2025-11-21T21:57:55Z

2.98.77.121:

They really do. Even if you end up becoming rich and famous, there's always that one guy who has to complain about you shafting them. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|purple|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 08:18, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there any chance this could be referring to the physics principle of Work? [[User:Z|Z]] ([[User talk:Z|talk]]) 23:54, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I wish I could remember the quote from a teacher who supplied Gene Symmons with 50p to get a coffee after he bummed a coffee from a teacher. But I just forgot why. [[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 07:45, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Once I failed my tech elective because I was busy designing custom PCBs for my custom hacking device (flipper zero-like but with more features) {{unsigned|Tristan42|21:31, 21 November 2025}}

Talk:3169: EPIRBs

2025-11-21T21:07:43Z

2.98.77.121: (Un)signed and moved it until *after* the whole thing that already mentioned that it was explained.

First comment.
>"would not be in an operable state when packaged in transit" .... I dunno EPIRBs, but EZ-Pass sent my transponder "live", it tracked ALL over NYcity (I never go there), and I got bills for like 13 bridges, tunnels, expressways. --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 23:44, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

:This also happened to me. At one point I needed a replacement for my EZ-Pass unit and managed to track the route it followed through NYC over the several monitored bridges the shipment crossed. Luckily the CS when I called, immediately recognized what had happened. [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 06:44, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Is the caption implying that they've apologized multiple times for the same incident or that there have heen multiple incidents of this nature? The haphazardous unloading procedure shown makes me think it's the latter. [[Special:Contributions/64.114.211.89|64.114.211.89]] 00:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

: Because of some people I have known to well I would ship the items as fully operational and trust the sandwich ziplock bags I put them in to keep sneezes off. I would Not trust the end user to install them. It would suck to be the emergency responder for those 1600 {within whatever distance they are precise enough to show} screams for help:
: I recall a 911 operator who hung up on a surgical or something nurse who was reporting that her husband was having a heart attack because caller was not upset so obviously fake. IIRC the caller lost her husband and quite calmly (as must be for her job) helped her lawyers hurt that 911 center and every thing associated with it so badly that all 911 calls get a response nowadays.four tildas.just a sec [[Special:Contributions/2607:FB91:1649:8047:48AF:AA8B:AEFE:DAD2|2607:FB91:1649:8047:48AF:AA8B:AEFE:DAD2]] 05:08, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

"...drifting out into the harbor!" Is the ship not already in the harbor? I really dislike that use of "out into", it makes little sense. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 01:51, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:It depends upon your interpretation of the (unseen) port in question.
:The harbour might just be considered the wide-open area, landward of any (natural or constructed) harbour-wall. Where the ship is, is at a dock-wall, might (together with the adjacent dock) be bounding a finger (one of several?) of waterway that's landward even of the primary open 'harbour' area, functionally considered different as a dock-basin.
:Or, even simpler (by visual, if not words), the crate drops between ship and dock-wall, where the ship itself forms the boundary from the 'open harbour' that (without the ship) normally goes to the sea-wall. But, here, the possibility of the crate being washed around the end of the ship and being in the ''open'' harbour where you find other boats sailing/motoring through (or tied up to buoys, floating jetties, etc) is "...drifting out into the harbour". A opposed to being within easy reach to retrieve, once you've found the right harbourside equipment.
:Unless it's been changed, since I last read it, the Explanation also had it rephrased as drifting ''out of'' the harbour (i.e. into the open sea, river, estuary or whatever-it's-a-harbour-off-of), though I had consciously decided not to change that. As it was functionally the logical end-result. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.196|82.132.236.196]] 03:34, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:If I have a bobcat sequestered in a room, waiting for a cardboard box and duct tape to be delivered, and someone accidentally opens the door, would it not be correct to say it is now out and into the house despite the fact that it was within the house before escaping the room? Another way to look at it would be a shortening of 'Oh no, the box is drifting out (of the port and) into (a part of) the harbor (that isn't the port)!', as both the speaker and listener both understand the context and origin of the box. [[Special:Contributions/64.114.211.37|64.114.211.37]] 04:09, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

So this comic is inadvertently based on a true story.

EPIRB stands for "Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacon". I know because I used to work the company that makes them, though in a different assembly line. One day the production manager decided to give us all a chewing out.

It turns out due to poor quality control, around 1000 EPIRBs had shipped with faulty activators, and triggered unprompted.

Indeed, the coastguard were NOT amused. [[Special:Contributions/163.116.177.50|163.116.177.50]] 09:06, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

I understand the 1600 CT written at the box indicates that there is 1600 EPIRBs in it. But I'm not native English speaker and could not just find it by searching. Is CT an abbreviation for content? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:18, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:Ah I can now answer myself, as someone has actually already put in this link to the {{w|CT#Other uses|meaning of CT}}, and here it is stated that: ct followed by a number means the number of items contained in a package (e.g. zucchini 3 ct). Thanks for the link :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
::Although 3 zucchini would cause rather less alarm to the Coastguard{{cn}} [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 09:24, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:: I believe it is short for 'count' [[Special:Contributions/62.220.2.194|62.220.2.194]] 09:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:::Although, note, that it says that "ct followed by a number" is that thing, then gives the number followed by "ct" as example. ;) But that's just a minor problem with the Wikipedia page, and I'm less likely to be picky with that than one on this site! [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 14:44, 18 November 2025 (UTC) (Well, as long as Cloudflare isn't being buggy...)
::::I'm assuming that you too were experiencing cloudflare errors in the Omaha server? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 15:05, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:::::It was more worldwide than that. From my own experience, it took out connections to Cloudflare-served services here in the UK (multiple local gateways), and it looked to be worldwide. I haven't seen a full explanation yet, but ''perhaps'' closer to "update error" than "mass DDos/hack".
:::::I'd not actual been hit by the recent AWS error, not long ago, nor the CrowdStrike thing before that, seemingly not using anything that relied on those working. But a handful of the places I ''do'' use seem to be behind CF. I only previously knew of this site, due to prior (wiki-side) errors, but suddenly I was unable to access TVTropes, etc, each now revealing themselves as using upon CF's services. (Meh... it happens. As long as CF knows how to stop it reoccuring in future.) [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.236|82.132.238.236]] 16:44, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:::::Yeah, here I was reading, edited the above (not in Omaha) and then found myself unable to save it, until a little over three hours later.
:::::From all that I've seen, it was down to a common reference file getting too big. Whether for the file-system or just for the code trying to check it, I don't know. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 23:54, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
:"ct" is an abbreviation for ''count''. You can find the relevant definition [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/count here], given as sense 4 of the noun(1) entry: "the total number of individual things in a given unit". {{unsigned ip|2601:647:c182:b070:69db:c392:2a5e:8d0d|10:44, 21 November 2025}}

Modern EPIRBs have a digital identity which they broadcast - unlike their archaic ancestors which are no longer tracked. The old ones last century just basically all broadcast an emergency tone so you can't tell one from another. These identities map to an entry in a database, which presumably will be blank for a brand new EPIRB. Outfits like a Coast Guard will have access to the database and can thus see the 1600 beacons in the comic are probably unused. You're supposed to register contact details in the database, obviously if you need rescuing then your phone number is unlikely to be useful, but it can have details of friends and family back home who'll be able to verify that you're overdue, or at least your intent and purpose which justifies activation of the rescue assets. Registering in many countries is mandatory, and even if it's not mandatory for you it's a good idea. COSPAS SARSAT (the service EPIRBs are sending messages to) is said to "Take the search out of Search & Rescue" because of the accuracy of the position data. --[[Special:Contributions/2001:8B0:FBB0:1247:1B24:1C24:1D24:714|2001:8B0:FBB0:1247:1B24:1C24:1D24:714]] 19:13, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Another question is if the system is able to decode 1600 buoys transmitting at the same time. My guess is that coastguard would receive an alarm, but would only be able to decode data from few buoys transmitting. [[Special:Contributions/109.81.171.206|109.81.171.206]] 19:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

AFAICT, system can only support cca 100 beacons at the same time. Quoting siranah.de/html/sail051c.htm

>>> Typical rescue beacon radios transmit a 5 watt signal for 0.5 second once every 50 seconds. ... The 406-MHz data channel is 170 kHz wide and centred at 406.05 MHz. On this channel, a burst of digital data is transmitted with a bit rate of 400 bps using phase modulation. Each transmission consists of a 160 ms CW preamble followed by a data message. The data message is either a 112-bit "short" message (280 ms) or a 144-bit "long" message (360 ms) both including full identification and position information. >>>

So, if you dropped around 100 beacons, there would be chance of them identifying eventually. With 1000 beacons, they would be cca 10 devices transmitting at the same time, all the time, and I doubt that would allow successful transmission. [[Special:Contributions/109.81.171.206|109.81.171.206]] 19:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Am I missing something? Not being a native speaker I ask: do the words "once again" refer to any prior incident of the same sort? [[Special:Contributions/2001:16B8:A849:D00:505C:3DD5:355A:EFF3|2001:16B8:A849:D00:505C:3DD5:355A:EFF3]] 20:50, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

saying "...apologize for 'the' 1,600 simultaneous false alarms 'this morning'" makes it clear they have already apologized for this specific event. It doesn't imply any previous false alarms. [[Special:Contributions/173.88.137.222|173.88.137.222]] 21:32, 18 November 2025
:It may refer to that morning's dropping of a similar box. "We'd like to apologise once again for [...], and ''now'' we also need to apologise for this latest incident... if you're not ''already'' getting 1600 more distress signals, you'll definitely start to be getting them as soon as the water soaks into the crate." [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 00:05, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
:"We apologised yesterday for the box we dropped then, and now we'd like to apologise once again for the one we dropped this morning." [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 09:20, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

The Trivia section here describes a real case of [[978:_Citogenesis|Citogenesis]] ! {{unsigned ip|100.1.214.162|22:58, 19 November 2025}}