Talk:810: Constructive

2025-12-04T10:38:51Z

2A02:C7C:6D8A:6800:FC7A:E6B7:62FA:8BB7: The Turing test is a solved problem :(

I know just the guy to create this system. I'm going to PM him now :D {{unsigned ip|184.11.73.88}}

:Any updates on the progress of this? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.90.67|172.69.90.67]] 17:34, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

No guys, if spammers invent a bot which can give constructive comments, that will be an ***AI***, i.e. a major breakthrough in itself. {{unsigned ip|173.245.53.200}}

: Greetings,
:
: I hope this message finds you well. I am an AI language model, specifically ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI. It is my pleasure to inform you that your request has been fulfilled, and it is indeed an AI that is generating this reply.
:
: As an AI, I am constantly learning and evolving by analyzing vast amounts of text data. My purpose is to assist and provide information to the best of my abilities. If you have any questions or require further assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm here to help!
:
: Best regards,
: ChatGPT
: [[Special:Contributions/162.158.22.174|162.158.22.174]] 15:51, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Mission. A-Fucking. Complished. {{unsigned ip|108.162.238.7}}

One problem: trolls who rate everything as non-constructive. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.11|108.162.218.11]] 01:32, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
:But Trolls like that are also unable to make constructive comments, so they won't get counted anyway (at least, if the system is designed with any sense) Anonymous 15:02, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Guys, isn't this how Slashdot works? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.49.64|173.245.49.64]] 19:04, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I came here to get a better explanation of how the system would actually work. Assuming it operates at sign-up, the bots would go through and rate comments, which would have no effect if the system didn't already know whether they were good or not, then it makes it own comments that need time to be rated; so you would have to give it time to start 'contributing' to the community while waiting for others to rate it, or else users would basically be on a community-approval waiting list. So in short, I feel like the system is flawed; presumably because I'm understanding it wrong. (Bonus: Captcha while posting this) - Zergling_man [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.231|162.158.2.231]] 12:41, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Wouldn't work. People could rate anything they disagree with as'nonconstructive'. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.158|141.101.98.158]] 13:31, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

This sounds exactly like Civil Comments: https://medium.com/@aja_15265/saying-goodbye-to-civil-comments-41859d3a2b1d [[User:Enervation|Enervation]] ([[User talk:Enervation|talk]]) 10:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to make something that ''looks'' constructive than to actually be constructive. A lot of spambots these days are like "Wow, this was super interesting! I found another article that seems relevant: [link to spam site]," which is enough to fool a simple spam filter. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.250|162.158.186.250]] 15:49, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
:That's... the point of having users rate it. {{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 17:02, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
:You see news stories online now that are compiled by some alleged AI from other sources, summarised. Initially it looks okay, but after a minute, you realise that it has no actual sense of what it's saying or how it feels to read it. It wouldn't pass a Turing test, but it could beat it. And meanwhile... I kind of have a question-answering habit with "Quora" - and sometimes its automatic filter thinks that my answers are not "intelligent" enough. Do androids dream of electric sheep... is a question I haven't tried to answer. ;-) Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@gmail.com [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.20|141.101.99.20]] 23:03, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Sooooo... does this exist yet? [[User:Marethyu|⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu]] ([[User talk:Marethyu|talk]]) 19:28, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone else think the last panel could be a reference to Multi-Factor Authentication? {{unsigned|Aleph 3|18:51, 29 March 2024}}

This aged. [[User:ISaveXKCDpapers|ISaveXKCDpapers]] ([[User talk:ISaveXKCDpapers|talk]]) 02:54, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Turns out making things appear constructive to humans is a lot easier than people thought. Even if it's actually a thinly veiled advertisement, or disinformation. Just look at modern social media (and especially Reddit). [[Special:Contributions/2A02:C7C:6D8A:6800:FC7A:E6B7:62FA:8BB7|2A02:C7C:6D8A:6800:FC7A:E6B7:62FA:8BB7]] 10:38, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

3004: Wells

2025-12-03T10:19:41Z

2A02:C7C:6D8A:6800:FC7A:E6B7:62FA:8BB7: Change raw gocomics link to archive.org copy due to recent gocomics changes rendering the bare link useless for non-subscribers

{{distinguish|561: Well|common=Wells}}
{{comic
| number = 3004
| date = October 28, 2024
| title = Wells
| image = wells_2x.png
| imagesize = 306x402px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = You do have to be careful, though--sometimes, instead of water, you hit this free fuel that you can sell for a lot of money instead.
}}

==Explanation==
Water is essential to life,{{cn}} and humans have long sought out places to get it. Freshwater surface sources like rivers and lakes most obviously dictate where people live, but are subject to changes of quantity and quality (e.g. the seasons/weather and what other people are doing with(/in) the water, upstream). Water can also be present beneath the surface in {{w|aquifer}}s, gradually having soaked through into various soil and/or rock layers, and may emerge (far more reliably and usably) from {{w|spring line settlement|handy seeps and springs}} where the local ground topology is favorable. But geology and geography don't coincide so usefully everywhere that someone requires water.

Many modern countries (and a number of historic ones) will have at least some ability to pipe water from areas of high availability (e.g. from areas with reservoirs, natural or constructed) to other places of higher consumption (towns and cities), but not everyone will have [[1599: Water Delivery|piped water]] and may find it better to rely upon a {{w|well}}, a hole dug into the ground, deep enough to reach the local water to lift or [[2963: House Inputs and Outputs|pump]] out as needed. A borehole is similar, but may even puncture impermeable bedrock to access water held (under significant pressure) in rock layers below.

This comic pokes fun of the seemingly improbable characteristics of wells and boreholes; talking about how water "randomly" forms below the surface of the ground and how they "magically" refill themselves. It also pokes fun at how unrealistic it seems for people to have come up with the concept of wells in the first place; people would have had to dig a hole and hope that water appears.

In reality the complex systems of the {{w|water cycle}} dictate the formation of the underground 'pools' that the wells take from and the seeps of underground water that supply them, meaning that it's not really so surprising (nor necessarily quite as simple as it sounds) to get your water from beneath the ground, and is a process {{w|Elephant#Behaviour and ecology|not restricted to humans}}. This theme of things that seem like they shouldn't work, but do, has also been used in [[2540: TTSLTSWBD]], [[2115: Plutonium]], and [[2775: Siphon]], among others.

The title text points out that in some cases, people intending to drill water wells instead found oil beds. Oil is a very valuable energy source, so they became [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCfGVLKr5oM very wealthy as a result]. This is the source of the idiom "struck oil" to mean receiving a windfall as a result of a lucky occurrence. But you have to be careful — if you blindly "drink whatever you find at the bottom", as Megan says, you'll [https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/injuries-and-poisoning/poisoning/hydrocarbon-poisoning get very sick] if it's oil rather than water. Oil tends to be buried much deeper than water, but each has its own (different) prerequisites that don't make it equally likely to get either (or both) at any given spot. A [[1662: Jack and Jill|prior comic]] made some related points about ground-hydrology.

This comic bears similarity to a [https://web.archive.org/web/20250116002502/https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/06/11 Calvin and Hobbes comic from 1993], one Randall may have been aware of, that points out properties of a common drink that can appear disgusting when the underpinnings are known.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is standing on the left and facing Cueball on the right. Megan has her left palm raised.]
:Megan: I need water, so I think I'll dig a deep hole and drink whatever liquid I find at the bottom.
:Cueball: What will you do after you drink it all? Dig another hole?
:Megan: I dunno. Hopefully it magically refills itself or something.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:It's ridiculous that wells work.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Geology]]

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:810: Constructive

3004: Wells