Category talk:Extra pages

This discussion was moved from the community portal and edited.

Creation

I would like to propose the creation of an additional category for "miscellaneous pages" that aren't really comics, and which generally have a URL slug that's an English word or phrase instead of a number. This includes xkcd.com/YES and xkcd.com/NO, both of which currently have articles, and others as they are found or recovered. If only we could access the forum thread mentioned on the YES and NO pages! I was able to find a link to the thread here, but it's inaccessible.

It's the one labeled "Hidden pages on xkcd": [1]. I was able to find the pages above via Reddit: [2] [3] --Rumbling7145 (talk) 00:16, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Update: I got into the forum page! [4] We can now add these pages to the list. Rumbling7145 (talk) 23:37, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

This is not a comic, but a webpage on xkcd.com There are many other similar xkcd webpages. The explain xkcd is trying to decide how they should be treated and you are welcome to help us decide how we should categorise, call, or present these kinds of explanations. Join the discussion at Category talk:Extra pages! This page should not be categorized until we decide how to explain these non-comics (see discussion above).

You can monitor the pages that are using this template (so the brand new webpage explanations) by going to Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:misc_page

How should we treat them?

This is great! I think we should first create an article for each of them, and after we have a few articles then we can start to figure out a good name for the category and answer some questions, like:

• Should we add a new parameter to the template for these non-comics? To do that, we would have to ask an admin to edit the {{comic}} template to allow us to do that. We can ask Kynde, no big deal.

• Some pages, like Blue Eyes and Bitcoin address are already in other categories, like Category:Extra comics and Category:Design of xkcd.com. Should we use the existing categories, or add a new one? How do we distinguish between, for example, Blue Eyes, Bitcoin address, and YES, which are all in theory "misc pages".

• Where should the new category be categorised?

• What title should we give for explanations of pages that don't have a name, like xkcd.com/dot? That one is just titled "xkcd.com/dot", unlike pages like Blue Eyes and YES. Would it become "dot", "Dot", something else? Should we keep it coherent or base ourselves solely on the rendered title on the official site?

I love the idea! I currently don't have time, but I will create these pages eventually. If anyone else wants to chime in, please do! --FaviFake (talk) 16:11, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

"Unnumbered publications", or similar, could cover anything that wasn't xkcd.com/<digits>. Wouldn't cover replacements (2642: No One Was Hurt was originally 2642, for example), but that's a different class from deliberately off-series items. Also, given that often they are entirely non-image (the Yes and No), or straight text and multi-image (as per Blue Eyes, or other articles with a WhatIf-ish feel to them), I think calling them "comic"s is stretching the term.

Though "miscellaneous pages" sort of covers this, I've a feeling that there's at least one... 'entity'... that is built upon multiple actual 'pages', but the list of candidates above doesn't contain any that look like they're what I'm vaguely thinking of. (Neither was it anything like the xkcd survey, or other interactive (numbered) comics, but maybe I'll bring it back to mind sooner rather than later.)

As to the use of {{comic}}, I think we could spring to a (modified, 'inspired-by') template specifically for all these no-number/off-sequence explanation headers. Either explicit "prev=" and "next=" (per comic, could get quite mixed up if not kept uncontradictory) or a "position=" which could help maintain a list (and, from that, an auto-generated first/prev/next/last 'page ring') without having to subvert expectations of fitting in with the normal Template:LATESTCOMIC system.

With the Comic template already equipped to deal with "no-number 'comics'", there wouldn't (in the first instance) be much work needed to "decomic" the new copy, with the exact method of resequencing (if desired) as a parallel series being the biggest question. 172.70.85.49 17:20, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the last sentenc means, but I like the idea of a new template! However, I don't think we should call the category "Unnumbered publications". Isn't that just Category:Extra comics but without comics Disappearing Sunday Update and No One Was Hurt? We should establish a criterion to add pages to this category and then figure out a name i think. --FaviFake (talk) 15:42, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

On this subject, is there any reason why it's YES and NO (currently the valid links) rather than Yes and No / yes and no (currently invalid links)? And I don't mean "why aren't there redirects?", which I don't even think is the right way of resolving this, but what was the thinking? (Which then didn't result in DOT, etc, so there's definitely some inconsistency, one way or another.) 172.68.205.92 21:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see inconsistencies. The name of the browser tab for the yes page is "YES" by Randall, same for NO. Instead, the page for dot is called "xkcd.com/dot/". We could use that, but that's likely not what Randall intended and might have been a coding oversight. --FaviFake (talk) 16:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I've created the {{misc page}} template for these pages and removed the incomplete template until we reach consensus on what to do with them. --FaviFake (talk) 14:40, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Ahem, I'd like to remind everyone that they can feel free to comment on the best way to manage these. Or if they should be included in the wiki at all. FaviFake (talk) 21:38, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

What if we just create a subcategory for These. It is xkcd so it should belong here. Should not be in the random queue but something like a button to get to these. 216.125.50.226 (talk) 16:51, 18 March 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

New page "Spiral"

I found a new page at xkcd/spiral. what should I do? Thanks! This is my first post, sorry it's not formatted correctly. -- 73.169.159.188 00:27, 12 October 2025‎

Welcome. Good find! Any suggestions? -- Dtgriscom (talk) 01:47, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I've moved this over to Coordination and uploaded all images on spiral. I'll be making the page soon. 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 05:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Moving to correct location where we're discussing these pages. More discussion about how we should treat them is welcome! FaviFake (talk) 18:00, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Category:Extra pages

I've created a category called Extra pages for all of these pages. 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 03:14, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

So, right now we have "Category:Extra pages" and "Category:Extra comics". Some are unnumbered comics (plus at least one "was a number, then replaced") and some are 'merely' pages (with possible a fuzzy line between for 'pages' that show images-that-aren't-comics), perhaps we should be consistent between which are which, and how they relate to 'standard' numbered comics.

For example, being an Extra Comics was (officially, but you could also manually add it) initiated by the "extra=yes" param to {{comic}}. This also (theoretically, problems with the randomness backend aside) adds them to the Random Comics link-choice, without adding them to the Comic List numbers (such that it states "we have #### comics", where #### should not be different from the latest comic number, as recently established).

Perhaps:

• Make the comic template accept "extra=comic" or "extra=page", instead of "extra=yes".
  • Perhaps "extra=yes" 'remains' to default to one or the other? ...nah, just make sure all the current "=yes" ones are assigned beforehand.
  • "extra=no" just defaults back to behaviour without any "extra=" at all, of course, pretty much as currently.
• Each of these new distinctions assigns to the 'Extra' category that fits it, but keeps it out of the All (numbered) Comics list, as being not numbered (and some not being 'comics')
• Either just keep Extra Comics feeding to the Random Comic list (All Comics+Extra Comics, as we've painstakingly set it up to do, recently) or also include Extra Pages (it being AC+EC+EP in the Special:Random target list/whatever). TBD, depends upon whether you like a strictly "non-comic page" potentially popping up as a 'treat' for people.

...that's all a little extra work. Some of which I could probably do right now (though maybe some pages are Protected against my input, haven't checked), but I think this needs discussion before doing any actual refining of the current setup.

Might have been better to have proposed and discussed the Extra Pages details before starting that, too, but I'm happy to use this setup as a stepping stone given that it's been done already. 82.132.244.89 14:20, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Update on ngrams

The images on the ngrams page appear to be generated dynamically. The original URLs are broken, but can be restored by changing "/chart" to "/graph". This doesn't fix the HTML page, but it does render each of the 58 URLs accessible - see below.

All graphs default to a corpus from 2009. Note that some graphs, such as the one noted "cherry picking" below, look very different using a more recent corpus.

[Moved to Category:Extra pages#Ngrams.]

Rumbling7145 (talk) 16:14, 10 March 2026 (UTC)