User talk:FaviFake

Hey there, feel free to send me a message :)

Objects table

Thanks for replying. The current table in the main text looks good, but still it is a description or just enumeration of game objects, not an explanation (or in some cases: partly an explanation). Supposing we keep the current structure, it is possible to add explanations for the planet names in the Explanation column. For example, first sentence of the second paragraph is a good explanation for the Uzumaki planet's name. On the other hand, Andal has only a description (what it looks like and what features are present on the surface) and no explanation (that it refers to Animorphs series of books). There's also a question where one should put explanations of items and messages. Some do not need an explanation ('You found a stick'), but most do: what they mean and what they refer to, both in xkcd context (such as when there's a comic about the thing) and in general context. I hope you understand the difference between description and explanation. Maybe there's also some misunderstanding resulting from a language barrier; English is not my native language.

What is also missing in the table are many structures or objects found on the planets and, most importantly, dialogues or monologous of the characters, which contain many puns and references, and also hints for the player. There's simply no place for them in the current structure. Making more columns may be messsy. That's why I proposed making several tables covering different aspects.

Please take my remarks as proposals to improve the structure and not as a criticism or request for you to make everything right and fill every cell of the table. I think we need to create a clear structure for everyone else to fill in with details; but also to provide good examples to follow.

Technical remarks:

• In my opinion, the filename column is not needed, it does not appear anywhere while playing, it's in source code only. Better remove it to have more horizontal space for the rest. The names given to the planets by the editors of the explanation page shown in the Description column are fine.
• Coordinates are also not useful for a regular player, who does not use some Javascript addition/cheats, maybe remove it as well; textual directions in Explanation column are sufficient.

-- Malgond (talk) 19:59, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

> Thanks for replying. The current table in the main text looks good, but still it is a description or just enumeration of game objects, not an explanation (or in some cases: partly an explanation). Supposing we keep the current structure, it is possible to add explanations for the planet names in the Explanation column. For example, first sentence of the second paragraph is a good explanation for the Uzumaki planet's name. On the other hand, Andal has only a description (what it looks like and what features are present on the surface) and no explanation (that it refers to Animorphs series of books).

Hey! Yeah, that's the state of the table right now, and I 100% percent agree with everything you're saying here. All planets and items that need an explanation should be explained and not just described. I mostly just copied and pasted the "planet description/explanations" from the old list to the table: creating the table was way more painful than i thought. I was actually surprized to see that nobody explained what Andal referred to, but I don't know anything about it so more knowledgeable people will have to chip in on that

>There's also a question where one should put explanations of items and messages. Some do not need an explanation ('You found a stick'), but most do: what they mean and what they refer to, both in xkcd context (such as when there's a comic about the thing) and in general context. I hope you understand the difference between description and explanation.

I do! And I wish other people could help here. I'm not sure if you've seen it, but this is the banner i put above the table:

---

ALL ITEM EXPLANATIONS NEED TO BE TRANSFERRED FROM THE OLD PLANET LIST TO THE NEW TABLE
We are currently switching from a disorganized list (below, inside the green banner) to the new organized table, but the explanations for specific items are missing from the new table. Please help by copying the item explanations from the old list and adding them to the new table in this format:
The item message – ''Where to find it – Explanation, such as references etc''
Example: You found a cheese platter (Your tanks recharge faster) – Next to the cell tower – The cheese is a reference to 1234: Cheese

---

OTHER ISSUES:

• upgrades that end in "???" need to be replaced by the exact upgrade message shown to the user.
• the "Tiles (X, Y)" column for planet coordinates is empty

As you can see, the explanations should be put right next to the items and messages. Unfortunately no one has started to add them to the table yet

> Maybe there's also some misunderstanding resulting from a language barrier; English is not my native language.

Your English is excellent :)

> dialogues or monologous of the characters, which contain many puns and references, and also hints for the player. There's simply no place for them in the current structure. Making more columns may be messsy. That's why I proposed making several tables covering different aspects.

Almost all the dialogues are on the 2765: Escape Speed/Transcript page, so I guess they should be added there. I don't know if they're already here, I haven't looked at it enough

The transcript is not the place for explanations. Puns and references shall be explained elsewhere. I continue working on the transcript but there's still quite a way to go. -- Malgond (talk) 5 May 2023

> Please take my remarks as proposals to improve the structure and not as a criticism or request for you to make everything right and fill every cell of the table. I think we need to create a clear structure for everyone else to fill in with details; but also to provide good examples to follow.

Yeah; i totally get everything you said. In my last reply I think I was a bit too rude for some reason, maybe it's because I just finished the table and was tired.

>* In my opinion, the filename column is not needed, it does not appear anywhere while playing, it's in source code only. Better remove it to have more horizontal space for the rest. The names given to the planets by the editors of the explanation page shown in the Description column are fine.

• Coordinates are also not useful for a regular player, who does not use some Javascript addition/cheats, maybe remove it as well; textual directions in Explanation column are sufficient.

I was heavily inspired by the table in the 2712: Gravity explanation, which included these. I kind of agree that the filename could be removed, and the filenames could be added to the planet name or explanation, i didn't think about that. About the tiles, someone might use them someday, but if the column keeps remaining empty, i don't mind seeing it disappear

I really liked your ideas, if you don't mind I'll copy and paste this discussion in the actual comic discussion page and see what others think --FaviFake (talk) 21:37, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: I found a way and added all the coordinates, and moved the planet filenames to the Planet Name column to make more space for the other columns :)

Hi, what about dividing planets and objects like in my experiment? There's plenty of horizontal space for explanations and the entries are quite compact vertically. I also think about color-coding the different Types of game objects. -- Malgond (talk) 5 May 2023

Hmm, I think it looks a little messy and maybe too complicated. Do any other comics have two different tables? Also, I'm personally not a fan of mixing items, landscapes, and people. I think most people reading the table are there to get an overview of the planets and what they contain. Do we really have to explain everything in such detail? FaviFake (talk) 14:09, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

We do not have to follow other explanations too closely, we could use a new form if it seems clearer and better. The current form has no place neither for explaining items nor for dialogues/monologues. More columns could be problematic (specifically in today's world of high and narrow screens of smartphones). Should we explain everything? Well, it us up to collective "us". Personally, I would like someone explain a few puns/dialogues I do not understand.

For now, there's only a handful of people still interested in somehow finishing the explanation for this huge comic. Maybe if we two can agree on some format we could put it in discussion page and ask for votes. (Discussion needs a cleanup, BTW). -- Malgond (talk) 22:00, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Hey, I'm back. I see you're enhancing your example table, and iI was wondering, do you plan to move your edits to the actual article after you're done and use the test to see how the formatting looks? Isn't it easier to just add them to the main page directly? Just wondering. If you want I can help you port them over :)

Keeping the contents of the table on your talk page and then porting them over afterwards could lead to a loss of information added after you started editing your user page FaviFake (talk) 13:11, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm back too. Yes, I intend to put it in the main article, but I am a bit shy to replace a lot of your work; I've asked for opinions in the talk page. Let's see how it sorts out. Maybe someone has a still better idea. -- Malgond (talk) 21:50, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Oh. I think the structure of the current table in the article is better than the one you've been working on: for example, it's easier to sort for items, is more compact, and is just one. Why don't you just add a "transcript" column like the table on 2712: Gravity to put what things and people say, and add the rest of the information on the respective columns? Personally, I think you're making it a little bit too complicated. FaviFake (talk) 15:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Haltones

"They're not **predominantly** gray, the two main colors are just white and black. Sometimes he uses the gray color just like when he uses any other color" ... It didn't say that they were predominantly grey(/'gray'), any more than it said that they'd be predominently black (as Category:Comics with inverted brightness, often, in preference to white). The point being that even the most "black and white" images aren't monochrome, but have degrees of grey at the boundaries, with smoothly antialiased boundaries between the full black of the line (or filled area) and the full white of the background (or inverted detail). You'll see this if you zoom in, with your favourite image editor. And very often in images with a default RGB colourspace, even if the effective pallette employed covers just greyscale values. But greys actually do feature a lot, too (often the first choice of non-black-and-white, for slight lessening of prominence, as opposed to 'red pen' increased visibility). So it's technically inaccurate to describe them as pretty much monochrome. But how to convey this in <...counts...> less than 157ish words? 172.71.242.173 16:35, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

The wiki page says

"xkcd comics are usually plain, predominantly black-and-white line drawings, but sometimes they make use of hues beyond the usual monochrome colors, even if it is just red-penned annotations.

I think it's enough, since, even if grey is more used than other non-monochrome colors, I don't believe it's so important that it needs to be included as a "third" main color. If Randall uses many bright colors, that he will obviously also use simpler hues of grey when needed. What do you think? FaviFake (talk) 16:51, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Aside from the antialising edging gradient, I just used the Random Page link and landed on something with functional greys, an unusual use of 'Post-It' yellow, an unremarkably "just black pen" comic and then more functional grey. I'd argue against "monochrome" as a description, as clearly there is more than just #000000 and #FFFFFF, often enough, in an actual fill-colour/broad-brush context. Even if that's #808080 or another no-hue shade. (I was expecting to land on a "grey pen" comic to assess, after enough clicks but, having seen what I got in the random first handful, I saw no need to go on.)

And "monochrome" can be/often is coloured. Sepia photographs or "night vision" green displays are perfect examples of monochrome (with or without halftones/dithering/whatever). As is 267: Choices: Part 4 (other Choices comics may be considered "duotone", in different ways).

Maybe "...are often drawn as black shapes on white, or occasionally white shapes on a dark background, but may feature at least one additional highlighting shade or an even fuller colour pallette." Does that sufficiently cover that whole breadth of use? 172.70.86.154 19:48, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Childish slang.

Agree with you on the recent change that you (generic 'you', not you 'you'!) sound infantile, any which way, upon use of the words mentioned. Which is how it was still said before the revert in that version of edit. But with "pretty gay" and "retarded" are infantile and offensive slang for "foolish" or "contemptible", you miss the point. Foolishness is just one distant contender for what "pretty gay" is often intended to mean (even if not actually being used for someone/something 'effeminate'). And "retarded" is more in the whole "thick, stupid, dumb" line of insult than "contemptible" (which is more "horrible, dislikable, repulsive"..?).
Personally, I also thought it better with not actually defining insults (correctly or otherwise), as it adds power to them. I can call someone a "numpty" in jest, for example, and colloquially that might be understood as the low-level insult (if that) which it is intended to be. But if I start to bandy around its dictionary definition then it becomes more of a seriously accusatory description.
Just my opinion. Not really understanding the latest revert when it had seemed to be improved (if anything) in the version you reverted away. Just putting it there. I know you're doing a lot of editing (good stuff!) just wondering if you considered this one carefully enough in your obvious zeal. 172.71.182.89 16:31, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Addendum. Meant to say, if you decide to undo/reform your own revert (I won't do it, but on the offchance you see my point), I'd have not said "commonly used". They're used in slang, but I don't think we can say how frequently they pop up. They're "used in slang" (and also not in slang, or at least not insulting slang, where "gay" has a long history of just meaning "happy", whilst "retarded" is often to do with decceleration/minimised acceleration of physical systems) but I'm not sure they're no more than minority words in the whole world of such language. They depict a subset of insult-givers (like the character in the comic, for whom it adds a certain additional characterisation) amongst all the many and varied insult-givers, and Randall surely chose such semi-bowlderised terms to not have to write any of all the far worse words he might also have done. 172.71.94.31 16:46, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

IP page to delete

I didn't see your thinking about why the Deletion category was not needed there. And, believe me as an IP myself, I've never known anything useful being said on an IP's User or User Talk page. With that example not breaking the pattern any. 172.70.85.131 00:41, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I just don't think there's a reason to delete it, it's useful to have a previous talk page if the IP continues to edit and people want to communicate with them FaviFake (talk) 10:51, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

"The IP" is whichever one of 'us' happens to land on that particular Cloudflare route.

I'm not going to go back and find out which IP it represents, to check if it's in their current stock of connected gateways, but it might not be. Or it was even (depending on date) a pre-Cloudflare 'straight' access unproxied and thus no longer seen, even if the exact same editor on the exact same IP lucked on their initial gateway.

Certainly it won't map to a meaningful 'user', chances may even be that it doesn't map to any user. IP-version User/User Talk pages are anachronisms pretty much as soon as they're created. Or before, if based upon trying to contact an author of an older edit. I was on 172.70.85.131, above, but who knows (before I submit it) what this reply's sign-off will say.

And a one-shot editor may never ever see the results of any conversation that was tried to be started. Whereas I might see any response, anywhere, that contextually makes it plain that they're talking about an edit I once made.

Honestly, I think it'd be worthwhile checking every IP-focussed namespace page and archiving anything truly interesting that found itself in there in some other central location then condemning them all to deletion. Maybe, if possible, prevent their creation too. But I don't have the ability to do anything (except sift through them for any of the very rare gems of quality, but I wouldn't be able to do anything about it from there on in, so...

...not gonna do anything more about it (I can't, other than reinstate the To Be Deleted membership, whch I won't bother with), but I hope you understand my perspective on this. I've seen you become a very useful member of the community, who I generally respect for your input and tweaks to the site, and don't expect you to take instruction from li'l ol' me (not even working with an established identity). Just consider this as food for thought, and leave it at that if you wish. 162.158.34.19 20:12, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

RTL/LTR: "...but I think it refers to me"

Yeah, it does. The point being that we might not do anything about the smartarses who vandalise knowingly (and I don't see a problem with what you otherwise did), but when someone thinks they have unique and funny joke (along the lines of putting "Citation needed"s everywhere) they might spot the comment and then realise how we've seen it all done before so refrain from the prank. I can't even recall how many times we have had to revert things, but best to put off the casual comedian, and it won't change the outcome either way for the dedicated vandal with their blood up and looking to cause trouble. 141.101.98.107 20:00, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I guess you're right, I just thought it was very clear for everyone that rendering an entire article unreadable was an act of pure vandalism, but I guess an editor comment doesn't hurt. FaviFake (talk) 10:53, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The reason "the image size wasn't there"?

...because it didn't need an image-size restriction, originally? Compare the previous and current version sizes. Nice to have a (huge!) high-res headshot, no doubt, but clearly that's why you found that it now needs artificially constraining... No actual mystery. 172.70.85.63 17:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah you're right, I just assumed every comic had the image size to be future-proof. The weird thing was that the "imagesize: " part was already there, but there was no value. Anyway, nothing important.

I disagree with Oxford commas.

"For breakfast I had some bread, toast, and jam." - A legitimate(ish) case of ", and ". Or "I created the world, and saw that it was good." I otherwise prefer to suscribe to replacing all non-final conjunctions in sequence with commas but not adding one before the ultimate (remaining) conjunction. That's like having "Fish, and chips", where it isn't an actual afterthought. And best to rephrase or repunctuate (e.g. with super-listing semicolons to separate) if you have confusing comma-breakout clauses that so easily clash (or lead you down funny garden paths) with Oxford Commas. My opinion, but this is why syntax is clearer when leaving out OCs. 172.70.85.93 13:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I just think it's better to use it everywhere to avoid any possible confusion. If we used it half the time, it would be inconsistent. But it's no big deal.

Similarly, no big deal. Except that it looked like an error. You've done a lot of useful changes, recently... A lot... Which is not a bad thing, I must add. Occasionally I've seen what (I thought!) you intended to say, and I've helped out with a misplaced word or two. And I honestly do not feel like OCs read correctly in many circumstances. How would you even OC something like "...you should paint it red, yellow or, maybe, orange"?

The comma already does a lot of heavy lifting, four or five different uses can occur in the same sentence, with it commonly doing duty as a sub-clause parenthetical (except without the clear open/close distinction of an actual parenthetical) as well as conjunction-replacement within a list. You will find many instances of non-OCed lists on the site. In fact I find the "Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd..." bit, below this edit box, to be the exception and not the rule.

Anyhoo... I 'corrected' an example, but did not re'correct' it once you made it obvious what rule you were working to. I think you're less right than me, naturally, even if I wouldn't say that you're more wrong. ;) But I thought I'd make you a brief note of my thoughts rather than edit-warring the issue. Less brief, now, but I hope you still take it in good humour. (Oh, yeah, I'm sort of Ok with Oxford Spelling, insofar as it's mostly what I use naturally. Except for the "-ize" bit. That and their Comma are totally against how I was taught at school, a number of decades ago. :P ) 172.71.242.71 15:26, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

You really seem to care about this a lot more than I do, if you want feel free to revert my edit back. I'm not even sure why we're here talking about commas lol

I'm no expert and I just like commas. Thanks for checking my edits, I think I've seen a few of your corrections. I have a lot of free time at the moment and I seem to like fixing up unorganized things here --FaviFake (talk) 21:42, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Science Girl/Hairbun

You may have noted that several of the Talk pages attached to those you changed already had discussions about whether someone was Hairbun or (a possibly grown-up version of) Science Girl, and you had people like Kynde support the change to treating her as Science Girl. No skin off my nose, but I'm not sure your arguments are strong enough to support your broad sweep changes in that regard. I think I'd side with "bun with trailing hair" being SG (regardless of apparent age/maturity, as the description only really says usually a child, whether you take that as prescriptivist or descriptivist) but not enough that I'd reverse your considerable efforts in this matter. But on the off-chance that you hadn't noticed the prior discussions and conclusions, before making your own assessment. FYI, only. 172.71.178.204 14:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I will properly reply to you tomorrow since it's midnight here. Btw thanks for letting me know these hyperlinks were rendered correctly, and for fixing my 1 typo (after i corrected 100)

Guys, some things may be being taken too seriously. Assuming this was the 'one error', yeah, the Pedant's Curse hits us all, that's the point. Easy to see how it was done (read as "a Category:Interactive..." rather than "an interactive", or whatever). Happens to the best of us, when concentrating on loads of other things. Not sure about the Jill thing, at all, myself, but that discussion is probably for soewhere else. 172.69.79.158 22:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Nonononono I wasn't serious when I thanked you about the typo, I was also just kidding. I was joking about how after I corrected a ton of typos I added one more.

On the main topic you brought up: I think Jill's main characteristics (I'll talk about why I renamed her) are that she is a child, she is usually interested in science, and has always one or two buns with trailing hair. Hairbun isn't as defined as Jill: she just has a bun. This is what the page Hairbun (written entirely by Kynde, I haven't reformatted to remove the bullet points yet), say about the bun:

---

• Her appearance, apart from her glasses, can also change.
  • In 703: Honor Societies, 708: Sex Dice, 1511: Spice Girl, 1601: Isolation and in every instance in 1608: Hoverboard her hair looks somewhat different, curly and with some kind of ponytail, but since her main distinguishing characteristic is the hair bun, these comics are included.

[...]

• There are some characters with hair buns that are not Hairbun:
  • Since she is a grown woman, she should not be confused with Jill or any other small girls with hair bun like in 1584: Moments of Inspiration.

---

And on the Page for Jill, before I ever touched it, it said:

• As she is usually also clearly a child she usually cannot be confused with Hairbun

---

Kynde mentioned 1511: Spice Girl and 1601: Isolation as featuring Hairbun and not Jill, but they look exactly like a grown-up Jill. Plus, on the gallery section on Hairbun (I'm working on adding back a better one since the old one was kinda broken UPDATE 11:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC): Added the gallery back with vector images), this was the first picture of Hairbun:

So, to recap: Hairbun has always had a version with a bun with trailing hair, but it was inconsistent between comics, so I settled on Jill is a girl that always has trailing hair and Hairbun is an adult that sometimes has trailing hair.

On the topic of renaming Jill:

• I searched the wiki for Jill and found 3 discussions. One of them ended up "why world we even create a page for that girl, there aren't many comics featuring her.", but didn't criticize the name too much iirc
• We did the same thing for Danish. The only time she was given any name ("Danish in the sense of "darling" iirc), that was the name used.
• If we change our minds and Jill also becomes a woman, we don't have to remove the "girl" part.
• I'm not sure about this, but I think she's slowing being added more and more outside science comics.

Wow this was long --FaviFake (talk) 10:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

In reply to this query...

There's the Welsh, at the very least! (Well, you did ask! Even if it's truly not so relevent. ;) ) 172.70.86.159 11:29, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Lol. TIL! --FaviFake (talk) 20:13, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Plural animals

Following on from Ferret->Ferrets, what about the last remaining singular that is Category:Apatosaurus? (I must admit, all your edits/re-edits are making my head spin, as worthy as they often are, but this seems like the next logical step that I thought you might have done to finish that particular neatening job.) But I'll leave it up to you as to whether it's Apatosauruses, Apatosaurii or whatever else you might consider most appropriate... ;) 172.70.85.98 10:15, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I actually thought about it, and I came to the conclusion that I don't know what the plural of that word is. Feel free to research if there's a "right" word and rename that category :)

> (I must admit, all your edits/re-edits are making my head spin,

Yeah I don't really organize everything I want to change beforehand, so whenever i notice a little thing is missing, I add it to every page that needs it. I guess it's easier to review my edits in bulk from a page's version history lol --FaviFake (talk) 10:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Username

I spotted a spam-like user named "Papyrus". ChristmasGospel (talk) 21:55, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, i edited that comic's page yesterday. --FaviFake (talk) 07:49, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Community portal spam

The spammers seem to be deleting text from Community Portal. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 07:28, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, but I couldn't find any recent example concerning me. Do you mind giving an example? --FaviFake (talk) 07:49, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Possible Adminship?

Hi FaviFake, I’m Victoria. I’m planning on reaching out to Jeff via Twitter/X because there’s a long list of things that only he can do. You can see the list at my user page. One of these tasks is promoting more admins. Seeing as you are quite active, and have done quite a lot of edits (top 10 in CS score-wow!), would you like to be mentioned in my message as a possible admin candidate? 42.book.addict (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh hey, thanks for messaging me! I started caring a lot for this site about a year ago, went on a complete pause for a few months, and came back this week. You seem very active, love to see some new active users! I saw your message on the community portal saying you were trying to find a way to contact Jeff. That's actually something I've thought about doing for a long time but never actually tried since not even Davidy22 was able to contact him at one point iirc.

Anyway, yes, I'd love to be an admin for this site since there are so many things I can't do as a user (i have my own to-do list, which includes 1) actually deleting pages in Pages to delete and 2) improving/fixing the comic templates and Main page).

So yeah, I wish you good luck contacting him! My only advice is to use any possible way to (or to get someone else to) contact him without worrying too much about annoying him. His last contribution was more than a year ago, he can totally jump back in for a moment after being unreachable for so long. I really like your message, it's very well-written, now the hard part is getting it to him. Asking Davidy22 for his email address (or finding it online) sounds like a great idea to me. --FaviFake (talk) 22:12, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Trivia below transcript

The FAQ page says that trivia is below transcript. I'm very sorry about this. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 00:41, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Nono don't be sorry, you're totally right! I came back here after months of being offline and forgot about the order! I realised my mistake yesterday but didn't have the time to go look for the article to revert my edit. Please revert it if you get the chance to do it before me. FaviFake (talk) 04:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

There, I should've fixed it now. I see you also reverted my edit, thanks! FaviFake (talk) 04:59, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

On the Ghosts in the NavPane

When I saw 42's inclusion of Ghosts in the Character NavPane, I was pondering asking for Demons and Aliens (the blob-monster types, or near variations, from both UFO-ish comics and far-future) to be added alongside.

But I agree with you that they're not really minor characters. Yet I think they (all of them) deserve a slot there, as they are as much a feature as the (Animals/)Squirrels section. Originally thought to suggest "Groups" (could include "Multiple Cueballs" and even "Children" for groups with otherwise un-IDed child characters), which you could still also add (but for human-character groups only), but now thinking "Other Beings" could hold Ghosts, Demons and Aliens (maybe "Future Beings" separate from the latter, or at least the differently-futuristic "Floating Orbs" as another other classification category in there). As a section between Real People and Animals, I thought, unless it's decided best to put them after Animals.

Food for thought, anyway. You (and 42, and maybe others) may have your own ideas on this, and I wouldn't (and can't) spring my own ideas upon you by suddenly just editing the appropriate source. It probably needs discussion. I nearly put my earlier thoughts in the Community Portal area, but as you're personally active on this at the moment I thought it might be easier for you to ponder if I finally commited it to writing just here. (Feel free to move this contrib/advertise it wider, if you see fit.) 172.70.91.62 14:19, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Just popping in to add my 2 cents-I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of having “other beings” in the navbox. 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 16:02, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey there, thanks a lot for messaging me about this. I disagree with you for one specific reason: the navbox was initially supposed to catalogue the recurring characters in the comics which displayed more or less the same behaviours across comics, such as Black Hat and Beret Guy. It then expanded to include real people, such as politicians, which still remained the same characters across different comics. The animal section is different in that some of them are the same animals across comics (such as bobcats and red spiders, for example), but since we had to include them, we included EVERY animal, even when they were completely different every time, because it'd look weird if the only animals there were the specific ones i mentioned.

If we included a section such as Other beings that includes ghosts, I believe it would be filled with characters that are not the same in every comic they appear in and the navbox would completely lose its intended purpose. --FaviFake (talk) 18:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

(Whoops, forgot a header!) ...FYC

If you agree with these additions/changes, with or without other adjustments, I was wondering if you'd like to do the respective changes to the Incomplete Article category page, as I find it's semi-protected and I'm thus locked out from the edits that I thought I might duplicate there too (in my IP state – yes, I know I could change this, but I'm happier just to leave it up to you/whoever). Anyway, for your consideration. 162.158.202.75 17:09, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Done! Thanks. I removed a few technical details. --FaviFake (talk) 07:24, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

The What If? article index project

The messages regarding the What If? article index project have been moved to Talk:What If? chapters. To add a new topic regarding the index, click here. --FaviFake (talk) 09:15, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Removed "Discussion" super-header.

I had wondered, as (at that time) you hadn't bothered to remove any of the other equivalent super-headers. It looked a bit like an accidental select-and-cut, like sometimes editors do, given your actual edit was waaay down the other end of the page. (It was a bit too neat, not like the usual case of somehow snipping off just one of the "="s, make a =="header"== into a ="header="=, effectively, but I've also seen similarly unmessy accidents happen, so your decent tightening up of the whitespace could have just as easily been a part of the same misclicking.)

I did check the companion pages, and they were all happyily as they (once) were. Note that the extra level of header does have use for (e.g.) putting a similar level of header at the bottom to give Archive, FAQ, etc, sections (not part of the now-top-levelisted points), or even such that we can have "for <foo>, see <otherPortal#section>" to gather things up with less repeats. Not to have their own subheaders (unless they, too, get so large that we have to further split them!), but to be seperate-but-appended like a Transcript (and maybe Trivia) section, regardless of how subheadered an in-depth Explanation gets. If we ever get that (and, really, we could do with a lot of archival for most of the Community Pages, and maybe some FAQing, for which I might suggest a subheadering to easily scan for... e.g. ... the situation with the MathML that seems to get revisited more often than not), then we probably need the superheaders back, unless we put messy indented-bullet-trees (at the top? with or without "expand"-hiding?) only for non-discussion items.

Not that I totally agree that "1.<many...>" (and the occasional "1.<something>.<subsubitem>" was unreadable, either, but so long as we don't have a further main(ish) header, of equal import, then maybe it's ok to do it your way. Just it seemed like a big decision to make, to cut out all the (admitedly untaken) options out of the equation. ...And that is a summary of the mental arithmatic whizzing through my head when I had decided (on balance) that you'd probably just made an unknowing misedit that needed bringing back in line with the others. Just to explain the snap decision to undo your 'accident'. Not sure whether you'd been purposefully thinking about it for far longer, of course. Maybe even a couple of minutes! ;) 172.71.178.58 14:53, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I totally agree with everything you said! One day I noticed there was a useless superheader at the top which was making the TOC unnecessarily slightly harder to scan through. We should definitely bring it back if someone decides to organise the portals, but I figured since it was untouched for more than a decade, it's likely it won't happen in the near future. There was no need to explain the reasoning behind your revert, but I appreciate you reaching out! --FaviFake (talk) 16:06, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

A simple Thank-you

Thank you so much for expanding my knowledge of xkcd, the wiki, and wikis overall. That user page creation left a bit of a mark on me lol. I have found out that I have reached a high enough level to create user pages. I have created 2 user pages and 2 discussion pages for other worthy members of the community. Thank you for the very helpful advice, and thanks again for providing helpful information from the community. Sincerely, DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 05:14, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

No worries! I'm glad we have another active contributor <3   --FaviFake (talk) 16:09, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

It's relevant to note that we only create User pages when people explicitly ask for them. On the other hand, User talk pages are created if you want to talk to that specific member privately. --FaviFake (talk) 16:14, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Removing references to order of LiveJournal comics

But WHY?
I'm very unhappy to realize you have deleted my hard work giving people a possibility to click through the first comics in the order they where released on livejournal. I have not checked them all, but I'm not happy that it has been deleted and would like to get it back. Pleas try to explain why you found it a good idea to remove this info from so many comics! I'm quite upset about it at the moment. And since you removed it would like you to restore it if you cannot make me see why! Seems there is also more info I put in that have been deleted? :-( --Kynde (talk) 19:31, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

You are mistaken! I actually liked the idea of browsing the first comics in the original order so much that I moved it above the explanation! This means it's now much easier to browse them in the correct order, because the user is no longer required to scroll to the bottom of the page: the links are right below the comic.

I did this for all the 50ish comics. I think you might also have missed the "Original title" and "Original caption" parts of these first comics. In every one of these comics, right under the title (above the image) there's an "Original title". Likewise, below every Title text there's now an "Original caption" part, which contains the LiveJournal caption. See for example comics 4: Landscape (sketch) or 8: Red spiders. I also added a link to the specific LiveJournal post both on the title and caption parts, so users can see them for themselves. Your hard work no longer sits in the hidden Trivia section, but is actually above everything else and easier to read and use!

I do think it's still not perfect, especially part to browse the comics. I'd like to create a custom template with real buttons (not just links) and an actual explanation of the situation, or maybe integrate it directly into the {{comic}} template. But still, a much better solution than putting everything in the last section! --FaviFake (talk) 15:47, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the harsh words. Late that night I realized all my trivia info was deleted (did see the original title text was added), but did not realize that the info was relegated to a more prominent place. So I take back my comment, and instead now thank you for improving my work. Hope you accept this apology from a message written at a bad time. --Kynde (talk) 12:58, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Of course! You were very polite. I'm glad you're still active in this wiki :) --FaviFake (talk) 15:16, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Me to, so there at least is one active admin. Sadly I'm not very good at the tech stuff a<nd also do not have time to look into all kinds of wiki policies... Glad there are others like you who lift the mantle on those parts. We really need a guy like Davidy... --Kynde (talk) 20:12, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

UPDATE: I moved the sentences above the ==Explanation==, so it should now be clearer. --FaviFake (talk) 18:01, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Jill's renaming

Hi FaviFake
Just came around to think about the renaming og Science Girl, that I created, to Jill. I really do not like it, and we do not generally give generic figures a name, Megan and Danish the exceptions. And because she is in a comic based on a children song, the name is clearly from the song not because the generic Science Girl is called Jill. Jill is not even used in the comic, only in the title text. You wrote there where no less than three discussions regarding this name change, agreeing with you. But they are not on the talk page of Science Girls page. I'm seriously considering changing it back, so let me know where these discussions are located. I also think it was a mistake to call Danish, Danish, but it beats calling her Black Hats girlfriend. It was just a nickname he used, and they killed the witness as no one must know... But that was done way before I began editing this page. --Kynde (talk) 16:21, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for your message! I'll respond tomorrow because I don't have time, but for now I just wanted to note somewhere (before I forget) that I looked though all 41 appearances and counted the times where science is the main theme of the comic. The result was that the majority of Jill appearences are not related to science. --FaviFake (talk) 20:07, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Well I will have to check that but the first instance was included because it was a girl who where interested in science even though she doesn't look like ScienceGirl. And an adult version of her was included because it was science again. The question is of course if there are now a different girl... But I do not like the naming of her. We did refrain from naming Cueball Rob, and there was also someone who did not like Megan. But that I like now. I prefer keeping Danish, but do not like the reason why she got than name. And other generic characters have been given a name in some comics without we used this. And really feel it is wrong to name her after a children song just because she was in a comic about that song! --Kynde (talk) 09:26, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Hey.

And an adult version of her was included because it was science again.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, but this would actually help my case! "Girl" implies she's either a teenager or a child. This means that, if you wanted to broaden her definition to also include "adult versions", you'd have to use another name. Science Woman? Science Female Charachter? I think Jill is better: it sounds like a name a child would have, but doesn't prevent us from giving the name Jill to adult versions. If we change our minds and Jill also becomes a woman, we don't have to remove the "girl" part.

We do not generally give generic figures a name

But I don't think she's a generic figure. In a bit more than a third of the comic appearences, she's specifically interested in science. This, to me, means she's likely the same person on most of the comics. SHe also has a similar behaviour.

Even if that weren't the case, we would still have to find a name for her that's generic enough, that represents her qualities, AND that's not a proper name. Or, we could just call her what Randall called her, "Jill". There is precendent on this wiki for giving a name to a character based solely on one instance, where the name wasn't even intended: that's Danish. Even more: Danish was used by Randall as an adjective, but here Randall gave us a proper name!

There where no less than three discussions regarding this name change, agreeing with you.

I didn't say they agreed with me. There was no consensus on all of them, iirc, mainly because few people partecipated. Yes, I remember they weren't on her talk page, which is weird, but they were somewhere else. I remember they were mostly even.

The first instance was included [...] even though she doesn't look like Science Girl

That specific comic is an exception, in all other comics she has a bun with trailing hair. Randall may have drawn a ponytail because of the limited space. Anyways, as I said, the majority of the comics featuring her aren't mainly about science. (Of course, almost all Randall comics relate to science, but I counted comics where it was intented.)

We did refrain from naming Cueball Rob

That's because there was consensus on the fact that Cueball is an everyman, while Rob is the same charachter.

And really feel it is wrong to name her after a children song just because she was in a comic about that song!

Well that's the only mention of her name we have, even if it's unrelated. I like that she was named after a nursery rhyme, it fits her character, since she's a child.

[...] I really do not like it, [...]

[...] I do not like the naming of her. [...]

[...] There was also someone who did not like Megan. But I like [Megan] now. [...]

[...] I really feel it is wrong to name her after a children song [...]

I'm starting to see a trend here. Do you think it could be possible you're against the name change because you simply... don’t like how it sounds? I didn't like how "Science Girl" sounded, but that's not why I changed her name...

--FaviFake (talk) 15:34, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Sadly you could not show me any discussion about the name change. Only that you said there where. So that did not help. Yes maybe I used the same wording many time. Also not native English speaker so may have less options to express my meaning... What I do not like about Jill and using that comic to name her, is that I do not think that comic at all is representative of the character I had identified and named Science Girl. But I do agree that if there are several instances where she is represented as an adult it could be a problem. I only new her as adult in 1520: Degree-Off and I can see this has been changes, although I believe this should be reverted as this is not hairbun bu Science Girl. I did not know it had been removed. In this version she was named Science Girl] but it was removed without my knowing. And that she was an adult version was in this version. --Kynde (talk) 16:35, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Looking at comics now, and just found this one, without looking for Jill and saw her here: 2747: Presents for Biologists. To me the important thing is the interest in science and that the hairbun is not tight but with strings of hair hanging loose. So maybe the explanation to Jill should be changed to a young woman, often a child with a loose hairbun, not to be3 confused with the generic every woman Hairbun... Then Degree-Off is also clearly Jill. --Kynde (talk) 17:56, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Also not native English speaker so may have less options to express my meaning

I'm also not a native speaker, I'm Italian! :D I wasn't pointing out your choice of words but rather what you were trying to say, which is (I think?) that you don't like the name. Anyways:

To me the important thing is the interest in science [...] So maybe the explanation to Jill should be changed to a young woman [...]

It seems your opinion has changed completely then! This is what you wrote about Hairbun before I joined this wiki:

Since she [Hairbun] is a grown woman, she should not be confused with Science Girl or any other small girls with hair bun like in 1584: Moments of Inspiration.

According to this logic in this comic:

• 1520: Degree-Off - taller than other woman and man, so a woman → not Jill
• 2747: Presents for Biologists - as tall as other woman and man, so a woman → not Jill

Also, this would mean we'd have to rename Jill to someone else in a third or a fourth of her appearences.

But I do agree that if there are several instances where she is represented as an adult it could be a problem

I agree! If there's one thing that I think everyone can agreen on is that we shoudn't call a grown woman a "girl". And "Science Woman" sounds like a superhero.

So, to avoid naming Hairbun based on how she looks and Jill based on her displayed interest (I'll remind you, you said in Hairbun's page that this is Hairbun:)

...all i did was standardise the matter:

• Jill is a child OR girl that always has trailing hair (except 1 comic), and
• Hairbun is an adult that sometimes has trailing hair.

I think any other definition would be incredibly confusing. --FaviFake (talk) 16:03, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Well I originally put in degree off as Science Girl as she both looked and behaved like Science Girl. So I may have changed my mind. Cannot find the picture you said that I said was Hairbun? Maybe it was from before I introduced Science Girl. I have created both of these characters and then others have changed the explanation and the name. I also called her Hair Bun Girl, which I can now see it wrong since she was a woman, but again, not native English. Here is my first creation of Science Girl. There where more than a year between, so maybe I changed my mind regarding which could be hairbun in between? I'm certainly more interested in having those characters with hairbun and dangling hair to be another than normal hairbun now. And would today have collected those that looks like that together. Also there are many instances of Jill where she do not have a speaking part, thus saying she is always interested in science doesn't fit with how she is listed now... It is difficult. --Kynde (talk) 12:57, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh yeah that makes sense, I didn't consider the fact that Science Jirl was created possibly years after Hairbun. I'm not sure I understood your last sentence, about Jill not speaking? --FaviFake (talk) 14:26, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I think only a year after. But still. I meant that there are several instances with Jill where she do not have a speaking part in the comic, and thus cannot be said to have a special interest in science or her sharp wit. So if science should be her main indicator then she has to say something. But I do not really know how to make this as best as it could be. (Science Jirl, Jirl a combination of Jill and Girl ;-) --Kynde (talk) 12:46, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

It'd be so funny if we settled on Science Jirl haha. --FaviFake (talk) 15:10, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

As I can't edit it...

Regarding the Editor FAQ:

For headlines, you have to use wiki-style code. The simplest way is a preceding semicolon at the beginning of the line which causes the entire line to be rendered in bold.

...I might be tempted to say something like "This makes use of Description List markup", given how there are circumstances when a ";something:fuller description of something" is also actually useful. And then go on to say something about how this is functionally simpler than the actual (sub-)header use of =s, ==s, ===s, etc, (which you'd be advised to check what 'level' of (sub-)header you're already working in and go for the next level on from that) and would the usually be recorded in a Table Of Contents of either the page concerned or any page which it is transcluded within.

Except that we're going into really technical territory with the latter bit. Generally, ==s are for Explanation, Transcript, Trivia headers in comics, you could say. (The reason being is that the Main Page has a single-= header under which the Latest Comic is transcluded and so ==s are best to be inherited as transient sub-headers - but you don't need to say that... it's just an obvious reasong behind the stylistic decision.) Headering a section other than these, in a comic (such as a place for a Table Of Things, or similar) would generally be ===ed (or, rarely, ====ed, as a sub-sub-header of the Explanation/whatever). It is best to avoid any ===+ing at all in the Comic Talk page because, if the Comic page itself gets a TOC (some do, most don't, but all potentially could) then the transcluded Discussion gets (probably!) inadvertently and improperly added in. (You can force a NOTOC, and some other tricks, but I've never been able to find a NOTOCIFTRANSCLUDED-like thing, not without peppering noinclude sections around section headers, which is... getting far too complicated.) So, just saying "Don't use '==...'s in Talk Pages, stick to ';'s..." (even without the reasoning) might be an advisable statement.

Yeah, I'm giving you a lot of stuff here (I think you know all of it, actually), hopefully you can tease out some of the bits actually useful to suggest in the FAQ. :P 172.68.205.164 21:52, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Darnit, also meant to add that in the {{Citation needed}} explanation you wrote, could you change {{actual citation needed}} to {{Actual citation needed}}? The latter is the actual template, the former is just a redirect. No harm in using the redirect-needing ones (generally), but you might as well advertise the correct ones. Like you don't advertise {{cn}} or {{fact}} (both ->{{Citation needed}}, as are {{citation needed}}, {{Citation Needed}} and other case-accomadating variations), though people still are able to use them. 172.68.205.164 21:58, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Sorry but you're gonna have to give me exactly what you want me to paste in the article, I haven't understood a word of what you said. I changed the actual cit needed thinghy--FaviFake (talk) 09:45, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

User page creation

I just wanted to say thanks again for making my user page! --xnerkcd (talk) 17:38, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

No worries! --FaviFake (talk) 18:22, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Admin

What does an admin do? Are they just the people that can create pages?

Not an admin, but they basically manage the wiki state-of-affairs and oversee day-to-day operation. Basically, a stepup from typical moderators. 172.69.208.206

I guess that's what they're supposed to do. Because of the status quo, they just sometimes pop back in and do stuff we can't. We can however create pages ourselves. --FaviFake (talk) 15:46, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

A Barnstar For You :3

		The Template Barnstar
		Thanks for all of your work on improving the templates on here! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 20:01, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks so much! But User:Firestar233 definitely deserves that award more than I do! He created the templates for the what if? index that are still incredibly useful! --FaviFake (talk) 20:31, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Restructuring Header text as a table

"yeah, best not suggest that..." - 162.158.216.41

"Nobody is ever going to do that by hand." - FaviFake

Let's just say.... Countdown in header text was just a warm-up.

bet. DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 21:00, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh jeez no way. No way man. That'd be incredible. And insane. hahaha

But seriously, if you really want to do this, feel free to shoot me a message! Header text is a huge beast, and I think we could even redesign it completely like what if. Imagine a huge table, sortable by date, comic number, alphabetical order of header text, with a ton of templates to manage...

Ok the last one isn't tempting. But seriously we could turn it into the most beautiful list of header texts the world has ever seen! I'm already excited! --FaviFake (talk) 21:12, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I already got the first header text done! The table idea sounds super fun though. I'm on board. DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 21:16, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Shoot you were so fast i didn't even see it! Ok we need to seriously think about it now. A few questions come to mind:

1. How many columns (date, ? What are all the possible things we can display in a useful way that are common to every header text?
   1. How do we handle the section titles? We should definitely use a template to keep the [[#Anchor links]], but should we keep the ad-hoc section titles?
2. How many tables? Two tables for comic specific and general changes, or just 1 mega table?
3. We definitely need a template to mimic the all caps font that Randall uses. Ideas for what else it could do (like contain parts of the table code, color the cell background...)?
4. Would it be useful if some columns were color-coded? Like on what if? ("back to standard text", "what if promotion", "xkcd store updates", ...)?

I have so many questions! If anyone who's reading or watchlisted this talk page wants to chime in and suggest anything at all please do! I'll go sleep now, I guess we'll organise tomorrow? --FaviFake (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good. Date as a column probably won't work because of stuff like permanence. 'Timeframe'(e.g. temporary/permanent) could work though. I guess it could look something like this for comic-specific:

Comic	Timeframe	Header text	Explanation	Purpose

And this could be used for the global headers:

Date	Header text	Explanation	Purpose

I think we should do two tables, with a small blurb before each one explaining what 'comic-specific' means. For the global header text, 'timeframe' could be replaced with 'date'. Color-sorting does sound good (that would be what the column 'purpose' does).

'comic' would just be like '2916: Machine'. 'Header text' is just what the text says. 'Explanation' is self-explanatory. 'Purpose' documents the reason.

For the color codes, we could do 'book promotion', 'Store updates', 'Credits' (e.g. The supporter credits on the April Fools' Comics), maybe fundraisers, he's done those.

I made a test table, with most of the wikitext taken from the what if chapters table and the help:table article on Wikipedia here

Have a good night! DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 22:23, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh and also I got another one done heehee DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 22:27, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Nummer tree dun. I made a little test table so we can experiment with it without putting it on the actual page ( over here!DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 15:55, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey this is great! I'll reply tomorrow cuz I don't have time now but it seems to me you might be deleting some stuff that's actually worth keeping. For example, in this and this edit I thought most of the info you removed could be useful. But as i said i don't have much time, I'll read and reply tomorrow. --FaviFake (talk) 16:19, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah these columns sound good! We could also add "Comic" to the global one, to mark which comic was up when it changed. We should definitely use a template for Comic, so we can link to the explanation, create an automatic #Anchor link tag, and also link to xkcd.com to view the header. It could be the same template, and the first parameter switches between the "global header text" (1) and the "comic-specific header text" (2) modes.

I'm however more and more concerned with the amout of time it would take to rewrite EVERYTHING. If the main goal is to make this easy to visualise and to sort, I think the best way to do it would be to fill these columns with the info, and keep the original text that Kynde wrote. We could simply erase all bullet points automatically and make it look like a normal paragraph, even if it isn't coherent. We will worry about that later, if we even manage to do the former. Does this sound good Dollar?

I removed the rewritten ones and moved them to the testing page to avoid losing info. If we want to do what we did for what if?, we have to use another page until it's ready. I told Kynde about this page to let her know, since she's the main contributor on Header text. Here's what I imagine it could look like:

This would be for comic-specific:

Comic	Timeframe	Header text	Explanation	Purpose
				Book Promotion	Store Promotion	Credits	Fundraiser
472: House of Pancakes (View the header text on xkcd.com)	Permanent	(Today's comic is a parody of House of Leaves.)	This comic's header notes its status as a parody. Only on the days this comic was the newest was this header featured on the front page of xkcd for instance as seen here the day after release on 2008-09-06. But it was only on this comic. The commercial for his new t-shirt was on all the other pages, also on 2008-09-06 and presumably returned to the front page with the next comic. But there is a gap in the archive after this comic.			Yes

And this could be used for the global headers:

This is for comic-specific:

Appeared on...	Comic	Header text	Explanation	Purpose
				Book Promotion	Store Promotion	Credits	Fundraiser
01-01-2009	View archived page of the header text (This global header appeared while 123: Example comic was up.)	Hey all, the new tshirts at the example xkcd store are now available!	This comic's header notes its status as a parody. Only on the days this comic was the newest was this header featured on the front page of xkcd for instance as seen here the day after release on 2008-09-06. But it was only on this comic. The commercial for his new t-shirt was on all the other pages, also on 2008-09-06 and presumably returned to the front page with the next comic. But there is a gap in the archive after this comic.		Yes

The first 3 collumns (except Timeframe and Appeared on) would use a custom-made template which would only need (1) the number: Name of the comic and (2) the header text to make it look all caps. Thoughts?--FaviFake (talk) 15:42, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

This looks great! Good job with the font, looks incredible! It does seem to me that maybe we could shorten the 'purpose' category into one column, with different fill colors for different purposes. That way, the cell would contain the purpose instead of the word 'yes'. Also, the purpose would be in the cell instead of the headers. The tables are super long, especially with global headers, so the purpose being there would prevent people from needing to scroll all the way to the top to figure out which category it is. DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 15:55, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah you're right that'd be too long. But if we do that idk how people will be able to sort tha table? Is there a better way that keeps sorting and is compact? --FaviFake (talk) 17:08, 24 April 2025 (UTC)]

I wonder if there's a way to sort by color? That way they could sort by book promotion/store promotion etc. first? DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 17:24, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

You can't sort by non-content formatting of any kind per se, but if you use a data-sort-value= alongside the cell's pre-content formatting, associated to it either by (careful) manual matching or by the same procedural method that procedurally set the background hue, then that column can be made to sort as if by colour. e.g., whatever makes a cell red also gives it data-sort-value=0, whatever makes it green gives =1, etc. (Though would be good to further refine the value, in such a case, to be integer+decimals, such that the decimals produce a further logical sorting within any given run of hue, if that is in any way more logical than not worrying about it.) 141.101.99.130 17:58, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could make it so everything is shown in one unsortable column, but it could expand into multiple sortable columns like the graphs you made. I will also say that I absolutely suck at basi--FaviFake (talk) 10:01, 25 April 2025 (UTC)cally any wikitext more advanced than creating a table. This is the reason it depends whether I do the repetitive work. DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 17:28, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm gonna start to bring explanations over and add them to the table on the sandbox page. The project continues! --DollarStoreBa'al ^Converse 18:57, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh ok you're just going for it! I wanted to make sure everything was ready and decided before starting, just so we don't have to lose our work if we change our minds later! For example, I'm not really sure what "permanent" and temporary means for the comic specific?

Also, I thought of something for the sorting of purpose. We could use extremely narrow columns, just one letter, and also colorthe cell? And for clarity we could say "C<br>R" instead of the full "credits" to avoid wasting space? Like the one in 1608:_Hoverboard#Table_with_references? --FaviFake (talk) 20:53, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

'Permanent' basically just means that the header text has always been there since the comic's release, while 'temporary' means that the header text was only up for a shorter period of time before being replaced by a typical header. I think the narrow columns are a good idea, but I don't really see where they would be used. --DollarStoreBa'al ^{ConverseMy life choices} 03:38, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Hmm.

> Permanent' basically just means that the header text has always been there since the comic's release.

This i understand; makes sense! Maybe could be reworded.

> temporary' means that the header text was only up for a shorter period of time before being replaced by a typical header.

I'm not sure I understand this? Don't comic-specific header texts (let's call them CS from now on) never expire? I thought they overrode the global headers (GL).

Anyways, still awaiting input from Kynde on this. --FaviFake (talk) 10:02, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi... Was alerted to this by FaviFake.

Yes it is my baby, anything with the design of the xkcd page was made by me to begin with. And I have done a huge job finding the different regular header text in the archive.

I do think a table could be good. However, the current version means you have a chance of jumping to a specific header just by looking in the TOC. A table would make this very difficult. Also there are quite a lot of info for some of these header text, and it could be hard to get into the table.

I have also done quite a lot to make a transcript with descriptions of images etc. And would hate to see that go for a table. And it will fill quite a lot in the table.

I certainly think the permanent header text should have their own section. Question is if they should have their own page. So there is Header Text (the current page) with a link to a new page with Permanent Header texts.

Not sure there are many individual header text that was not permanent. So I think the permanent column is not needed, especially since I do not think we should mix the permanent with the real header text! But I still think a table of the permanent should have a date, the day they first appeared. And in a table this would be useful to sort in the order they came out.

For the not permanent I think there should also be a end date. From date and end date. Maybe a duration calculated from this.

Not quite sure what we would sort on... But if it should be sort-able, then the last column with purpose, could just be a single word, so you can sort on Store, Promotion, etc. Then it would only take up one short column.

I'm not going to help with the actual work of moving to a table. But if you manage to do it in a smooth way that do not loose all the information I have gathered and the transcripts I have made, then go for it. --Kynde (talk) 12:47, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

(i wrote this response before Dollar and IP commented.)

Thank you!

> The current version means you have a chance of jumping to a specific header just by looking in the TOC. A table would make this very difficult.

This is true, but this can easily be fixed using a template. For example, if you go to What If? chapters#123 right now, the link will bring you directly to the table row for #123, even though there isn't a heading! The same is true if you use the name of the article, like What If? chapters#Cassini brings you to "Cassini". The only downside is that we would have to manually keep the TOC up-to-date (or maybe there could be a way to automate that too? But i doubt it.)

> I have also done quite a lot to make a transcript with descriptions of images etc. And would hate to see that go for a table.

Yeah that would definitely not be removed. We can either add the transcript at the bottom of the explanation or make another column, it depends on how many headers have a transcript, I haven't looked.

> I certainly think the permanent header text should have their own section.

> I think the permanent column is not needed

> But I still think a table of the permanent should have a date, the day they first appeared. And in a table this would be useful to sort in the order they came out.

1: Agree, 2: agree, and 3: defintely! Luckily the way you formatted the dates (YYYY-MM-DD) is already perfect for sorting, and they're already hyperlinked too!

> For the not permanent I think there should also be a end date. From date and end date. Maybe a duration calculated from this.

Yeah I had forgotten about this! The {{date}} template could look something like this:

Date
From 2014-07-23 (during 1398: Snake Facts) until 2014-09-01 (during 1415: Ballooning)

> But if it should be sort-able, then the last column with purpose, could just be a single word, so you can sort on Store, Promotion, etc. Then it would only take up one short column.

Yeah you're right, I think we might end up going for this. As you said, we should give the explanation enough space.

> But if you manage to do it in a smooth way that do not loose all the information I have gathered and the transcripts I have made, then go for it.

Thank you! As I said previously, I wanted to shift the focus from removing the bullet points to reorganising the info and leaving the existing te there for now:

"If the main goal is to make this easy to visualise and to sort, I think the best way to do it would be to fill these columns with the info, and keep the original text that Kynde wrote. We could simply erase all bullet points automatically and make it look like a normal paragraph, even if it isn't coherent. We will worry about that later, if we even manage to do the former."

So i guess this is the new proposed design?

Comic-specific: (updated by FaviFake on 21:54, 25 April 2025 (UTC) with suggestion from Kynde below)

Date & Comic	Header text	Explanation	Purpose
2008-09-06 472: House of Pancakes (View the header text on xkcd.com)	(Today's comic is a parody of House of Leaves.)	This comic's header notes its status as a parody. Only on the days this comic was the newest was this header featured on the front page of xkcd for instance as seen here the day after release on 2008-09-06. But it was only on this comic. The commercial for his new t-shirt was on all the other pages, also on 2008-09-06 and presumably returned to the front page with the next comic. But there is a gap in the archive after this comic.	Credits

Global headers: (updated by FaviFake on 21:54, 25 April 2025 (UTC) with suggestion from Kynde below)

Date & Comic	Header text	Explanation	Purpose
From 2014-07-23 (during 1398: Snake Facts) until 2014-09-01 (during 1415: Ballooning)	Hey all, the new tshirts at the example xkcd store are now available!	This comic's header notes its status as a parody. Only on the days this comic was the newest was this header featured on the front page of xkcd for instance as seen here the day after release on 2008-09-06. But it was only on this comic. The commercial for his new t-shirt was on all the other pages, also on 2008-09-06 and presumably returned to the front page with the next comic. But there is a gap in the archive after this comic.	Store promotion

We could add a number column to show how many times it has changed?--FaviFake (talk) 14:07, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I reply here to the above. It is very difficult to find out what I was replying to if I put it in ath the end. The next message and many below written before this:

I like the idea from you table. But you missed the release date on the permanent. Still think that is important.

I was also thinking of two columns for start and end, but your idea my be fine. Could it be easy to add the number of days the header have been up then?

What will the number represent? We do not have the first, and we do not have the last... Unless it is automatic numbering, so the newest is number 1 and the rest gets higher automatic, like in a bullet list, I think it will make no sense?

My input to the above --Kynde (talk) 20:27, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Don't worry, this page is already a mess. Yes, I forgot the release date! I guess we'll put it above the comic in the column "Comic", since the order is the same if we sort by date or by comic number. I also thought about two columns for start and end, but I figured it wouldn't really make sense because the sorting would be the same. Plus, by using just one column we save horizontal space! We can definitely add the duration, that'll be another parameter in the template.

Yeah you have a good point, the number column wouldn't make sense. I removed it. But we might need another column: where do we put the current heading that appear in the TOC? Should we add another column? If so, where would we put that column? I hadn't thought about this. --FaviFake (talk) 21:54, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Not always the same with number vs date, as at least one of the comics did not get the permanent text when released. But it may not be that important.

Yes what to do for the heading I have given the different headers...? The number you suggested may not have worked, but in the header bullet lidt it is nice to be able to see there are 110 (3 of which are placeholders, so 107 changes documented) and also the number of permanent individial headers. (23). That info would be lost in a table. I think it is not possible to move into a table without loosing info. Also it will be much more difficult to add new info, as you have to edit the whole table, rater than now, just the post above or below the one you wish to enter a new header. It would be a massive page to edit. I know it is nice to be able to sort, but it will be difficult or even impossible for someone to add new thing to it... --Kynde (talk) 16:53, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, as I said we would have to update the TOC manually, but it would still be these in some form. We would simply use # to create a numbered list, which would keep the number of total headers. So it wouldn't be lost. Also, editing the table wouldn't be that difficult in my opinion, you'd just have to fill the templates, something like this:

! Special 10th anniversary edition of WHAT IF? - preorder

| {{Date| 2024-05-15 | 2933: Elementary Physics Paths | 2024-10-15 | 2998: Ravioli-Shaped Objects}}

| {{Header text| Special 10th anniversary edition of WHAT IF?—revised and annotated with brand-new illustrations and answers to important questions. Preorder now!

| The first link goes to the page for the what if? book on xkcd and the other link is to the HarperCollins page for the 10th anniversary edition of the book, rest of the explanation... 

| {{What If promotion}}

Also, I just realised we could just put the title you gave in the very first column, before the date! --FaviFake (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

You do have a good point there. Actually, all of these are good points. Maybe we could take out the 'timeframe' column for the CS table and replace it with 'start and end date' for the GL table. --DollarStoreBa'al ^{ConverseMy life choices} 13:43, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Not that I'm taking any part in this conversion (excelt for giving ideas, when they occur to me), but how about: Table has one (small) column contents act as an #anchor-link to the appropriate extended header-defined information below. The beauty (YMMV) of the tabular/sortable overview being developed whilst retaining the table-incompatible "long descriptive" bits (perhaps with a similar back-anchor to the table-rows so that a minimal amount of table-worthy detail need be included in the long-header.

And though that could be done with "^[a], ^[b], ^[c]" or "^[n1], ^[n2], ^[n3]" inbuilt wiki-references, I think maybe just plain [[#itemFoo|Foo]] sort of thing for the Comic or Purpose cell contents. If that works well within a collapsing text area, that might make it available (but not obtrusive to the casual view). Or perhaps send it to a Header text/fuller descriptions]]-ish new sub-page.

This does mean a bit more to remember if updating with new instances (add 'line' to table and add at least a placeholder into the headered paragraphs, not just one or the other) but that much might be made more obvious as a reminder (to those who 'know') or a guide (to newer editors) by a commented out row+paragraph template at the end of each.

Or is it unfair of me to complicate things further by essentially suggesting both approaches to be carried forward..? 172.70.85.186 14:01, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Sorry but I didn't understand any of that. What are you suggesting? For the missing TOC problem, I thought we would solve it by using a template to create an HTML anchor, and then manually creating the TOC. --FaviFake (talk) 14:11, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Do you need it explained longer, or shorter..?

Trying (mostly) shorter: Retain "TOC"ed version (additional: though not necessarily still TOCed, could be redone as ";"ed, instead of "==...=="ed — we don't need any TOC list, 'cos the table will do that), but without most of the repeating short info you're putting into the table. Don't have huge "Details" column, just bare bones. But #anchor-link each entry to the longer-form original sections in their more prosaic forms. So you've a table that's not too busy, but all the hard-won case study info is also elsewhere, just not clogging up the table itself.

The rest of what I said was a lot of optional mini-variations of this general idea. Because TIMTOWTDI. 141.101.98.34 16:32, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Now I understand! Usually a good way to read your comments is to just mentally remove all parenthesis, but it didn't work this time. I don't really think the text is so much that we have to link to it? The example above is the average length (is much shorter when you remove the bullet points), and it doesn't seem to take up much space.

Sounds pretty good! I'm just going to continue getting more texts summarized and ported over to the sandbox, because I have no idea how to use wikitext more advanced than tables and <nowiki> and <sup>. I am trying to learn <span> though. --DollarStoreBa'al ^{ConverseMy life choices} 17:23, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Wait, I thought we were not doing that? I wrote the message below and I thought you agreed, but I must've misread your response. Here's the relevant part:

"I'm however more and more concerned with the amout of time it would take to rewrite EVERYTHING. If the main goal is to make this easy to visualise and read (and to sort, as a bonus), I think the best way to do it would be to fill these columns with the info, and keep the original text that Kynde wrote. We could simply erase all bullet points automatically and make it look like a normal paragraph, even if it isn't coherent. We will worry about that later, if we even manage to do the former."

In short, I think we would make the page much more useful if, instead of using grammatically correct sentences, we simply reorganised it and chenged how it looks. I think this is a huge enough task already, and I think it would benefit the wiki more than rewriting everything. Thoughts? --FaviFake (talk) 18:43, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

To be clear, I already have a perfectly good way of removing all bullet points in less than a minute. The downside is, of course, that the paragraphs would be impossible to read: not because the sentences aren't coherent but because they're not organised. --FaviFake (talk) 18:45, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I've created a template that makes any text look like a header text, to kickstart the project. It's called {{Header text}}. --FaviFake (talk) 15:45, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I shall unleash my american-ness on your incomprehensible British intellect to say: HELL YEAH, BROTHER!!!!!!! --DollarStoreBa'al^ConverseMy life choices 19:40, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Also, yeah you're right. Maybe you could take out all the bullets and I can make them more coherent and add them. But why are we keeping the text Kynde wrote? Isn't the entire point of this project to replace that with something more coherent? --DollarStoreBa'al^ConverseMy life choices 19:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

(Kindly change your signature to comply with WP:SIGAPP.) That was the initial goal, yes, but I believe our efforts would benefit the wiki much more if we made it easy to browse the page. And, in a sense, we would still edit her messages, by moving the date, comic, and HT text to different columns. I just think it's much easier than rewriting everything: what's the point of making every sentence follow grammatical rules if reading the page is as uninteresting as it is now? As I said previously, we could try to pursue the initial goal after the page is tuned into a table, if we still have the strength to keep going.

The reason I haven't yet removed every bullet is because they're needed to understand what is the

actual header text

and what is the explanation for said HT. My plan is that, once a HT explanation is inserted into the table, then I'll remove the bullet points because they'll no longer be needed. --FaviFake (talk) 12:57, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

So, the HiddenCat..?

You do seem pleased that it works, but I can't work out what you've done by it (presuming it has effects upon a different page). And slightly worried by the additional redlinked category that the page now has. 172.68.229.161 19:31, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure. See Help:Categories#Hidden_categories. I only applied it for the new All pages and the old All comics cats. --FaviFake (talk) 15:13, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Solved the redlink (non-)issue by un-redlinking it (aka creating the cat). --FaviFake (talk) 15:55, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Still less than wise as to what problem it solves, but I'm just happy that you're happy. ;)

Also "The categories that a page is in are normally listed at the bottom of the page." I'd have written as "The categories that a page are in are normally listed at the bottom of the page.", to match "categories=>are" or "Each category that a page is in is normally listed at the bottom of the page." to force "category=>is" agreement- but maybe that's a UK-English v.s. US-English thing. (Or just my particular regional sub-dialect of English (quite near me there's a place where "we was" and "I was" are considered 'correct' and another where "we were" and "I were" are, so there's easily room for such confusion, even though I'm a "we were" and "I was" person myself). Or just me be entirely mistaken about something!) 172.68.205.187 20:52, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

> Still less than wise as to what problem it solves

Solves the problem of displaying a category that should not be seen by users.

Also, your suggestion seems grammatically incorrect. The "is" you'd like to change to an "are" is referring to "a page", not "categories". You may want to read the sentence again. afaik, "a page is here" is correct and "a page are here" is incorrect. --FaviFake (talk) 14:18, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Exclusive xkcd textbook comics

Hey uhhh does anyone know about this? Should we make explanations for these? --DollarStoreBa'al^ConverseMy life choices 20:48, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Google's Ai says there are multiple exclusive comics for the textbook, but I've only been able to find Inside Body, shown here:

  -- DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 23:07, 8 May 2025‎ (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Hey, I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific about what "this" and "these" are. You might be looking for this page: New York Times: Good Question. --FaviFake (talk) 15:06, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

'This' links to a NYT article about randall munroe doing illustrations for a science textbook. Google's AI overview says there are three exclusive comic for this. I've only been able to find one. I'm asking if we should add explanations for these new comics. I have given it the temporary name 'Inside Body', since when I saved the image from the NYT article, the name 'Inside Body comic' was used.--DollarStoreBa'al^ConverseMy life choices 16:59, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

upon further investigation, the article is on the page you linked to. My question is still whether we add an explanation for Inside Body. Also, do we add explanations for the other comics shown in the science textbook pages? --DollarStoreBa'al^ConverseMy life choices 17:02, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

A large language model is one of the most unreliable sources of information. Unless you find any other site or person mentioning that there are exclusive xkcd comics on some textbooks, I don't think we should in any way create pages based on what a large language model generated. Can you find any actual sources?

We might still explain that one specific comic, but this is not the right place to discuss this, we should use the community portals. Besides, there are many other comics in New York Times: Good Question that aren't explained. --FaviFake (talk) 17:06, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

It's a date.

I'm confused by the ISO Dates edit. First of all, as explained in my full revert's summary, lowercase are (mostly) reserved for time-placeholders and uppercase used for date-placeholder. And I checked a number of separate documentations and implementations where datetime format variations are described/configured, without finding even one that consistently reserved only "MM", etc, for month, for disambiguation with time's equivalent "mm"-for-minutes, but lowercased everything else.

Secondly, the apparent reason for this edit did not mention this. (Perhaps an overzealous editor auto-correct? Except it/you 'missed a few' and came back to 'fix' them.) The reason actually suggests a sentence's meaning was previously reversed when it clearly was not.

I reverted to before both your edits and those which had prompted your mass-'correction'. Technically, this leaves the "US format in binary" incorrect, which was the only case-change that the prior editor had actually rationalised before you. An argument could be made that "mm/dd/yyyy" could be parsable as being "MM/DD/YYYY, but in binary", like kb/kilobits is to kB/kilobytes... though that's not even how it's phrased and I'm sure that this should indeed be uppercased like it had been. I also think the other change, to the sentence, is more elegant (for the exact same meaning), but am allowing for a slight possibility that I'm wrong about that. As such, I'm letting you consider where we go from here. Revert my change (the latest, as I type) to re-'fix' things back into lowercase, if you have enough reason to, or reassess the things you blitzed and restore the "binary date" and/or rephrased "drop leading zeros" edits.

Any further discussion, on either original issue, I will leave between you and the other editor, though I thought I'd give you a direct nod about my full reasons why I nuked both changes, as you had apparently put far more effort into your contributions (for right or wrong). And I'm not currently unconvinced by their edits, but maybe you can take the opportunity to explain things better and switch my opinions over to your POV. 172.68.229.44 04:05, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure! I just made the table on that page sortable again. Microsoft has always used yyyy, dd, and MM in their settings, so I assumed that was the standard. Thanks!--FaviFake (talk) 14:55, 13 May 2025 (UTC)