Talk:what if

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Split the page into three organized pages[edit]

Hello, I'm mostly known here for creating the huge table of 2765: Escape Speed

I've organed the "What If?" pages on explainxkcd better, so we don't have a single page for three very different things. At the start of this wiki, this one page was only about the "what if?" blog, since Randall hadn't released any book. But then, after he published "What If?", we kept using this page for both the book and the blog, which meant that explanations of the book and the blog were randomly scattered across the page. This became even worse in 2022, since we kept using this ONE page for a web blog, and 2014 book and a 2022 book. All very different things that deserve their own, dedicated page.

So, I've fixed all of that! All the contents of this page have been split into three pages to clean up and organize the previous mess. Here they are:

Before you ask, yes, I've taken all the necessary steps, such as updating internal links in 150 comic pages and adding redirects to the right pages. Thank you. FaviFake (talk) 14:36, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Previous discussion page:


I moved the what if? page to here because I was unable to use the "move" ability as it kept showing "No input file specified".The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I just noticed this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/science/randall-munroe-question-popcorn.html It seems to be a continuation of what if in spirit but not in name, should we link to it from here?

Is the "it's" in the UK book description a typo by the article writer, or is it there in the actual book? I can't find it on the internets. Szeth Pancakes (talk) 20:36, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Summary[edit]

What exactly is the summary? There are numerous fallacies in it. Please provide context or I will likely return and edit this in the future. SilverTheTerribleMathematician (talk) 15:11, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Page disappearing?[edit]

When I try to access the page, I get a 404 error. Is this just me? GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e (talk) 05:53, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

For that (the 'main/default' page of the domain), I'm getting "403 Forbidden", instead. But "404 Not Found" for WI-number pages or the feed on that domain. But not tried to work out what the archive/list page is or was. I think it's a mess-up on the backend server (accidental change, or not keeping up with some other front-end change) rather than a domain-level end-of-service situation... 172.71.178.207 15:43, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Was reading the site the past few days, 17 and the others I saw the past few days work on my end but the others are 404 for me. 162.158.155.4 17:32, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Well, Comic 17 isn't an actual "what-if", in anything but name. The others might locally be cached for you, having been there recently. Def. something wrong, but exactly what needs to be looked into by Randall/his tech team, I would say. 172.71.242.86 18:25, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm getting errors as well. A 403 error on the "what if" landing page, and 404 errors to any directly linked pages. 172.71.154.86 19:53, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Looks like it might be fixed now, apparently it was moving to a site called sciesnet. 172.70.134.145 18:46, 26 April 2023 (UTC)