explain xkcd:Explanation Improvement Project/Successful nominations

explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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See also the /Unsuccessful nominations.

This is an archive of past discussions about explain xkcd:Explanation Improvement Project and is kept for historical purposes. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current discussion page.

 

Criteria

The Explanation Improvement Project is primarily focused on improving existing explanations while also helping create new editors. Ideal candidates for This Week's Explanation for Improvement are:

1. In need of significant improvement, with an extensive scope for expansion. Short explanations (view list of shortest explanations) are often the most ideal for improvement, but longer explanations also qualify if they fail to explain the joke and are written poorly. Good concise explanations about quick and straightforward jokes should remain short, so evaluate explanations on overall quality rather than length.

2. Accessible to a broad audience or otherwise ideal for new editors. The week-long collaborative format of this project (edit-a-thon) works best for comics about relatable topics. Explanations about niche or highly technical jokes, as well as those detailing the inner workings of the comic, usually belong in the general incomplete explanations backlog instead.

3. Old or out of date. While not required, an explanation is usually a good candidate if it predates the creation of this wiki or if it needs to be updated to reflect newly available information (such as future predictions coming true). Starting from the release of comic 1079 in 2012, new explanations were featured on the Main Page for several days and are generally higher-quality as a result. Particularly, recent comics from the last few years are almost never nominated.

Past successful nominations

2026

August 2026

Black Hat's Hat (talk) 03:42, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

This is amazing! It has a relatively deep but simple joke, a weak explanation, and a reference to an old internet custom! FaviFake (talk) 16:27, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
 Nomination successful. FaviFake (talk) 08:22, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
 Featured as This Week's Explanation for Improvement. FaviFake (talk) 08:22, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
 Archived. FaviFake (talk) 11:03, 6 September 2026 (UTC)


September 2026

Very short, and only does a surface graze of the topic. Parallels to AI image editing, anyone? 7amiþ moi · 💬 · 📊 06:03, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

This is a great one! I was about to say the same thing, it can be updated by better explaining the reference and to add modern parallels. FaviFake (talk) 19:36, 2 September 2026 (UTC)
 Nomination successful. FaviFake (talk) 11:02, 6 September 2026 (UTC)
 Featured as This Week's Explanation for Improvement. FaviFake (talk) 11:02, 6 September 2026 (UTC)
 Archived but marked as still incomplete. Unfortunately it still needs some serious copy-editing. FaviFake (talk) 16:44, 13 September 2026 (UTC)


This explanation is just seven sentences and three small paragraphs. It also doesn't explain the title text or first panel well enough. This has to be the most incomplete explanation that isn't marked as incomplete. YZ100 (talk) 20:55, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

 Nomination successful. Jeez. You're right; if this comic were released today, its explanation would be at least several pages long! FaviFake (talk) 17:04, 13 September 2026 (UTC)
 Featured as This Week's Explanation for Improvement. FaviFake (talk) 17:04, 13 September 2026 (UTC)
 Archived but marked as still incomplete. Unfortunately one late suggestion from the talk page wasn't addressed. FaviFake (talk) 00:01, 21 September 2026 (UTC)


Short, relevant to the public, and I'm sure we could go way deeper into washing clothes and adjacent habits. 7amiþ moi · 💬 · 📊 21:32, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Wow, this simply doesn't even have an explanation at all. It's basically just a transcript in the wrong section. Great find! FaviFake (talk) 22:50, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
Good pick here! Needs some help for sure Black Hat's Hat (talk) 03:08, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
 Nomination successful. FaviFake (talk) 08:16, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
Yeah 47.225.213.200 17:54, 16 September 2026 (UTC)
 Featured as This Week's Explanation for Improvement. FaviFake (talk) 00:08, 21 September 2026 (UTC)
 Archived. FaviFake (talk) 16:59, 27 September 2026 (UTC)


Short short. Intriguing, though slightly niche, and dated. 7amiþ moi · 💬 · 📊 05:55, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. We could explain more the controversy around skateboarding, and the stickers and similar occurrences Black Hat's Hat (talk) 19:53, 4 September 2026 (UTC)
 Nomination successful. FaviFake (talk) 11:02, 6 September 2026 (UTC)
 Featured as This Week's Explanation for Improvement. FaviFake (talk) 17:53, 27 September 2026 (UTC)
 Archived. FaviFake (talk) 22:35, 3 October 2026 (UTC)


October 2026

The explanation is short and is pretty much a transcript; and it doesn't actually explain the joke No (talk) 02:14, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Support Indeed too short, and only touches the joke tangentially. Would be nice to see how well this aged. 7amiþ = moi.__init__(t, c) 04:34, 30 September 2026 (UTC)
Support – The actual explanation is one sentence. So much left to explain! FaviFake (talk) 23:38, 30 September 2026 (UTC)
 Nomination successful. FaviFake (talk) 22:29, 1 October 2026 (UTC)
 Featured as This Week's Explanation for Improvement. FaviFake (talk) 22:34, 3 October 2026 (UTC)
 Archived. FaviFake (talk) 12:09, 11 October 2026 (UTC)


This is an archive of past discussions about explain xkcd:Explanation Improvement Project and is kept for historical purposes. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current discussion page.