Difference between revisions of "explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical"
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<i>Technical issues ''about'' the [[explain xkcd]] wiki, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests.</i> {{AddNewSection|Page=Explain XKCD:Community portal/Technical|Text=<small>(+post)</small>}} | <i>Technical issues ''about'' the [[explain xkcd]] wiki, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests.</i> {{AddNewSection|Page=Explain XKCD:Community portal/Technical|Text=<small>(+post)</small>}} | ||
| − | |} | + | |}</noinclude> |
| − | = | + | <div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''RSS FEED:''' If you're here for the broken RSS feed, please see [[#RSS FEED]]!</div> |
| − | </ | ||
| − | == | + | <div class="plainlinks" style="background:#f69191; border:1px solid #000000; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 135%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">'''Random Button Glitch:''' If you're here for the broken Random Comics button, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles|the Miscellaneous portal]]!</div> |
| − | + | ---- | |
| − | + | ==ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS== | |
| − | + | <div class="plainlinks" style="background:#edf6ff; border:1px solid #a7d7f9; margin:1em auto 1em auto; width:100%; font-size: 120%; padding: 0.5ex; text-align: center;">Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at '''[[explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Technical]]'''.</div> | |
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== Unable to view "what if?" page == | == Unable to view "what if?" page == | ||
| Line 1,319: | Line 230: | ||
:On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they ''were'' going to try and do the necessary tweak. | :On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they ''were'' going to try and do the necessary tweak. | ||
:As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. ''If'' those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.24|172.70.85.24]] 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC) | :As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. ''If'' those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.24|172.70.85.24]] 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
| − | + | :fyi it is supported in MediaWiki through <code>$wgCdnServers</code>. See [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Cloudflare#Integration_with_MediaWiki MediaWiki’s introduction]. {{unsigned|物灵|06:58, 6 April 2025}} | |
==Main page in categories== | ==Main page in categories== | ||
| Line 1,443: | Line 354: | ||
::update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.129|172.69.135.129]] 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC) | ::update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.129|172.69.135.129]] 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC) | ||
| − | == | + | == The site is collapsing == |
503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC) | 503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC) | ||
:heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC) | :heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC) | ||
| Line 1,449: | Line 360: | ||
:::update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC) | :::update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC) | ||
::::October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | ::::October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Agree, the situation is not terrible but feels extremely unstable. What happens if the wiki just breaks, and nobody can even contact Jeff? I feel like these errors are happening more and more frequently. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::Were you around for the (hacking-enforced) sudden ending of the xkcd fora? All things end. | ||
| + | :::But (touch wood) the 503s/other connection refusals are a lot less frequent right now, so I'm not actually quite so worried as I might occasionally have been. What's more likely to happen is that the hosting plan, physical hardware and/or domain reaches an end and then... that's probably it unless someone with the wherewithall somehow manages to drag it back up again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.14|162.158.74.14]] 00:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::I really don't like the idea of this site becoming permanently unavailable :( This makes me want to contribute less! I was not around back then, no. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :I've been getting these errors a lot as well all of a sudden. Sadly from what I've read on these pages, the sysadmin has basically left and ghosted everyone. The moment the site fully breaks for whatever reason, ExplainXKCD will be history. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.58|172.71.178.58]] 15:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::It's probably not the site breaking (as in, it's not intrinsically failing), just that unrestrained useless traffic to it (I theorise, elsewhere that it's a sudden rise in inconsiderate AI-training has led to a rise of ungoverned degrees of site-scraping) is marginalising our more legitimate attempts to interact. ''It would help'' to get some Administrator-led process to mitigate it, but it really should be better dealt with more towards the gateway-side of the connection (or the scrapers gradually toning their scraping down, but I doubt that'll happen). It, say, Cloudflare ''itself'' gets a good solution in place to dissuade such high attempts to access all the sites it otherwise proxies for, then we'll be back to just the site bumbling along in its ''slightly'' unmaintained condition. We then still have a couple of sub-administrators, a Bot and a good population of other users to keep things running against more trivial issues (short of hardware/infrastructure/financial failures). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.186.141|172.68.186.141]] 16:55, 23 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
== List of All Comics == | == List of All Comics == | ||
| Line 1,482: | Line 399: | ||
== Esolang wiki bug == | == Esolang wiki bug == | ||
The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| − | :Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into [[explain xkcd:Community portal/ | + | :Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Technical|the Technical Community Portal]]. Two, I saw your talk page on [https://esolangs.org/wiki/User_talk:ColorfulGalaxy%27s_CA_discoveries esolangs.org], which you brought up this “bug”, which the local admin (who’s probably just as sick and tired of you as I am) called BS on. If the server was changing your sig to my sig, it would be '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#db97bf">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#97b6db">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''', not the sig that you faked in. You’re obviously seeking attention and are being abusive and childish. Please see the bottom of https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esolang:Introduce_yourself to see a full list of complaints. I will be asking Kynde to ban you and all of your alt (or shared) accounts. -tori [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.98|162.158.167.98]] 05:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC) |
| − | ::Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) - | + | ::Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#db97bf">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#97b6db">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC) |
:I just realized that they've changed '''my''' signature as well. That's strange. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | :I just realized that they've changed '''my''' signature as well. That's strange. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| Line 1,491: | Line 408: | ||
The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | :No, it has not been hacked. The error message means that the server that is hosting the wiki is under a lot of stress and load. '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#db97bf">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#97b6db">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Yes and no. | ||
| + | ::;429 Too Many Requests (RFC 6585):The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. Intended for use with rate-limiting schemes. | ||
| + | ::...it generally means that (in the opinion of the server), the person getting the 429 has been bashing the connection too much. This ''could'' be because they happen to be going through the same proxy as an actual prolific user (or several sub-prolific ones that similarly got lumped together to add up to "too much"), but load-sharing systems generally account for that already. General 'stress and load' is more likely to invoke a 500s message (depending upon what actually is happening). | ||
| + | ::But, either way, if you get one of them then you're advised to pause, take a breath, perhaps wait a little before your next refresh/reload attempt, but if ''that'' goes wrong then wait a bit longer still (double your patience, maybe), and again more (further doubling) as necessary. | ||
| + | ::Either it's not your fault, but you probably don't need to add to the problems, or it ''is'' your fault (e.g. you're webscraping in the background at full throttle) and you ''really'' need to stop causing those problems (and try not to do it again later). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 20:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#db97bf">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#97b6db">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::Hint: even if you don't entirely trust Wikipedia not to be written (or rewritten) wrongly, you don't get the whole world of possible wrongness of a mostly uncomprehending AI repeating a load of mangled fragments put together on an "at least it looks grammatically correct" basis. If you trust AI so much that you don't go looking anywhere else (there are plenty of technical sites out there, including the actual official RFCs which say what servers ''should'' be doing and saying) but Wikipedia is also far from wrong and pretty thorough on this point. | ||
| + | ::::Ask Google's AI for entertainment, or to start to put together a school report (but be prepared to check ''everything'', as well as edit enough not to be caught by AI-detection as well as Plagiarism-detection). But not for insta-expertise, if you've not got enough grounding in the subject to at least sanity-checking what you're being told. Truth-checking and reality-checking are always necessary, of course, no matter what the source. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.36|141.101.98.36]] 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::::Noted and acknowledged. '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#db97bf">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#97b6db">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 14:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Total amount of accounts created on this wiki? == | ||
| + | |||
| + | I was editing [[explain xkcd:Museum]] and I was wondering how many accounts have ever been created. Is there a way to access this? {{unsigned|DollarStoreBa'al|15:52, 17 March 2025}} | ||
| + | :Hey, I moved your message from the Coordination portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :The base information you need is from the special page that is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers - although bear in mind that an overwhelming number of created accounts are spam-attempts (that get no further), so perhaps the count needs to be qualified as "users that have then gone on to post" (a few of which ''are'' still spam-only contributors, but now an insignificant amount rather than a probably overwhelming majoriy). | ||
| + | :How you go about counting ''and'' classifying valid accounts is up to you, of course. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.68|162.158.74.68]] 21:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::There's <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, that gives you the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]] (it was 142,958 when I wrote this), for the total number of registered users (including no-input pre-spammers, only-ever-spammed contributors, "I only created this account to say..."ers who didn't realised they could do as much as an IP, maybe some banned, sock-puppet/legitimate-alts/forgot-my-old-login duplicate accounts, maybe ''not'' some totally excised by top-tier-admins). | ||
| + | :::There's also <code><nowiki>[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]]</nowiki></code>, with the value [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]] (119, as I write this), which I think is everyone active (+registered) in the past 30 days. | ||
| + | :::Possibly there are other "magic word" values for more useful in-betweeny values (nearer the top end of the first), e.g. of everyone who has made at least one edit ''ever''. But not sure I know what that might off the top of my head. | ||
| + | :::I can think of ways to ''interrogate'' the wiki for one or other (better) counting criteria, but it would be horribly intensive. If anyone wanted to do this (it already needing a bit more technical ability than merely using inbuilt auto-value magic words, and preferably you'd need to not be a 'mere' scriptkiddie jumping in with both feet without knowing how to do it sensibly), I'd suggest ensuring a ''very'' throttled-back process that may take its time over days. Then, once 'completed', a not-quite-so-throttled-back version can just 'top up' its stats with everything from the last point you'd reached the last time round until the present (to never hammer the site). | ||
| + | :::Please please please, though, you should probably only try any of this if you're already sure of everything I've been suggesting. There are also far easier ways to attempt a DoS, but it would be ironic if you did this ''while trying to be helpful''... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.65|141.101.98.65]] 20:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::Oh neat that's exactly what we needed! Could you add these magic words to the museum, maybe calling one "total accounts" and the other one "users active in last 30 days"? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == email confirmation == | ||
| + | |||
| + | my email confirmation did not get sent even after a week. is there anything wrong? - [[User:Bb777|(((((((((((((([...]((((((((((((((]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 21:36, 22 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :been broken for a decade i think. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::WE REALLY NEED JEFF BACK !!!!!!!! [[User:Bb777|hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 16:12, 24 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == MediaWiki error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]] == | ||
| + | |||
| + | When I go to [[1270: Functional]] or [[1270]], there is a MediaWiki error. This does not occur at [[1269]] or [[1271]]. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 13:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :Could not replicate. | ||
| + | :[[1270]] redirects to [[1270: Functional]], so does it happen for you if you go via [[Functional]] and ''its'' redirect? How about https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1270:_Functional (as URL) rather than what you may be doing (but so did I, at first, still to find no error) in plugging the text into the "Search explain xkcd" field..? | ||
| + | :Unless it's an off-page edit (some template, broken and then fixed), the page itself seems to have no recent edit to explain any changes (to broken and/or to unbroken)... I think we may need more info. Including myself in "we" in case it's an error even I can fix, which isn't unknown but not guaranteed! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.160|172.71.178.160]] | ||
| + | ::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/L5icGdZ9nBzw.png?o=1 | ||
| + | ::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/1nP1qunLk86a.png?o=1 | ||
| + | ::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[Functional]]: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/7S3Ct5wghTIH.png?o=1 | ||
| + | ::Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting [[1270: Functional]] via index.php: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/HghYaRj9wA1f.png?o=1 [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::Anybody else? ''None'' of that happens here. | ||
| + | ::::Could it be somehow browser-specific, or even extension-related? One thing to try is if you any further browsers handily installed (or installable) that you can use (even if just just for this one purpose, you don't need them to be the default system one). As of right now, though, I'm flumoxed and don't have any obvious other steps, and I dont believe anybody else has the means to enable the debug options.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.190|172.69.79.190]] 22:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::::This occurs on a Chromebook managed by my school, so I can't install any browsers besides Chrome and I can't manage the extensions. I can see the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1270:_Functional&action=edit editing page] but I get an even less elegantly presented [https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/xQOVUQMjoF1r.png?o=1 error] when I try to preview the page.[[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :Couldn't replicate either, Windows 11 Chrome Canary. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :Figured out the problem. This error occurs on any page using the <code><nowiki><math></nowiki></code> tag. I don't know why, though. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Yep, added <code><nowiki><math>This causes an error.</math></nowiki></code> to the top of [[explain xkcd:Sandbox]] and now it gives the same error. [[User:Dgrilawidbanana|Dgrilawidbanana]] ([[User talk:Dgrilawidbanana|talk]]) 20:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :::This bug has been around for at least 7 years. Here's the fix: [[#Mediawiki exception on some pages]]. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 21:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Captcha repeat == | ||
| + | When you've finished editing, there is an "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA. | ||
| + | |||
| + | But if you preview the changes before saving, that gets reset, so you can't just say "yup, looks good, go ahead and publish this change." | ||
| + | |||
| + | How hard would it be to make the CAPTCHA sticky, so that it doesn't need an extra interaction/mouse movement after previewing? | ||
| + | |||
| + | Or, alternatively, to not display either the CAPTCHA or the Save Changes until after a preview. {{unsigned|JimJJewett20:40, 14 April 2025}} | ||
| + | |||
| + | :If you're going to Preview (which can often be a good idea), don't bother ticking the "I am not a robot". Previews (also the "Show Changes") are 'free' and don't need you to feed the CAPTHA machine. | ||
| + | :What's wrong with 1) editing, 2) previewing, 3) going "Yup, looks good" and ticking the box, 3a) ''if'' required, fulfill the Captcha, 4) Submit..? | ||
| + | :It's exactly the same amount of work as having the Captcha-fulfillment at position (1a) and 'sticky' | ||
| + | :Also, however hard it might be to 'sticky' the CAPTCHA, there's a ''reason'' that a validated CAPTCHA isn't held over willy-nilly. Theoretically, an automated system (or semi-attended one) that relied upon finding out if it ''could'' post an edit, before it even bothered to try could benefit (if only by a smidgen) from first having a pot-shot at authorisation and only then (presumably before any 'time out' kicked in) pushing the latest spambot stuff. | ||
| + | :I see no value in allowing that, even if there was anybody who might have enough of an 'in' on the server code to enable such a thing. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.248|162.158.33.248]] 23:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :Moved this to technical portal. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 17:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Request for feedback about {{tl|comic}} == | ||
| + | |||
| + | Hey, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the random button on our comic template, please see this page: [[Template talk:comic#Random button should link to Special:RandomInCategory]] --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 08:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :Does anyone here know how to create a random link that fetches pages from two different categories? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:12, 4 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Random comic/explanation glitches == | ||
| + | |||
| + | For some reason, I can''not'' press random without being sent to either the Verizon comic-thing or comic #4 (this is one of my first times commenting, no clue how to do links). I’ve now pressed the button for random comic 8 times and keep getting these two pages, any idea for fixing this? [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :update: it’s now added repeatedly sending me to [[1057:Klout]] and [[2875:2024]]. I can’t get it to send me to any other page through the random button. After 23 random comic presses, I got each of these four comics 6 times and the latest comic once. [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 00:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Incessant 503 errors == | ||
| + | |||
| + | I cannot keep contributing to this site if the 503 errors continue. The time it takes to perform a single action is about 10 times greater than it should be, some pages never load, and almost everything is broken and outdated. The situation will get worse if we do nothing. We have to do something :( --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :I've not yet found any page that won't ever load, can you give an example? | ||
| + | :Updating the website, though useful for other reasons, also cannot help this problem much. Different hosting might help, but mostly different proxying. Site-side changes, of the kind we've perhaps been waiting for, would be minimally useful to this external issue. Maybe we'll get some changes out of this crisis, maybe we'll just get the site closed down as not worth the additional effort. (Just going read-only might not even help, and would still be gruelling loss.) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.10|172.71.178.10]] 16:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::Can't do much better than Cloudflare for proxying, at least not on a budget. If the DDOS is from an AI-scraper or a malicious-but-not-paying-attention source, temporarily shifting everything to a new domain and having explainxkcd.com just be a placeholder with human-readable instructions to het to the temp site ''might'' help, at least until the adversary adapted. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.16|162.158.167.16]] 19:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::Well anything would be better than the current situation, except a total shutdown. Why is nobody worried this entire wiki is dying in front of our eyes and the owner doesn't even remember it exists? Jesus --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :Same issue. What could be causing this? {{unsigned ip|162.158.114.253|14:49, 27 May 2025}} | ||
| + | ::The server's seemingly being hammered by a new batch of unregulated traffic, that's been hammering many other sites. Your attempts to connect are getting lost in the overload, until the instigators get bored, smarter/kinder or someone implements a better way to stop the offending connections better. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.160|172.70.162.160]] 16:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == wtf is going on with the server?? == | ||
| + | |||
| + | why is the site giving a db error 90% of the time? is something wrong? how/when will it be fixed? (can it be fixed at all?) update: the db crashed AGAIN while i was writing this. also its not like above section, since it currently *specifically* gives db errors. "cannot access the database." [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 16:54, 27 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :See the sub-header above (and other contributions by people in the last two or three comic Discussions), but imagine you're at a party, trying to talk to your friends, and people you don't know keep coming over and trying to start various inane conversations that just keep distracting you, and ''they just won't leave you alone!'' | ||
| + | :So: 1) Too much traffic. 2) Not with the server. 3) Difficult/not quickly (it's not really a server-fix). And the DB isn't fully crashing (that'd do something else). It's just unable to reply to everyone, every time, and even saying "No I can't talk to you" takes up time. | ||
| + | :Ideally, you get someone else to intercept anyone coming over to talk to you. Maybe a VIP-section "red rope", and a big guy with a clipboard of guests/a personal secretary to vet newcomers. Doing that yourself is just going to distract you more. (Or you can take enough amphetamines to become enough of a party animal to comfortably be at the centre of the ''wildest'' of parties, but that takes finding a dealer with the right product, as well as other problems. And the tendency to overextend your analogies.) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.72|172.68.205.72]] 19:36, 27 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::That reads like the "explain" of an XKCD that I want to see. :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.131|162.158.175.131]] 21:17, 27 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==Special:ContributionScores on Main Page busts caching, causing load== | ||
| + | |||
| + | Long story short, the Main Page transcludes a top contributors table, [[Special:ContributionScores/10/30]], which marks the entire Main Page as dynamic (not cacheable). This means that (1) Cloudflare is not serving up a static version of this page, even to those not logged in, (2) the Main Page wikitext is getting reparsed on every hit, and (3) the parser is recreating the table from scratch on every hit, consuming a lot of database connection time, roughly between 0.5 and 1.0 second each. This is...suspicious, given the wiki's technical difficulties. I suggest an experiment with removing it to see if technical issues improve. If so, and if people wish to keep the table, I suggest creating a static version of the table that is updated only occasionally (even once every few hours by bot should be fine). | ||
| + | |||
| + | <div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:750px; overflow:auto;">Expand for details... | ||
| + | <div class="mw-collapsible-content">The whole story is: While browsing overnight, I noticed that the issues with page loads seemed caching-related; pages never seemed to load on the first click, though refreshing was often successful, at least during the presumably lower-load overnight hours. Research led me to the possibility that some broken caching system was leading to the database running out of connections (even on a cache hit, one is still needed to determine whether it is a cache hit or miss), so I started looking at some technical indicators, eventually leading to the parser profiling ("NewPP") and transclusions block at the end of the parser output [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&page=Main%20Page here]. | ||
| + | |||
| + | For the main page, it outputs: | ||
| + | |||
| + | <nowiki>NewPP limit report | ||
| + | Cached time: 20250528101640 | ||
| + | Cache expiry: 0 | ||
| + | Dynamic content: true | ||
| + | CPU time usage: 0.059 seconds | ||
| + | Real time usage: 2.564 seconds | ||
| + | Preprocessor visited node count: 273/1000000 | ||
| + | Preprocessor generated node count: 2367/1000000 | ||
| + | Post\u2010expand include size: 17895/2097152 bytes | ||
| + | Template argument size: 714/2097152 bytes | ||
| + | Highest expansion depth: 7/40 | ||
| + | Expensive parser function count: 4/100 | ||
| + | --> | ||
| + | <!-- | ||
| + | Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template) | ||
| + | 100.00% 1762.386 1 -total | ||
| + | 65.93% 1161.960 1 3094 | ||
| + | 33.89% 597.347 1 Special:ContributionScores/10/30/nosort,notools | ||
| + | 22.59% 398.159 1 Template:comic | ||
| + | 16.62% 292.973 1 Template:incomplete_transcript | ||
| + | 15.21% 268.077 1 Template:incomplete | ||
| + | 6.34% 111.727 1 Template:comic_discussion | ||
| + | 6.20% 109.319 1 MediaWiki:Mainpage | ||
| + | 0.21% 3.766 4 Template:w | ||
| + | 0.09% 1.566 5 Template:LATESTCOMIC</nowiki> | ||
| + | |||
| + | The 2.5 seconds taken isn't itself necessarily a problem, but notice that the page is considered dynamic content with immediate cache expiration. This contrasts with a normal page like [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&page=3094:%20Mass%20Spec the latest comic]: | ||
| + | |||
| + | <nowiki><!-- | ||
| + | NewPP limit report | ||
| + | Cached time: 20250528111305 | ||
| + | Cache expiry: 86400 | ||
| + | Dynamic content: false | ||
| + | CPU time usage: 0.060 seconds | ||
| + | Real time usage: 0.333 seconds | ||
| + | Preprocessor visited node count: 324/1000000 | ||
| + | Preprocessor generated node count: 2362/1000000 | ||
| + | Post\u2010expand include size: 63936/2097152 bytes | ||
| + | Template argument size: 1609/2097152 bytes | ||
| + | Highest expansion depth: 9/40 | ||
| + | Expensive parser function count: 3/100 | ||
| + | --> | ||
| + | <!-- | ||
| + | Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template) | ||
| + | 100.00% 160.074 1 -total | ||
| + | 37.56% 60.117 1 Template:comic | ||
| + | 20.70% 33.133 1 Template:comic_discussion | ||
| + | 19.54% 31.277 1 Template:cn | ||
| + | 8.81% 14.101 5 Template:w | ||
| + | 8.31% 13.303 1 MediaWiki:Mainpage | ||
| + | 7.86% 12.585 1 Template:incomplete_transcript | ||
| + | 5.26% 8.424 1 Template:incomplete | ||
| + | 4.83% 7.739 2 Template:notice | ||
| + | 1.38% 2.212 2 Talk:3094:_Mass_Spec | ||
| + | --> | ||
| + | </div> | ||
| + | <!-- Saved in parser cache with key expla0_db423085716:pcache:idhash:29008-0!canonical and timestamp 20250528111305 and revision id 378578 | ||
| + | --></nowiki> | ||
| + | </div></div> | ||
| + | |||
| + | From a quick search, it sounds like transclusion of a special page will always cause the parser cache to be bypassed, causing all of the parsed output to be regenerated on every hit by any visitor, logged in or not, via the API or not, etc. (While it's not technically wrong that increased number of visits may be causing issues, this would be a multiplicative exacerbation of that.) Combined with the fact that the page is recreating a pretty heavy database query to count and tabulate the last 30 days of edits, this seems Really Bad. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 11:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | : Edited for corrections and clarity. Also, one can generate and profile the cost of any bit of wikitext using the API: <nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores</nowiki> would create and time the processing time needed to generate <nowiki>{{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}</nowiki>. | ||
| + | : I'd noticed that there was a recent change from 7 to 30 days of scoring, but it turns out that doesn't make a big difference in processing time. In addition, the parser considering the content static doesn't seem to be enough for Cloudflare to start caching a page, so that might not be as easy to change. Still, simply allowing the parser output to be saved and regenerating the table for the vast majority of visitors' hits might be a big help. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 13:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :: Does this affect other pages? If not, then the main DB issues aren't fixed... but if it does, then why is the contribs page loaded for EVERY page? Also, I *support* removing this... it's just a showcase that exists for no good reason if shown to every viewer, the recent contribs should probably be restricted to users only or something [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.176|162.158.8.176]] 08:30, 29 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::: The contrib table doesn't load on every page, but the vast majority of hits are going to be to the Main Page. And (my hypothesis is) it holds database connections open while it's running, which consumes that limited resource on the server. (We could just raise the cap, but we don't have access to the server.) A lot of the lag time in the profiler above is just sitting in a queue for the next database connection, which affects everything. So in that sense, it affects the whole wiki. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::Hi. I changed to 30 days on suggestion by FaviFake. But that was in March. Just changed it back to 7 again just to try it. Of course I can also try to remove it for a period of time. But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor. So I would hate to remove it. Also it has worked with 30 days for more than two months and with the 7 days for as long as I have used the site (since 2012). So it seems weird that it should suddenly be the front page that breaks it all. It is also not the first time we have had these issues. Not sure how they where resolved last time but strange if it suddenly is the main page that causes all these problems [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:29, 29 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::: (Un)Fortunately(?) I suspect the technical caching issue is more relevant, where naively transcluding a Special page via <code><nowiki>{{Special:...}}</nowiki></code> causes everything to re-process on every hit. That doesn't mean losing the feature entirely (or even the 30 days); I can help make a bot that can send the output (inside <code><nowiki>https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/30,nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores&format=json</nowiki></code>) to a template, automatically updating once per short interval (an hour?). The delayed version can also be Main Page only; the live version can always still be linked, and/or the full page linked to. | ||
| + | ::: You're right that perhaps this isn't necessarily ''the'' proximate "straw that broke the camel's back" cause. And there are a lot of other problems and solutions that could help - like simply raising the DB connection cap, or all the stuff about crawler traffic, and that Cloudflare doesn't seem to be caching the basically-static CSS from tool.php, etc. etc... But without admin access to diagnostics or settings for the database and Cloudflare, we can only work with the tools we have. Even this specific widget itself does some caching in a newer update, but we don't have access to updating it. (That said, I'm still keeping an eye out for other things that might have changed recently.) [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::As it did not help making it 7 days again I have now removed it. Seems to make no difference to begin with. But lets give it some time to work. But I'm not optimistic. Let me know if I moved the correct bit, I'm no expert just sadly the only active admin and we cannot get hold of Jeff... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | Since the removal of the Rankings table, I haven't noticed a downtick of connection errors. (That said, I dislike people ''aiming'' to be in the Rankings, I consider that editing should be its own reward, so personally I'd be happier without it anywhere quite as prominent.) Haven't done a full technical analysis, but I estimate that from a prior peak of maybe 1.5 "technical difficulties" or "also, a 503 error" responses, generally varying between zero issues (straight in) and normal worstest-case scenario of three attempts (fourth attempt is Ok, ''maybe'' unstylsheeted), in the last 24 hours it's been more like 2.5:1 fail to success ratio. (i.e. reaching up to maybe 6th-attempt success, worst case.) Not nice, but survivable. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Though got a new one, just a few minutes ago. An actual Cloudflare error: "SSL handshake failed Error code 525 // Visit cloudflare.com for more information. // 2025-05-30 20:01:57 UTC". In case that interests anyone. Looks like the server was temperarily so incapacitated as to not be able to even handshake with the proxy. But I don't currently expect that to recur, just thought I'd note it as a 'new' glitch, in passing. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | : Well, ''right now'' things seem more stable. But during Friday just after the change, when pages could load at all, I noticed they were loading faster, but the availability was just as bad or worse for a while. I'm not really sure how much credit to the latest improvement goes to changing the contribution table. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 00:59, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :Everything seems to be good now. No constant DB errors, and it's now smooth! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.142|162.158.8.142]] 07:00, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::Should I try inserting the contribution score to see if the problems return, because it would be nice to know if it was this or just random. Also even though some might dislike this score it has been there always, and should not just be removed because one person writes negatively about it. But of course if it was really the reason behind the problems it has to stay of the front page. But a link could be inserted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:44, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :::To clarify, I wasn't saying I disliked the score, ''per se'', just that it encourages edits-for-the-sake-of-edits and (though I rarely see the Main Page myself) is prominent enough for the new discoverers of the site to take as a challenge (in well-meaning ways, as well as less so). I have sympathy with "But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor." Just pointing out the functional inverse that it is a motivating factor ''to make a lot of contributions''. (And that I personally abstain from that competition, buried within the contributions of various other IPers, no temptation at all to edit without decent cause.) | ||
| + | :::A version of the table weighted against new accounts ''might'' make me happier, but too many ways of doing that (hard threshold, to kick in at an arbitrary 'account maturity' age, so no-one appears on the list until 'old enough'; a formula that slopes from 0 to 1 at the "maturity" time, multiply the contributions by the current value; ditto, but a smoother function that becomes assymptotic to 1) that probably also involve scripted conversions and various arbitrary choices. So not something I'd imagine being done. | ||
| + | :::I do think it's a good idea to re-add it ''for science''. Give it a week to settle down, without it as an issue. If (as it seems) it has died down properly, add it again for a further week (or less, if it becomes obvious it has reintroduced the same DoS-like scenario). Let the outcome shape your further decision, or fine-tuning. Not mere yay/nay preferences, like mine, regarding it. | ||
| + | :::It's also very likely only a ''factor'' in the slow-down. It was ok (in both 7 day and 30 day versions) for aong time, but ''together with'' increased amounts of site traffic (as per anecdotal evidence from elsewhere on the 'net) it went bad on us. The improved situation could also have been due to the perpetrators turning their (accidental?) web-hammering scripts off, having finished their project, or now making them far less aggressive. The 'benefits' of the League Table might not now cause such side-effects. But also it's still possible that the problematic traffic comes back and hobbles the site gain, regardless of the absence frontpage League Tabling. | ||
| + | :::And you can always add the Special:ContributionScores(-slash-whatever) information as a link to go to, rather than transcluded (if you've decided that it's still trouble to have where it was). But cross that bridge if you come to it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::PS I also gets 0-2 errors at the moment, so it is not all good, had to reload twice to get the comment above posted. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:45, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :::My observations: still 'terrible', maybe even slightly worse, Friday and early Saturday, UK time, noting the Friday Comic didn't get Bot-imported until well into Saturday PM (theusaf might have failure logs?), but I'm sure I saw it on xkcd.com on Saturday morning (but still had showed Wednesday as of Fri/Sat midnight, UTC+1, or thereabouts, i.e. early Friday evening Randall Time, not untypical for such updates). The table-transclusion was removed at least a full day before. Don't know if anything else caused lag in the proxy's response. | ||
| + | :::Since Saturday evening, more or less ok. ''Some'' errors, in line with "background levels" before this recent splurge actually hit. If I get a "technical problems", an imminent refresh sorts it (doesn't return another error), gets on with things. Not perfect, might mean a bit more RAM/swapspace might further help, or a higher quota of shared processing threads (if there are any that can be spared from whatever else is running in whatever rackspace unit it might be). Livable, if also still vulnerable to the next period of increased pressure. Keeping an eye on it, and still trying to eventually get through to the hardware-owning sysops, would be wise. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | : A note for the future: the new (current) version of this extension [https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/search/?q=ContribScoreCacheTTL&files=&excludeFiles=&repos= caches] data for half an hour (by default), so if we ever get an update, the bot wouldn't be necessary anymore. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 07:46, 11 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == What would it take to clone ExplainXKCD? == | ||
| + | |||
| + | What would it take technically and financially to clone this web site? | ||
| + | |||
| + | Installing MediaWiki and cloning the wiki pages should be fairly straightforward. There may be some pain due to differences in MediaWiki versions. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Cloning or rewriting the bots may be a chore. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Paying for hosting and Cloudflare will take a steady stream of income. | ||
| + | |||
| + | There's also legal issues, like how to protect everyone from liability if someone wants to sue, even if it's a frivolous suit. | ||
| + | |||
| + | There will need to be multiple administrators at every level so we don't have the "if one person disappears for awhile and problems arise, we are stuck" issues. | ||
| + | |||
| + | My guess is that between the existing administrators and regular contributors, we have the technical skills to do this. It's the financial and legal issues that give me pause. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Yes, I'm an occasional contributor, and no, I haven't created an account yet. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.119|162.158.175.119]] 19:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :It would help if we didn't want to clone ''all page history''. Already, it would bar those bits hidden behind admin-level deletions, etc, but limiting the actual depth of history scraped up and made available on a new platform would be wise from a 'start over' POV, ''especially'' if not having direct access to the core database. Possibly a 'bot could maintain an "anything new on old site gets reduplicated to new site" until a phased cut-off, with enough thought, dyluring the ''duration'' of the migratory process, but you need a solid base (maybe with further back-filled history as much as you can). | ||
| + | ::Removing page history might violate the "attribution" part of the CC-BY-SA license (but I am not a lawyer so don't take my word for it.) [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 17:46, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :And then there's user accounts. Maybe there's a way to confirm your rights to an original-site username on the new-site (potentially complex things, or just something to do with logins on both, posting "it's me" on the new site, then "yes, that new-site claim me of being me is indeed correct" on old-site, but you still have to deal with potential claim-jumping/identity-gazumping). Which also needs trust of the new-site admins to play fair with potential disputes. | ||
| + | :And it'd be a good opportunity to clean some up things (everyone can think of several inconsistecies that ''they'd'' deal with, given the opportunity), but only with a lot of hands on effort. So factor that in for potential work. | ||
| + | :On the whole, though, best just to 'start fresh'. A task in itself, perhaps use and acknowledge this site's "best material" (I think copyright might be not so much an issue if based upon a fair and dutiful copy, due to the details of [[explain xkcd:Copyrights]], but that's of course something that needs advice sought for any particular implementation). That, of course, needs community acceptance not to be seen as an "upstart usurper" site, perhaps, and could create a schism where some would refuse to partake in the new project at all. | ||
| + | :i.e. you raise good questions (and prompt others), but I'm not sure there are ''undeniably'' objective good answers to them all. Trying it and seeing how it goes is probably the ''only'' way to bash out the many details. Not an easy project. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.144|172.71.241.144]] 21:19, 29 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :I think it would be absolutely awesome to move to something that *isn't* self hosted, something that as far as I can tell this wiki is. If we move or clone, may we see [https://weirdgloop.org/ Weird Gloop] as an option? They have a lot of experience and will [https://weirdgloop.org/blog/why-were-helping-more-wikis-move-away-from-fandom#how-to-not-turn-into-fandom-20-with-these-2-simple-tricks probably not turn into another fandom and will not be bought by them]. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.130.250|172.69.130.250]] 15:33, 30 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Oh ye gods... Yes, whatever you do, ''don't'' go anywhere near Fandom, as a solution. Not that I think this will be a convincing argument on its own, but you'll absolutely lose me as an 'explain' reader (never mind contributor) if it goes onto a Fandom/ex-Wikia hosting model. I've no experience of Weird Gloop (yet), but the URL (about why they're different) certainly does vicerally appeal to me on first glance. Do your own independant research, though, anybody tempted down that or any eqyivalent route. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.123|172.71.241.123]] 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :[https://github.com/saveweb/wikiteam3/ Wikidump] can get all page content with full history (for pages that have not been deleted). It doesn't require admin privileges to use. [[User:183231bcb|183231bcb]] ([[User talk:183231bcb|talk]]) 21:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :The site seems stable now, at least for the last half-day. I'm not sure if the attack/scraping ended, or if there's a real back-end fix in place, but here's hoping it stays stable. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.73|172.68.26.73]] 02:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Replying to '''my''' comment of 02:11, 1 June 2025 immediately above: I spoke too soon, I got two "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties." errors in less than 5 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.67.217|172.69.67.217]] 03:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | : Why should we do this in the first place? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.8.165|162.158.8.165]] 07:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :: So we can manage things when someone with server-level access is required. For example, if someone with server-level access was around during the last week or two when we've been having intermittent-but-sometimes-heavy site-is-too-busy-try-again-later errors, we (or, rather, the server operator) would have more insight to the problem and would likely be able to do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.170.157|172.71.170.157]] 16:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | : The resources at [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Grabbers Mediawiki/Manual:Grabbers] seem useful - they seem written for the new server administrator to have the new server save things into the new wiki. (I worry about the note regarding MediaWiki version 1.39+ since we're stuck on 1.30, but I think that might be about the version of the *new* wiki installation.) In particular, there exists a [[Special:Export]] page (and associated API) that also exports the page history. There are a few options for migrating people's accounts; [https://github.com/ciencia/mediawiki-extensions-StubUserWikiAuth Extension:StubUserWikiAuth] seems most promising so far. [[User:AySz88|AySz88]] ([[User talk:AySz88|talk]]) 09:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == new and exciting 522 and 524 cloudflare errors == | ||
| + | |||
| + | everyone else saw that, right? [[user:lettherebedarklight|this website's domain expires in august]] 02:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :From at least midday (UK time), yesterday. But given the lack of ''any'' recorded edits for 4/Jun (UTC), only being broken by your (and other) early-hours edits of 5/Jun, was a lengthy period of whatever-went-even-more-wrong. (I had kept notes, I probably got 522s and 524s, when I checked back every few hours. Might have been other 52Xs, but not got that bit of scrap paper with me right now.) [[Special:Contributions/82.132.234.190|82.132.234.190]] 12:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Expires. Will that mean that if it is not prolonged this entire site will vanish? [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 06:22, 6 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::Read [[User talk:Lettherebedarklight]] (to the bottom!) for one Q&A that was done on it. I know I also ''previously'' discussed LTBDL's 'discovery' (before they decided to break their own User Page in suggesting this was going to be an issue), but they also ignored me. As they still have their alarmist signature up, despite the other explanation, thus alarming you. | ||
| + | :::Short version: the domain potentially expires ''every year''. Every year, so far, it has been renewed. It's not the first time. Chances are low that it'll be the last. | ||
| + | :::Or, to rephrase your question, this site may vanish if it ''isn't'' prolonged (the auto-renew is not auto-renewed, perhaps the person paying for it gets fed up doing it). | ||
| + | :::PS. is it just a coincidence that, since the 'day outage', we're now getting many IPv6 contributors? (And vastly different IPv4 ranges/submasks.) Seems like a Cloudflare-led thing, assuming that nobody has been reconfiguring the explainxkcd server in any way (which is the current 'complaint'). ...Not worth a seperate new header to mention, but thought I'd mention it in passing, as I'm here. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.213.196|82.132.213.196]] 10:32, 6 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Problem Sending a Question to [email protected] == | ||
| + | |||
| + | I tried to send a question to [email protected], and I got an automatic mail from google that "It was failed to send to the group", does it means that the question was sent, or that it got blocked entirely? <small>[[Special:Contributions/2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01]] ([[User talk:2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01|talk]]) 15:16, 11 June 2025 (UTC) <span style="color:grey; white-space:nowrap;">''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''</span></small> | ||
| + | |||
| + | :Yup, that's a known error. See the notice on ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' for more info. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Monobook style categories bug == | ||
| + | I recently switched to the monobook style in preferences, and I saw this on the main page: | ||
| + | |||
| + | [[File:Monobook Font Bug.png]] | ||
| + | |||
| + | Is this something that's inherent to the monobook font or something that I can fix on my end? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al |<span style="font-family:Atomic Age;font-size:12pt;color:red;">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al |'''''Converse''''']]</sup>[[Special:Contributions/DollarStoreBa'al|'''''My life choices''''']] 15:03, 25 August 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==Bug on Modern style== | ||
| + | I encountered this UI bug opening up the site. Is this one-time or have others experienced this? [[File:UI Bug.png|200x200px]] --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#023020">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#000080">'''''converse'''''</span>]]</sup> 16:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :that's just broken css. if you refresh it, it should render correctly. '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:pink">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#B1E4E3">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 16:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :I'm sure you've occasionally had a "page cannot load" error on the HTML (a few months back, it was particularly bad, but it's fairly rare at the moment). But imagine if you luckily escaped the issue of the HTML file loading. ''It'' tells your machine to ask for the CSV, as well as things like the images it needs. And then the inability to get the CSV happens. It could have been the image that didn't load, also. The lack of stylesheet | ||
| + | :A refresh of the page is usually what I'd try next. Or a hard-refresh, possibly, depending upon which browser I'm using. Either it all appears fine or the HTML totally fails the second time from whatever glitch is plaguing the system at that time. If you get exactly the same. | ||
| + | :I'll have to admit, though, but it took me quite a few moments to find what was wrong with the UI... maybe I'm innured against the occasional version of this issue. Unless I was looking for the Recent Changes link, for example, I'd probably just read the page as normal and then move onto the next page I want to check/editing the Talk page, all of which likely loads correctly and leaves me none the wiser that I'd missed a minor reshuffle. | ||
| + | :Tell you what, though, the "Recent Changes" page looks quite a bit different without Stylesheet-styling. And you can even invoke that, if you want. Depending upon browser, you can either choose which (or no!) stylesheet gets applied, also useful to see a site using its "mobile" settings from your desktop. Or you may be able to use whatever the equivalent of Object Inspector is for your page code and 'break' the particular ".css"-line that governs it. Sometimes gives interesting and useful results, on more awkward sites that try to enforce "no copypasting" or selectively hide/obscure things. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 23:29, 29 August 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Upgrading MediaWiki == | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::''Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)'' | ||
| + | |||
| + | Hi! If you aren't already aware, the wiki's MediaWiki software is many years out of date, 1.30 became end of life in 2019. This likely opens up the wiki to security issues, and presumably some annoyance from the users due to lack of newer features. It seems that Jeff never got around to this. If you have access to the wiki server, please upgrade the wiki, or have someone else do it. I think the recommendation to avoid compatibility issues is to go from LTS to LTS on upward, so <s>1.30 > 1.31 > 1.35 > 1.39 > 1.43</s> (it seems that you can go straight from 1.30 > 1.35 > 1.43 although the errors may be more difficult to read, based on the FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#How_do_I_upgrade_from_a_really_old_version?_In_one_step,_or_in_several_steps? ). | ||
| + | |||
| + | If you want assistance with MediaWiki upgrades, this organization called Professional Wiki seems to also performs this service. https://professional.wiki/en/mediawiki-upgrade-services In any case, they would probably follow a form of the procedure outlined in the official MediaWiki manual. | ||
| + | |||
| + | To check the wiki's current version: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Version | ||
| + | |||
| + | Version lifecycle: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle | ||
| + | |||
| + | Upgrading procedure/manual: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading | ||
| + | |||
| + | Thank you! [[User:Cam1170|Cam1170]] ([[User talk:Cam1170|talk]]) 19:32, 9 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :Hi Cam1170, thank you for your proposal and thought! Unfortunately, we are unable to update this wiki's MediaWiki software because the owner has gone AWOL. He is a bureaucrat on here, and the other 'crat is also inactive. Despite multiple times to reach out to him both on-site and through other platforms, he has not responded. We are assuming that this wiki will stay frozen like this unless we migrate (which I have no idea how will be done-or if it's even possible!). '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:pink">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#B1E4E3">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 01:30, 10 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :Noting that even migrating would probably involve someone (active) taking it upon themselves to provide the 'blank' new server on a new host (and new domain!) upon which the existing available information is to be written. (N.B., possibly still to a limited degree, without the access also required to upgrade or grant a further third party the access required to upgrade, unless there are some truly weird backdoors. Everything I know indicates that even making sure that everyone can reproduce their accounts in the new system would be a tricky achievement to get right.) And then we'd probably still have this place's 'box' (or boxes, or cloud-like bundle of cooperating resources) happily but redundantpt continuing in whatever 'protected stasis' we'll have then placed it in, as we try to re-establish the SEOing/etc that leads to our new doorway. | ||
| + | :This isn't the first time, probably won't be the last, that we've been advised of the 'issues'. And been only able to state that our active most-priviliged users seem not to be priviliged enough to even consider the direct server-level access needed to up-patch/re-install the core backend. Nor to properly migrate everything (leaving this service running as a 'ghost' site, to a greater or lesser extent), from the box(es) it runs upon all the way to the original registered domain. | ||
| + | :I had written more, but it boils down to the conspicuously absent progenitor being the main hurdle, likely for reasons beyond even their control. Though ''perhaps'' there are further missing administrators who might have enough access to (if they don't entirely break everything, in the attenpt) assist us, should they be coaxed/cajoled to return. | ||
| + | :Personally (as if my opinion counts), I see no urgent need for (e.g.) a more visual editor. Dealing with entirely new and more complex bugs, compared to what I think is far simpler to work with, is one thing that I know will at least annoy me. | ||
| + | :As for security issues, I believe we're at not a bad 'stuck' stage, compared to some (newer!) stages we could be at. And 0-day exploits are an ever present (intangible) risk at the bleeding edge, of course. ;) But you'd be also right to question what I know of all this, as an effectively unknown voice from the wilderness. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.27|82.132.238.27]] 05:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Ahem... | ||
| + | I see no urgent need for [...] [the] visual editor. | ||
| + | ::'''Tables''' --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::Seems like others have made it clear why I cannot help. I ended up stuck as the only admin without bureaucrat powers... Also I'm not very tech minded so not the best admin you could have. but at the moment the only active. :-/ Not quite sure what Favifake means though? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::Yes, of course! You're still unable to do anything, just like everyone else. | ||
| + | ::::I replied to IP, which said the Visual editor wasn't necessary. Tables are incredibly hard to set up without the visual editor, so I think it's ''the'' most important feature we're missing right now. | ||
| + | ::::''[Moved from [[User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki]] [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)]'' | ||
| + | :::::Easier to custom convert 'raw' tabular data to "tabular data under wikitable format" than to painstakingly arrange it in a visually-'aided' WYSYWYG table, actually. Making a casual table might be easier, but making a ''well thought out'' table with any complexity benefits from knowing the abilities and limitations of the markup. | ||
| + | :::::I had thought someone would object on a different sisue, actually, but that would also be something for which actually caring about the back-end markup (and using Preview judiciously) certainly doesn't hurt, with "dumbing up"/abstraction often not being an overall advantage. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.245.43|82.132.245.43]] 21:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::::Sorry but I unfortunately didn't understand anything of what you just said :( ㅤ [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 11:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::::::I think they're saying that [https://imgur.com/gallery/i-dont-even-see-code-anymore-WqqJfNb the raw markup isn't exactly difficult]. And further that a WYSIWYG interface (which was typoed!) can often create suboptimal layouts, just because it was tweaked to 'look right' in the rather limited context of the composition editor. | ||
| + | :::::::And I probably agree, to an extent. Wikitables are designed to be far more simple/uncluttered, at source, than the equivalent HTML code. You can easily hand-craft them to both render nicely and be intelligable by future editors. It's not rocket science. | ||
| + | :::::::And then there was something about creating wikitables from non-wiki data, which might not actually be totally relevant. But is something I sometimes do, and I'd definitely consider a visual editor an impediment if I was doing that. The difference being that you can (hopefully) just toggle that option away. Or, rather, not bother toggling it on. Either way, I'd do what I think looks best for later editors, like leaving nice/logical text-spacing in monospace font by judicious use of whitespace/newlines - often lacking/badly done otherwise. If you want ''my'' opinion, too. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 21:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::::::"the raw markup isn't exactly difficult" yes is is? Merging cells is a nightmare, adding new cells to the rowspan/colspan is a nightmare, moving text around is annoying, clicking preview constantly is time-consuming... i could go on and on. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::::::::I concur. Especially with large tables, it's hard to find where you need to edit, simply because it all looks the same. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#023020">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#000080">converse</span>]]</sup> 13:09, 18 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | : that's actually quite scary that the person who pays for the server has gone awol. That means this wiki is just 1-2 unpaid bills away from being shut down for good without any means to recover it. I think updating the software is the least of our concern. I mean, if the current admins should retire as well, then there's no one who could even appoint new admins. [[Special:Contributions/2.204.192.65|2.204.192.65]] 09:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :: As said before, when the domain-name was "mere months from expiring" (n.b., it ''seems'' to be annually renewed, automatically, so is ''forever'' potentially mere months from expiring), there are all kinds of other ways for a site to fail. Some, like the hosting/hardware rental, might be tied to the same bill-paying cycle as the domain, so any such interruption might happen across the board as a grand-slam. (Interruptions might not mean the loss of the account-holder, and the loss of the account-holder might not mean an interruption... Would depend on how someone organises (or fails to organise) such things.) | ||
| + | :: Other failures could happen any time. Glad to see we're back from the outage: my initial guess was that someone ''had'' tried to update the site, somehow, but had got it horribly ''horribly'' wrong and left it unworkable. This would have been our invisible benefactor, perhaps, unless a "guerilla hacktivist" had taken a big chance and bigger risk. Probably not any of that, though, or at least it was someone who could still revoke the broken changes. | ||
| + | :: And then there's just a vital rapidly spinning disk shedding its magnetic coating or even fragmenting, or its circuitry develops a dry-joint/whisker of solder. The lifetime of an HDD is said to be "3 to 5 years", by one source I found (though I'm personally using ones that are >30yo, in near constant use, and I've seen far earlier failures, so I don't know how useful that is). If it's now sitting on SSD, that has read/write-cycle 'limits', instead. So, if it's not RAIDed with someone able to hotswap replacement drives, potentially some time (perhaps in a darkened but air-conditioned room) there may be the momentary shriek of metal (or silence, at least compared to the general humming of everything else) and ''at best'' we'll revert to the last valid automated backup... If there is one, and someone can fix it. (My second theory about the blackout was this. But I don't remember anything new to the site that didn't come back when it returned.) | ||
| + | ::As for the WYSIWYG (cheers, yep!) thing, I've had to use enforced-visual editors, elsewhere. A right pain. I sure would hope it's optional, for my part. I also think it's healthy for people to not rely on too much 'wizardry' and know more about how everything works, but then I'm someone who has thirty-year-old HDDs running forty-year-old OSes. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.237.89|82.132.237.89]] 11:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::Based on what I'm seeing in terms of recent changes, it appears that the cloudflare errors appeared about 2:00 UTC September 11th, and left about 14:00 UTC September 12, making for around 36 hours of total downtime. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#023020">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#000080">converse</span>]]</sup> 21:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == A precaution == | ||
| + | In approximately 2 hours, MediaWiki will be switching something on the server-side, so be ready for a temporary read-only period starting 15:00 UTC. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#023020">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#000080">converse</span>]]</sup> 18:04, 24 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :I wonder what will happen with this wiki's old-ass MediaWiki version...I '''''hope''''' everything will go back to normal... --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#023020">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#000080">converse</span>]]</sup> 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | that's for wikis supported by the WMF, and we're not. unfortunately. It’s the WMF doing the thing, not the MW software. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:50, 26 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | ==RSS FEED== | ||
| + | I've created a megathread for the broken RSS feed since this keeps being brought up. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | === RSS Feed: XML not well-formed === | ||
| + | |||
| + | <pre>XML Parsing Error: not well-formed | ||
| + | |||
| + | Location: https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml?_SLWxoPenuRl=nOtinFEeDPREVIew | ||
| + | |||
| + | Line Number 31, Column 18: | ||
| + | |||
| + | <title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title> | ||
| + | ------------------------^ | ||
| + | </pre> | ||
| + | |||
| + | PHP-Fix: | ||
| + | |||
| + | $title = str_replace("&", "&amp;", $title); | ||
| + | |||
| + | or | ||
| + | |||
| + | $title = htmlspecialchars($title); | ||
| + | |||
| + | : Same problem here. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the first time an xkcd title has included an ampersand (as far as I can see from [[List_of_all_comics_(full)]]). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.85|141.101.99.85]] 14:16, 7 December 2024 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | === rss feed === | ||
| + | |||
| + | Hello | ||
| + | |||
| + | the rss feed is broken, could you fix it ? | ||
| + | <nowiki> | ||
| + | Error : | ||
| + | try{(function overrideDefaultMethods(r, g, b, a, scriptId, storedObjectPrefix) { | ||
| + | var scriptNode = document.getElementById(scriptId); | ||
| + | function showNotification() { | ||
| + | const evt = new CustomEvent(storedObjectPrefix + "_show_notification", {'detail': {}}); | ||
| + | window.dispatchEvent(evt); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | function overrideCanvasProto(root) { | ||
| + | function overrideCanvasInternal(name, old) { | ||
| + | root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old; | ||
| + | Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name, | ||
| + | { | ||
| + | value: function () { | ||
| + | var width = this.width; | ||
| + | var height = this.height; | ||
| + | var context = this.getContext("2d"); | ||
| + | var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height); | ||
| + | for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) { | ||
| + | for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) { | ||
| + | var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4)); | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r; | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g; | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b; | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a; | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | context.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0); | ||
| + | showNotification(); | ||
| + | return old.apply(this, arguments); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | ); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | overrideCanvasInternal("toDataURL", root.prototype.toDataURL); | ||
| + | overrideCanvasInternal("toBlob", root.prototype.toBlob); | ||
| + | //overrideCanvasInternal("mozGetAsFile", root.prototype.mozGetAsFile); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | function overrideCanvaRendProto(root) { | ||
| + | const name = "getImageData"; | ||
| + | const getImageData = root.prototype.getImageData; | ||
| + | |||
| + | root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = getImageData; | ||
| + | |||
| + | Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, "getImageData", | ||
| + | { | ||
| + | value: function () { | ||
| + | var imageData = getImageData.apply(this, arguments); | ||
| + | var height = imageData.height; | ||
| + | var width = imageData.width; | ||
| + | // console.log("getImageData " + width + " " + height); | ||
| + | for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) { | ||
| + | for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) { | ||
| + | var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4)); | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r; | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g; | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b; | ||
| + | imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a; | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | showNotification(); | ||
| + | return imageData; | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | ); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | function inject(element) { | ||
| + | if (element.tagName.toUpperCase() === "IFRAME" && element.contentWindow) { | ||
| + | try { | ||
| + | var hasAccess = element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement; | ||
| + | } catch (e) { | ||
| + | console.log("can't access " + e); | ||
| + | return; | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | overrideCanvasProto(element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement); | ||
| + | overrideCanvaRendProto(element.contentWindow.CanvasRenderingContext2D); | ||
| + | overrideDocumentProto(element.contentWindow.Document); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | function overrideDocumentProto(root) { | ||
| + | function doOverrideDocumentProto(old, name) { | ||
| + | root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old; | ||
| + | Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name, | ||
| + | { | ||
| + | value: function () { | ||
| + | var element = old.apply(this, arguments); | ||
| + | // console.log(name+ " everridden call"+element); | ||
| + | if (element == null) { | ||
| + | return null; | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | if (Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object HTMLCollection]' || | ||
| + | Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object NodeList]') { | ||
| + | for (var i = 0; i < element.length; ++i) { | ||
| + | var el = element[i]; | ||
| + | // console.log("elements list inject " + name); | ||
| + | inject(el); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | } else { | ||
| + | // console.log("element inject " + name); | ||
| + | inject(element); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | return element; | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | ); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElement, "createElement"); | ||
| + | doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElementNS, "createElementNS"); | ||
| + | doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementById, "getElementById"); | ||
| + | doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByName, "getElementsByName"); | ||
| + | doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByClassName, "getElementsByClassName"); | ||
| + | doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagName, "getElementsByTagName"); | ||
| + | doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagNameNS, "getElementsByTagNameNS"); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | overrideCanvasProto(HTMLCanvasElement); | ||
| + | overrideCanvaRendProto(CanvasRenderingContext2D); | ||
| + | overrideDocumentProto(Document); | ||
| + | scriptNode.parentNode.removeChild(scriptNode); | ||
| + | })(24,14,-9,19,"ojkrt", "ltwvx");} catch (e) {console.error(e);}Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé | ||
| + | Emplacement : https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml | ||
| + | Numéro de ligne 63, Colonne 18 : | ||
| + | <title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title> | ||
| + | ------------------------^ | ||
| + | </nowiki> | ||
| + | |||
| + | <small>[[Special:Contributions/172.71.130.228|172.71.130.228]] ([[User talk:172.71.130.228|talk]]) 08:58, 12 December 2024 <span style="color:grey; white-space:nowrap;">''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''</span></small> | ||
| + | |||
| + | === RSS === | ||
| + | |||
| + | RIP RSS feed yet again. 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[[User:Bb777|[insert signature here]]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) | ||
| + | :Is there something new we should know? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.58.6|172.70.58.6]] 00:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | === the rss feed seems to be broken === | ||
| + | |||
| + | the rss feed button on the side leading to https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml throws up and error making the feed not load properly in rss readers. | ||
| + | |||
| + | "This page contains the following errors: | ||
| + | error on line 463 at column 18: EntityRef: expecting ';' | ||
| + | Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." {{unsigned ip|172.71.241.19|20:38, 5 May 2025}} | ||
| + | :I think this is the continuing issue as of [[#RSS Feed: XML not well-formed]], you're talking about. As far as I'm aware unfixed and (with the current smattering of active admins at their limits of admin-levels) unfixable. Because of a 'bare' ampersand (or two) being misinterpreted as a failed attempt at a character-entity reference. ''If'' that was fixed, without me noticing, then I'm sure someone will be along to try to fix your new issue too. | ||
| + | :People have been trying to prod other people who can prod the server back into shape (insofar as that issue), but I've not yet been privy to anything coming of that, and presume you're just trapped in the exact same glitch. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.30|172.70.91.30]] 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ::What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::It's unusable so long as the "I'm parsing this is an '&Thing;' ... oh, wait, it has no closing ';'... ARGH!" happens to it. If you click on the RSS feed, to the left, you can see how it shows the (not ''quite'' humanly-readable) lines of the RSS feed (most recent, chronologically backwards) until the last line it shows is the comic imediately after the most recent "D&D" entry. (Actually, depends on browser. Sorry, just checked. It does that on Android Chrome, but currently I'm on Windows Firefox and it 'only' complains. But if you'll take my word for it.) | ||
| + | :::Someone really needs to go into the https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml file (who can edit it directly) and find the two "D&D" instances and make them "D&amp;D". (Note to editors: Had to "amp amp" the "amp", here in this edit, to get it to appear just as amp... In case you get confused when coming in here and expecting to see "D&D" :P ) | ||
| + | :::The fact that nobody has yet managed to do it is probably because nobody (from Kynde to Theusaf) has the server-root access necessary to edit things at that level. | ||
| + | :::Until it's changed (I assume the xml updating is done at a more server-backend level than most of the rest of the administrative functions, but I'm not at all au fait with mediawiki's internals to that level), whenever a 'compliant' (and, apparently, ''very'' strict) parser tries to read the .xml it'll 'quite rightly' tell you that there's a bare ampersand and then refuses to do anything more. | ||
| + | :::Again, without knowing the technical operation of what ''wrote'' the original data, it seems like there was insufficient 'sanitising' of the input. It applied the bare-ampersand without forward-converting it to an ampersanded ampersand-entity. That maybe also needs fixing (in case we get more), even if the existing ones get manually changed. I don't use any RSS feeds, myself, being too new-fangled ("Initial release: RSS 0.90 (Netscape), March 15, 1999; 26 years ago; Latest release: RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.11) March 30, 2009; 16 years ago"... yeah, ''to me'' that's still new-fangled! :P ) so all I know about how this one fails is what people have talked about above, and trivially clicking on the left-sidebar link to look at it myself, and venture what I think is the logical nature of the glitch (both cause and effect). Maybe somebody knows more about it, but I'm filling in until that person comes along and says oytherswise (and/or more) about it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.193|162.158.33.193]] 20:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::: It's not being "very strict" to reject an unescaped ampersand: it's just part of the XML spec. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.216.67|162.158.216.67]] 09:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::::Now it says there's an error on line 767...--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#023020">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#000080">converse</span>]]</sup> 19:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::::Same error, of the same (second of two, once it had added its influence to the first) comic that did the "&D" problem. But just with more non-invalid lines before it. Check it again after another few comics and it should be line 770+. This isn't the new <City> thing, for several reasons, if that's what you were thinking it was. (Though there appears to be ''another'' issue with it, which is masked and made moot by the &D-breakage.)[[Special:Contributions/82.132.246.227|82.132.246.227]] 04:55, 18 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | === RSS Feed doesn't seem to contain anything after 3 August 2025 === | ||
| + | |||
| + | There do not seem to be any new entries in the RSS Feed after the third of August. {{unsigned ip|216.212.38.209|16:01, 23 September 2025}} | ||
| + | :That's been noticed. But not much chance trying to fix that (manually adding in, if necessary) until we can properly (and manually?) fix the ampersand-D issues. For which there seems to be no-one with sufficient access. [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 22:12, 23 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | May I ask why my PHP-Workaround for the broken RSS Feed has been removed without any explanation and not included in the the new RSS-Feed section? (see history) or is this another wiki edit hell not worth wasting another constructive thought? | ||
| + | [[Special:Contributions/2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B|2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B]] 21:36, 2 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :I think that FaviFake forgot to add it into this mega-thread. I've pasted it back in. Sorry! '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#3a795e">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#ce5f15">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 22:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::Yes sorry! [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::Apology accepted [[Special:Contributions/2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D|2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D]] 20:01, 9 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | === PHP Workaround for Broken RSS Feed === | ||
| + | The following PHP-Code creates a RSS-Feed from the "All comics" page on explainxkcd: (with kind help from Kimi K2) | ||
| + | <pre> | ||
| + | <?php | ||
| + | error_reporting(E_ALL); | ||
| + | ini_set('display_errors', 1); | ||
| + | |||
| + | // php-xml module available | ||
| + | if (!class_exists('DOMDocument')) { | ||
| + | die("Error: DOMDocument class missing. Please install php-xml"); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | |||
| + | // configuration | ||
| + | $url = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_all_comics_(full)'; | ||
| + | $url2 = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/'; | ||
| + | $feedTitle = 'xkcdExplain'; | ||
| + | $feedDescription = ''; | ||
| + | $feedLanguage = 'en-en'; | ||
| + | $maxItems = 40; | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | $ch = curl_init(); | ||
| + | curl_setopt_array($ch, [ | ||
| + | CURLOPT_URL => $url, | ||
| + | CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, | ||
| + | CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36', | ||
| + | CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true, | ||
| + | CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 20, | ||
| + | CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => true, | ||
| + | CURLOPT_ENCODING => 'gzip, deflate', | ||
| + | CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [ | ||
| + | 'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8', | ||
| + | 'Accept-Language: de-DE,de;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7', | ||
| + | 'Cache-Control: no-cache', | ||
| + | ] | ||
| + | ]); | ||
| + | /* */ | ||
| + | $html = curl_exec($ch); | ||
| + | |||
| + | if (curl_errno($ch)) { | ||
| + | die('cURL-Fehler: ' . curl_error($ch)); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | |||
| + | $httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE); | ||
| + | if ($httpCode !== 200) { | ||
| + | die("HTTP-Fehler: $httpCode"); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | |||
| + | curl_close($ch); | ||
| + | |||
| + | // DOM-Verarbeitung | ||
| + | $dom = new DOMDocument(); | ||
| + | libxml_use_internal_errors(true); | ||
| + | $dom->loadHTML($html); | ||
| + | libxml_clear_errors(); | ||
| + | $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom); | ||
| + | |||
| + | $items = $xpath->query('//tr[ .//a[starts-with(@href,"/wiki/index.php/") and contains(@href,":")]]'); | ||
| + | if ($items->length === 0) { | ||
| + | die("Nothing found."); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | // creat RSS | ||
| + | $rss = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8'); | ||
| + | $rss->formatOutput = true; | ||
| + | |||
| + | $rssRoot = $rss->createElement('rss'); | ||
| + | $rssRoot->setAttribute('version', '2.0'); | ||
| + | $rssRoot->setAttribute('xmlns:atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'); | ||
| + | $rss->appendChild($rssRoot); | ||
| + | |||
| + | $channel = $rss->createElement('channel'); | ||
| + | $rssRoot->appendChild($channel); | ||
| + | |||
| + | $channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', $feedTitle)); | ||
| + | $channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('description', $feedDescription)); | ||
| + | $channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', $url)); | ||
| + | $channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('language', $feedLanguage)); | ||
| + | |||
| + | // Atom Self-Link | ||
| + | $atomLink = $rss->createElement('atom:link'); | ||
| + | $atomLink->setAttribute('href', (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? 'https://' : 'http://') . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); | ||
| + | $atomLink->setAttribute('rel', 'self'); | ||
| + | $atomLink->setAttribute('type', 'application/rss+xml'); | ||
| + | $channel->appendChild($atomLink); | ||
| + | |||
| + | foreach ($items as $item) { | ||
| + | if ($maxItems-- <= 0) break; | ||
| + | |||
| + | $cells = $item->getElementsByTagName('td'); | ||
| + | if ($cells->length < 4) continue; // Sicherheits-check | ||
| + | $number = trim($item->getElementsByTagName('th')->item(0)->textContent); | ||
| + | $title = trim($cells->item(0)->textContent); | ||
| + | $link = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com' . $cells->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->getAttribute('href'); | ||
| + | $image = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/' . trim($cells->item(2)->textContent); | ||
| + | $date = trim($cells->item(3)->textContent); // YYYY-MM-DD | ||
| + | |||
| + | // RSS-Item erzeugen | ||
| + | $rssItem = $rss->createElement('item'); | ||
| + | $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', htmlspecialchars($number . ': ' . $title))); | ||
| + | $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', htmlspecialchars($link))); | ||
| + | $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('description', | ||
| + | htmlspecialchars('<img src="' . $image . '" alt="' . $title . '" /><br>' . $title))); | ||
| + | $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('pubDate', date(DATE_RSS, strtotime($date)))); | ||
| + | $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('guid', htmlspecialchars($link))); | ||
| + | $channel->appendChild($rssItem); | ||
| + | } | ||
| + | |||
| + | header('Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8'); | ||
| + | echo $rss->saveXML(); | ||
| + | ?> | ||
| + | </pre> | ||
| + | {{unsigned ip|2a01:599:442:d8ec:967c:b1b4:cb3e:2bc2}} 20:08, 27 September 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ---- | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Can't we just rename the two pages?=== | ||
| + | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3028:_D%26D_Roll&diff=prev&oldid=389591 This edit made me think]: can't we just rename the two pages to something like ...DnD ... to fix our RSS feed? Would that work? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :Only if that propogated to (overwote/superseded and deleted the old entry) the RSS file. But with (for totally different reasons?) there not having been any updates since 8/Aug/2025, I don't even see that happening. And a number of reasons to think that even if it replaces the items: a) it won't remove another wrong aspect, b) it won't let us (easily!) add all the missing ones since that point. | ||
| + | :I think it still needs someone with server-side editing priviliges to just correct it, perhaps add some text-sanitising to the script that updates it ''and'' investigate why the updating script isn't still running. | ||
| + | :Though you could try renaming the first (i.e. chronologically last) page that pops up. ''If'' it makes it update that entry (revealing the other D&D error as the new stopper), then make the second change... (surely if it's kick-started to respond to that, then it's kick-started to start adding new things, but no idea if you'd ''then'' need to change/unchange everything since the current last, in order to prompt them to be added). But my guess is that you'll change the page, nothing will happen, you'll wait... eventually you'll want to undo the change back to how it currently is. (Or look for every page that references the changed page to get them pointing at the new-name... as not leaving a Redirect page on the old name might be the only way to make it 'RSS official'). | ||
| + | :Or I'm totally wrong, and it's all much simpler. Can't test any of these hypotheticals and predictions myself. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 20:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Fix Random Comic RNG == | ||
| + | |||
| + | The random comic button seems to not work properly since it wont show comics before 2022. {{unsigned ip|174.168.56.208|16:41, 17 October 2025 (UTC)}} | ||
| + | :This is a known issue, please see [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles]]. '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#3a795e">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#ce5f15">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 17:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==Main page comic number== | ||
| + | The main page currently states that there are 3,161 comics. However, the latest comic as of today is [[3159]], resulting in a discrepancy of three comics. Is there a reason for this? --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#023020">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#000080">converse</span>]]</sup> 20:02, 27 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :Moved from Kynde's talk, they've said enough times that they aren't a technical user. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into this, but I'm sure someone will. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 20:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::The main page is, through the magic of the instruction <code><nowiki>{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}}</nowiki></code>, taking the number from those listed in (and as enumerated at the top of) [[:Category:All comics]]. At the time of writing, that has comics [[1]] to [[3159]] , plus [[ngram charts]] and [[verizon]], giving a total two more than the numbers would suggest. | ||
| + | ::The possible changes are to either remove non-numbered comics from the All Comics categories or (such as when some people were wondering whether the [[404]] 'non-comic' should count in the total), make a hard-coded mathematical adjustment to the counted number within the Main Page to 'correct' it. (And be prepared to re-hardcode it if the number of non-number comics changes later.) If you think it worthwhile. An even more useful change would be to have a way to ''auto''-adjust for non-number comics via a bit of extra categorisation and counting being fed into the subtraction. Depends on how much work you want to do! ;) | ||
| + | ::Or... you could also just add ", including non-numbered comics", or your choice of wording, to the "We have..." text and then (regardless of how many such oddities occur, and why) it might not be considered any kind of problem. Simple enough, just not within my power to do for you![[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 21:06, 27 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::How can people miss such a huge message, ffs. | ||
| + | {{misc page}} | ||
| + | :::Fixed by marking them as extra. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::They were {{diff|390190|marked as not-extra}} again... | ||
| + | ::::Just found the other more recent suggestion(s) I saw, about this: | ||
| + | ::::*[[explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals#Category:Extra pages]] | ||
| + | ::::*[[Template talk:comic#Extra Page vs Extra Comic]] | ||
| + | ::::Makes sense to me. But I couldn't implement it, even if I wanted to change how everything works (admitedly, so that it works better, after maybe a little messing around) | ||
| + | ::::Tempted to check exactly which pages are "extra=no" (i.e. have been changed, looks like should be "extra=page") and "extra=yes" (probably candidates for "extra=comic" treatment). But anybody can find that info, especially people who can do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:45, 23 November 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :::::Yep, there's been the paradox that non-numbered comics don't count as comics (for numbering purposes) but non-numbered ''non-''comics do. | ||
| + | :::::I give you three(+) options to 'solve' it (there could be more), in increasing order of complexity. By both dsscription (sorry!) and implementation. | ||
| + | :::::# Change the main page to say something like "We have #### comics ''and other pages'' explained", don't bother to change anything (except maybe abandon "Extra Comics" idea and stop using "extra=yes", although that does more work than recategorising), potentially have all extra comics and extra non-comic pages in the count, but nobody's now particularly bothered that this count is higher than the highest comic number and nobody<sup>[[[Template:Actual citation needed#top|<!--This is needed so it doesn't become bold this page-->''actual citation needed'']]]</sup> ever complains about this again, ok? | ||
| + | :::::# Accept that non-comic extra pages are "extra comics", make them "extra=yes", excludes them from the count (keeps them in the Random Page, as broken as that is), makes the "number of comics" correct again, the counting complaint ends until something else different needs pondering about in the future and further decision needs to be made. | ||
| + | :::::#* Slight variation: do that, but change all "Extra Comics" to "Extra Pages" as the sole "extra=yes" result/repository, without distinction. | ||
| + | :::::# Have both "Extra Comics" ''and'' "Extra Pages" 'infrastructure', i.e. categories, etc. Then have the comic template expanded by one further "is there an <code>extra=</code> term, and is it's value [1) 'yes', or perhaps 'comic', 2) 'page']?" nested search term to assign accordingly. (Benefit of being able to check just if <code><nowiki>{{{extra|}}}</nowiki></code> is blank/nonblank for the comic template check to see if next/previous, etc, are needed, without comic/non-comic distinction.) Anything that uses a comic-template that needs not to appear on the 'number of comics' needs one or other valid "extra=" value. Count is accurate, theoretically the Random Comic can be made to go to any number-comic, no-number-comic and (optional) non-comic extra explanation. | ||
| + | :::::#* Similar, but use <code>extracomic=yes</code> and <code>extrapage=yes</code>, with appropriate choices. Complicates matters (don't get the benefit/script optimisation described above), setting ''both'' extracomic and extrapage is accidentally possible (though shouldn't matter, it'll act only on the first), anything still "extra=yes" will be treated as a normal comic until changed (as it would if you chose to go with "extra=comic" template choice-change, above, but you could at least find 'illicit' hangers-on in the "All comics" list" to then change them accordingly). Again, numbered-comics, not-numbered-comics and not-comics are dealt with seperately (where it counts) but can still be grouped for Random Comic (or perhaps better "Random Explanation"?) purposes, such as it is. | ||
| + | :::::Simplest item is the first. Even the last isn't too complicated, for someone who has more than basic template-editing experience. (Please, nobody who has just followed the ill-advised "How to make a template" course in the FAQ. That's too basic for this, and also far too much "Hey guys, just make loads of templates, yeah!?" for comfort.) | ||
| + | :::::Your choices, however. Perhaps discuss first, though? [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.65|82.132.236.65]] 08:39, 23 November 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | ::::::I would like to vote for using extra=page and extra=comic. '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#3a795e">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#ce5f15">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 20:17, 24 November 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==What If? Toolbar button== | ||
| + | The button called 'What If?' on the left-hand toolbar currently links to [[What If? Chapters]]. However, users would be clicking this link possibly to go to the article about the blog or the articles about the books. So, I think we should have that button link to [[What If (disambiguation)|the disambiguation link]] instead. <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 16px;">--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#E3C6BE">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#CC9A8B">Converse</span>]]</sup></span> 14:41, 13 November 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==Comic number off again== | ||
| + | The comic number is now a full nine numbers off? What's happened? [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 16px;">--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#E3C6BE">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#CC9A8B">Converse</span>]]</sup></span>]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 00:14, 23 November 2025 (UTC) | ||
| + | :See the subsection two above this... [[Special:Contributions/2.98.77.121|2.98.77.121]] 00:27, 23 November 2025 (UTC) | ||
Latest revision as of 20:17, 24 November 2025
| Proposals • Technical • Coordination • Admin requests • Miscellaneous • All |
New topic 
Add comment 
Refresh
 Technical issues about the explain xkcd wiki, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests. (+post) |
RSS FEED: If you're here for the broken RSS feed, please see #RSS FEED!
Random Button Glitch: If you're here for the broken Random Comics button, please see the Miscellaneous portal!
Contents
- 1 ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS
- 2 Unable to view "what if?" page
- 3 Discussion not displaying with comic
- 4 Random page sometimes takes me to an invalid address
- 5 Bug on the main page
- 6 Occasional error via Cloudflare
- 7 Add TemplateData
- 8 MediaWiki 1.30.0?!
- 9 Uptime
- 10 Comic template lappend breaks for standalone comic links
- 11 May not be your problem, but FYI.
- 12 special:interwiki
- 13 Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter
- 14 ↑ ?
- 15 Is there anything else we can do to prevent vandalism?
- 16 Rollback
- 17 What happened to custom JavaScript?
- 18 My IP
- 19 Main page in categories
- 20 Cannot create user page
- 21 Fanmade comics
- 22 Why doesn't this code block work?
- 23 Can't add RSS feed because of pubDate value on 27 Nov 2015
- 24 Admin request posted here because of vandalism
- 25 Way to contact the site hosters?
- 26 Confirmation Email Bug
- 27 Lack of Userpage
- 28 server errors
- 29 Allow new users to edit their own page
- 30 Technical difficulties?
- 31 The site is collapsing
- 32 List of All Comics
- 33 The List of all comics is no longer being updated automatically
- 34 2034: Equations error?
- 35 Esolang wiki bug
- 36 Total amount of accounts created on this wiki?
- 37 email confirmation
- 38 MediaWiki error when visiting 1270: Functional or 1270
- 39 Captcha repeat
- 40 Request for feedback about {{comic}}
- 41 Random comic/explanation glitches
- 42 Incessant 503 errors
- 43 wtf is going on with the server??
- 44 Special:ContributionScores on Main Page busts caching, causing load
- 45 What would it take to clone ExplainXKCD?
- 46 new and exciting 522 and 524 cloudflare errors
- 47 Problem Sending a Question to [email protected]
- 48 Monobook style categories bug
- 49 Bug on Modern style
- 50 Upgrading MediaWiki
- 51 A precaution
- 52 RSS FEED
- 53 Fix Random Comic RNG
- 54 Main page comic number
- 55 What If? Toolbar button
- 56 Comic number off again
ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS[edit]
Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Technical.
Unable to view "what if?" page[edit]
The link to the page for the what if? blog displays an error: "No input file specified." JBYoshi (talk) 03:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
- This also happens to me on 1205: Is It Worth the Time? Must be something with the ?s in the titles. 172.69.22.66 15:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
- I've noticed that as well. I made a page in my userspace that redirects to the what if page, and for some reason that seems to work. (here is the link to the page) Blue screen of life (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
- I have also noticed this but it is not just on pages with questions marks. Both 259 and 1705 show the same thing. A full list (as of 22 June 2020) of the ones i found is in the last reply to my report found here #2138_page_issues TomW1605 (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
- Both 259 and 1705 have an (e-with-accute-accent, Unicode U+00E9) in the URL, so for those pages, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?
- For the "what if?" page, I had recently added a redirect from what if (blog) to get to it, and the What If disambiguation page has been updated with it, so at least we can get to it that way; and for the comic explanations, at least we can get to them by linking to their number-redirects (as 58 instead of 58: Why Do You Love Me?); but not sure how to fix it overall. At the following page, it suggests tweaking an Apache rewrite directive in .htaccess (or a CGI setting in PHP if it's running on IIS):
- So maybe something about that has changed recently? Documentation:
- Summarizing a few points from this related discussion:
- Only one of the site's 10 administrators has made recent edits (SlashMe).
- Neither of the site's 2 bureaucrats (Jeff and Lcarsos) have made any edits recently.
- For admin access to the server itself, my limited understanding is that Jeff might actually own the server, but may have also given admin access to Dgbrt; however, neither of them have made edits recently.
- But "most recent edit" might not be a good indicator, so I wonder of some of these folks are still involved in the project?
- – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 05:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
- Looks like it happens for any page that has a percent-encoding in the title. PoolloverNathan[stalk the blue seas] 16:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Known broken pages[edit]
(Redirects work, whereas links to the actual page are broken.)
Title containing e-accute-accent:
Title ending with question mark:
-
what if (blog) ↳ what if? (What links here)fixed – content now exists at what if, and broken links are in the process of being updated (see below) - 58 ↳ 58: Why Do You Love Me? (What links here)
- 111 ↳ 111: Firefox and Witchcraft - The Connection? (What links here)
- 1205 ↳ 1205: Is It Worth the Time? (What links here)
- 1841 ↳ 1841: Who? (What links here)
- 1913 ↳ 1913: A ? (What links here)
- 2065 ↳ 2065: Who Sends the First Text? (What links here)
- 2138 ↳ 2138: Wanna See the Code? (What links here)
- 2236 ↳ 2236: Is it Christmas? (What links here)
Moved[edit]
I moved the what if? page to the what if (blog) page which I then changed to simply what if to fix this issue and because anyone new to this site would type that any way to see it. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
- Still trying to wrap my head around it – so just to summarize, we currently have:
-
- whatif (no-redirect link)
- ↳ redirects to what if? (see below)
- What If? – page broken (no-redirect link) (What links here)
- ↳ also redirects to what if? – page broken (no-redirect link) (What links here)
- ↳ redirects to what if – actual content
- content manually moved from (diff) what if? to (diff) what if (blog) (no-redirect link) (previous revision history remains at what if?)
- ⇒ moved to what if – actual content
- ↳ also redirects to what if? – page broken (no-redirect link) (What links here)
- whatif (no-redirect link)
- For completeness, we also have...
-
- what if book (no-redirect link)
- ↳ redirects to what if#The book – actual content
- Suggestion: for consistency, also add a what if (book) page that redirects here?
- what if book (no-redirect link)
- ...and the disambiguation page...
-
- What If (no-redirect link)
- ⇒ moved to What If (disambiguation) – disambiguation page
- links to 17: What If (↲ 17 redirects here (no-redirect link))
- links to what if – actual content
- Suggestion: mention the book here as well, and link to its section in the what if page?
- ⇒ moved to What If (disambiguation) – disambiguation page
- What If (no-redirect link)
- ...and these troubleshooting pages from User:Blue screen of life:
-
- User:Blue screen of life/redirecttest – test page (no-redirect link)
- ⇒ moved to User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink – test page (no-redirect link)
- ↳ redirects to What If? (see above)
- ⇒ moved to User:Blue screen of life/whatiflink – test page (no-redirect link)
- User:Blue screen of life/redirecttest – test page (no-redirect link)
- Given that the actual content of the "what if?" article now lives at what if, I've started updating pages (except for Talk pages) to link directly there instead of the other redirect pages. All that's left to do are pages that link to the what if? redirect-page (which is broken).
Its "What links here" special page is broken too, so it's difficult to find what pages link there – but now that it redirects to the what if page, you can see them indirectly from that page's "What links here" special page.These are the pages that still link there. There are still a lot of them to go. - Also, should the following redirect-pages be simplified to have them redirect straight to the new what if page, instead of redirecting through the intermediate what if? page (which itself redirects there anyway)?
- – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 17:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
- Fixed the double redirects, don't ask me why we have so many pages for the same thing. PoolloverNathan[stalk the blue seas] 16:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Discussion not displaying with comic[edit]
I am using FireFox on a Win10 machine. When I come to the site I can see the comic, explanation and transcript. But the discussion section is hidden. Even when logged in.
Any ideas?
- You say "when I come to the site". If the address bar says you are on Main_Page and you see the heading "Latest comic", then it's simply working as designed. Above the comic, click on "Go to this comic explanation" and you will see the comic plus discussion.
- Also, Steve, please sign your comments every time, with four tildes. That expands into your user name and a timestamp. Like this -- JohnB (talk) 10:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Random page sometimes takes me to an invalid address[edit]
Sometimes, when clicking on "Random page" in the left sidebar, the site will be blank apart from the text "No input file specified. ".
An example of such an URL is: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F
- I've noticed this happens for all URLs to comics that end in a question mark (or possibly any special character). Interestingly, this doesn't happen if you go to the comic from the search bar. Danish (talk) 23:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
Bug on the main page[edit]
Bug Enviroment(Might work on other enviroments): Ubuntu 20.04LTS Firefox85.0 2021.2.7
Bug: The front page reads: `Welcome, Main Page, to explain xkcd!` with `Main Page` formatted as a username,can someone fix this?
Xkcdjerry (talk) 09:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
Occasional error via Cloudflare[edit]
Just a note that I'm getting Cloudflare errors of "origin not reachable" (sounds wrong to me, in my head it should be 'destination', but never mind) three times now in the last ten to fifteen minutes - of maybe a dozen general site-requests.
I've also been getting seemingly .CSSless formatted pages over the past few days, which I've been putting down to slightly dodgy wifi at my end (not unknown) but if I'm getting Cloudflare's error cleanly then perhaps it's been entirely upstream/downstream/however-you'd-describe-the-Explain-server. (Obviously CSS resource requests, as with images, are additional HTTP calls, but I still lump it into the single site-request per page in my 'dozen' estimate above. No obviously lost images, though, in incomplete pages - not that can't be explained by .CSS non-following, anyway.)
I had copy-buffered some of the exact info, but due to incompetence I recopied over it before coming here. If it happens again, I'll try to bring it over here. But (the way these things go) maybe it won't. FYI, though. 141.101.98.52 12:04, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
- Not a Cloudfare error (looks like an error of the actual explainxkcd server) but every now and then (like just a few minutes ago) I get an error page that generally goes away if I immediately refresh. To whit:
Service Unavailable The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
- Not really a problem (occasionally happened while submitting an exit, and I have to confirm to the browser that I wish to repost the data, but this particular copied instance was through a more 'read-only' link-click, like most of the instances) but... in case someone finds this to be new and useful information... here you are! 141.101.98.192 03:45, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
- OP, here, of the above 503 error report/casual mention. Obviously this is the same message that happened for an extended period of time over a number of days, but I've only just happened to find the site responding again and have not yet looked to see if it is explained as the same or different cause to the old intermittent issues (at root). I hope things are resolved from the major outage (server quota? bill payments? renewal/reconfiguration blips?) but wonder if I should report any future minor outages? I'm still smarting from the total loss of the fora.xkcd.com platform, a few years back, and while I'm not active enough here to consider a proper login (lurking as a freeloading anon-IP is good enough, usually, for my intellectual enjoyment, with all due apologies) I did have a slight pang of emptiness while it was out-of-order. 141.101.99.79 15:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
Add TemplateData[edit]
Add the TemplateData extension to allow setting data for templates. This will help editors because they will be able to see the data of templates.
MediaWiki 1.30.0?![edit]
This wiki is currently on MediaWiki 1.30.0 (release notes), the first of three releases of a version of MW that reached end-of-life in June of 2019 (mw:Version lifecycle). It's thus missing multiple important security updates from 1.30.1 and 1.30.2, not to mention the two years' worth of security updates since 1.30.x reached end-of-life. Even 1.31.x will be reaching end-of-life in just over a month.
If the sysadmins here update to MediaWiki 1.35.2 (release notes), that version will be maintained till September of 2023, with only a few security updates in the meantime. I would strongly encourage y'all to update to 1.35.2; to promptly update if there's a .3, .4, etc.; and to make sure you switch to the next LTS release (which will presumably be 1.39) well in advance of September of '23. (Note that this will also require updating to PHP 7.3.19 or later.) PinkAmpersand (talk) 07:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
Uptime[edit]
Did the website just go down? Beanie talk 13:06, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
It was definitely down this weekend! https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/nxrm65 ProphetZarquon (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
Comic template lappend breaks for standalone comic links[edit]
For example, https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html is changed to https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html/ which isn't valid 172.69.90.15 15:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Template here, I think it needs to be changed to solve this https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Template:comic
exkcd page here https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Blue_Eyes
May not be your problem, but FYI.[edit]
My typcal setup: Android tablet, with Chrome for Android (latest update), but also Firefox for Android (ditto), using default Gboard (likewise) for input.
Occasionally (notably within the last few weeks/maybe a month or so), when going in to edit an explainxkcd page through Chrome (it's how I divide up my browsing), I'm getting the cursor in the textarea box which can be used to Cut/Copy/Paste (as applicable and useful), but the on-screen keyboard isn't popping up. Page is fully loaded (can be refreshed, doesn't have the "stop loading" alternative), can go back (page viewing) and try to go back to the page editor (often to same result). Sitting and waiting doesn't pop the keyboard up, either (sat there for minutes). Happens both on home wifi and mobile connection.
If I transfer my attentions to the page to Firefox (copy URL, to use there... but I don't use that by default for expxkcd stuff) there's no problem, but then if I come back to Chrome again it seems to start working again anyway so not sure if it's just avoiding/flushing a transient problem that would also initially crop up with Firefox if I used that more.
Because editing is a different (mobile-optimised) process on Wikipedia and I can't be sure about any the equivalence of any other wiki out there (and it doesn't happen with anything else I regularly key into on Chrome) it's not something I've reproduced outwith this site, and of course desktop page-editing doesn't require touch-screen keyboard because there's a physical one.
Not getting much feedback with Chrome (really can't get on with their bugrep processes, it's too huge a project to make headway, IME), not even tried to pester the Gboard team and I've not seen anything said on here about this being a site-issue (not sure how it could be, as it's outside the remit of the core web-page rendering process and more an Android or App level of incompetence), but I thought I'd make a note of it here for future reference. Make of it what you will. Annoying but not game-breaking. And I just wanted to vent a little. 172.70.162.147 16:54, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
special:interwiki[edit]
where'd it go? 172.69.68.200 05:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter[edit]
Seriously. Many scripts and such built for modern, supported versions of MW do not work here because it is so unbelievably undated. PinkAmpersand above basically covers the reason why. I also highly recommend adding the extension AbuseFilter (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter) as it immensely makes removing vandalism easier (by straight up disallowing or blocking those that do, esp if it's like the current formulaic massive-replacement vandalism.) CRLF (talk) 00:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
- Ditto. I feel like the main problem is that the sole person who has access to the backend either doesn't have time to update, doesn't have interest, or doesn't have the technical knowledge necessary. But yes, I agree - updating and installing an extension to help control vandalism would help this wiki tremendously. Obwankenobi (talk) 20:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
↑ ?[edit]
Why do some pages have ↑ at the very start? They can all be spotted by searching ↑ Is it a technical thing, vandalism, some sort of glitch? Maybe I'm just uninformed or being an idiot.
- Edit logs tell me that an IP user manually reverting vandalism somehow inserted one or more extra characters while manually reverting vandalism. Davidy²²[talk] 13:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
- Should it be removed? It's not necessary and might be confusing for screenreaders... Mushrooms (talk) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
- Maybe not en-mass, I'd say. But I've dove in to delete a rogue leading <br /> tag left from a part of a prior vandalism (likewise, just before the {{comic}}-element) and I've promised myself that I'll remove any more that I spot (and now that arrow) in any future whole-page edit I make. Plus a small shopping-list of inessential but useful edits like making {{Citation needed}}s flow better when they're mispunctuated/etc.
- But that's my solitary opinion. I'm sure hunting out and squishing this isn't a problem at all. I'm just balancing my own peculiar brand of OCD with what is somehow my also my own version of casual apathy towards other details. (Also, it probably looks better for a named account of recognised good standing to start editing potentially hundreds of pages in a session, rather than myself... potentially indistinguishable from the IP who seems to relish worn out memes in a general page-trashing.) 162.158.159.121 12:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
- Should it be removed? It's not necessary and might be confusing for screenreaders... Mushrooms (talk) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Is there anything else we can do to prevent vandalism?[edit]
There's been quite a significant uptick in vandalism recently, and I don't feel we have any effective tools to combat it. I believe one of the biggest issues here is due to the way logged-out editing works on this wiki. Blocks are completely ineffective at slowing vandals, and IP editors can vandalize with basically nothing we can do to thwart them other than revert-warring. Is there a better way?
There's been some discussion of installing AbuseFilter, but I'm not sure anything became of it. We could disable logged-out editing, but that would likely be counterproductive as we get lots of legitimate contributions from logged-out users. If there's a way to switch to location-based IPs, we could rangeblock problematic users as well as proxies. Does anyone have any ideas? 162.158.78.145 16:11, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'm sort of making server side changes via telegraph so an extension is probably going to take a while to get installed. Takes a bunch of emails and followups to get single variables changed in the mediawiki settings file. There is an email verification option, and some edit frequency variables that could be set to make spam more time consuming. Don't love range blocks but wouldn't mind getting the CDN IPs dealt with so we can actually use the IP bans again. Davidy²²[talk] 17:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'm very grateful that you're working on changes under the hood. What do you think is the best way to deal with disruption in the meantime? Vandalbane (talk) 17:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- Could borrow a patrol bot like the ones people on main wikipedia have, could ask around. Davidy²²[talk] 18:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- There's not really a drop-in solution that you can use, especially since the server's MediaWiki version is not in sync with Wikipedia's (so a lot of the APIs etc have completely changed; when initially reverting vandalism I tried importing some scripts from enwiki but they failed as a result), but also because the bots have gotten pretty complex (using machine learning provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, for example). CRLF (talk) 03:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- Could borrow a patrol bot like the ones people on main wikipedia have, could ask around. Davidy²²[talk] 18:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'm very grateful that you're working on changes under the hood. What do you think is the best way to deal with disruption in the meantime? Vandalbane (talk) 17:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
Rollback[edit]
Does the rollback permission exist on this wiki? Vandalbane (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- The rollback permission of course exists but there's no group called "rollbacker" like you'd find on Wikipedia (limited to admins). You'd need the sysadmin to change the configuration to add one, which as established is not really an option right now. CRLF (talk) 03:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
What happened to custom JavaScript?[edit]
I put some code in User:Some user/common.js, but it is not alerting 'hi' every time I load a page. Why can't we execute JavaScript anymore? Is it in response to the crapping incident? Some user (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
My IP[edit]
Why is my IP address a Cloudflare address in Norway? Is this a joke of some kind that I'm missing?
Other wikis like Wikipedia are showing me my actual IP when I go to Special:MyContributions, so I suspect this is a wiki misconfiguration. It changed again while I was typing this. 162.158.222.194 16:55, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- All IPs (as this one will be) are from Cloudflare gateway IPs, because that's the default IP that the Wiki understands as the source. Cloudflare mediates all the traffic, and perhaps to some advantage (not being privvy to the logs, I can only guess how much it insulates the true server from extreme problems, but I bet it does in some way).
- There have been suggestions before to change some setting (in the MediaWiki implementation? ...can't recall exactly) to have it pick up and use the IP that the gateway reports (in its meta-request) was the origin, but that's not been enacted for Idunnowhat reason.
- Because the black-box that is the Cloudflare traffic shapes in various ways, you will find that a single user will jump around 'apparent' IPs, and I've also been in the relatively embarassing situation of replying to another IP's info and finding that I've registered on the exact same IP so that it looks like I'm stooging myself, or something.
- On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they were going to try and do the necessary tweak.
- As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. If those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... 172.70.85.24 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
- fyi it is supported in MediaWiki through
$wgCdnServers. See MediaWiki’s introduction. -- 物灵 (talk) 06:58, 6 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Main page in categories[edit]
|
This discussion is marked as duplicate. See this discussion. |
Main_Page was found wrongly appearing in some newly-created categories, such as Category:Cosmology. Could you fix it? --ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 17:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
- Never noticed this myself, but I'll take it as read. Before checking myself, I'm wondering if this could be when the main page 'inherits' tags from the Current Comic that it features. And thus solve itself (whilst gaining others) upon a newer Current Comic. (Must surely inherit "Monday Comics"/etc, on schedule every week.)
- If it is that, perhaps the solution lies in the details contained within https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories#Categories_and_templates_(transcluded_pages)
- Or maybe I'm wrong about it. But I have no rights to edit (thus at least examine the 'code' of) the Main page, to check my snap theory, as with most people. 172.70.162.46 19:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
This happened again in Category:Airplane banner. I27.O.O.I (talk) 09:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, and it lasted as long as the latest comic was still one with particular categories. I don't intend to worry about it. If someone goes to a category that interests them and looks at the main page, as temporarily advertised, they're likely to find (as part of it) a comic which is indeed in that category. Doesn't sound like a big problem to me, except for determinin why some cats (e.g. Friday Comics) don't link to the Main page when they might be expected to...
- (PS, I know for sure that I27.O.O.I isn't the same person as ColofulGalaxy (and various others, beyond even those with the bloomin' obvious "CG" initials or other recent spoofs on the RFC1918 addresses), and I don't think I mind too much, but faking disagreements between your various IDs isn't helping, anyone... smells too much of trying to establish alibis in advance of your next attempt to vandalise the site with stupid stuff. And doesn't impress me, so I doubt it impresses anyone else either. As long as you're just doing sane things, however, I'll accept your little idiosyncracies.) 162.158.74.32 19:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
- (PPS: You left your fingerprint on this latter attempt to 'rescue' this page. - Spammer a few minutes before midnight, my IP reversion happened shortly after. A little later "Elisabeth" then re-spammed (modified), then another IP immediately jumps on it to restore it but with the modified undo-summary line clearly indicating that some sort of a game is being played. Please don't, it's not clever.) 172.70.90.34 02:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
This doesn't happen to date categories, but it happens in manually added categories such as Category:Statistics. ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 21:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Cannot create user page[edit]
It says: There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page. 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
- (Removed alternative text in the link involved, to not hide behind trickery.) I think you know that there's no problem with 2659: Unreliable Connection itself, except that it had become one of several pages targeted for spamming, the only one then locked down, then finding that the spammers just retargeted to its Talk page, etc.
- I'm torn between "not assuming bad faith" and "don't feed the trolls", as competing principles, so I'm spelling out the situation. However much a tribute you might think it could be, I don't think there's a future in having a new username that's directly referencing a comic which has become so frequently seen in the recent history of this wiki's edits.
- Obviously any genuine contributions are more than welcome. So prove me wrong, why don't you? 172.70.91.151 03:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
- Could you help now? 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 09:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
- I've created your talk page. I guess that what you intended is to have a backup or mirror page for comic 2659. Am I right? ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 20:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Fanmade comics[edit]
A fanmade comic appeared on xkcd. Could you edit the template? 172.69.23.100 07:21, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
- You're going to have to say more about it, at least for me. Apart from the Sandbox attempt to make a page, I haven't seen the comic you're describing anywhere. Certainly not anywhere official. Link, for our benefit? 172.70.85.66 10:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Why doesn't this code block work?[edit]
Does anybody know why the code block at the end of this page doesn't work? I've tried everything and it still looks like plain text
Can't add RSS feed because of pubDate value on 27 Nov 2015[edit]
When I try to add the RSS feed in Nextcloud News feed reader I get an error Impossible to convert date : Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time.
W3C Feed validation says that pubDate must be an RFC-822 date-time and points "Pacific Standard Time" portion as the cause of the error: <pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</pubDate>. Can you please fix the timestap for this?
Admin request posted here because of vandalism[edit]
I can not currently access the admin requests page because it has been vandalized... can someone please protect the latest comic page (2805). There is some pretty childish vandalism going on there right now. Thanks!
- It's not the latest, seems like ALL. I went back to 2804, 2803, jumped back like 15 comics, all the same thing. To me the most offensive part is doing it with a nonsensical image. And why pipe it through Archive somehow? NiceGuy1 (talk) 02:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
- UGH. the vandals are back at it again... we need to lock xkcd pages @NiceGuy 172.70.39.2 00:59, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Way to contact the site hosters?[edit]
As many have pointed out the software this wiki runs on is horribly outdated. WikiEditor also isn't here for some reason. Quite a bit of messages here have seen no action. Is there some kind of contact form to reach the hosters? -- Aaron Liu (talk) 00:36, 10 October 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- There are various levels of admin who do intervene, as and when jecessary, but I understand that the (active) ones closest to the actual hosting level of intervention are not really ready to do the (increasingly greater) degree of uprooting necessary to get a "working" system to be "marginally better working", by way of that very dangerous middle-ground of potentially being ruined entirely.
- I appreciate and anticipate the counter-arguments regarding letting it go totally unupdated, of course, just I've personally seen enough failures (participated in some, or been the actual invokee, myself) to be very sympathetic to the "if it aint (too) broke, don't fix it" tendency. But that inertia is not the only factor, of course, and the full motivations (or lack of them) of those involved is not for a lowly IP like me to explain, even if I think I know... 172.69.195.42 01:24, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
- Have they posted some sort of statement? It also is most definitely not “marginally” better working, compare the source editor to that of Wikipedia and look at topic subscription etc features. Not to mention a lot of security fixes haven’t been added and this version has reached EOL long ago. Updating also would not ruin this entirely…Aaron Liu (talk) 17:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
- Some have also said that quite a bit of assistive scripts for modern versions don’t work. Visual Editor, while horrible, is still easier for new people to get started with. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I've found a new reason: This wiki doesn't even allow loading userscripts! Aaron Liu (talk) 01:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- That might actually have been a conscious decition, after a 'certain user' caused chaos here, not so long ago. 162.158.74.25 19:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- It was about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. 172.68.174.143 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
- Huh? What happened? Is there a place to request gadgets then? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
- "What happened" involved automated vandalism (from someone who been doing it manually, then found the "better way") though I couldn't tell you the exact details, there were automated 'unvandalism's made in response, and theusafBOT/etc does some of that still, in response to non-automated(/off-site scripted) vandalism/errors that it can actually catch before ordinary users (or IPs like me) can. But certainly a certain brand of scripting was turned off to curtail the 'high intensity' vandalism phase.
- You're more or less in the best place to request things, right here. Whether updates, (re)adding functionalitu or tweaking site settings. Can't tell if those who can do these things can't or won't do them... Or are actually absent, instead of just not replying. The cavalry has been known to come running in when necessary (e.g. when "what happened" happened) so it could be any manner of non-response (until you get one). Not necessarily the best state of affairs, but better than being confirmed absentees.
- I ran a bot to mass-edit pages by replacing their content with the word "crap" repeatedly. I was 15 then, and I thought it was funny. It wasn't. 172.68.174.143 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
- As an occasional but infrequent actual-Wikipedia editor, too, I must say that if the Visual Editor is what I currently have to use for that (at least as an anonIP when using a mobile device, which tends to be when I get the urge most) then I like the unaugmented editor here more. Straight up, honest, un'wizarded' interface, where you only have to get used to markup details and not a WYSIWYG editing environment (as well?). Not sure I'd be happy with an even more 'assistive' script imposed upon me, like I dislike modern generations of Windows (and 'user friendly' linux dists). So can I just ask that functional/visible changes of the kind you seem to be asking for, if made available, aren't overimposed/left as options rather than the default (or only) choice...? Ok, so I can (or would have to) adapt, but I'd rather not. Of course, I have no weight to pull in this matter, it's just an afterthought (even as I wish you good luck with raising an admin's eyebrow, in some useful manner). 141.101.98.135 05:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
- I am not asking for VisualEditor, which no one likes on Wikipedia either. For some blasted reason they made it edit HTML instead of Wikitext and it’s clunky and loads for a very long time.
- I’m asking about the WikiEditor, aka Wikipedia’s source editor. In VE, click on the pen next to the publish button and click on “source editing”. That editor makes this one look like freaking Stone Age, syntax highlighting is especially a game-changer. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
- There’s also the annoying ReCaptcha v2 every single edit… it seems like it would be relatively easy to switch to v3 which only makes you do the challenge when you’ve visited a bit too much. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, that would make things easier for someone who wanted to do mass vandalism like I did. If it didn't do it every time, someone could still edit quite quickly. 172.68.174.192 18:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
- Well, I can tell you that it doesn't always demand that I fulfil more than a tickbox (most trouble I have is when it fails to connect to give me the tickbox (or respond with anything useful when I do), for which I'm forced into one or more Previews until it will. When it does ask me to do something about it, I do often get forced through two or more request to identify traffic lights, motorbikes, stairways, bridges, hills, tractors, buses, etc, etc, etc... But I think that's more the Tesla-training Algorithm being nust greedy for my attention than the Robot-sentry having a less casual attitude to my attempt to edit. (I believe I'm on a usually untroublesome source IP/Cloudflare gateway, but it could also depend on how many others try to do things via (part of) the same route. Very, very rarely I get Google Search requesting something similar of me ((It: "You have made a lot of searches", me: "Of course I'll have play your little game, but this is my first lookup today...")), which I'm sure isn't Cloudflared, so it might reach back to my ISP's gateway and what fellow users are currently getting up to.)
- As for the guy above (and you, Liu), can't speak for how well or badly others on your own 'choice' of gateways behave. Or yourselves. Luck of the draw? For the first part, at least. 172.69.195.174 20:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
- MediaWiki 1.40 automatically tags all edits that remove over 90% of page text with "mw-replaced". You could block all edits in mainspace with that tag, either if MediaWiki has it or through the AbuseFilter extension. While I can complete the CAPTCHAs, it's very annoying to need to Captcha every edit on a place where the main focus is edits. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
- Plus, v3 doesn't just do nothing. It tracks how your cursor moves to see if it's robotic, while v2 annoyingly gives you the challenge every time. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- Presumably for touchscreen control (like mine, right this moment), it does something else than track a nonexistent mouse-pointer's passage across the monitored elements of the display... ;) 172.70.90.190 12:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
- There are a few MediaWiki plugins that help keep vandalism/spam under control without requiring users to solve a Captcha every time they make an edit. I use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Moderation on the wiki I maintain, and it works very well. However, it does require that there be enough active moderators to approve edits, as it basically requires every single edit to be approved before it's posted. Thus, it also introduces some "lag" between when stuff is written and when it can be seen by others. I think it could work if the extension could be installed (I'm not even sure if it's supported on this version of MediaWiki) and if a good list of moderators could be put together. Obwankenobi (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
- I disagree with requiring edits to be approved. Unless we have extremely high vandalism, just filtering out the above tags I mentioned and using ReCAPTCHA v3 would be enough. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, fair point. However, that wouldn't stop human vandalism, just vandalism from bots. I'm not sure how much human vandalism there is, though, so it might not even be a problem. Obwankenobi (talk) 12:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
- It's hard (for us 'civvies') to know how much bot-vandalism is stopped but probably a lot, most of which we never see, with occasional ones we might see having be dealt with. (I'm guessing these things are rare (temporarily-)successful 'bots, because flesh-and-blood vandals wouldn't be occasionally doing essentially the same insta-reverted thing on a thematically-small set of pages, over several years without moving on. It has to be a lucky unattended script-based effort that just keeps trying the same things over and over with an easily revertible but tangible result happening only infrequently.)
- More obvious human vandalism tends to rumble on, with occasionally a spate of it as someone gets short-term kicks for it. Though some of them seem may repeat themself after a break. Friendly humans and friendly 'bots both tend to provide the main anti-vandalism responses fairly quickly, though, depending upon what kind of a mess they caused. I've seen worse places, definitely, and it's by no means a losing battle against chaos, just regular skermishes.
- Not wanting to tempt fate, of course. I guarantee that there'll be some fool that takes all this as a challenge, so I just have to trust to the Good Guys keeping on keeping on. 172.70.90.71 14:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, fair point. However, that wouldn't stop human vandalism, just vandalism from bots. I'm not sure how much human vandalism there is, though, so it might not even be a problem. Obwankenobi (talk) 12:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
- I disagree with requiring edits to be approved. Unless we have extremely high vandalism, just filtering out the above tags I mentioned and using ReCAPTCHA v3 would be enough. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
heyo, is there a way to add actual citations to explainxkcd instead of the template citation needed? couldn't find anything, but i'm pretty new here - thanks in advance. Nigga (talk) 21:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
- Not that I have much faith in your usernae lasting long (you're 'that guy', aren't you? ...in which case you know anyway), but for the sake of anyone else who needs to know:
- If you mean "add an actual 'citation needed' tag", then it's {{Actual citation needed}} that you'll use.
- If you mean "add an actual citation link to somewhere", then:
- Link to URLs with [].
- A link such as [<url>] will give you a superscript-number link, which isn't pretty, IMO.
- A link such as [<url> <text>] (that's a space between the two) will link <text> to the URL, just work it into the sentence you're writing, fairly easy
- Link to internal (or cross-wiki) pages with [[]].
- [[<page title>]] will make a literal link to <page title>.
- [[<page title>|<text>]] (with a pipe) is how you make the <text> your link.
- You can use the last to link specifically to wikipedia's cross-site format, but for that it's best to use {{w}}
- {{w|<page title>}} (w-pipe...) uses the page title
- It will use the link as if the first character is uppercase, so you don't need to capitalise that. Other case-sensitivity is preserved.
- {{w|<singular page title>}}s will link the obvious pluralisation of the page title, just to save you effort
- {{w|<page title>|<text>}} (w-pipe and pipe) lets you use entirely alternate text.
- {{w|<page title>}} (w-pipe...) uses the page title
- There's also templates that shortcut (or make easier on the eye, or add appropriate warnings) for some other commonly referenced external sites, from xkcd's own what-if to TVTropes.
- Link to URLs with [].
- ...hope that helps everyone that doesn't already know these few simple bits as relate to wikis in general or this wiki in particular. 172.71.242.218 22:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
Confirmation Email Bug[edit]
Hi. I've been trying to get my email confirmed so that I can get pinged when pages are edited, but I just can't find it, even after trying multiple times. I use Gmail, and yes, I have checked my spam folder. Has anyone else had this issue? EDIT: I see that others have had this issue, but the admins haven't done any action to solve it, except for one sarcastic comment by Davidy22 back in 2014. 42.book.addict (talk) 00:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Lack of Userpage[edit]
Hey, I joined a few years ago, but I still do not have a Userpage. Can you make one for me? I do not have the permission to do so. GreyFox (talk) 22:47, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- This is actually your very first post, after joining a bit more than a year ago ("18:35, 14 November 2023 User account GreyFox (talk | contribs) was created"). I'm sure someone can oblige (not me, for obvious reasons), but you've not done much to contribute (at least under this account), which would have then eventually brought you to the point where you can just self-create your Userpages/etc. So your request is a bit out of the blue.
- Just so long as we all know where we stand, though. 172.69.194.227 09:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, thanks! Do you know the exact number of edits I need to create it?
- 50 to be autoconfirmed. Also, please sign your comments. 42.book.addict (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, thanks! Do you know the exact number of edits I need to create it?
server errors[edit]
is anyone else constantly getting 503 errors? youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 17:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
- yup, been seeing those all the time. Also seeing that the server is down a lot of time-it suggests me to Google for what I’m “looking for” 42.book.addict (talk) 17:18, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
- 503s are fairly common (often when I'm in a rush), and have been for... well, certainly years, maybe more than a decade (though more common during major vandalism/anti-vandalism surges). I had, however, noticed a recent blip (during the last day or so) of the Server Down/Try Google page that you refer to, which I haven't seen for a long time (not really sure when, but maybe five years or so ago). In fact, I probably got Cloudflare 'rejections' more, during aformentioned vandal-overloading.
- Without any access to the admin logs, I can only speculate as to what might be sparking it. But service (notwithstanding the brief page-refusals themselves) seems to be happily unaffected. 172.70.160.249 20:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Allow new users to edit their own page[edit]
I found someone asking if we could change this in the proposals page (Community portal/Proposals: Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed (not a typo)). PDesbeginner (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Technical difficulties?[edit]
I keep getting a message that says: "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Cannot access the database)" It's happened a lot so I was wondering if there was a specific cause behind it and perhaps a way to fix it. 172.68.54.65 00:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
- yeah, I’ve been getting those errors too. I can’t even log into my account before it says that there’s an error again. I’ve been steadily receiving them for a couple months, but never like today. From Recent Changes, it doesn’t look like anyone is spamming the wiki, so maybe it’s an attack of some kind. You’ll need to contact the admins who have access to the server and can poke around, but good luck getting User:Davidy22 or User:Jeff online. 172.69.135.130 17:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
- update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. 172.69.135.129 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
The site is collapsing[edit]
503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- I’ve messaged Davidy22 and Jeff about it, hopefully they see it and reply. It looks fine right now, appears that it works horribly at times and fine later. Due to the on-off nature of it, I would suspect DDoS attacks, as a 503 error means that the server can’t process the request, which occurs with DDoS attacks. 42.book.addict (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! 42.book.addict (talk) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
- October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. 42.book.addict (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! 42.book.addict (talk) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
- Agree, the situation is not terrible but feels extremely unstable. What happens if the wiki just breaks, and nobody can even contact Jeff? I feel like these errors are happening more and more frequently. --FaviFake (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
- Were you around for the (hacking-enforced) sudden ending of the xkcd fora? All things end.
- But (touch wood) the 503s/other connection refusals are a lot less frequent right now, so I'm not actually quite so worried as I might occasionally have been. What's more likely to happen is that the hosting plan, physical hardware and/or domain reaches an end and then... that's probably it unless someone with the wherewithall somehow manages to drag it back up again. 162.158.74.14 00:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- I’ve messaged Davidy22 and Jeff about it, hopefully they see it and reply. It looks fine right now, appears that it works horribly at times and fine later. Due to the on-off nature of it, I would suspect DDoS attacks, as a 503 error means that the server can’t process the request, which occurs with DDoS attacks. 42.book.addict (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- I've been getting these errors a lot as well all of a sudden. Sadly from what I've read on these pages, the sysadmin has basically left and ghosted everyone. The moment the site fully breaks for whatever reason, ExplainXKCD will be history. 172.71.178.58 15:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
- It's probably not the site breaking (as in, it's not intrinsically failing), just that unrestrained useless traffic to it (I theorise, elsewhere that it's a sudden rise in inconsiderate AI-training has led to a rise of ungoverned degrees of site-scraping) is marginalising our more legitimate attempts to interact. It would help to get some Administrator-led process to mitigate it, but it really should be better dealt with more towards the gateway-side of the connection (or the scrapers gradually toning their scraping down, but I doubt that'll happen). It, say, Cloudflare itself gets a good solution in place to dissuade such high attempts to access all the sites it otherwise proxies for, then we'll be back to just the site bumbling along in its slightly unmaintained condition. We then still have a couple of sub-administrators, a Bot and a good population of other users to keep things running against more trivial issues (short of hardware/infrastructure/financial failures). 172.68.186.141 16:55, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
List of All Comics[edit]
I think that FaviFake and I have accidentally broken the All comics page. When clicked, it brings you to the page List of all comics, which displays the comics 3000-3002 (as of right now) instead of the list of all comics (oops-my bad). How do we fix this? There’s also the page List of all comics (3000-3500), but the TheusafBOT ignores it. Can someone more technical help troubleshoot this problem? Again, sorry for making a muck of things. 42.book.addict (talk) 18:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Oh I'm sorry, I created a new topic for this and I didn't see this one. I noticed the List of all comics (3000-3500) today and scheduled it for deletion because we never make such a page until we have exactly 500 comics to put there. Also, the name is wrong, it should say 3001-3500.
- The page List of all comics is supposed to display comics 3001-3005, not all comics. You might be confusing it with List of all comics (full), which would work perfectly if List of all comics displayed the last 3 comics. I have no idea why the bot stopped updating it. Maybe it will work now that the wrong page is scheduled for deletion? FaviFake (talk) 05:15, 31 October 2024
- Wait a second, why did you move the List of all comics to List of all comics (3000-3500)? It seemed to me like everything was working fine before you moved it FaviFake (talk) 05:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
- I was trying to copy the content to List of all comics (3000-3500), and accidentally broke it. Sorry! 42.book.addict (talk) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah I can confirm the content and the entire edit history was moved to the incorrectly-titled page that's now scheduled for deletion. I guess maybe we didn't really need the edit history on that page, but who knows.
- Weirdly, the bot seems to have restored the page as it was and then stopped doing its thing. Since we're the only ones here, I suggest you manually create the missing rows for the new comics and we'll see if that works when the next comic drops. If it doesn't, I'll contact the maintainer and creator of the bot myself. Sounds good? :) FaviFake (talk) 18:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
- Sir yes Sir! 🫡 42.book.addict (talk) 04:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
- I was trying to copy the content to List of all comics (3000-3500), and accidentally broke it. Sorry! 42.book.addict (talk) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
- Wait a second, why did you move the List of all comics to List of all comics (3000-3500)? It seemed to me like everything was working fine before you moved it FaviFake (talk) 05:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
The List of all comics is no longer being updated automatically[edit]
Hey everyone, I noticed the bot isn't updating this page anymore: List of all comics. There are supposed to be five comics in it but there are only two at the moment. Is this supposed to happen? FaviFake (talk) 05:06, 31 October 2024
2034: Equations error?[edit]
One of the TeX math-thingies (sorry for the informal writing), is showing this error: "Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \oint". Idk why it's showing this, can someone fix this? 108.162.237.48 19:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
- It's a long-standing error, to do with the background processes that turns the TeX-style markup into embedded images. All equations (or whatever it might be that the particular MathML was being used to render) that were originally given cached-imagery still work fine, but it seems a later update made it so that if you adjust it at all (even slightly), it no longer has the route to produce the embedding cleanly.
- It can probably be solved by rolling back some module(s) that got refreshed quite some time ago, though the advised fix is to actually fully update them (and/or reconfigure the backend scripting) to work with all the newest versions of the original tools. Unfortunately, the people (or maybe person) who would do this is not too active at the moment (may also not be up to speed on everything, either, if it involves a bit of more tricky administration), so we're left with the occasional problem establishing the texvc handler.
- Not sure which page you're encountering this on, but sometimes if you look back in the edit history you can find a working version of the thing you're seeing go wrong. If it's an aesthetic difference (e.g. the presence or absence of a spacing character), you might be able to just restore the render-cached version and make do with it not looking quite right.
- If it's a necessary change that was made (e.g. "dt" instead of "dx", which is definitely wrong the old way), or it seems never to have a valid render, then there's two obvious solutions:
- Make your own image of it as it should be and (with a suitably auto-validated account, or via a handy external image hosting service and/or a more mature account here) get that embedded in place of the markup-source, or
- Replicate its appearance in more basic (by standard) but complex (by source needed) markup. Combinations of basic wikimarkup and HTML can do most 'fiddly positional' things, see 2614: 2 for a numerator/denominator layout, for example.
- Not as 'simple' as TeX-markedup. But, on the other hand, the "\oint" symbol is "∮", so perhaps all you need to do is copy'n'paste that actual unicode symbol to wherever you found the problem, and use that instead, and forgo the TeX version altogether? (Might not show on some displays, but probably enough to make it a minority issue.) 172.70.90.105 22:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
- Had the brainwave that I could probable search for the offending \oint, actually. Did so, found 2034: Equations, noted that it was the only (current) rendering issue and therefore just did the pasting over myself. Looks good for me, but obviously might not help (but not make worse) others' viewing of it. 172.69.195.54 22:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
...Why didn't I think of just pasting the Unicode equivalent. I'm dumb, but thanks for fixing it. 172.69.70.10 13:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
Esolang wiki bug[edit]
The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into the Technical Community Portal. Two, I saw your talk page on esolangs.org, which you brought up this “bug”, which the local admin (who’s probably just as sick and tired of you as I am) called BS on. If the server was changing your sig to my sig, it would be 42.book.addictTalk to me!, not the sig that you faked in. You’re obviously seeking attention and are being abusive and childish. Please see the bottom of https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esolang:Introduce_yourself to see a full list of complaints. I will be asking Kynde to ban you and all of your alt (or shared) accounts. -tori 162.158.167.98 05:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- I just realized that they've changed my signature as well. That's strange. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Once again they suddenly redirected my username to the Main Page. And the bug even forgot to remove "User:". ConscriptGlossary (talk) 13:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- It's working normally now. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 13:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. ChristmasGospel (talk) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- No, it has not been hacked. The error message means that the server that is hosting the wiki is under a lot of stress and load. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- Yes and no.
- 429 Too Many Requests (RFC 6585)
- The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. Intended for use with rate-limiting schemes.
- ...it generally means that (in the opinion of the server), the person getting the 429 has been bashing the connection too much. This could be because they happen to be going through the same proxy as an actual prolific user (or several sub-prolific ones that similarly got lumped together to add up to "too much"), but load-sharing systems generally account for that already. General 'stress and load' is more likely to invoke a 500s message (depending upon what actually is happening).
- But, either way, if you get one of them then you're advised to pause, take a breath, perhaps wait a little before your next refresh/reload attempt, but if that goes wrong then wait a bit longer still (double your patience, maybe), and again more (further doubling) as necessary.
- Either it's not your fault, but you probably don't need to add to the problems, or it is your fault (e.g. you're webscraping in the background at full throttle) and you really need to stop causing those problems (and try not to do it again later). 172.70.90.109 20:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- Hint: even if you don't entirely trust Wikipedia not to be written (or rewritten) wrongly, you don't get the whole world of possible wrongness of a mostly uncomprehending AI repeating a load of mangled fragments put together on an "at least it looks grammatically correct" basis. If you trust AI so much that you don't go looking anywhere else (there are plenty of technical sites out there, including the actual official RFCs which say what servers should be doing and saying) but Wikipedia is also far from wrong and pretty thorough on this point.
- Ask Google's AI for entertainment, or to start to put together a school report (but be prepared to check everything, as well as edit enough not to be caught by AI-detection as well as Plagiarism-detection). But not for insta-expertise, if you've not got enough grounding in the subject to at least sanity-checking what you're being told. Truth-checking and reality-checking are always necessary, of course, no matter what the source. 141.101.98.36 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
- Noted and acknowledged. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 14:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
- Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
- Yes and no.
Total amount of accounts created on this wiki?[edit]
I was editing explain xkcd:Museum and I was wondering how many accounts have ever been created. Is there a way to access this? -- DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 15:52, 17 March 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Hey, I moved your message from the Coordination portal. --FaviFake (talk) 16:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- The base information you need is from the special page that is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers - although bear in mind that an overwhelming number of created accounts are spam-attempts (that get no further), so perhaps the count needs to be qualified as "users that have then gone on to post" (a few of which are still spam-only contributors, but now an insignificant amount rather than a probably overwhelming majoriy).
- How you go about counting and classifying valid accounts is up to you, of course. 162.158.74.68 21:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --FaviFake (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
- There's
[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]], that gives you the value 153,157 (it was 142,958 when I wrote this), for the total number of registered users (including no-input pre-spammers, only-ever-spammed contributors, "I only created this account to say..."ers who didn't realised they could do as much as an IP, maybe some banned, sock-puppet/legitimate-alts/forgot-my-old-login duplicate accounts, maybe not some totally excised by top-tier-admins). - There's also
[[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]], with the value 119 (119, as I write this), which I think is everyone active (+registered) in the past 30 days. - Possibly there are other "magic word" values for more useful in-betweeny values (nearer the top end of the first), e.g. of everyone who has made at least one edit ever. But not sure I know what that might off the top of my head.
- I can think of ways to interrogate the wiki for one or other (better) counting criteria, but it would be horribly intensive. If anyone wanted to do this (it already needing a bit more technical ability than merely using inbuilt auto-value magic words, and preferably you'd need to not be a 'mere' scriptkiddie jumping in with both feet without knowing how to do it sensibly), I'd suggest ensuring a very throttled-back process that may take its time over days. Then, once 'completed', a not-quite-so-throttled-back version can just 'top up' its stats with everything from the last point you'd reached the last time round until the present (to never hammer the site).
- Please please please, though, you should probably only try any of this if you're already sure of everything I've been suggesting. There are also far easier ways to attempt a DoS, but it would be ironic if you did this while trying to be helpful... 141.101.98.65 20:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
- There's
- How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --FaviFake (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
email confirmation[edit]
my email confirmation did not get sent even after a week. is there anything wrong? - (((((((((((((([...](((((((((((((( (talk) 21:36, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
MediaWiki error when visiting 1270: Functional or 1270[edit]
When I go to 1270: Functional or 1270, there is a MediaWiki error. This does not occur at 1269 or 1271. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 13:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
- Could not replicate.
- 1270 redirects to 1270: Functional, so does it happen for you if you go via Functional and its redirect? How about https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1270:_Functional (as URL) rather than what you may be doing (but so did I, at first, still to find no error) in plugging the text into the "Search explain xkcd" field..?
- Unless it's an off-page edit (some template, broken and then fixed), the page itself seems to have no recent edit to explain any changes (to broken and/or to unbroken)... I think we may need more info. Including myself in "we" in case it's an error even I can fix, which isn't unknown but not guaranteed! 172.71.178.160
- Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: Functional: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/L5icGdZ9nBzw.png?o=1
- Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/1nP1qunLk86a.png?o=1
- Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting Functional: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/7S3Ct5wghTIH.png?o=1
- Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: Functional via index.php: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/HghYaRj9wA1f.png?o=1 Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 14:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
- I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
- Anybody else? None of that happens here.
- Could it be somehow browser-specific, or even extension-related? One thing to try is if you any further browsers handily installed (or installable) that you can use (even if just just for this one purpose, you don't need them to be the default system one). As of right now, though, I'm flumoxed and don't have any obvious other steps, and I dont believe anybody else has the means to enable the debug options.172.69.79.190 22:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
- This occurs on a Chromebook managed by my school, so I can't install any browsers besides Chrome and I can't manage the extensions. I can see the editing page but I get an even less elegantly presented error when I try to preview the page.Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
- I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
- Couldn't replicate either, Windows 11 Chrome Canary. --FaviFake (talk) 17:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
- Figured out the problem. This error occurs on any page using the
<math>tag. I don't know why, though. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)- Yep, added
<math>This causes an error.</math>to the top of explain xkcd:Sandbox and now it gives the same error. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
- Yep, added
- This bug has been around for at least 7 years. Here's the fix: #Mediawiki exception on some pages. --FaviFake (talk) 21:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Captcha repeat[edit]
When you've finished editing, there is an "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA.
But if you preview the changes before saving, that gets reset, so you can't just say "yup, looks good, go ahead and publish this change."
How hard would it be to make the CAPTCHA sticky, so that it doesn't need an extra interaction/mouse movement after previewing?
Or, alternatively, to not display either the CAPTCHA or the Save Changes until after a preview. -- JimJJewett20:40, 14 April 2025 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- If you're going to Preview (which can often be a good idea), don't bother ticking the "I am not a robot". Previews (also the "Show Changes") are 'free' and don't need you to feed the CAPTHA machine.
- What's wrong with 1) editing, 2) previewing, 3) going "Yup, looks good" and ticking the box, 3a) if required, fulfill the Captcha, 4) Submit..?
- It's exactly the same amount of work as having the Captcha-fulfillment at position (1a) and 'sticky'
- Also, however hard it might be to 'sticky' the CAPTCHA, there's a reason that a validated CAPTCHA isn't held over willy-nilly. Theoretically, an automated system (or semi-attended one) that relied upon finding out if it could post an edit, before it even bothered to try could benefit (if only by a smidgen) from first having a pot-shot at authorisation and only then (presumably before any 'time out' kicked in) pushing the latest spambot stuff.
- I see no value in allowing that, even if there was anybody who might have enough of an 'in' on the server code to enable such a thing. 162.158.33.248 23:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
- Moved this to technical portal. --FaviFake (talk) 17:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Request for feedback about {{comic}}[edit]
Hey, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the random button on our comic template, please see this page: Template talk:comic#Random button should link to Special:RandomInCategory --FaviFake (talk) 08:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Does anyone here know how to create a random link that fetches pages from two different categories? --FaviFake (talk) 10:12, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
Random comic/explanation glitches[edit]
For some reason, I cannot press random without being sent to either the Verizon comic-thing or comic #4 (this is one of my first times commenting, no clue how to do links). I’ve now pressed the button for random comic 8 times and keep getting these two pages, any idea for fixing this? AH24Ammit (talk) 00:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
- update: it’s now added repeatedly sending me to 1057:Klout and 2875:2024. I can’t get it to send me to any other page through the random button. After 23 random comic presses, I got each of these four comics 6 times and the latest comic once. AH24Ammit (talk) 00:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
Incessant 503 errors[edit]
I cannot keep contributing to this site if the 503 errors continue. The time it takes to perform a single action is about 10 times greater than it should be, some pages never load, and almost everything is broken and outdated. The situation will get worse if we do nothing. We have to do something :( --FaviFake (talk) 15:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
- I've not yet found any page that won't ever load, can you give an example?
- Updating the website, though useful for other reasons, also cannot help this problem much. Different hosting might help, but mostly different proxying. Site-side changes, of the kind we've perhaps been waiting for, would be minimally useful to this external issue. Maybe we'll get some changes out of this crisis, maybe we'll just get the site closed down as not worth the additional effort. (Just going read-only might not even help, and would still be gruelling loss.) 172.71.178.10 16:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
- Can't do much better than Cloudflare for proxying, at least not on a budget. If the DDOS is from an AI-scraper or a malicious-but-not-paying-attention source, temporarily shifting everything to a new domain and having explainxkcd.com just be a placeholder with human-readable instructions to het to the temp site might help, at least until the adversary adapted. 162.158.167.16 19:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
- Same issue. What could be causing this? 162.158.114.253 (talk) 14:49, 27 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- The server's seemingly being hammered by a new batch of unregulated traffic, that's been hammering many other sites. Your attempts to connect are getting lost in the overload, until the instigators get bored, smarter/kinder or someone implements a better way to stop the offending connections better. 172.70.162.160 16:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
wtf is going on with the server??[edit]
why is the site giving a db error 90% of the time? is something wrong? how/when will it be fixed? (can it be fixed at all?) update: the db crashed AGAIN while i was writing this. also its not like above section, since it currently *specifically* gives db errors. "cannot access the database." An user who has no account yet (talk) 16:54, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
- See the sub-header above (and other contributions by people in the last two or three comic Discussions), but imagine you're at a party, trying to talk to your friends, and people you don't know keep coming over and trying to start various inane conversations that just keep distracting you, and they just won't leave you alone!
- So: 1) Too much traffic. 2) Not with the server. 3) Difficult/not quickly (it's not really a server-fix). And the DB isn't fully crashing (that'd do something else). It's just unable to reply to everyone, every time, and even saying "No I can't talk to you" takes up time.
- Ideally, you get someone else to intercept anyone coming over to talk to you. Maybe a VIP-section "red rope", and a big guy with a clipboard of guests/a personal secretary to vet newcomers. Doing that yourself is just going to distract you more. (Or you can take enough amphetamines to become enough of a party animal to comfortably be at the centre of the wildest of parties, but that takes finding a dealer with the right product, as well as other problems. And the tendency to overextend your analogies.) 172.68.205.72 19:36, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
- That reads like the "explain" of an XKCD that I want to see. :P 162.158.175.131 21:17, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
Special:ContributionScores on Main Page busts caching, causing load[edit]
Long story short, the Main Page transcludes a top contributors table, Special:ContributionScores/10/30, which marks the entire Main Page as dynamic (not cacheable). This means that (1) Cloudflare is not serving up a static version of this page, even to those not logged in, (2) the Main Page wikitext is getting reparsed on every hit, and (3) the parser is recreating the table from scratch on every hit, consuming a lot of database connection time, roughly between 0.5 and 1.0 second each. This is...suspicious, given the wiki's technical difficulties. I suggest an experiment with removing it to see if technical issues improve. If so, and if people wish to keep the table, I suggest creating a static version of the table that is updated only occasionally (even once every few hours by bot should be fine).
Expand for details...
The whole story is: While browsing overnight, I noticed that the issues with page loads seemed caching-related; pages never seemed to load on the first click, though refreshing was often successful, at least during the presumably lower-load overnight hours. Research led me to the possibility that some broken caching system was leading to the database running out of connections (even on a cache hit, one is still needed to determine whether it is a cache hit or miss), so I started looking at some technical indicators, eventually leading to the parser profiling ("NewPP") and transclusions block at the end of the parser output here.
For the main page, it outputs:
NewPP limit report Cached time: 20250528101640 Cache expiry: 0 Dynamic content: true CPU time usage: 0.059 seconds Real time usage: 2.564 seconds Preprocessor visited node count: 273/1000000 Preprocessor generated node count: 2367/1000000 Post\u2010expand include size: 17895/2097152 bytes Template argument size: 714/2097152 bytes Highest expansion depth: 7/40 Expensive parser function count: 4/100 --> <!-- Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template) 100.00% 1762.386 1 -total 65.93% 1161.960 1 3094 33.89% 597.347 1 Special:ContributionScores/10/30/nosort,notools 22.59% 398.159 1 Template:comic 16.62% 292.973 1 Template:incomplete_transcript 15.21% 268.077 1 Template:incomplete 6.34% 111.727 1 Template:comic_discussion 6.20% 109.319 1 MediaWiki:Mainpage 0.21% 3.766 4 Template:w 0.09% 1.566 5 Template:LATESTCOMIC
The 2.5 seconds taken isn't itself necessarily a problem, but notice that the page is considered dynamic content with immediate cache expiration. This contrasts with a normal page like the latest comic:
<!-- NewPP limit report Cached time: 20250528111305 Cache expiry: 86400 Dynamic content: false CPU time usage: 0.060 seconds Real time usage: 0.333 seconds Preprocessor visited node count: 324/1000000 Preprocessor generated node count: 2362/1000000 Post\u2010expand include size: 63936/2097152 bytes Template argument size: 1609/2097152 bytes Highest expansion depth: 9/40 Expensive parser function count: 3/100 --> <!-- Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template) 100.00% 160.074 1 -total 37.56% 60.117 1 Template:comic 20.70% 33.133 1 Template:comic_discussion 19.54% 31.277 1 Template:cn 8.81% 14.101 5 Template:w 8.31% 13.303 1 MediaWiki:Mainpage 7.86% 12.585 1 Template:incomplete_transcript 5.26% 8.424 1 Template:incomplete 4.83% 7.739 2 Template:notice 1.38% 2.212 2 Talk:3094:_Mass_Spec --> </div> <!-- Saved in parser cache with key expla0_db423085716:pcache:idhash:29008-0!canonical and timestamp 20250528111305 and revision id 378578 -->
From a quick search, it sounds like transclusion of a special page will always cause the parser cache to be bypassed, causing all of the parsed output to be regenerated on every hit by any visitor, logged in or not, via the API or not, etc. (While it's not technically wrong that increased number of visits may be causing issues, this would be a multiplicative exacerbation of that.) Combined with the fact that the page is recreating a pretty heavy database query to count and tabulate the last 30 days of edits, this seems Really Bad. AySz88 (talk) 11:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Edited for corrections and clarity. Also, one can generate and profile the cost of any bit of wikitext using the API: https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores would create and time the processing time needed to generate {{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}.
- I'd noticed that there was a recent change from 7 to 30 days of scoring, but it turns out that doesn't make a big difference in processing time. In addition, the parser considering the content static doesn't seem to be enough for Cloudflare to start caching a page, so that might not be as easy to change. Still, simply allowing the parser output to be saved and regenerating the table for the vast majority of visitors' hits might be a big help. AySz88 (talk) 13:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Does this affect other pages? If not, then the main DB issues aren't fixed... but if it does, then why is the contribs page loaded for EVERY page? Also, I *support* removing this... it's just a showcase that exists for no good reason if shown to every viewer, the recent contribs should probably be restricted to users only or something 162.158.8.176 08:30, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- The contrib table doesn't load on every page, but the vast majority of hits are going to be to the Main Page. And (my hypothesis is) it holds database connections open while it's running, which consumes that limited resource on the server. (We could just raise the cap, but we don't have access to the server.) A lot of the lag time in the profiler above is just sitting in a queue for the next database connection, which affects everything. So in that sense, it affects the whole wiki. AySz88 (talk) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- Hi. I changed to 30 days on suggestion by FaviFake. But that was in March. Just changed it back to 7 again just to try it. Of course I can also try to remove it for a period of time. But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor. So I would hate to remove it. Also it has worked with 30 days for more than two months and with the 7 days for as long as I have used the site (since 2012). So it seems weird that it should suddenly be the front page that breaks it all. It is also not the first time we have had these issues. Not sure how they where resolved last time but strange if it suddenly is the main page that causes all these problems Kynde (talk) 13:29, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- (Un)Fortunately(?) I suspect the technical caching issue is more relevant, where naively transcluding a Special page via
{{Special:...}}causes everything to re-process on every hit. That doesn't mean losing the feature entirely (or even the 30 days); I can help make a bot that can send the output (insidehttps://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/30,nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores&format=json) to a template, automatically updating once per short interval (an hour?). The delayed version can also be Main Page only; the live version can always still be linked, and/or the full page linked to. - You're right that perhaps this isn't necessarily the proximate "straw that broke the camel's back" cause. And there are a lot of other problems and solutions that could help - like simply raising the DB connection cap, or all the stuff about crawler traffic, and that Cloudflare doesn't seem to be caching the basically-static CSS from tool.php, etc. etc... But without admin access to diagnostics or settings for the database and Cloudflare, we can only work with the tools we have. Even this specific widget itself does some caching in a newer update, but we don't have access to updating it. (That said, I'm still keeping an eye out for other things that might have changed recently.) AySz88 (talk) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- As it did not help making it 7 days again I have now removed it. Seems to make no difference to begin with. But lets give it some time to work. But I'm not optimistic. Let me know if I moved the correct bit, I'm no expert just sadly the only active admin and we cannot get hold of Jeff... --Kynde (talk) 07:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- (Un)Fortunately(?) I suspect the technical caching issue is more relevant, where naively transcluding a Special page via
Since the removal of the Rankings table, I haven't noticed a downtick of connection errors. (That said, I dislike people aiming to be in the Rankings, I consider that editing should be its own reward, so personally I'd be happier without it anywhere quite as prominent.) Haven't done a full technical analysis, but I estimate that from a prior peak of maybe 1.5 "technical difficulties" or "also, a 503 error" responses, generally varying between zero issues (straight in) and normal worstest-case scenario of three attempts (fourth attempt is Ok, maybe unstylsheeted), in the last 24 hours it's been more like 2.5:1 fail to success ratio. (i.e. reaching up to maybe 6th-attempt success, worst case.) Not nice, but survivable.
Though got a new one, just a few minutes ago. An actual Cloudflare error: "SSL handshake failed Error code 525 // Visit cloudflare.com for more information. // 2025-05-30 20:01:57 UTC". In case that interests anyone. Looks like the server was temperarily so incapacitated as to not be able to even handshake with the proxy. But I don't currently expect that to recur, just thought I'd note it as a 'new' glitch, in passing. 172.71.241.123 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Well, right now things seem more stable. But during Friday just after the change, when pages could load at all, I noticed they were loading faster, but the availability was just as bad or worse for a while. I'm not really sure how much credit to the latest improvement goes to changing the contribution table. AySz88 (talk) 00:59, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- Everything seems to be good now. No constant DB errors, and it's now smooth! 162.158.8.142 07:00, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- Should I try inserting the contribution score to see if the problems return, because it would be nice to know if it was this or just random. Also even though some might dislike this score it has been there always, and should not just be removed because one person writes negatively about it. But of course if it was really the reason behind the problems it has to stay of the front page. But a link could be inserted. Kynde (talk) 10:44, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- To clarify, I wasn't saying I disliked the score, per se, just that it encourages edits-for-the-sake-of-edits and (though I rarely see the Main Page myself) is prominent enough for the new discoverers of the site to take as a challenge (in well-meaning ways, as well as less so). I have sympathy with "But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor." Just pointing out the functional inverse that it is a motivating factor to make a lot of contributions. (And that I personally abstain from that competition, buried within the contributions of various other IPers, no temptation at all to edit without decent cause.)
- A version of the table weighted against new accounts might make me happier, but too many ways of doing that (hard threshold, to kick in at an arbitrary 'account maturity' age, so no-one appears on the list until 'old enough'; a formula that slopes from 0 to 1 at the "maturity" time, multiply the contributions by the current value; ditto, but a smoother function that becomes assymptotic to 1) that probably also involve scripted conversions and various arbitrary choices. So not something I'd imagine being done.
- I do think it's a good idea to re-add it for science. Give it a week to settle down, without it as an issue. If (as it seems) it has died down properly, add it again for a further week (or less, if it becomes obvious it has reintroduced the same DoS-like scenario). Let the outcome shape your further decision, or fine-tuning. Not mere yay/nay preferences, like mine, regarding it.
- It's also very likely only a factor in the slow-down. It was ok (in both 7 day and 30 day versions) for aong time, but together with increased amounts of site traffic (as per anecdotal evidence from elsewhere on the 'net) it went bad on us. The improved situation could also have been due to the perpetrators turning their (accidental?) web-hammering scripts off, having finished their project, or now making them far less aggressive. The 'benefits' of the League Table might not now cause such side-effects. But also it's still possible that the problematic traffic comes back and hobbles the site gain, regardless of the absence frontpage League Tabling.
- And you can always add the Special:ContributionScores(-slash-whatever) information as a link to go to, rather than transcluded (if you've decided that it's still trouble to have where it was). But cross that bridge if you come to it. 172.70.90.109 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- My observations: still 'terrible', maybe even slightly worse, Friday and early Saturday, UK time, noting the Friday Comic didn't get Bot-imported until well into Saturday PM (theusaf might have failure logs?), but I'm sure I saw it on xkcd.com on Saturday morning (but still had showed Wednesday as of Fri/Sat midnight, UTC+1, or thereabouts, i.e. early Friday evening Randall Time, not untypical for such updates). The table-transclusion was removed at least a full day before. Don't know if anything else caused lag in the proxy's response.
- Since Saturday evening, more or less ok. Some errors, in line with "background levels" before this recent splurge actually hit. If I get a "technical problems", an imminent refresh sorts it (doesn't return another error), gets on with things. Not perfect, might mean a bit more RAM/swapspace might further help, or a higher quota of shared processing threads (if there are any that can be spared from whatever else is running in whatever rackspace unit it might be). Livable, if also still vulnerable to the next period of increased pressure. Keeping an eye on it, and still trying to eventually get through to the hardware-owning sysops, would be wise. 172.70.90.109 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- A note for the future: the new (current) version of this extension caches data for half an hour (by default), so if we ever get an update, the bot wouldn't be necessary anymore. AySz88 (talk) 07:46, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
What would it take to clone ExplainXKCD?[edit]
What would it take technically and financially to clone this web site?
Installing MediaWiki and cloning the wiki pages should be fairly straightforward. There may be some pain due to differences in MediaWiki versions.
Cloning or rewriting the bots may be a chore.
Paying for hosting and Cloudflare will take a steady stream of income.
There's also legal issues, like how to protect everyone from liability if someone wants to sue, even if it's a frivolous suit.
There will need to be multiple administrators at every level so we don't have the "if one person disappears for awhile and problems arise, we are stuck" issues.
My guess is that between the existing administrators and regular contributors, we have the technical skills to do this. It's the financial and legal issues that give me pause.
Yes, I'm an occasional contributor, and no, I haven't created an account yet. 162.158.175.119 19:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- It would help if we didn't want to clone all page history. Already, it would bar those bits hidden behind admin-level deletions, etc, but limiting the actual depth of history scraped up and made available on a new platform would be wise from a 'start over' POV, especially if not having direct access to the core database. Possibly a 'bot could maintain an "anything new on old site gets reduplicated to new site" until a phased cut-off, with enough thought, dyluring the duration of the migratory process, but you need a solid base (maybe with further back-filled history as much as you can).
- And then there's user accounts. Maybe there's a way to confirm your rights to an original-site username on the new-site (potentially complex things, or just something to do with logins on both, posting "it's me" on the new site, then "yes, that new-site claim me of being me is indeed correct" on old-site, but you still have to deal with potential claim-jumping/identity-gazumping). Which also needs trust of the new-site admins to play fair with potential disputes.
- And it'd be a good opportunity to clean some up things (everyone can think of several inconsistecies that they'd deal with, given the opportunity), but only with a lot of hands on effort. So factor that in for potential work.
- On the whole, though, best just to 'start fresh'. A task in itself, perhaps use and acknowledge this site's "best material" (I think copyright might be not so much an issue if based upon a fair and dutiful copy, due to the details of explain xkcd:Copyrights, but that's of course something that needs advice sought for any particular implementation). That, of course, needs community acceptance not to be seen as an "upstart usurper" site, perhaps, and could create a schism where some would refuse to partake in the new project at all.
- i.e. you raise good questions (and prompt others), but I'm not sure there are undeniably objective good answers to them all. Trying it and seeing how it goes is probably the only way to bash out the many details. Not an easy project. 172.71.241.144 21:19, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- I think it would be absolutely awesome to move to something that *isn't* self hosted, something that as far as I can tell this wiki is. If we move or clone, may we see Weird Gloop as an option? They have a lot of experience and will probably not turn into another fandom and will not be bought by them. 172.69.130.250 15:33, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Oh ye gods... Yes, whatever you do, don't go anywhere near Fandom, as a solution. Not that I think this will be a convincing argument on its own, but you'll absolutely lose me as an 'explain' reader (never mind contributor) if it goes onto a Fandom/ex-Wikia hosting model. I've no experience of Weird Gloop (yet), but the URL (about why they're different) certainly does vicerally appeal to me on first glance. Do your own independant research, though, anybody tempted down that or any eqyivalent route. 172.71.241.123 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
- Wikidump can get all page content with full history (for pages that have not been deleted). It doesn't require admin privileges to use. 183231bcb (talk) 21:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
- The site seems stable now, at least for the last half-day. I'm not sure if the attack/scraping ended, or if there's a real back-end fix in place, but here's hoping it stays stable. 172.68.26.73 02:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
- Replying to my comment of 02:11, 1 June 2025 immediately above: I spoke too soon, I got two "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties." errors in less than 5 minutes. 172.69.67.217 03:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- Why should we do this in the first place? 162.158.8.165 07:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- So we can manage things when someone with server-level access is required. For example, if someone with server-level access was around during the last week or two when we've been having intermittent-but-sometimes-heavy site-is-too-busy-try-again-later errors, we (or, rather, the server operator) would have more insight to the problem and would likely be able to do something about it. 172.71.170.157 16:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
- The resources at Mediawiki/Manual:Grabbers seem useful - they seem written for the new server administrator to have the new server save things into the new wiki. (I worry about the note regarding MediaWiki version 1.39+ since we're stuck on 1.30, but I think that might be about the version of the *new* wiki installation.) In particular, there exists a Special:Export page (and associated API) that also exports the page history. There are a few options for migrating people's accounts; Extension:StubUserWikiAuth seems most promising so far. AySz88 (talk) 09:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
new and exciting 522 and 524 cloudflare errors[edit]
everyone else saw that, right? this website's domain expires in august 02:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
- From at least midday (UK time), yesterday. But given the lack of any recorded edits for 4/Jun (UTC), only being broken by your (and other) early-hours edits of 5/Jun, was a lengthy period of whatever-went-even-more-wrong. (I had kept notes, I probably got 522s and 524s, when I checked back every few hours. Might have been other 52Xs, but not got that bit of scrap paper with me right now.) 82.132.234.190 12:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
- Expires. Will that mean that if it is not prolonged this entire site will vanish? Kynde (talk) 06:22, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
- Read User talk:Lettherebedarklight (to the bottom!) for one Q&A that was done on it. I know I also previously discussed LTBDL's 'discovery' (before they decided to break their own User Page in suggesting this was going to be an issue), but they also ignored me. As they still have their alarmist signature up, despite the other explanation, thus alarming you.
- Short version: the domain potentially expires every year. Every year, so far, it has been renewed. It's not the first time. Chances are low that it'll be the last.
- Or, to rephrase your question, this site may vanish if it isn't prolonged (the auto-renew is not auto-renewed, perhaps the person paying for it gets fed up doing it).
- PS. is it just a coincidence that, since the 'day outage', we're now getting many IPv6 contributors? (And vastly different IPv4 ranges/submasks.) Seems like a Cloudflare-led thing, assuming that nobody has been reconfiguring the explainxkcd server in any way (which is the current 'complaint'). ...Not worth a seperate new header to mention, but thought I'd mention it in passing, as I'm here. 82.132.213.196 10:32, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
- Expires. Will that mean that if it is not prolonged this entire site will vanish? Kynde (talk) 06:22, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
Problem Sending a Question to [email protected][edit]
I tried to send a question to [email protected], and I got an automatic mail from google that "It was failed to send to the group", does it means that the question was sent, or that it got blocked entirely? 2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01 (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Yup, that's a known error. See the notice on what if? for more info. --FaviFake (talk) 09:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)
Monobook style categories bug[edit]
I recently switched to the monobook style in preferences, and I saw this on the main page:
Is this something that's inherent to the monobook font or something that I can fix on my end? --DollarStoreBa'alConverseMy life choices 15:03, 25 August 2025 (UTC)
Bug on Modern style[edit]
I encountered this UI bug opening up the site. Is this one-time or have others experienced this? 
--DollarStoreBa'alconverse 16:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
- that's just broken css. if you refresh it, it should render correctly. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 16:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
- I'm sure you've occasionally had a "page cannot load" error on the HTML (a few months back, it was particularly bad, but it's fairly rare at the moment). But imagine if you luckily escaped the issue of the HTML file loading. It tells your machine to ask for the CSV, as well as things like the images it needs. And then the inability to get the CSV happens. It could have been the image that didn't load, also. The lack of stylesheet
- A refresh of the page is usually what I'd try next. Or a hard-refresh, possibly, depending upon which browser I'm using. Either it all appears fine or the HTML totally fails the second time from whatever glitch is plaguing the system at that time. If you get exactly the same.
- I'll have to admit, though, but it took me quite a few moments to find what was wrong with the UI... maybe I'm innured against the occasional version of this issue. Unless I was looking for the Recent Changes link, for example, I'd probably just read the page as normal and then move onto the next page I want to check/editing the Talk page, all of which likely loads correctly and leaves me none the wiser that I'd missed a minor reshuffle.
- Tell you what, though, the "Recent Changes" page looks quite a bit different without Stylesheet-styling. And you can even invoke that, if you want. Depending upon browser, you can either choose which (or no!) stylesheet gets applied, also useful to see a site using its "mobile" settings from your desktop. Or you may be able to use whatever the equivalent of Object Inspector is for your page code and 'break' the particular ".css"-line that governs it. Sometimes gives interesting and useful results, on more awkward sites that try to enforce "no copypasting" or selectively hide/obscure things. 92.17.62.87 23:29, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Upgrading MediaWiki[edit]
- Moved from User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki FaviFake (talk) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
Hi! If you aren't already aware, the wiki's MediaWiki software is many years out of date, 1.30 became end of life in 2019. This likely opens up the wiki to security issues, and presumably some annoyance from the users due to lack of newer features. It seems that Jeff never got around to this. If you have access to the wiki server, please upgrade the wiki, or have someone else do it. I think the recommendation to avoid compatibility issues is to go from LTS to LTS on upward, so 1.30 > 1.31 > 1.35 > 1.39 > 1.43 (it seems that you can go straight from 1.30 > 1.35 > 1.43 although the errors may be more difficult to read, based on the FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#How_do_I_upgrade_from_a_really_old_version?_In_one_step,_or_in_several_steps? ).
If you want assistance with MediaWiki upgrades, this organization called Professional Wiki seems to also performs this service. https://professional.wiki/en/mediawiki-upgrade-services In any case, they would probably follow a form of the procedure outlined in the official MediaWiki manual.
To check the wiki's current version: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Version
Version lifecycle: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle
Upgrading procedure/manual: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading
Thank you! Cam1170 (talk) 19:32, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
- Hi Cam1170, thank you for your proposal and thought! Unfortunately, we are unable to update this wiki's MediaWiki software because the owner has gone AWOL. He is a bureaucrat on here, and the other 'crat is also inactive. Despite multiple times to reach out to him both on-site and through other platforms, he has not responded. We are assuming that this wiki will stay frozen like this unless we migrate (which I have no idea how will be done-or if it's even possible!). 42.book.addictTalk to me! 01:30, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- Noting that even migrating would probably involve someone (active) taking it upon themselves to provide the 'blank' new server on a new host (and new domain!) upon which the existing available information is to be written. (N.B., possibly still to a limited degree, without the access also required to upgrade or grant a further third party the access required to upgrade, unless there are some truly weird backdoors. Everything I know indicates that even making sure that everyone can reproduce their accounts in the new system would be a tricky achievement to get right.) And then we'd probably still have this place's 'box' (or boxes, or cloud-like bundle of cooperating resources) happily but redundantpt continuing in whatever 'protected stasis' we'll have then placed it in, as we try to re-establish the SEOing/etc that leads to our new doorway.
- This isn't the first time, probably won't be the last, that we've been advised of the 'issues'. And been only able to state that our active most-priviliged users seem not to be priviliged enough to even consider the direct server-level access needed to up-patch/re-install the core backend. Nor to properly migrate everything (leaving this service running as a 'ghost' site, to a greater or lesser extent), from the box(es) it runs upon all the way to the original registered domain.
- I had written more, but it boils down to the conspicuously absent progenitor being the main hurdle, likely for reasons beyond even their control. Though perhaps there are further missing administrators who might have enough access to (if they don't entirely break everything, in the attenpt) assist us, should they be coaxed/cajoled to return.
- Personally (as if my opinion counts), I see no urgent need for (e.g.) a more visual editor. Dealing with entirely new and more complex bugs, compared to what I think is far simpler to work with, is one thing that I know will at least annoy me.
- As for security issues, I believe we're at not a bad 'stuck' stage, compared to some (newer!) stages we could be at. And 0-day exploits are an ever present (intangible) risk at the bleeding edge, of course. ;) But you'd be also right to question what I know of all this, as an effectively unknown voice from the wilderness. 82.132.238.27 05:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- Ahem...
I see no urgent need for [...] [the] visual editor.
- Tables --FaviFake (talk) 09:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- Seems like others have made it clear why I cannot help. I ended up stuck as the only admin without bureaucrat powers... Also I'm not very tech minded so not the best admin you could have. but at the moment the only active. :-/ Not quite sure what Favifake means though? --Kynde (talk) 09:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, of course! You're still unable to do anything, just like everyone else.
- I replied to IP, which said the Visual editor wasn't necessary. Tables are incredibly hard to set up without the visual editor, so I think it's the most important feature we're missing right now.
- [Moved from User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki FaviFake (talk) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)]
- Easier to custom convert 'raw' tabular data to "tabular data under wikitable format" than to painstakingly arrange it in a visually-'aided' WYSYWYG table, actually. Making a casual table might be easier, but making a well thought out table with any complexity benefits from knowing the abilities and limitations of the markup.
- I had thought someone would object on a different sisue, actually, but that would also be something for which actually caring about the back-end markup (and using Preview judiciously) certainly doesn't hurt, with "dumbing up"/abstraction often not being an overall advantage. 82.132.245.43 21:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- Sorry but I unfortunately didn't understand anything of what you just said :( ㅤ FaviFake (talk) 11:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
- I think they're saying that the raw markup isn't exactly difficult. And further that a WYSIWYG interface (which was typoed!) can often create suboptimal layouts, just because it was tweaked to 'look right' in the rather limited context of the composition editor.
- And I probably agree, to an extent. Wikitables are designed to be far more simple/uncluttered, at source, than the equivalent HTML code. You can easily hand-craft them to both render nicely and be intelligable by future editors. It's not rocket science.
- And then there was something about creating wikitables from non-wiki data, which might not actually be totally relevant. But is something I sometimes do, and I'd definitely consider a visual editor an impediment if I was doing that. The difference being that you can (hopefully) just toggle that option away. Or, rather, not bother toggling it on. Either way, I'd do what I think looks best for later editors, like leaving nice/logical text-spacing in monospace font by judicious use of whitespace/newlines - often lacking/badly done otherwise. If you want my opinion, too. 92.17.62.87 21:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
- "the raw markup isn't exactly difficult" yes is is? Merging cells is a nightmare, adding new cells to the rowspan/colspan is a nightmare, moving text around is annoying, clicking preview constantly is time-consuming... i could go on and on. FaviFake (talk) 14:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
- I concur. Especially with large tables, it's hard to find where you need to edit, simply because it all looks the same. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 13:09, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- "the raw markup isn't exactly difficult" yes is is? Merging cells is a nightmare, adding new cells to the rowspan/colspan is a nightmare, moving text around is annoying, clicking preview constantly is time-consuming... i could go on and on. FaviFake (talk) 14:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
- Sorry but I unfortunately didn't understand anything of what you just said :( ㅤ FaviFake (talk) 11:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
- Seems like others have made it clear why I cannot help. I ended up stuck as the only admin without bureaucrat powers... Also I'm not very tech minded so not the best admin you could have. but at the moment the only active. :-/ Not quite sure what Favifake means though? --Kynde (talk) 09:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- Tables --FaviFake (talk) 09:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- that's actually quite scary that the person who pays for the server has gone awol. That means this wiki is just 1-2 unpaid bills away from being shut down for good without any means to recover it. I think updating the software is the least of our concern. I mean, if the current admins should retire as well, then there's no one who could even appoint new admins. 2.204.192.65 09:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
- As said before, when the domain-name was "mere months from expiring" (n.b., it seems to be annually renewed, automatically, so is forever potentially mere months from expiring), there are all kinds of other ways for a site to fail. Some, like the hosting/hardware rental, might be tied to the same bill-paying cycle as the domain, so any such interruption might happen across the board as a grand-slam. (Interruptions might not mean the loss of the account-holder, and the loss of the account-holder might not mean an interruption... Would depend on how someone organises (or fails to organise) such things.)
- Other failures could happen any time. Glad to see we're back from the outage: my initial guess was that someone had tried to update the site, somehow, but had got it horribly horribly wrong and left it unworkable. This would have been our invisible benefactor, perhaps, unless a "guerilla hacktivist" had taken a big chance and bigger risk. Probably not any of that, though, or at least it was someone who could still revoke the broken changes.
- And then there's just a vital rapidly spinning disk shedding its magnetic coating or even fragmenting, or its circuitry develops a dry-joint/whisker of solder. The lifetime of an HDD is said to be "3 to 5 years", by one source I found (though I'm personally using ones that are >30yo, in near constant use, and I've seen far earlier failures, so I don't know how useful that is). If it's now sitting on SSD, that has read/write-cycle 'limits', instead. So, if it's not RAIDed with someone able to hotswap replacement drives, potentially some time (perhaps in a darkened but air-conditioned room) there may be the momentary shriek of metal (or silence, at least compared to the general humming of everything else) and at best we'll revert to the last valid automated backup... If there is one, and someone can fix it. (My second theory about the blackout was this. But I don't remember anything new to the site that didn't come back when it returned.)
- As for the WYSIWYG (cheers, yep!) thing, I've had to use enforced-visual editors, elsewhere. A right pain. I sure would hope it's optional, for my part. I also think it's healthy for people to not rely on too much 'wizardry' and know more about how everything works, but then I'm someone who has thirty-year-old HDDs running forty-year-old OSes. 82.132.237.89 11:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
- Based on what I'm seeing in terms of recent changes, it appears that the cloudflare errors appeared about 2:00 UTC September 11th, and left about 14:00 UTC September 12, making for around 36 hours of total downtime. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 21:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC)
A precaution[edit]
In approximately 2 hours, MediaWiki will be switching something on the server-side, so be ready for a temporary read-only period starting 15:00 UTC. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 18:04, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
- I wonder what will happen with this wiki's old-ass MediaWiki version...I hope everything will go back to normal... --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
that's for wikis supported by the WMF, and we're not. unfortunately. It’s the WMF doing the thing, not the MW software. FaviFake (talk) 15:50, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
RSS FEED[edit]
I've created a megathread for the broken RSS feed since this keeps being brought up. FaviFake (talk) 14:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC)
RSS Feed: XML not well-formed[edit]
XML Parsing Error: not well-formed Location: https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml?_SLWxoPenuRl=nOtinFEeDPREVIew Line Number 31, Column 18: <title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title> ------------------------^
PHP-Fix:
$title = str_replace("&", "&", $title);
or
$title = htmlspecialchars($title);
- Same problem here. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the first time an xkcd title has included an ampersand (as far as I can see from List_of_all_comics_(full)). 141.101.99.85 14:16, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
rss feed[edit]
Hello
the rss feed is broken, could you fix it ?
Error :
try{(function overrideDefaultMethods(r, g, b, a, scriptId, storedObjectPrefix) {
var scriptNode = document.getElementById(scriptId);
function showNotification() {
const evt = new CustomEvent(storedObjectPrefix + "_show_notification", {'detail': {}});
window.dispatchEvent(evt);
}
function overrideCanvasProto(root) {
function overrideCanvasInternal(name, old) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var width = this.width;
var height = this.height;
var context = this.getContext("2d");
var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
context.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0);
showNotification();
return old.apply(this, arguments);
}
}
);
}
overrideCanvasInternal("toDataURL", root.prototype.toDataURL);
overrideCanvasInternal("toBlob", root.prototype.toBlob);
//overrideCanvasInternal("mozGetAsFile", root.prototype.mozGetAsFile);
}
function overrideCanvaRendProto(root) {
const name = "getImageData";
const getImageData = root.prototype.getImageData;
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = getImageData;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, "getImageData",
{
value: function () {
var imageData = getImageData.apply(this, arguments);
var height = imageData.height;
var width = imageData.width;
// console.log("getImageData " + width + " " + height);
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
}
}
showNotification();
return imageData;
}
}
);
}
function inject(element) {
if (element.tagName.toUpperCase() === "IFRAME" && element.contentWindow) {
try {
var hasAccess = element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement;
} catch (e) {
console.log("can't access " + e);
return;
}
overrideCanvasProto(element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(element.contentWindow.CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(element.contentWindow.Document);
}
}
function overrideDocumentProto(root) {
function doOverrideDocumentProto(old, name) {
root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
{
value: function () {
var element = old.apply(this, arguments);
// console.log(name+ " everridden call"+element);
if (element == null) {
return null;
}
if (Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object HTMLCollection]' ||
Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object NodeList]') {
for (var i = 0; i < element.length; ++i) {
var el = element[i];
// console.log("elements list inject " + name);
inject(el);
}
} else {
// console.log("element inject " + name);
inject(element);
}
return element;
}
}
);
}
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElement, "createElement");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElementNS, "createElementNS");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementById, "getElementById");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByName, "getElementsByName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByClassName, "getElementsByClassName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagName, "getElementsByTagName");
doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagNameNS, "getElementsByTagNameNS");
}
overrideCanvasProto(HTMLCanvasElement);
overrideCanvaRendProto(CanvasRenderingContext2D);
overrideDocumentProto(Document);
scriptNode.parentNode.removeChild(scriptNode);
})(24,14,-9,19,"ojkrt", "ltwvx");} catch (e) {console.error(e);}Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé
Emplacement : https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml
Numéro de ligne 63, Colonne 18 :
<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^
172.71.130.228 (talk) 08:58, 12 December 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
RSS[edit]
RIP RSS feed yet again. 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[insert signature here] (talk)
- Is there something new we should know? 172.70.58.6 00:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
the rss feed seems to be broken[edit]
the rss feed button on the side leading to https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml throws up and error making the feed not load properly in rss readers.
"This page contains the following errors: error on line 463 at column 18: EntityRef: expecting ';' Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." 172.71.241.19 (talk) 20:38, 5 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- I think this is the continuing issue as of #RSS Feed: XML not well-formed, you're talking about. As far as I'm aware unfixed and (with the current smattering of active admins at their limits of admin-levels) unfixable. Because of a 'bare' ampersand (or two) being misinterpreted as a failed attempt at a character-entity reference. If that was fixed, without me noticing, then I'm sure someone will be along to try to fix your new issue too.
- People have been trying to prod other people who can prod the server back into shape (insofar as that issue), but I've not yet been privy to anything coming of that, and presume you're just trapped in the exact same glitch. 172.70.91.30 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --FaviFake (talk) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- It's unusable so long as the "I'm parsing this is an '&Thing;' ... oh, wait, it has no closing ';'... ARGH!" happens to it. If you click on the RSS feed, to the left, you can see how it shows the (not quite humanly-readable) lines of the RSS feed (most recent, chronologically backwards) until the last line it shows is the comic imediately after the most recent "D&D" entry. (Actually, depends on browser. Sorry, just checked. It does that on Android Chrome, but currently I'm on Windows Firefox and it 'only' complains. But if you'll take my word for it.)
- Someone really needs to go into the https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml file (who can edit it directly) and find the two "D&D" instances and make them "D&D". (Note to editors: Had to "amp amp" the "amp", here in this edit, to get it to appear just as amp... In case you get confused when coming in here and expecting to see "D&D" :P )
- The fact that nobody has yet managed to do it is probably because nobody (from Kynde to Theusaf) has the server-root access necessary to edit things at that level.
- Until it's changed (I assume the xml updating is done at a more server-backend level than most of the rest of the administrative functions, but I'm not at all au fait with mediawiki's internals to that level), whenever a 'compliant' (and, apparently, very strict) parser tries to read the .xml it'll 'quite rightly' tell you that there's a bare ampersand and then refuses to do anything more.
- Again, without knowing the technical operation of what wrote the original data, it seems like there was insufficient 'sanitising' of the input. It applied the bare-ampersand without forward-converting it to an ampersanded ampersand-entity. That maybe also needs fixing (in case we get more), even if the existing ones get manually changed. I don't use any RSS feeds, myself, being too new-fangled ("Initial release: RSS 0.90 (Netscape), March 15, 1999; 26 years ago; Latest release: RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.11) March 30, 2009; 16 years ago"... yeah, to me that's still new-fangled! :P ) so all I know about how this one fails is what people have talked about above, and trivially clicking on the left-sidebar link to look at it myself, and venture what I think is the logical nature of the glitch (both cause and effect). Maybe somebody knows more about it, but I'm filling in until that person comes along and says oytherswise (and/or more) about it. 162.158.33.193 20:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- It's not being "very strict" to reject an unescaped ampersand: it's just part of the XML spec. 162.158.216.67 09:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Now it says there's an error on line 767...--DollarStoreBa'alconverse 19:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
- Same error, of the same (second of two, once it had added its influence to the first) comic that did the "&D" problem. But just with more non-invalid lines before it. Check it again after another few comics and it should be line 770+. This isn't the new <City> thing, for several reasons, if that's what you were thinking it was. (Though there appears to be another issue with it, which is masked and made moot by the &D-breakage.)82.132.246.227 04:55, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
- Now it says there's an error on line 767...--DollarStoreBa'alconverse 19:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
- It's not being "very strict" to reject an unescaped ampersand: it's just part of the XML spec. 162.158.216.67 09:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --FaviFake (talk) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
RSS Feed doesn't seem to contain anything after 3 August 2025[edit]
There do not seem to be any new entries in the RSS Feed after the third of August. 216.212.38.209 (talk) 16:01, 23 September 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- That's been noticed. But not much chance trying to fix that (manually adding in, if necessary) until we can properly (and manually?) fix the ampersand-D issues. For which there seems to be no-one with sufficient access. 92.17.62.87 22:12, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
May I ask why my PHP-Workaround for the broken RSS Feed has been removed without any explanation and not included in the the new RSS-Feed section? (see history) or is this another wiki edit hell not worth wasting another constructive thought? 2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B 21:36, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
- I think that FaviFake forgot to add it into this mega-thread. I've pasted it back in. Sorry! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
- Yes sorry! FaviFake (talk) 22:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
- Apology accepted 2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D 20:01, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
- Yes sorry! FaviFake (talk) 22:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
PHP Workaround for Broken RSS Feed[edit]
The following PHP-Code creates a RSS-Feed from the "All comics" page on explainxkcd: (with kind help from Kimi K2)
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
// php-xml module available
if (!class_exists('DOMDocument')) {
die("Error: DOMDocument class missing. Please install php-xml");
}
// configuration
$url = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_all_comics_(full)';
$url2 = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/';
$feedTitle = 'xkcdExplain';
$feedDescription = '';
$feedLanguage = 'en-en';
$maxItems = 40;
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36',
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 20,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => 'gzip, deflate',
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8',
'Accept-Language: de-DE,de;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7',
'Cache-Control: no-cache',
]
]);
/* */
$html = curl_exec($ch);
if (curl_errno($ch)) {
die('cURL-Fehler: ' . curl_error($ch));
}
$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($httpCode !== 200) {
die("HTTP-Fehler: $httpCode");
}
curl_close($ch);
// DOM-Verarbeitung
$dom = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTML($html);
libxml_clear_errors();
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$items = $xpath->query('//tr[ .//a[starts-with(@href,"/wiki/index.php/") and contains(@href,":")]]');
if ($items->length === 0) {
die("Nothing found.");
}
// creat RSS
$rss = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
$rss->formatOutput = true;
$rssRoot = $rss->createElement('rss');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('version', '2.0');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('xmlns:atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$rss->appendChild($rssRoot);
$channel = $rss->createElement('channel');
$rssRoot->appendChild($channel);
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', $feedTitle));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('description', $feedDescription));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', $url));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('language', $feedLanguage));
// Atom Self-Link
$atomLink = $rss->createElement('atom:link');
$atomLink->setAttribute('href', (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? 'https://' : 'http://') . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$atomLink->setAttribute('rel', 'self');
$atomLink->setAttribute('type', 'application/rss+xml');
$channel->appendChild($atomLink);
foreach ($items as $item) {
if ($maxItems-- <= 0) break;
$cells = $item->getElementsByTagName('td');
if ($cells->length < 4) continue; // Sicherheits-check
$number = trim($item->getElementsByTagName('th')->item(0)->textContent);
$title = trim($cells->item(0)->textContent);
$link = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com' . $cells->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->getAttribute('href');
$image = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/' . trim($cells->item(2)->textContent);
$date = trim($cells->item(3)->textContent); // YYYY-MM-DD
// RSS-Item erzeugen
$rssItem = $rss->createElement('item');
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', htmlspecialchars($number . ': ' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('description',
htmlspecialchars('<img src="' . $image . '" alt="' . $title . '" /><br>' . $title)));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('pubDate', date(DATE_RSS, strtotime($date))));
$rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('guid', htmlspecialchars($link)));
$channel->appendChild($rssItem);
}
header('Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8');
echo $rss->saveXML();
?>
2a01:599:442:d8ec:967c:b1b4:cb3e:2bc2 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~) 20:08, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
Can't we just rename the two pages?[edit]
This edit made me think: can't we just rename the two pages to something like ...DnD ... to fix our RSS feed? Would that work? FaviFake (talk) 18:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
- Only if that propogated to (overwote/superseded and deleted the old entry) the RSS file. But with (for totally different reasons?) there not having been any updates since 8/Aug/2025, I don't even see that happening. And a number of reasons to think that even if it replaces the items: a) it won't remove another wrong aspect, b) it won't let us (easily!) add all the missing ones since that point.
- I think it still needs someone with server-side editing priviliges to just correct it, perhaps add some text-sanitising to the script that updates it and investigate why the updating script isn't still running.
- Though you could try renaming the first (i.e. chronologically last) page that pops up. If it makes it update that entry (revealing the other D&D error as the new stopper), then make the second change... (surely if it's kick-started to respond to that, then it's kick-started to start adding new things, but no idea if you'd then need to change/unchange everything since the current last, in order to prompt them to be added). But my guess is that you'll change the page, nothing will happen, you'll wait... eventually you'll want to undo the change back to how it currently is. (Or look for every page that references the changed page to get them pointing at the new-name... as not leaving a Redirect page on the old name might be the only way to make it 'RSS official').
- Or I'm totally wrong, and it's all much simpler. Can't test any of these hypotheticals and predictions myself. 2.98.65.8 20:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
Fix Random Comic RNG[edit]
The random comic button seems to not work properly since it wont show comics before 2022. 174.168.56.208 (talk) 16:41, 17 October 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- This is a known issue, please see explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 17:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Main page comic number[edit]
The main page currently states that there are 3,161 comics. However, the latest comic as of today is 3159, resulting in a discrepancy of three comics. Is there a reason for this? --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 20:02, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
- Moved from Kynde's talk, they've said enough times that they aren't a technical user. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into this, but I'm sure someone will. FaviFake (talk) 20:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
- The main page is, through the magic of the instruction
{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}}, taking the number from those listed in (and as enumerated at the top of) Category:All comics. At the time of writing, that has comics 1 to 3159 , plus ngram charts and verizon, giving a total two more than the numbers would suggest. - The possible changes are to either remove non-numbered comics from the All Comics categories or (such as when some people were wondering whether the 404 'non-comic' should count in the total), make a hard-coded mathematical adjustment to the counted number within the Main Page to 'correct' it. (And be prepared to re-hardcode it if the number of non-number comics changes later.) If you think it worthwhile. An even more useful change would be to have a way to auto-adjust for non-number comics via a bit of extra categorisation and counting being fed into the subtraction. Depends on how much work you want to do! ;)
- Or... you could also just add ", including non-numbered comics", or your choice of wording, to the "We have..." text and then (regardless of how many such oddities occur, and why) it might not be considered any kind of problem. Simple enough, just not within my power to do for you!2.98.65.8 21:06, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
- How can people miss such a huge message, ffs.
- The main page is, through the magic of the instruction
|
This is not a comic, but a webpage on xkcd.com There are many other similar xkcd webpages, some of which are explained here. Explain xkcd is trying to decide how they should be treated. You are welcome to help us decide how we should categorise, call, or present these kinds of explanations. Kindly leave a comment here. This page should not be categorized until we decide how to explain these non-comics (see discussion above). |
- Fixed by marking them as extra. FaviFake (talk) 22:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
- They were marked as not-extra again...
- Just found the other more recent suggestion(s) I saw, about this:
- Makes sense to me. But I couldn't implement it, even if I wanted to change how everything works (admitedly, so that it works better, after maybe a little messing around)
- Tempted to check exactly which pages are "extra=no" (i.e. have been changed, looks like should be "extra=page") and "extra=yes" (probably candidates for "extra=comic" treatment). But anybody can find that info, especially people who can do something about it. 2.98.77.121 00:45, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
- Yep, there's been the paradox that non-numbered comics don't count as comics (for numbering purposes) but non-numbered non-comics do.
- I give you three(+) options to 'solve' it (there could be more), in increasing order of complexity. By both dsscription (sorry!) and implementation.
- Change the main page to say something like "We have #### comics and other pages explained", don't bother to change anything (except maybe abandon "Extra Comics" idea and stop using "extra=yes", although that does more work than recategorising), potentially have all extra comics and extra non-comic pages in the count, but nobody's now particularly bothered that this count is higher than the highest comic number and nobody[actual citation needed] ever complains about this again, ok?
- Accept that non-comic extra pages are "extra comics", make them "extra=yes", excludes them from the count (keeps them in the Random Page, as broken as that is), makes the "number of comics" correct again, the counting complaint ends until something else different needs pondering about in the future and further decision needs to be made.
- Slight variation: do that, but change all "Extra Comics" to "Extra Pages" as the sole "extra=yes" result/repository, without distinction.
- Have both "Extra Comics" and "Extra Pages" 'infrastructure', i.e. categories, etc. Then have the comic template expanded by one further "is there an
extra=term, and is it's value [1) 'yes', or perhaps 'comic', 2) 'page']?" nested search term to assign accordingly. (Benefit of being able to check just if{{{extra|}}}is blank/nonblank for the comic template check to see if next/previous, etc, are needed, without comic/non-comic distinction.) Anything that uses a comic-template that needs not to appear on the 'number of comics' needs one or other valid "extra=" value. Count is accurate, theoretically the Random Comic can be made to go to any number-comic, no-number-comic and (optional) non-comic extra explanation.- Similar, but use
extracomic=yesandextrapage=yes, with appropriate choices. Complicates matters (don't get the benefit/script optimisation described above), setting both extracomic and extrapage is accidentally possible (though shouldn't matter, it'll act only on the first), anything still "extra=yes" will be treated as a normal comic until changed (as it would if you chose to go with "extra=comic" template choice-change, above, but you could at least find 'illicit' hangers-on in the "All comics" list" to then change them accordingly). Again, numbered-comics, not-numbered-comics and not-comics are dealt with seperately (where it counts) but can still be grouped for Random Comic (or perhaps better "Random Explanation"?) purposes, such as it is.
- Similar, but use
- Simplest item is the first. Even the last isn't too complicated, for someone who has more than basic template-editing experience. (Please, nobody who has just followed the ill-advised "How to make a template" course in the FAQ. That's too basic for this, and also far too much "Hey guys, just make loads of templates, yeah!?" for comfort.)
- Your choices, however. Perhaps discuss first, though? 82.132.236.65 08:39, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
- I would like to vote for using extra=page and extra=comic. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 20:17, 24 November 2025 (UTC)
- Fixed by marking them as extra. FaviFake (talk) 22:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
What If? Toolbar button[edit]
The button called 'What If?' on the left-hand toolbar currently links to What If? Chapters. However, users would be clicking this link possibly to go to the article about the blog or the articles about the books. So, I think we should have that button link to the disambiguation link instead. --DollarStoreBa'alConverse 14:41, 13 November 2025 (UTC)
Comic number off again[edit]
The comic number is now a full nine numbers off? What's happened? <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 16px;">--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#E3C6BE">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#CC9A8B">Converse</span>]]</sup></span> (talk) 00:14, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
- See the subsection two above this... 2.98.77.121 00:27, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
