User talk:FaviFake

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

Objects table

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

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

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

Technical remarks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

---

OTHER ISSUES:

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

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

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

Your English is excellent :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haltones

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

The wiki page says

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

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

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

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

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

Childish slang.

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

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

IP page to delete

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just out of curiosity, are you the same IP guy from #IP page to delete?--FaviFake (talk) 18:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with Oxford commas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science Girl/Hairbun

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

[...]

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

---

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

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

---

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

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

On the topic of renaming Jill:

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

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

In reply to this query...

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

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

Plural animals

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

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

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

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

Username

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

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

Community portal spam

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

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

Possible Adminship?

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

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

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

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

Trivia below transcript

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

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

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

On the Ghosts in the NavPane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting streamlined 'table furniture', but...

...I'm wondering about the current (slight) usage differences between:

style="text-align:center" | {{{1}}}

and:

style="white-space:nowrap" |

Do you need to add the Param1 to the nowrap/remove if from the text-alignment?

And what if someone wanted no-wrap+centre at the same time? There maybe are ways to combine {{ac|<foo>}} and {{nw}}, but it seems non-trivial to to do. (Unless you make a {{nwac}}, but then where do you end?) I'm wondering if you should try it without the |-character.

Let's see if that could work:

Test

Foo	Bar	Baz
Normal text of a normal style	This is as if using variations {{ac|<foo>}} and {{nw}} as rendered without the pipe-character or inconsistent parameter, which is tricky to demonstrate with the actual templates.	More normal text of a normal style
Normal text of a normal style	style="white-space:nowrap" | This is how {{ac|{{nw}} <foo>}} might look	More normal text of a normal style
Normal text of a normal style	Template:ac	More normal text of a normal style
Normal text of a normal style	style="text-align:center" | This is how {{nw}} {{ac|<foo>}} might look	More normal text of a normal style
Normal text of a normal style	Template:nw Template:ac Also goes bold, I notice!	More normal text of a normal style

So, yes, it looks like it might be better to just remove the pipe (or pipe-and-param) and rely on the table-writer to just put in the relevent bare style-giving {{}} (or {{}}s) before the pipe. (I must look into why there's unexpected boldness. I don't know if that comes from the way you templated it or as an associated function of the aligh-center style. But it doesn't appear when I do it 'raw'.) Anyway, food for thought, over to you. It looks like I could edit your templates, but that might be rude, and would of course instantly break whatever it is you're currently using them (singly) for. That's the What If? table, I suppose? Anyway, you can both 'fix' how they work and adjust how they are invoked, rather than leaving me to guess about the latter. ;) 162.158.74.49 19:04, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

PS: Yes, I have just checked, and, yes you've added (apparently after I saw and copied the original {{ac}} for my own testing and emulating purposes!) the bolding to the aligh-centering template. That part of the mystery is solved! :P 162.158.74.49 19:10, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

PPS: I know what happened. I copied the (slightly formatted) 'plaintext' as it appeared in the template. If I'd have edited it and copied the wikisource then I'd have grabbed the '''formatted'' as you already had it by the time I passed by. Don't mind me, it was just something that made me wonder. Probably moreso than the thing that I was actually trying to prod and poke and solve! IOW: Ignore me. On this bit, at least! 172.68.205.151 19:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I love how interested you are about this! Honestly i'm not really sure what exactly it is you're asking, but you seem very smart so do whatever you want! My only request is that the ac thing keeps working as expected, so i don't have to change the table again. I had forgotten about the nw thing, you can delete it or change it or do anything else, I don't use it anymore. Feel free to add to the documentation that these are just for 1 table and might break everything if used anywhere else. Or, if they already work everywhere, great! I remember I created them expecting the entire page to be destroyed when used, and being pleasantly surprised when they worked. So yeah go wild! --FaviFake (talk) 21:19, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not going to make any change without taking time to check your tables and making sure the appropriate change doesn't inflict damage on your attempts to curate the tables you're probably using it for.

But, in short, I understand that you're streamlining the (often longwinded) style="" statements, an admirble task. In the structure of "| cell || another cell || etc", you're doing something to save from having to do cumbersome "| cell || style="this-style: that; that-style: that; the-other-style: the.other" | another cell || etc", all of which makes editing 'difficult'. (I tend to do such things in Notepad, or whatever separate text editor I have, which lets me add temporary whitespace and use with no-wrap on the markup while I'm working on it, rather than in this textbox editor.)

But the single-pipe that formats the cell isn't a great difficulty to maintain (indeed, it is useful to line up). As such I'd suggest "| cell || {{??}} | another cell || etc" would be as good. i.e. leave the pipe (intended for the table-cell) out of the template. For the no-wrap version, that's easy enough. Though I do understand that you want to put bold-format about the cell contents, so that's why you give it as a param and explicitly bold the Param1 as you pass it back out.

Maybe the solution to that is to also add (to the style, along with the text-align:center) the "font-weight: bold" doublet. Then "... || <format(s), as templates and/or raw> | Cell Text || ..." doesn't need to 'enclose' the Cell Text in any way.

But making the change from something that expects to transclude the range of the template "... || format | Cell Text || ..." to "... || format | Cell Text || ..." obviously requires that each and every table-cell item that uses "... || {{template|Cell Text}} || ..." to be converted to "... || {{template}} | Cell Text || ...", or... it'll definitely not work as it was originally set.

Anyway, that's just my own vision of how you can do what you seem to have wanted to, without introducing more complications. As the cell-formatting gladly accepts multiple statements of the form style="..." (it adds style="..." style="..." style="..." together, much as style="...; ...; ..." does), an editor now has complete freedom to compound the two format-templates you created. And any additional ones that might be useful. Such ones to usefully colour cell backgrounds as red/yellow/green (for use on the various Confusion Tables), something that I sometimes take a couple of goes to do... not least because I habitually spell 'color' as 'colour'..! ;)

...but that's just to explain so that (should you/anybody else wish to follow my own instincts on the matter), you have some decent idea of what I'm getting at. There are probably other ways of doing it. Templates can be made to detect and extract pipes, so that "... || {{template1|{{templete2|Cell Text}}}} || ..." or "... || {{template2|{{templete1|Cell Text}}}} || ..." would equally produce "... || templateOneOrTwoFormat templateTwoOrOneFormat | Cell Text || ...", but that would take a degree of of unwieldy parameter-processing functions (that I'd have to work out, probably would involve some subst-function, but might depend upon what's available in the installed mediawiki version). I just think you could avoid all that trouble! 162.158.74.118 22:51, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Forgot to say, that for what you want to use it for, there's another way:

Example 2

Number (Centered)	Foo	Bar (Centered)	Baz
1	Normal text of a normal style	Some text of whatever size (centered)	More normal text of a normal style
2	Normal text of a normal style	Some text of whatever size (also centered, though not so obviously so)	More normal text of a normal style

... This is only possible by newlining each new cell, in the example (you can't do "! cell || cell !! cell || cell", you have to line-break it as you change from "!"-/"|"-starting cell-groups), but it isn't really so great a loss to do so.

The "wikitable" class gives these 'header cells' a different background too, but (if you really don't like that) it that can be adjusted in various other ways (including with scope="col", I think), or you can leave the wikitable class off (it centres and bolds, but doesn't give cell-borders) and re-add the whole-table bordering style that this now leaves out. But you really don't want me listing every idea I had, just this one was the other (template-free) option to enforcing centre-aligning bold text on certain cells. 162.158.74.119 23:09, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Huh, I was actually thinking of doing the opposite of what you're suggesting: include even more pipes inside the template so the editor is cleaner and easier to use. (UPDATE: this probably worse than the other option you gave at the end, see below). So instead of this:

|-
| {{ac|4}} || 

You would just use this:

|-
{{ac|4}}

And it would contain all the pipes needed. I guess then we would have to update the documentation to point out that this template's use case is extremely narrow. Also, if you want to see how it is currently used, the table is on my user page! That's the only place where it's used

Since you seem very interested in templates, What do you think of the idea of a creating a template like these:

{{yt|YTNUMBER (1, 2, 3, etc)|YTLINK|VIDEOTITLE (optional)}}

It would be used in the column that we still need to create. It would also colour the cell in red. I was also thinking of doing a similar thing for the What If? books:

{{bk|WHICH-BOOK|CHAPTER-NUMBER|CHAPTER-TITLE (if different)}}

For example, it would look like this: (This one would also colour the cell based on the book, e.g., green for WI?1, yellow for WI?2, blue for WI10th ed.)

{{book|2|69|Jellyfish}}

What If? 2, chapter 69: Jellyfish

Would you be able to create something like this? I know nothing about templates, and i doubt I'll be able to ask chatgpt to do everything for me correctly. --FaviFake (talk) 07:16, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

> Forgot to say, that for what you want to use it for, there's another way:

Oh, i think i had forgotten to read this part!! This seems very interesting! I should try that, since it seems much simpler. --FaviFake (talk) 10:10, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Update:  ✓ Done  I applied your suggestion, now the numbers are in their own row:

|-
!1
| The rest of the table

--FaviFake (talk) 10:33, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

What If Chapters

Hey FaviFake, there are some What If? Chapters that aren’t included in the blog. Are we going to add them to the table? 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 17:41, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Great timing! You sent me this message while i was in the process of replying to the question. I'm not good at prioritising, I should've definitely responded before doing other edits. Check out my list of questions for y'all reply above! --FaviFake (talk) 18:10, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

YouTube template

Hey FaviFake, on the {{yt}} template, you asked for help on fixing the code of the template. What help do you need to “improve” it? I’m willing to help now that I’m not sick, as I was last week. 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 18:35, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Glad to hear you're healthy. That message was mostly a joke, but it is in fact barely held together. (Try modifying the hyperlink that's displayed when a title isn't provided, somehow what you add gets duplicated??) If you have the time and know how to make it more reliable and easily editable in the future, please do! I am honstly scared to touch it fearing it might explode.

Buuut, to be fair there is one template that i desperately needed help with, and that is Template:book. I wasted a ton of time to try to get it to change the cell background, and it never worked, so i decided to create Template:book1, Template:book2, Template:book3, Template:book4, and these do work beaytifully, but are harder to edit in bulk. (I still have profound hatred towards Template:book...). If you actually manage to do what i wanted (which i'm not sure is even clear after the all the mess i've made... ask me if you can't figure it out!), I would be very grateful. PS. I'm not sure if i should warn you, given my very low ability to create templates, but it's definitely not easy, imo.

I'm not sure how skilled you are at template editing, so if you want, you can absolutely continue uploading the What If? thumbnails like you did a few days ago! I just added a new batch of articles (about 60) thanks to some annoyingly complex jailbreaking of Google's NotebookLM. The new table of course includes the quick 100px link to upload a file. Again, thanks for reaching out! --FaviFake (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

The YT link appears to be going to [[whatever the name of the YouTube video is called]] and not acting as a [youtube.com filler thingy] linking to a YouTube video. I’m going to hit the books on template writing and try to see if I can do anything about it. Cheers! 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 03:11, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh great, that's broken too. I didn't even realise it. Thanks!--FaviFake (talk) 04:57, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Partly because you've removed the bit about how to better sort the book-column elements, but are using the same trick in the youtube-column, and partly because it's easier (more on that in a moment), I've just modified the {{yt}} to give it the sort value (of article number) directly. Have not removed the expression test to make "6th video ..." into "06th video ...", for sorting purposes, but I feel confident that you can do that (and remove the comment about making it give "006th video ...", in future, should that become necessary) if you now so wish.

For the books, I was thinking that if, instead of ="{{{1|0}}}", you could maybe use ="{{#expr:10000+{{{1|0}}}}}" for What If? (in {{book1}}) and ="{{#expr:20000+{{{1|0}}}}}" for What If? 2 (in {{book2}}), to let it sort by book and then chapter within book...

For What If? 10th Anniversary Edition ({{book3}}), I was thinking if you could make the added-to number 11000. Though anything from above 10000+<last chapter number> and below 20000-<last chapter number> would do (and 15000 would work), it leaves room to make any appearance of the 15th anniversary, 20th anniversary, 42nd anniversary, ..., 95th anniversary be able to use the mnemonic offsets of 11500+, 12000+, 14200+, ..., 19500+.. ;) Obviously, it would need revamping if there becomes a centenary edition of Book 1 (or any version of it ever gets so many "bonus chapters" that it breaks out of its own sequence into the next extant anniversary edition. But you'd need to start adding 100 newly-numbered chapters per year to do that, so probably not likely. But, right now, the sorting on the "Exclusive to What If? 10th Anniversary Edition" line sorts before the "NNth chapter of What If?" lines. The above should fix that...

And the format can be used for other (future?) books and their (possible) reissues: For What If? N, reissued YY years after the original, that's the number "NYY00", to which you add the chapter number. Fairly futureproofed, but if Randall ever publishes anything that makes you need to make the offset "NNYYY000" (e.g. for the quarter-of-a-millenium reissue of What If? 15, having a total of 512 chapters being 15250000+[1..512]) then I reckon the requisite changes will be easy enough to handle as and when, swapping in the expanded offset. And... hey... if they're still being written, and published, then I can only hope I'm still around to be able to add that edition to my bookshelf!

You could even redo the {{book}} idea (parameters of ...|book=#|chapter=#|optional:edition=#?|...) to only ever need to maintain the one source with all this flexibility. You've already got experience (by the 1st/2nd/3rd/Nth code) with what's needed to translate Book Number(+Edition Number, if applicable) into unique background colour codes.

The big problem, though, is still the non-numeric chapter 'numbers' in WI?2. I have two (or three) different thoughts about that.

• For only the numeric bits (currently, in the test for less-than-10, etc; in the above for within the data-sort-value="...") you might want to switch {{{1|0}}} with {{#if:{{#ifexpr:{{{1|0}}}}}|99|{{{1|0}}}}}{{{1|0}}}... This should test the param1 value for being a valid value (or missing, when you already make it zero... though not sure for what circumstance you should consider it validly missing) and using it if it is so, or else using the value "99" (or you could have "0", or "0.5", or whatever floats your boat). Then at least you'd get a value (that doesn't cause errors), though it probably wouldn't be sorted very precisely (though appear just after/before all other chapters of the book).

• The other idea is to use {{{effectiveChapter|{{{1|0}}}}}}, then you can append a parameter of ...|effectiveChapter=11.5}} to a non-numeric one sitting between actual chapters 11 and 12 (I haven't checked if that's an actual example, but imagine it is...). Also, for multiple items on page-chapter, you could even have =11.51, =11.52, =11.53, etc, to retain order within the book and upon the page... (You could also give effectiveChapter as "NYYCC(.optional)" format, direct, for all what if? Numbers, YYearly-editions and CChapters (with possibly sub-positions), come to that, but I don't see that as any simpler a solution as building it in.)

• The third option would be to use (for hidden sorting-only purpose, mostly) a value of P(.optionalDecimal) either as another numeric parameter or a named one, with P as page number, not chapter number. But, given how hardback vs. paperback (or just another imprint, not necessarily even a Anniversary redo, but I've got the UK edition with an additional UK foreword) might effect page numbers and/or where end-of-pages interupts any given chapter internals, it's possible that this is not consistent enough. But food for thought, maybe. Only needs to be definitively done once (or thoroughly checked and shuffled along as nevessary if redone to include other changes that require consistency).

Any of that make sense? Hopefully I've at least given you enough examples to ponder, where not immediately obvious. I'd really rather not change all your hard work just for the sake of a minor cosmetic change with a possibly major set of retouches, which is one of the reasons why I thought I'd do just the basic Youtube 'sort assisting' bit and let those of you who have already had so much 'fun' (tweaking the table formats) decide if and how you make full use of it. Assuming it isn't (differently) broken, for whatever reason may crop up, it shouldn't be a problem if you do nothing at all more with it (either in the {{yt}} or {{book#}}s). 172.71.241.26 14:38, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you so much! Would you mind if I moved your message to Talk:What If? chapters, to group everything regarding the index in one place? Anyways:
• I did the thing on the yt and {{blog}} one and it works!

For the books, I was thinking that if, instead of ="{{{1|0}}}", you could maybe use ="{{#expr:10000+{{{1|0}}}}}" for What If? (in {{book1}}) and ="{{#expr:20000+{{{1|0}}}}}" for What If? 2 (in {{book2}}), to let it sort by book and then chapter within book...

• Done! Thanks! For ({{book3}}) i used 30000 to have the chapter in chronological order.

You could even redo the {{book}} idea

• Sorry but I'm not touching that... thing anymore. That template traumatized me (jk! if you want to try fixing it i'd be very happy)

For only the numeric bits (currently, in the test for less-than-10, etc; in the above for within the data-sort-value="...") you might want to switch {{{1|0}}} with {{#if:{{#ifexpr:{{{1|0}}}}}|99|{{{1|0}}}}}{{{1|0}}}... This should test the param1 value for being a valid value (or missing, when you already make it zero... though not sure for what circumstance you should consider it validly missing) 

• I'm not sure why that's needed (and also how to actually implement it). What happens if the value is invalid? it seems to work. Or is it required for the other improvements you suggested?

The other idea is...
The third option would be...

• Yeah this seems pretty hard to solve easily (which is why i'd love it if you did it!). I guess it'll stay slightly broken until it becomes a bigger issue. --FaviFake (talk) 16:54, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

It seems like you just forgot to escape pipe characters in the book template in the table within the switch statement, so it just interpreted the non-formatting statements to be a case grouped with the next 'actual' case guess who (if you desire conversing | what i have done) 07:23, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

BTW I fixed the book template. It should now appear the same as the other templates, and even work with the youtube template guess who (if you desire conversing | what i have done) 09:13, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! IT ACTUALLY WORKS! What! How! Why!

Thanks so much for fixing the template! I can't describe how glad I am to see it working as (and even better than) I wanted. My life is finally complete. I have switched to using your template in the index.

The reason there was a YT link in one of the {{book}} documentation examples is because I was going insane and likely pasted it there by accident. From what I can tell, you seem to have set up {{book}} so well that {{book}} accepts a YouTube link as input, while the {{yt}} template it's based on doesn't if used by itself (requires only the ID). I love this! Since we're gonna have many YT videos to add, it's great to have a much simpler option which doesn't require extracting the ID of the video. Is there a way you could maybe incorporate this improvement into {{yt}} itself? Or maybe you're 10 steps ahead of me and you've already done it (which wouldn't surprise me given the amount of wizardry you used on these bad boys!), and I just didn't notice. Please let me know! And again, thank you so much!!! --FaviFake (talk) 17:56, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Also, since you've already rendered 4 templates useless thanks to your improvements, why not also add {{yt}} to the list of pages to delete, by incorporating it into {{book}}? This, unlike {{book}}, is absolutely not needed, and I also have no idea if it's as easy as a simple copy-and-paste, or if it requires more work. If it's the latter, please don't do it if you don't want to! I'm just throwing ideas around! --FaviFake (talk) 18:04, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

That IP, here. I (think) I fixed the sorting and error-fallback issues. I think (without trying to roll back to how you had it) you 'broke the sort' by putting in line-feeds (maybe double-ones), that messed up the table/cell handling. Then you broke the handling by commenting out too much (you needed to "< ! - -" and "- - >", without spaces, without crossing the quotes and |ing boundaries in data-sort-value="..." style="..." and the 'release', by pipe symbol, to cell-contents).
Recommented for it to work normally, first without the new 'sort assistance' and then with again. Had a look at the error-catcher (went down a blind alley, at first) and made it an explicit "catch all other inputs" for the errororing display, which I formatted in a more obvious manner and forced to sort to the start. (Well, almost the start. It puts empty cells with no sorting 'ahead' of even the -999 value I made it give any error-caught cells.)
If it were me, I'd be happy to have {{yt}} entirely separate from the {{book}} handling. It is mnemonically confusing and adds needless (and possibly error-prone) "if we have far too many params for Book template, feed it all into the Youtube template". Unless you're folding the whole Youtube template into the body of the Book one (even more work to maintain/debug), it's just adding complication for both server and editors who feel forced to use it. The beauty of the monolithic Book template is that (otherwise identical) "Book N, chapter C, optional new title T" information is trivially similar between different Ns. But it's not my project.
I'll have a dig about in maybe how to have a table sort "valueless" cells (in reality the empty value of cell absolutely without anything in it) beyond the sort-valued ones. The 'easiest' means I could imagine is to accept {{book|0}}, needing no further params, to create a data-sort-value="999999" |<blank> cell-definition, and have every book-column cell without a book-reference explicitly use that (ditto for {{yt|0}} to have the same pre-trap to it). But seems wasteful. A template {{empty}}, or even something like {{e}}, (without checking if either of those are free names) could also just give us this behaviour straight off, of course. It's potentially a lot of fuss to make consistent and flexible enough, either way.
But what I already did probably also needs to be checked for more edge-conditions... I may still have to tweak things when I have a better chance of catching errors (very difficult, on a tablet), and quicker. 172.70.162.196 21:32, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I also think that the book template shouldn't be used for the videos, on the basis that youtube is not a book.

for the default cell, it would probably take no arguments (i.e. just

This template has been retired and is no longer in use. Use {{book}} instead.