User talk:FaviFake

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

Objects table

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

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

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

Technical remarks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

---

OTHER ISSUES:

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

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

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

Your English is excellent :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haltones

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

The wiki page says

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

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

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

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

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

Childish slang.

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

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

IP page to delete

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I disagree with Oxford commas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science Girl/Hairbun

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

[...]

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

---

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

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

---

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

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

On the topic of renaming Jill:

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

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

In reply to this query...

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

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

Plural animals

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

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

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

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

Community portal spam

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

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

Possible Adminship?

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

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

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

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

Trivia below transcript

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

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

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

On the Ghosts in the NavPane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The What If? article index project

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

Removed "Discussion" super-header.

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

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

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

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

A simple Thank-you

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

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

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

Removing references to order of LiveJournal comics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jill's renaming

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

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

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

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

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

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

We do not generally give generic figures a name

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

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

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

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

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

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

We did refrain from naming Cueball Rob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to this logic in this comic:

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

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

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

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

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

...all i did was standardise the matter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I can't edit it...

Regarding the Editor FAQ:

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

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

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

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

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

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

User page creation

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

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

Admin

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

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

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

A Barnstar For You :3

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

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

Restructuring Header text as a table

The messages regarding the Header text reformatting project have been moved to Talk:Header text. To add a new topic regarding the projects, click here. --FaviFake (talk) 09:15, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

So, the HiddenCat..?

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

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

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

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

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

> Still less than wise as to what problem it solves

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

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

Exclusive xkcd textbook comics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's a date.

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

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

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

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

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

From Kynde's page

And finally: the typos in the message you replied to were caused by my keyboard autocorrecting my words (my pc is broken). When you reply, do it on my talk page so we don't spam Kynde's. --FaviFake (talk) 12:44, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

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

Hello, I think you mistook another IP's recent comment as being from me-IP, from things said prior to the above. There are a few of us around, and I don't mind being mixed up with some of them (or vice-versa) that are similarly longterm maintainers of seemingly good intentions. Though I think that IP also used "propogate" instead of "propagate" (like I know I've got my own blindspots in spelling/grammar, and occasional tendency to lapse into dialect), which also amused me.

As to your autocorrection-errors, it surprised me... In my experience, non-native but fluent of English don't let mistakes like that happen, and you're certainly up there with native speakers (il mio italiano è per lo più limitato a ciò che può fare un traduttore online... così!). I think it just looked... careless. Also, strangely induced errors.

Don't let me discourage you, you've gone to a lot of trouble. Some things maybe necessary, some things maybe more just 'your own vision' that I could take or leave. Just that the "diff" page doesn't always align things to make it easy to compare old vs. new versions for anything more complicated than paragraphs/bullets/tabling to bullets/tabling/paragraphs or tabling/paragraphs/tables (as required). Complete rewrites don't help, even assuming that they accurate rewrites.

...so, this is my response. From your invitation. Of course I can't speak for anyone else involved. 92.23.2.228 18:17, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Oh well, until you decide to create a proper account I will blindly assume every IP that uses parentheses and subclauses is the same exact person! You are everyone.

Grazie per il complimento; il mio inglese would be better if I cared about looking over every message I post. I usually only extensively proofread article changes. You're right, that specific mistake wasn't an auto correction, I just didn't want to explain everything, but I have time to kill so I guess I'll just do it. On mobile, i prefer using Gboard's glide typing feature, which can sometimes mistake two words even if their letters are almost completely different. You can look it up, it looks cool, though I doubt it'd be ergonomic to use on your tablet. That's why help became hello.

Amusingly, there's a grammar error in your reply that I'll let you find! --FaviFake (talk) 22:17, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Rather than re-de-revert.

The text "Don't remove this notice too soon" is there when there isn't a specific reason the page is incomplete. Now there is a clear moment when the page can be marked as complete. Not sure why you put back the PAGE CREATED BY thingy

—Your re-revert

It's not just "Don't remove the 'Don't remove this text too soon' text too soon"... It's contectually applying to the whole incompleteness tag. Now, I'm not saying that, without it, people will think it ok to remove the whole thing, but there's no reason to remove it until you're removing the whole thing as solved. What even is the benefit of doing so?

But, honestly, I restored it not for meta-ontological purposes, but because I was actually trying to counter the strange removal of the PAGE CREATED BY bit. I appreciate that you may think that it confuses new readers, and I daresay that it does (a little bit), but it probably confuses them more when some new comics have this time-honoured bit of site culture and some do not. Whereas they shouldn't really take too long to realise that:

• "CREATED BY A BOT" is basically what it says on the tin, before any human has had a chance to ponder the newly added page,
• "CREATED BY <A JOKE>" is a new article once the rabble have gotten to it,
  • ...though, IMO, you should only normally change it as "first editor" (or "first editor with a good idea ror a joke to put there") with something to contribute into the Explanation and/or Transcript (or will do momentarily), not just as a "FIRST!"-type thing then leave it...
  • ...and you should think twice before changing someone else's joke to your own; perhaps refine it (oapply mild corrections to grammar/spelling/whatever it's trying to reference), but if you just totally "no, MY IDEA!" it, what's to stop the next person going "no, no, MY IDEA!!"? Just accept what's there (or tweak it, honourably), you'll perhaps be able to get (and keep for a reasonable time) the subtle 'bragging rights' to a future comic, if everyone plays nice and doesn't just entirely change it on a whim. Or remove it for no good reason, before the whole tag is considered superfluous anyway...
• If someone (like yourself) adds in an incomplete tag back into a previously 'presumed complete' page, that can happily stay without the BOT-inspired humour. Unless one feels like it, but actually adding the tag back in to pages, which (by wiki convention) are always open to being re-edited if you so wish,
  • ...if I may say, adding an "incomplete|X and Y need doing to this page", instead of just doing X and Y to the page, is a waste of edits. I appreciate there are some things you might not be able to actually do (explain something that currently confuses you, for example), but occasionally it's a request to trivially reformat something, and no obvious reason why you haven't just done the reformatting in this edit. If you haven't time to do it all now, it doesn't need a placeholder to make a note to yourself to come back and do it when you can..
  • ...and, unless you've changed it since I last looked, there's at least one "X needs doing" that seems to have been done but the "X needs doing" tag is still there. Haven't been able to work out if not all X has been done (for some reason), or whoever did complete it left this tag (whether or not they've deleted othersz along the way). When I have time to to through it line-by-line (more work than to quickly write something like this, which is to explain things that are clearly not as self-evident as I had thought), maybe I'll be the one to remove the notice to that effect..

I have no doubt that some of my thinkings around these matters (and various site traditions/conventions, which may predate me and do definitely prefate you) are perhaps a little strange. Similarly, I find some of your thinking strange. Or at least what I imagine is your thinkings, based upon your occasional doings. As it is practically impossible to cover all the various aspects of thought (or ideas about your aspects of thought) in an Edit Summary, especially one with "Reverting edit by..." filler already in it, this is to make up for the rather limited and compressed 'explanation' you perhaps had to make do with previously.

And it's only my opinion, albeit based upon site consensus (messy and ever-changing as that is) that I've absorbed from my time here. Perhaps you wish to shift consensus, but I'd of course like you to at least know that this is what you're doing. If you don't know this, your well-meaning attempts to restandardise the groupçsnhive mind may just be more confusing than productive. Perhaps you may want to say "I don't think we should <foo> any more", rather than just de-<foo> everything without warning people that you might be treading on their metaphorical toes. Not that I can stop you, but every now and then I might be seeming to tread on your own toes (with no malicious intent), just because we're dancing to completely different beats. 82.132.246.216 17:10, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi!

There's no reason to remove it until you're removing the whole thing as solved. What even is the benefit of doing so?

That message is part of the default text for new comics. If someone has changed the incomplete tag, it's harder to notice that a specific reason has been created if the old text is still there. For these reasons, I believe editors are more likely to overlook what's written in the notice, thinking it only contains the default text.

[H]onestly, I restored it not for meta-ontological purposes

What's a meta-ontological purpose?

the strange removal of the PAGE CREATED BY bit. I appreciate that you may think that it confuses new readers, and I daresay that it does (a little bit), but it probably confuses them more when some new comics have this time-honoured bit of site culture and some do not.

Two things:

1. The main reason I remove it is to avoid the above: editors thinking nobody pointed out specific page issues. And not just newer editors, even I sometimes miss an incomplete reason because I SEE THE ALL CAPS TEXT AND THINK NOBODY CHANGED IT. (im not screaming)

2. Recently, I don't remove the joke from the LATESTCOMIC, unless it's really hard to see the actual incomplete reason.

"CREATED BY A BOT" is basically what it says on the tin, before any human has had a chance to ponder the newly added page,

That hasn't been the case for months now. Look at the OG versions of the pages. Editors are adding it wholesale.

...though, IMO, you should only normally change it as "first editor" (or "first editor with a good idea ror a joke to put there") with something to contribute into the Explanation and/or Transcript (or will do momentarily), not just as a "FIRST!"-type thing then leave it...
...and you should think twice before changing someone else's joke to your own; perhaps refine it (oapply mild corrections to grammar/spelling/whatever it's trying to reference), but if you just totally "no, MY IDEA!" it, what's to stop the next person going "no, no, MY IDEA!!"? Just accept what's there (or tweak it, honourably), you'll perhaps be able to get (and keep for a reasonable time) the subtle 'bragging rights' to a future comic, if everyone plays nice and doesn't just entirely change it on a whim. Or remove it for no good reason, before the whole tag is considered superfluous anyway...

I haven't considered this type of edit warring before, and I'm happy to stay away from it. I'm not sure whether the "you" was referring to me specifically, because I only edited the CREATED BY once or twice (i mostly remove it when it's old or hides the real reason a page is incomplete).

adding an "incomplete|X and Y need doing to this page", instead of just doing X and Y to the page, is a waste of edits

I've been trying to do that less recently

If you haven't time to do it all now, it doesn't need a placeholder to make a note to yourself to come back and do it when you can..

I thought this use was accepted. I do it because if someone else gets there before me, they can do it themselves. Could you suggest other ways for saving these small-but-needed edits?

unless you've changed it since I last looked, there's at least one "X needs doing" that seems to have been done but the "X needs doing" tag is still there.

I think I've always removed an incomplete tag I created myself for all comics that aren't the ~20 most recent if, after chacking the page, I notice the editor has forgotten (and I always check the edits within a few days unless im on vacation). Please feel free to remove all my or others' incomplete tags if you notice it's complete. I don't understand why you're saying you noticed one and seemingly didn't remove it? If the editor that fixes the page forgets, it's up to whoever notices first to remove it.

Similarly, I find some of your thinking strange. Or at least what I imagine is your thinkings, based upon your occasional doings.

Yeah I don't think I've ever explained my removals of the CREATED BY things. To summarise:

Reason number 1) editors thinking nobody pointed out specific page issues because they think it's still the default notice.

Reason number 2) the comic is old

Reason number 3) confuses new users, but in the last year or so I haven't worried about this because I removed the incomplete notices from the Main Page. Hopefully the newbies will look at the mainpage first.

Perhaps you may want to say "I don't think we should <foo> any more", rather than just de-<foo> everything without warning people that you might be treading on their metaphorical toes.

It's not that I want the tradition to stop, it's just that it gets in the way of productiveness. A notice is the most powerful thing we have to spread a message, and yet we use it as a joke which sometimes hides what's actually wrong with the page. I wish there were a way to keep the CREATED BY's and still allow for important notices to be highly visible. Currently, if I have to choose one, I choose the latter. Do you have any ideas about this? New templates, edits to the bot script, new fields for the existing template, a different notice type, etc?

Also, any thoughts on the topic above. Your suggestions are often a good start but then you stop replying :( ㅤ FaviFake (talk) 13:21, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Ok, my prior reply seems to have been not posted, for reasons I can only guess (dodgy connection, looked like it happened but I moved on too quick, or didn't notice I'd landed on Edit Conflict, something like that?). But I've also been way too busy to actively ponder if you've not bothered to respond to me, in turn.

Not going to recompose everything, at length, but Incomplete templates easily contain the original BOT text/user-version, as long as users don't go over-creative over it. Genuine reasons added to this are still visible. The BOT-original "don't delete this too soon" doesn't become any more superfluous than the now ubiquitous "editing it" link. For as long as the notice is 'new' on a new article, there's no reason at all to squeeze anything out in most circumstances. Don't underestimate the readership.

If you're adding a box back in for an old article that has passed such 'newness' (or where there never was one), keep it as businesslike as you wish, of course.

If you have a long, complicated list of things, it's probably a long, complicated article where you can site an Incomplete notice by the side of each troublesome item (as you have done).

Not going any further, like pointing you back at innumerable 'classic' examples of it all just working (whether new users or old users took the necessary hints), as that was a lot of wasted work from last time I 'replied'. But it's all there in the back-pagesz if you care to look. 82.132.245.128 16:45, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Short and sweet reply, I like it! You should have a dodgy connection more often :D I seem to care about the notice much less than you do, so, sure; I'll keep it on relatively new articles and do whatever if it's older and doesn't still have the original. I still wish there were an easier solution, but it's just a notice. --FaviFake (talk) 10:53, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

Questions

Dear FaviFake

I posted a new question on the Randall question thing. I have no clue how to use the Wiki, but I still did my best to post a question. If I did it wrong please forgive me and I'll do my best next time.

PS. The question I posted is all the way down, at least as I am writing now.

Little Timmy (talk) 01:30, 29 July 2025 (UTC)Little TimmyLittle Timmy (talk) 01:30, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

No worries, that was good. You can learn more about editing this wiki on explain xkcd:Editor FAQ. --FaviFake (talk) 08:50, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Restoring the mini Comic series

The messages regarding the definition of a proper "comic series" have been moved to Talk:Comic series. To add a new topic regarding the comic series, click here. --FaviFake (talk) 14:46, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Leaderboard

Wow, you probably know already but I’m just re-reminding you that you fell out of 1st place. Keep up the good contributions!

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 4,981 4,966 5,023 DollarStoreBa'al 2 1,848 1,831 1,907 Victoria 3 24 19 25 TheusafBOT 4 11 5 13 Trimutius 5 10 7 10 FaviFake 6 9 6 8 Utdtutyabthsc 7 7 5 6 R128 8 7 2 8 boB 9 6 3 6 Lp0 on fire 10 3 3 3 KelOfTheStars!

^April_fools^update!(talk) 09:57, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Oh well, I surely care more about this other list. Thanks! --FaviFake (talk) 13:09, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

I never knew this list existed! I wonder what’s behind it? The “well known” one is {{Special:ContributionScores/50/7/nosort,notools}} I guess, but what’s the one for this list? ^April_fools^update!(talk) 13:11, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Who knows! Maybe Mediawiki has the answer. --FaviFake (talk) 13:20, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Small Talk (Or Something Like That)

Hey, how's things going? Everything alright? Any wiki-wide events I missed? Really miss how things were before. -Tori 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 15:51, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

Hi welcome back!!! The only interesting thing imo opinion is that Randall replied to me again, I'm not sure if you saw that, see my userpage. :) --FaviFake (talk) 16:39, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Oh and the Comic series page was divided into main series and miniseries and is now just a list of transclusions so we don't have to keep 2 pages up to date. --FaviFake (talk) 16:41, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

"I'll omit this part because I'm not sure it should be published."

why? raeb 09:28, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

What? could you elaborate? --FaviFake (talk) 10:37, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

randall's reply. the answer that starts "Most of those were inside jokes sent to friends [...]" raeb 11:44, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Oh right. Some have said it's a bit personal. Now that the sitewide banner's off I'll reinstate it. Thx. --FaviFake (talk) 10:40, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

 ✓ Done  --FaviFake (talk) 10:42, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

A rational rationale?

You know, some people complain about explanations being too long. Copying a swathe of wikipedia about twice as large as the original explanation text seems about as odd as initially deciding to removing that text (which linked to the page in question, for the curious) possibly because you personally didn't know about it. It's ok, not everyone does know, even native speakers, but also maybe the treatment originally given to that part could be reworded to slightly more compact. (I liked the flippant bit. But I wouldn't have said it quite like that, myself.) Yet there's some confusion over your underkill-then-overkill approach. And if I was going to rewrite it, it'd be more considered than either excising or copypasting. Could have just been left alone, though. 82.132.237.85 17:27, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

It said singular they was considered incorrect, iirc, which is not really the case nowadays. I did a bit of ce before pasting it; my logic was: either add it back correctly, or remove the wrong part. --FaviFake (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Tori and I have an idea

Please check the proposals board for an idea to subvert the 255 character signature limit. --DollarStoreBa'al^converse 17:40, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

Template:comic discussion 1167

Hi FaviFake. I was looking through the unused templates page to try to do some cleanup on here when I noticed a template from back in 2013. You had originally tagged it as a page to delete, but then added a lot more to the template. Since it is still unused and I cannot surmise any purpose for it, I have re-tagged it. Would you mind explaining your thought process? Thanks, 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 16:36, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't remember why I used it, probably as a sandbox. It's unnecessary, thanks for flagging it.--FaviFake (talk) 10:58, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Contact Info Google Site

Hi FaviFake, what is the URL for your Google Site of contact info? I remember that you had posted it on here, but I cannot find it. I was experiencing Cloudflare errors in the past 24 hours and was unable to contact anyone on Explain XKCD. I would greatly enjoy it if we had some other form of communication outside of here. Thanks. 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 20:17, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Oh, thank god it's back. I noticed the outage and it seems someone had posted about it on reddit.

The website is https://sites.google.com/view/FaviFake, you can bookmark it if you want. I noticed you're also on Reddit (and Wikipedia iirc), so I might contact you there if there's a more serious outage. --FaviFake (talk) 10:58, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

   Reply

(new topic) • (contribs) • (jump to top)

Hoverboard

I glad that someone has looked at my changes to this game description.

I am sorry, however, that you disagree with my two main points.

Can we discuss?

I see no point in getting into a "reversion war" over comments to a comic.

Sprucegrouse (talk) 13:52, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Of course. I simply think your version is too odd:

The best way to enjoy this comic is just to play the game! (Just be sure that you play using a web browser other than Safari.) If you have not yet tried (hard) to play it "cold" already, do so now. Reading beyond this Alert first will deprive you of the best this game has to offer.

Mine:

The best way to enjoy this comic is just to play the game! If you didn't do that already, reading anything below will spoil you from truly enjoying the comic.

I don’t see the need of specifying browsers, and the complex language you used, in a spoiler alert. FaviFake (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Comic list numbers.

Had a look at all today's edits to the Comics-bar template, carefully, after making it fully correct. Though the other person apparently didn't spot it, and I didn't have enough space in the Explanation to say it in longhand, I think I need to appeal to you directly. Not entirely sure you realised what you were dealing with. Or you just have a weird idea of what's acceptibly correct.

If I'm actually wanting to look at the list that contains (say) comic 1500, I wouldn't find it by following the text "1500-<whatever>" that links to a 1501-2000 page. I would if I was followed the "<whatever>-1500" one, before that, that links to the explicitly 1001-1500 page. But quick scanning of the text might miss the obvious overlap and initially get you to explore only the latter. When you do, you get to the page that starts "2000, 1999, 1998, ...", then you scroll down to the bottom to find that it doesn't have the desired 1500 after all. (Before you ask, there are possible reasons that you might want to view the list item, and deliberately didn't go to the 1500 explanation page itself.) The explanation "unnecessary specificity" is at least misleading, and that edit made the whole top-bar misleading.

(Personally, I'd have gone with 1-499, 500-999, etc, even though the lack of a '0' makes the first one shorter. Each of them being (500n)+1 to 500(n+1), as it is, is also ok. But neither method is (500n) to 500(n+1), however you look at them.) 81.179.195.93 18:44, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Fine, sure. If someone is looking for exactly 1500, rounding it will be annoying for them, but I thought the nicer round numbers were more important than full correctness. But I don't mind, you can change it back. There are bigger fishes to fry. --FaviFake (talk) 21:26, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

That's a very strange thought to have had, here in the home of mathematical nitpicking, nerd sniping, over-anaylsing and all-round adherence to the ideals of accuracy and/or precision. I'm just surprised that it spent so much time with a partial off-by-one error.

Although I didn't actually personally notice it until one or more other people did and at least partially tried to fix it. I suppose we all have our blind spots! Though maybe this is one of those cases where some people, once they see the issue, couldn't unsee it. 81.179.195.93 22:28, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

2

`^ -_ /| /\ -\ /_ /` -\ -\ /` -` /\ %20 `^ ‘_ -`%20 -`|_ %20 |_ -` `’ -_ %20 ‘_ -’ /_ ‘_

^UP|DOWN -LEFT_RIGHT %20SPACE /DIAGDOWNLEFT \DIAGDOWNRIGHT `DIAGUPLEFT ‘DIAGUPRIGHT 204.137.100.1 (talk) 21:45, 12 November 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Ok, I've not worked out the exact symbolic logic, in use, but the plaintext is obvious. Then the significance of the tetragrams may be the final puzzle. (Sorry, Favi, they put this here. For whatever purpose.) 82.132.245.223 22:30, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

DOYOUNEEDHELP 204.137.100.1 (talk) 22:48, 12 November 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Personally, no. Not sure about you, though. ;) 82.132.245.223 00:21, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

HELP

Beetle? --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse 14:30, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

wut FaviFake (talk) 14:36, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

IAMNOTJUSTANYBODY 204.137.100.1 14:43, 13 November 2025 (UTC)