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Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Community Portal
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Proposals (+post)
Place for ideas and suggestions to improve the wiki's design and organization on general issues.

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Technical (+post)
Technical issues regarding the site, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests.

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Coordination (+post)
Community-managed page for coordinating content editing and maintenance tasks.

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Admin requests (+post)
Problems requiring assistance from an admin. User problems, changes to protected pages, etc.

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Miscellaneous (+post)
Place for general chit-chat about virtually anything that doesn't fit anywhere else.

View all Community Portal sections at once here
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This is the single-page edition of the Community portal. Conversations are transcluded here, so following this page will not follow the conversations.

Proposals


ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS

Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Proposals.

Removing unnecessary 3-comic categories?

I count eight categories on explainxkcd that satisfy the following properties: 1. They have only three comics in them. 2. They aren't really a comic series; they just feature or reference a comic theme. 3. They aren't Featuring some person or character. In short, they seem to have no real reason to exist. (They're thesones.) So my proposal: remove them. -Account (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

In addition, there are thirteen more four-comic categories that also seem rather in need of deletion.
Shouldn't the community at least have some time to expand on these categories, in case they're currently incomplete? For example, Category:The Matrix is on your list and now contains 7 strips, and Category:Tournament bracket got its 5th entry after your post. Even if they're not, a theme category can save some typing in the search box (and is probably also cheaper in terms of server resources than all the searches it'll eliminate). Promethean (talk) 22:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
So what do you think the limit should be for categories? Should we create a category when two comics mention the same topic? Three? --Account (talk) 16:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Three seems reasonable to me, and I could see a case being made for two. Categories aren't expensive. Promethean (talk) 00:17, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

New transcript

The transcripts in the comic pages are quite inconsistent, especially in the brackets where you have to describe what happens in the panels. If I understand correctly, the transcripts are for people to copy the text in the comic without having to type them out. If that's the case, then I think propose a new transcript. This transcript should have the comic with the words erased, and then the copy-pasteable words on top of that. Such a transcript would have no room for error, which would let anyone contribute to a seamless transcript.

The aim of the transcript is to provide a text-only version of the comic that would allow someone who is visually impaired to use a text-to-speech converter to understand the comic and also in a machine readable format for searching (see the Editor FAQ). Anything using mark-up, images or anything other than plain text will interfere with this and so should be avoided in the transcript. AlChemist (talk) 18:22, 23 November 2019 (UTC)User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al

Add title text and heading to transcript section

It has always bothered me that the transcript did not include the title text since it contributes so much to the humor of the comics. Also, it looks to me like the comic heading is sometimes included as part of the transcript and sometimes left out. I checked the previous proposals and did not see any discussion of these issues. Please consider having a policy going forward of including the heading and the title text within the transcript. Rtanenbaum (talk) 22:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

To my understanding (and also others, see discussion directly above) one of the main points of the transcript is to make the comics searchable, the other is, to make it readable when images are not an option. In both cases the comic's name and the title text mentioned above and below the image should be sufficient. I personally think this convention is fine. Lupo (talk) 08:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Pardon me -- (and, thanks for your patience) -- if this is too off-topic (/slash "boring") or TMI (see Information overload#Web accuracy e.g.), ...OR if this should have been posted elsewhere ...instead of here.
IMHO the term "title text" is a misnomer. I think the term is used to refer to the little (or, BIG!) pop-up -- (kinda like what is sometimes called a "tooltip", but ... aren't those usually pretty small?) -- that appears when one "hovers" his mouse [pointer] over an XKCD cartoon. ...at least, according to the "Talk:" page section Template talk:comic#The template field called .22titletext.22 which was added almost 3 years ago. I think that calling it a "BONUS text" would be even better than calling it a "caption". However, [to me], either one of those terms would make sense WAY more than calling it a "title text" ... for reasons which are stated in the [Template] "Talk:" page section mentioned (and ... LINKED TO) above.
Any Comments? . . *** Thanks! *** for listening! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 08:57, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi Mike, I see your point, and yes, something like "bonus text" might be a bit more descriptive. But FWIW, I think the reason it's called "title text" is because that's the text that appears in the title attribute of the HTML <img> tag of the comic's image on the xkcd.com site. For example, at https://xkcd.com/2364/, the code for the comic image looks like this:
<img src="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parity_conservation.png"
     title="Bloody Mary is made of antimatter. It explains so much."
     alt="Parity Conservation"
     srcset="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parity_conservation_2x.png 2x">
In there, you can see the title text as title="Bloody Mary is made of antimatter. It explains so much." See here for more explanation about that, and some discussions about it here. – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 03:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
While the current layout suits the first purpose (ease of search), I would argue that having the "title text" come before in the page layout, and in a completely different section, makes it fail the second (accessibility). Often the contents of the title text are a continuation of the humour in the strip, so it's about as useful as having the explanation ahead of the transcript as far as accessibility is concerned. My suggestion on this matter is to either a) move the transcript to the top of the content, maybe within a collapse section or b) not claim it for accessibility.
As for the secondary topic, I've seen it called "Author Text" before, as it is text by the author and most people won't care what the element attribute is named. 64.114.211.89 06:55, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia links.

I think the links to Wikipedia should have symbols, so it's not confusing which ones lead to other comic pages.

It's time to remove the HTTPS lock icon

Explainxkcd should do the same thing that browser makers have done: treat HTTPS as the modern standard, and mark HTTP as the deviation instead.

Here are appropriate replacement icons: 

* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unlock_Icon_Red_(32_bit).png
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unlock_Icon_Red_(4_bit).gif

- Frankie (talk) 12:49, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

New page for Randall's regular column in the New York Times

Randall Munroe has been writing and illustrating a monthly science column in the New York Times. I suggest a page in this Wiki, indexing those columns. For some reason the New York Times itself does not provide such an index. If they ever do add one, we would still have a topic article here, similar to the one we have for the What If blog, that could link to their index. --JohnB (talk) 00:47, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

New York Times column: Good Question

Good Question is a more-or-less monthly column written and illustrated by Randall Munroe in the Science section of the New York Times, beginning in November 2019. The columns give serious answers to science questions, in Munroe's inimitable style.

The New York Times website ordinarily requires registration, and its content is always protected by copyright. Most particularly it is not under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License the way xkcd is. The good news: anyone can register for a free digital subscription to the New York Times, with access to 'recent' Science articles among some others, but outside of that only five articles per month. See Free Articles.

Unlike for many of their other regular columnists, the New York Times does not provide a clickable link either on the byline Randall Munroe or on the column title Good Question. The following tables are intended to correct that omission.

New York Times columns by Randall Munroe
Column Headline Byline Date
SCIENCE What Makes a Red Sky at Night (and at Morning) Randall Munroe Aug. 13, 2019
GOOD QUESTION If I Touched the Moon, What Would It Feel Like? Randall Munroe Nov. 12, 2019
GOOD QUESTION Is Earth Getting Bigger Over Time? Randall Munroe Dec. 10, 2019
GOOD QUESTION How Fast Can a Human Run? Randall Munroe Jan. 21, 2020 / Feb. 7, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What’s the World’s Worst Smell? Randall Munroe Feb. 17, 2020 / Feb. 26, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What if Galileo Had Dropped Bobsleds From the Tower of Pisa? Randall Munroe March 10, 2020
GOOD QUESTION How’s the View From a Spinning Star? Randall Munroe April 7, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What’s the Sweetest, Crispiest Way to Stay Safe in a Car Crash? Randall Munroe May 11, 2020
GOOD QUESTION Can You Boil an Egg Too Long? Randall Munroe June 9, 2020
GOOD QUESTION Could You Make a Snowball of Neutrinos? Randall Munroe July 7, 2020
New York Times columns about Randall Munroe
Column Headline Byline Date
LINK BY LINK This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix Noam Cohen May 26, 2008
BITS Tech’s Favorite Cartoonist Enters Mainstream Publishing Noam Cohen March 14, 2014
SCIENCE He’s Glad You Asked Kenneth Chang Nov. 3, 2014
BOOKS Randall Munroe Explains It All for Us Alexandra Alter Nov. 23, 2015
SCIENCE Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High School Kenneth Chang March 21, 2016
SCIENCE Randall Munroe of ‘XKCD’ Explains the Human Body, Elevators and the Saturn 5 (Actual pages from Thing Explainer) March 21, 2016
Looks goods to me, you should probably make that an article of its own, maybe New York Times: Good Question? --SlashMe (talk) 22:58, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Ambox notice.png I went and added the page, here: New York Times: Good Question --JohnB (talk) 02:42, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Bring back the {{{1}}} template! please

Can someone restore the {{rw}} template? I insist on its existence. I further assure that it will be of much use. It was deleted by an admin. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

nm, did it myself. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 04:15, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Link to high-resolution images?

The wiki includes the "standard" resolution images, but would it be worth adding a link to the higher-resolution image on each page? It appears that this could be automated in at least a strong majority of cases: if the standard image is xyzzy.png, the hi-res one is xyzzy_2x.png . BunsenH (talk) 22:10, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Please stop adding this to the explanations. This is not needed. Kynde (talk) 08:56, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
The high-resolution image was quite useful in parsing the "Amelia's Farm Fresh Cookies" comic. I'm not convinced that the hi-res images are commonly known. I've been reading xkcd for about 7 years and hadn't heard about them until I stumbled across a mention of them in one of the Discussions here. What is the harm in having a one-line link here? -- not, I emphasize, the actual image, which would take up a great deal of space. BunsenH (talk) 17:00, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
I didn't know about the high-resolution images either. While it might be a bit repetitive to add a full sentence to every comic's explanation, I agree that having some easy way to link to the hi-res image on xkcd.com could be handy. For example, maybe a "hi-res" or "2x" button before the "Next >" button above the comic in Template:comic? That's a bit extreme, but I added an example template, derived from the existing Template:comic, to demonstrate how that could work:
With those changes to the template, for all comics as of 1084 the "2x" button would automatically appear. (No need to go back and change all comics.) This assumes the images hosted on explainxkcd generally have the same filename as on xkcd.com, but there are optional parameters to override the filename or omit the "2x" button altogether for specific exceptions. I'm not suggesting we actually go ahead and implement this; but if there was enough interest, an admin would be needed anyway, to make the changes within Template:comic, which is currently protected. – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 23:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, I like this. BunsenH (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
My proposal is that a bot should add it automatically to the description of each comic image when available so that it does not take up space anywhere and is easily accessible. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 13:49, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to replace the top section with this...

I have come up with a new design for the top section of all community portals... It’s located here... https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=explain_xkcd:Sandbox&oldid=199882 — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 14:15, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Crystal Clear app ktip.png
Proposals

Ideas to improve the wiki's design and organization can be added here. (+post)

Crystal Clear app package settings blue.pngCrystal Clear teamwork.pngMop.svgInternet-group-chat.svg

I made a template for welcoming new users.

Logo.png
Welcome, Community portal, to explain xkcd!
 Dialog-information on.svgPreferences-system.svgEdit-find-replace.svgTools-hammer.svgHelp-browser.svg
  • Be sure to give our FAQ a read so that you can learn to participate as effectively as possible.
  • If you are interested in editing the wiki, you can help reduce the number of incomplete explanations and transcripts.
  • See the Wikipedia pages on editing if you are new to editing wikis in general.
  • Browse all the xkcd comics by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
  • Check out our community portal for general chit-chat about the site and xkcd.
  • Remember to sign with --~~~~ when leaving a comment.

Any ideas? Suggestions? Objections? — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 16:35, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

this is now in at the top of the Main Page --Jeff (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
Why? This looks like a template intended for (newly created) UserPages. And it replaces interesting data from the frontpage with something not useful for casual visitors (or even non-casual lurkers). I'd undo this change in an instant if I had authority to do so. ((The template looks good, to clarify, just obviously not intended to be in that location.)) 141.101.76.154 01:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Jeff is the owner of explainxkcd you dingus. Beanie talk 13:46, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

comic groups

i think we should have a tech problems list of comics ( as there are quite a few)

We already have a category for it. Category:Cueball_Computer_Problems. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 13:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Archiving interactive comics?

Has the possibility of archiving interactive comics been discussed? Of course, users can view them on the original website, but it’d be nice to have a working backup of sorts, especially considering some of the interactive comics haven’t aged too well in terms of compatibility or support (e.g. Umwelt displays a blank page for me.)

It probably wouldn’t be possible to do so directly from mediawiki, but I’d be happy to experiment with cloning a few of them on another server, or as simple PHP pages that could be embedded, if it would help. Most of the interactive comics appear to be implemented mostly in client side JS anyways, so replicating them shouldn’t be too bad.

Tague (talk) 13:12, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Replace head shots of characters in the wiki with these new and high quality head shots!

https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/n2u28r/i_took_head_shots_of_the_reccuring_characters_and/

These are not only upscaled, but are all squares and have all the features of the characters. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 03:33, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I think you should do it (because higher quality = better) :] Beanie talk 13:42, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
There seemed to be no objections, so I went ahead and did it. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 12:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Cleaning up Special: Wanted Templates

I decided to take a look at the list of wanted templates. Imagine my surprise when I see that a lot of the templates wanted were mis-capitalizations or misspellings of existing templates. I hereby request permission to create redirect pages for some of the most popular errors. I intend to do five, wait a week, and do another five as to not spam the wiki. I will not begin for a week, at which point I will only proceed if nobody has said no OR a moderator has said yes. May I proceed? {)|(}Quill{)|(} 11:34, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Knit Cap

Sometimes Knit cap has long hair, sometimes short. Is Knit Cap meant to be a male character that sometimes has long hair, or is Knit Cap sometimes female? I want to clear this up before I finish editing 1350: Lorenz. Beanie talk 13:40, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Hm, in the 'Enemy Pikachu used theft' scene in 1350: Lorenz, Knit Cap's hair looks merely slightly unkempt. From this, I will assume that Knit Cap just sometimes has long hair and is always male. Beanie talk 13:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Ok, the official transcripts say that Knit Cap is 'A guy in a knit cap'. I will take that to mean that Knit Cap is definitely male.

We still need to complete some explanations like this one:

I think should change the banner shown at the top of every page to show a comic that is still incomplete, like Hoverboard or something. Sure (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Update MediaWiki

explainxkcd is running MediaWiki 1.30.0, which reached end-of-life in June 2019. There are likely security issues because of this, so please update MediaWiki to the latest version (or LTS) using the instructions here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading Cam1170 (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

It seems like the mysql is too outdated for the upgrade Starstar (talk) 17:37, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
Upgrade MySQL thenAaron Liu (talk) 03:16, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Does anybody know how to contact an admin for this? I have no clue. Cam1170 (talk) 03:25, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed

I can edit this page, but I can't create my own talk page! Starstar (talk) 17:34, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Upgrade Icons

The icons look quite old fashion (the ones on the sidebar and the ones above the editing text area), could they be replaced? Starstar (talk) 23:07, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

They probably could be, but changing icons the moment they're not absolutely cutting-edge just means using new icons that are as easily edged-out (as tastes change yet again), meanwhile annoying those who prefered the first set and rather wouldn't see a revolving door of ever-evolving aesthetics.
If I had a vote, I'd say keep the simple glyphs we're used to. If any are not totally obvious (perhaps some would not be, without the text captions) consider revising, but I think you'll get less agreement on what new images to use than that which would advocate the retention of the current ones.
Alternately, it would definitely be on-theme to find Randall-drawn illustrations to replace them all. But the constraints of adapting (say) any particular stick-figure-world depiction of randonmess to meaningfully replace the current Random Page icon (at the same scale!) might be less than optimal.172.70.162.57 01:08, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Make searchbar not case-sensitive

The way the search bar is currently set, it only suggests comic links when what is being typed is capitalized ("Assigning Numbers" rather than "assigning numbers" for instance). Would be nice if we could make it not case-sensitive :D Wielder of the Staple Gun (talk) 02:48, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Good idea. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:46, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Do not allow ordinary users to edit redirects that are just numbers

This overrides the default page you're sent to when you check a comic; e.g. recently a vandal edited the page entitled "2614" so it overrode the actual page, 2614: 2 on the main page.

The problem would be when creating a new page and the overrides are needed... ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

ExplainXKCD discord (or other platform)?

I'm just saying if we had instant messages, pings etc. there would be a lot faster reaction to vandals. The community portal is hard to get attention from and comments are all very well and good but conversations on Discord could get very quick response, and people could request edits, organise page re-writing etc. Idk if we can get "official" backing by anyone high up but we could make one anyways?

The problem with platforms like Discord or others is that we can't guarantee that everyone has access to them; on the wiki, anyone can edit, while some people may not have access to discord or such. A possible solution would be having a sort of service built into the wiki, but not sure how that might be done. Besides, this is a wiki, not an xkcd chat site. This is a good idea, though. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:43, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Anyone can create a discord account like anyone can create an account on this wiki. You don't even need a dedicated client/app as it can run in browser. Just like the wiki. Just my two cents. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:28, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
Some user may not wish anyone to be able to contact them outside this wiki. You do not need an acount to edit this wiki... Kynde (talk) 17:14, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

So, I got a question about transcripts.

A lot of comics show links (e.g.: all the ones with a drawing of wikipedia on it), and the transcripts don't really have a standard. In the transcript, should it be an actual link or just blue text or what? 162.158.79.52 15:03, 2 June 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

I'd say that if the linked thing (presuming it's a real linkable target!) is linked in the Explanation, it doesn't need to be (re)linked in the ostensibly flat-and-descriptive Transcript.
And I know that some Transcripts are hypertext formatted to emulate the thing they are transcribed from (whether bolded, enbiggened, sub-/superscripted and and/or given the hue) but maybe primarily the "[:Text that describes the text]" should be explaining the details, in case the screen-reader (or text-searching algorithm grepping the Transcript text for "green text" or "superscript" instances can't quite work it out from the various style-tags that can be applied to that effect in so many an various ways.
But this is IMO, I don't know if there's a specific policy about it, but it is how I've seen it vaguely applied... Not everywhere quite so consistently, though. 172.70.91.128 20:28, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
We try to keep links and explanations out of the transcript. The link and the explanation goes in the explanation section above. Kynde (talk) 17:12, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Use 2X Images

Apparently xkcd.com provides double-sized versions of almost every comic if you add _2x to the end of the image name. For instance,

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/watches.png

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/watches_2x.png

Since we are in 2022 and computers can load high-resolution images just fine, and they are easier to read, I propose that this website should use the provided double-sized images. Really, I think Randall ought to be doing this himself as well. 172.68.18.107 12:22, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

While I agree with using the higher quality images which are default on xkcd.com for many people, there has been discussion about this issue already. At the moment, the consensus seems to be to continue using the 'standard' size to 'use less space,' and instead link to the higher quality image on the image page. —theusaf (talk) 14:35, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
I think I may have mentioned it on that link (or similar), but often when the 2x image is used (or even an unwise too wide image/unbreakable-line-of-content) the explainxkcd site cannot sensibly handle it and it forces the default 'page width' of stuff into a zoomed out narrower column to the left (including the margin-line normally inset a dozen or so pixels in from the right) so that browser-window can display the whole of this wide element.
While "saving space" does apply to server resources and viewer download bandwidth/quotas (e.g.53kb vs 109kb) may seem insignificant, screen-space can be badly hit by this.
The motherlode xkcd site has code behind it to (usually?) serve the right image for the right displays, but explainxkcd isn't currently equipped to do the same choose-and-provide (which would need both images uploaded to it and a revised {{comic}} implementation, once we work out the method it could use). And I've never seen any case where the 'low quality' comic is conversely too small and narrow to appreciate (though occasionally the larger one reveals minor drawing details that have been obscured by the downscaling), just when the _2x one makes everything else too small.
...this may not apply to everyone's browser implementation, but it definitely happens, and consistently, on my usual Chrome and/or Firefox on Windows and/or Android platforms (according to which system I happen to be on at the time). 172.70.162.147 21:20, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
ExplainXKCD actually does have the capability to do this. For example, see 1079:_United_Shapes. It generates multiple images, automatically choosing one based on screen size (similar to how xkcd.com does it). The bot could use the `imagesize` parameter to keep the image within the page's width by using the 'standard' image size. This does add a button labeled "click to enlarge," but if that is annoying, the comic template can be modified to hide that button if specified.
Here is what it might look like:
Collapsed content
Capri Suns
[As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"
Title text: [As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"
which is clearer than the original comic page and the same size. —theusaf (talk) 05:20, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
As specificaly implemented above, I certainly see no immediate problem (need to check across machines/devices), but I suspect that part of the mechanism here is the "imagesize = 315x317px", which seems like it would need (albeit by the page-create bot, algorithm8cally) to be tailored to the 'input' image, not always in this ratio). I'm not technically conversant with the nature of your back-end scripting and doubtless it's all possible (scripts can do almost anything... once you know that they (may) need to do them and rewritten them to catch all the contingencies ;) ), but I don't know know if that's something you've accounted for (e.g. test with a three/four-panel wide comic, or the Earth Temperature Timeline or whatever, and see if it can facilitate them all nicely). Not to mention that if theusafBOT goes offline, the manual-add instructions (as used prior to your replacing the prior functioning bot, for which I thank you) also need this extra step of user involvement to be done, whereas usually the fallback manual method needed little thought in this direction (or indeed however much carbon or silicon there is in the 'brain' involved) except for exceptional circumstances or those rare prior slip-ups by Randall.
I'm just going through the first obvious issue (to me), didn't mean to concentrate so many words on just this before even checking everything else! 172.70.91.80 09:15, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
Basically, on the backend, the bot will fetch both the small and the large images, and measure the size of the small image, which is what it will use for the imagesize. I have actually used this system in the past for this bot, but was told to revert it due to the "click comic to enlarge" text. As for if the bot goes offline, there is no problem with falling back to the small image, and if editors want to, I can also provide instructions for using the large image. I'm mostly just waiting to see what others think about this. Are there any other problems to consider? —theusaf (talk) 14:44, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm making an App that collects web comics

My original idea was to use the rss feed present on xkcd, and other webcomic websites, but now im starting to wonder if there was a way to make a better service, that allowed users to maybe look at older comics, and explanations and such as well, and thats how i happened to come across explainxkcd.com. The RSS Feed for this website, would be pretty helpful, if it were like reddit's but apparently, the rss feed is only maintained for the home page. I was wondering if you guys provided that data through an API or something? Also are there wikis for other famous comics like this one? Any other suggestions and ideas for the app are welcome 🙌🙌.

Comics edited after their publication

many more comics have been changed than are in Category:Comics edited after their publication ! please add them (i already have done two i remember off the top of my head) 172.70.134.223 12:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

What if 2 book page creation

What if 2 has come out, but I don't know which page is to be created. There is already a comic under the same name. ClassicalGames (talk) 08:54, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Default to 3 Section Headings for Each Explanation: Non-Obvious Info, Recap, and Background Trivia

This is a proposal that all new comic explanations should, by default, have 3 Sections:

I. Explanation of the Non-Obvious (an actual explanation of the non-obvious elements of the comic for the average reader who might not understand the references/joke/relevant science)

II. Full Recap

III. Background Trivia

Most of us can agree that Category I is where the value of this website shines.

But today, all 3 of these categories of explanation are typically merged together, making it hard to find the Category I nuggets of goodness.

If we make these 3 section headings the default on every comic explanation, then this default will helpfully nudge editors to put the juiciest stuff up top, and not to clutter that section up with fluff or trivia.

——

As an example, take the recent comic #2878 about Astronomer Happiness and Supernova distance.

The main thing a lay reader would want to know — the Category I information — is…

..That the shape of the graph is probably a clever reference to a Light Curve, a type of supernova graph

..why astronomers like it when a supernova is close, and what happens when it gets too close

Everything else in the (currently) very wordy explanation gets in the way of the lay reader finding out these two things. It’s a bunch of Category II and Category III info that makes it hard to tease out the Category I info. It’s not BAD information, but it’s sandpaper. It’s friction slowing down the average reader.

Obviously I could go in and edit this particular comic, and I often do this kind of edit, but I think this issue pops up for most explanations, so I think changing the standard default interface will help everyone put their contribution into the right section.

In sum, my proposal would elevate Category I info to the top of each explanation, so instead of full recaps, we get right into the explanation that is going to be most efficiently illuminating for the average, non-expert reader, answering the most common questions.

Laser813 (talk) 10:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

In general (if I get dibs on the edit, or think I can legitimately re-edit/rearrange), I do try to go for "hook, line, sinker" format (i.e. establish the basics, relate that to what the comic shows, move on to any relevent speculations/extrapolations), very like your setup. Though it is often much too complicated (multi-layered, cross-disciplinary, etc, so that maybe it has to be interwoven 'mini explanations' per tabulated item) so I'm not sure how easy it would be to enforce a strict structure. I think there's merit to the principle, though. Assuming we can all agree what each comic needs focus on (apply that problem to the following proposal too!), as I've occasionally inserted a sort of "first you need to know <subject>" into an established cold-start explanation ("you see <foo>" only for a later editor to consider it more an afterthought and shuffle it to later ("you see <foo>" ... "<foo> is part of <subject>"), or variations on such layouts. Especially as different people have different ideas as to what's obvious/can be keyword-wikilinked and what needs more waffle to properly enlighten readers.
Also, prosaic variation is a good thing. Too formulaic and it could be (whilst accurate) considered too robotic, so some leaway should really always be allowed as we collectively bash together a community interpretation and elaboration. Within communal guidelines, clearly. 172.69.194.203 15:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

FAQ Style Editing should be the norm

Simply, we should experiment with more FAQ-style explanations.

We think of the top questions that the average reader might have about a comic, and we use those as bolded headers to explain the most curious/confusing/subtle/sciency parts of the comic.

The structure would be this (using a recent comic as an example)…

Q: Why did Randall use this shape of graph? A: It’s likely a clever reference to a Light Curve, a similarly shaped graph in the study of supernovae that…

Q: Why do astronomers prefer it when supernovae are closer? A: It makes it easier to glean information because…

Laser813 (talk) 10:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

sidebar revamp

I think that the sidebar looks plain and it should have a new design. It could be voted on by users Moderator (talk) 02:16, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

In leiu of you telling us what you think would be better, my starting vote is that I'm perfectly happy with that 'plain'. If it has the links I might need, why does it need a reskin? Or, worse, a functional revamp which probably removes the easy to use bits I was using already.
...could you do a mock-up screenshot (or render equivalents directly in markup) of before/after side by side, at least? 172.69.194.120 03:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

My biggest problem is it doesn’t scroll down with you which can be a big pain Moderator (talk) 01:43, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Don't know about anyone else, but (when not on a desktop) I read this on a tablet, in landscape, with the effective window quite short (ratio of 1:2 with width, approaching 1:3.5 with already narrowed onscreen keyboard popped up) and if I'm scrolled to the top I see nothing beyond Browse Comics.
If we assume separate scroll-control on the sidebar, setting Main Page at the top of browser pane gives What Links Here at the bottom. Now, I rarely use the next three links (or at least reach those pages using them), and separate scrolling wouldn't stop me even seeing the even lower Ad bit (but it would defeat the entire purpose of the Ad, in that position, whether or not I bother to notice it these days).
So whatever missing about you propose, I'm betting it would impact me. Perhaps not negatively, but I've seen enough awful assumptions about my screen-area in the name of scroll-free design. Including the "give us permission (or not) to give you cookies" popovers where it appears the actual buttons to confirm (or deny, or go somewhere to review and customise, if they have that option) are beyond the bottom of my screen. I can temporarily rotate the screen, of course, but often I just back out and don't bother in those cases. I wouldn't be reticent to rotate this site, on occasion, but I'd really rather not have to, if I can be so selfish and stick-in-the-mud, because websites just are not good to use (even temporarily) in narrow-portait mode. (What's worse is the websites that detect I'm on a mobile platform and redesign styles/placements on-the-fly to 'fit portrait view', assuming a vertical smartphone, regardless of my actual viewport orientation, etc.)
So, please, a hard no from me. Notwithstanding that just as solidly "always browse in portrait" people might be overjoyed at changes that would give them a better site design. But that's a tricky circle to square (or letterbox!), and not what you were suggesting anyway (now we know what it is). I just want to plea that any changes be made with a very good idea of all the knock-on effects of 'improving' certain edge-cases, especially when it comes to yet other edge-cases. 172.70.85.23 10:29, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

New Logo and Banner Proposals

I have new logo and banner proposals for this site.
They're made on Scratch, an all-ages block-based programming language, and are in the style of Right Click.
Here they are!
Logo proposal: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_proposal_for_explain_xkcd.png
Banner proposal: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banner_proposal_for_explain_xkcd.png 172.69.71.37 (talk) 01:54, 19 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I can't see the xkcdicity of the logo, really. The banner is certainly flavourful in the right way (does it scale down well? ...is that what your use of Scratch is for, as opposed to standard static Photoshop/GIMP image editing?), but not sure it'll work better for the current top-left-of-page xkcd (with three xkcd figurses idling away, sat on the letters).
Decent concept art for something else related, certainly. I could believe it was a Randall's-own interactive comic front-end of some kind (which would make sense of the "play button" that is the "►"-bit). Given that it's now in a programming system already, have you tried making a drag'n'click game of the idea of linking/looping the blue-trail, and animating the hanging-on characters? 172.70.90.29 13:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
It's an arrow, not a play button. Get it right. 172.69.71.72 (talk) 01:05, 20 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Hold your horses... I was just trying to find a good reason for the whatever-it-is triangle to be there (gave the example of a 'play' button in my speculated usefulness of it). And it isn't really obviously any more of an arrow (c.f. "→"), either. I like your(?) banner's use of xkcd-figures, just not sure where the logo exhibits any form of being xkcd-related, except by the literal reading of it.
Perhaps if it were "xkcd font" (i.e. artfully composited from actual samples of Randall's ALLCAPS comic-writing) then it wouldn't matter so much, but I just wouldn't say it was any more on-brand than the current logo/etc. This being intended as constructive criticism, I hope you understand. And there's more opinions than mine, so maybe I've indeed just missed some point that everyone else (especially named-users) have already realised. 172.70.86.5 02:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Regarding precision in the Unexplained popup

Would it be possible to add an extra decimal point for the sake of precision? Currently, it shows that 0% of comics are unexplained, which is (as of 13:21 UTC on March 27, 2024) incorrect. It's a small thing, but it's rather annoying. 162.158.158.233 (talk) 13:23, 27 March 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

With the current 2911 comics (give or take #404), 0.1% would be slightly under 3 comics. You'd need at least three before 0.1% appeared instead of the equally unuseful 0.0%.
I'm of the "at least give everyone a week before you unilaterally declare it 'done'..." camp, so right now just the latest M/W/F comic incomplete would hover at a token 0.1%.
(Actually, from two (0.06...% rounded up) to 4 (0.13...% rounded down. The good news is that it'll be almost seven years until two-rounded-up is insufficient, but also up to six-rounded-down is now "0.1%", if I've not goofed the carries/etc.)
If going to the trouble of editing it to 1DP, make it 2DP with exactly the same editing effort..?

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3184 xkcd comics, and only 52 (1.64%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

(As of time of posting, the above says "only 2 (0.07%)". From 0.0687049...% rounded up to 2DP.)
Though given that we're only going to go into the future,[citation needed] I suggest we can state the flat-out number. It's not now really going to be as scarily huge as it might have been, as the actual percentage becomes generally less significant.
And, for niceness, give it a grammatically/factually agreeable form:
General form
... and {{#ifeq: <!-- count here --> | 0 | no | <!-- count here --> }} comic{{#ifeq: <!-- count here --> | 1 | | s }} [[:Category:Incomplete explanations|{{#ifeq: <!-- count here --> | 1 | is | are }} incomplete]]. ...
Zero cases (hardcoded)
... and no comics are incomplete. ...
One case (hardcoded)
... and 1 comic is incomplete. ...
Multiple cases (hardcoded)
... and 42 comics are incomplete. ...
Current cases (dynamic)
... and 52 comics are incomplete. ...
...easy to replicate to get "Help us finish them!" to change (upon a zero-test truth) to "But they all might be improvable!". Or change the :Cat:Link to not even be a link when zero, with alternate phrasing dodged over to in order to avoid "no comics are incomplete" in other ways.
I wrote the above for minimal nesting of overlapping conditions. You might prefer just to go with {{#ifeq: <count> | 0 | <whole "zero cases" version> | {{#ifeq: <count> | 1 | <whole "single case" version> | <whole "plurality of cases" version> }} }} - both approaches involve repetitions, but maybe this other one can be given a degree of wikimarkup-readability within each case, to take pity on future editors. 172.70.160.166 16:02, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Hear me out: What If? discussion page.

That's it. That's my idea. Go crazy, everyone. Psychoticpotato (talk) 14:05, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Yup, I've been thinking the same thing. I would like a page on each What If entry. Maplestrip (talk) 07:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
I've thought about this, over the years. Having 'a page' (rather than the summary table, in the overview page, etc) does sound more completist than what we currently have but I then tend to hit the main ontological problem...
In the What-Ifs, Randall takes a 'simple' question and then explains the consequences. At length. A 'comic page' structure (starting with how we'd deal with the multiple midpoint images, so we would stray far from using the {{comic}} introduction) that followed the header(image,etc)/explanation/transcript/(trivia)/included-comments format would be silly and have many parts inappropriate. Remove the Transcript, for starters. Or need a mini-Transcript for each 'illustrative' image. (e.g. ":[Black Hat:] What if we tried more power?", several times.)
Is there an actual need to explain Randall's explanation..? Because that's the only thing 'we' can do. Which is rather silly, and seems like it would take a small (entertainingly rambling) essay and expand it into a large (pedantically rambling) one.
Or else we just straight-copy the What-If over here as a 'backup'-blag? Allowable, but not exactly a USP, there'll be Internet Archive and personal copies, should things go bad at Randall's end. Not really a noble-cause.
My suggestion, as to how to cover the remaining "explanation gap" and provide a useful 'service' that's worthwhile maintaining, is maybe two What If? (Blag) sub-pages:
  1. A place to collate all inter-text images (and hover-/title-texts), and Transcript them, for easy searching.
    • e.g. when you know you want to refer to the "bomb to the eyeball" one (internally or for something external) but think you might not realise where you need to go to (the supernova neutrinos one!) just by scrolling a bare comic list.
    • Or you'd like to see, at a glance, how many different places the Black Hat Try More Power running joke occurs.
    • Even if you don't want to open the page itself (160+ 'comics' with say 5 images each, is an 800ish-image page, less rationalising 'repeats' to a single entry), it should at least give you a search result for "dry waterfall" that points you in the direction of the "Niagra Straw" one (and maybe others?).
    • I could see these being brief Image/Titletext/Transcript/(optional explanatory context), but not enough material to make them separate comic-style-pages in their own right, right?
  2. Something of the same 'collation page mechanism' for all those superscript-popup-'footnote' bits. Though I admit I'm not entirely sure for what purpose except that it just seems like a good "collection page" to maintain. Perhaps to offer updated onward-links if any of the originals suffer link-rot? (But then, that fate can occur to all non-popupped links, so maybe I've chosen the wrong thing to highlight.)
...the question is, what do you want from it. Bear in mind that if you can creae pages here then you can set up what you think you'd like to see (e.g. for What-If#1, for starters) then get the community to assess it. Do it as a sub-page to your Userspace, maybe, as proof-of-concept.
Just because it's not been seen as necessary so far, doesn't mean it's not necessary. I've thought about it a lot (not thst I'm in a position to inplement anything), but I've only decided that I don't see a need for a straight copy (others' views may differ on that) and not enough reason to pester for my 'ideas' to be fulfilled. But I aint 'in charge' here, and happily so. 172.69.194.100 11:29, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
You make a fair point. He did already explain in great detail what would happen if [x] scenario happened. It just seems like it would be nice to have a page exclusively for discussing all the What If articles. Psychoticpotato (talk) 20:49, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
People just need to make a draft or two and see what happens. Be sure to link a draft here if one is created, I would like to help on it. "I want to learn more and explore this scenario further" is a valid feeling to have. Maplestrip (talk) 07:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Randall-ify the Captcha

Let's have some fun: Is it feasible to replace the Captcha with something "xkcd-ish" like "click on Randall's work" with a mix of XKCD stuff and generic pictures. If not, how about a replacing it with a quiz like "which of the following IS [or IS NOT] xkcd character" with one obvious correct answer. 172.68.26.75 16:11, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

are YOU able to create a CAPTCHA from scratch? 42.book.addict (talk) 15:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Choose any images that contain user-made CAPTCHAs from the following selection. Psychoticpotato (talk) 21:22, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
We could also make captchas based on most of these. PDesbeginner (talk) 02:57, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Incomplete Tag Vote

I think each comic's discussion page should have a section to vote on whether the explanation is complete or not. How long do you think the voting period should be?PDesbeginner (talk) 03:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Rather than a voting period, I think it would be ideal if people could "vote" on the completeness of an article at any time. As I go through all the old pages, I come across lots of pages that feel a little bit incomplete. It would be nice if we had a measurement of completion that wasn't binary. Maplestrip (talk) 10:16, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Feel free to add the incomplete tag again. But don't forget to mention WHY (either in the tag or the discussion or both) you think it's incomplete. :) The tag is mainly there so you can have a list of "incomplete" comics. A comic is either on that list or it isn't. This is pretty much binary. As for voting: If I think an explanation is complete and it bothers me that it's flagged as not I generally juts make a comment in the discussion asking if someone has still something to add or actually knows WHY it's still incomplete. If there's no response after a few days I delete the tag. There's no need to make a voting out of this. And if somone strongly disagrees to you there's always the "Undo"-link ;) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:09, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Sometimes I just feel "this could use more detail," without specifically knowing what the detail would look like. This can be a problem when it's about explaining complicated science: the "completion" of a description of quantum mechanics that is readable by a novice, is very subjective. I am realizing the problem with the persistent voting idea tho: many people will vote something as "incomplete" but wouldn't come back to check on it later. Maplestrip (talk) 12:08, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm more in the "less is more" camp. Most of my recent contributions to this wiki were deleting parts of bloated explanations: You don't need to explain quantum mechanics unless it's absolutely crucial for understanding the respective comic. Of course, if you are an expert in any given field, it's hard to tell whether or not the current explanation is sufficient for a layperson and most contributors tend to write "too much". Which is totally fine. People like me take care of the "too much". ;) So, if you are an expert in quantum mechanics ignore "completed" comics about quantum mechanics. Surely you could contribute a lot to it but chances are high that most of it is unnecessary for the comic. Instead ask yourself if you need more information to understand that comic about biology. And if you do, add an incomplete and ask for that information ;) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 12:31, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I've been here a long time, effectively back to when there were missing explanations (other than the "too new to have the barebones put in" ones, these days only seen when the current BOT is tardy or offline for some reason), and I've seen the Incomplete template change from the useful 'infill marker' to become a regular joke-tag of a similar nature to the Citation Needed. Yes, I agree that both of these (and the Because You're Dumb" tag) are perhaps a bit confusing for new users (like the one who badly edited out a link, just now, apparently thinking it was spam, because of the way it mentioned viagra), but I have grown to see them as community in-jokes (of various degrees of subtlety) that many people seem to appreciate under their current incarnations.
We've recently removed the Main Page's more literal "there are # incomplete articles" announcement, which leaves the purpose of more accurately using the Incomplete tag a little less important. Apart from letting us dive into the (purported) list of Incomplete Explanations, one of the main serious purposes of the Incomplete tag is removed, leaving the now consistently employed purpose of doing a "Created by a THING OTHER THAN THE BOT" joke much more prominent.
Really, all articles are potentially incomplete, still. Some more than others. Something big, like Hoverboard or Gravity, might truly have easter-eggs or subtle details as yet not properly commented upon, but there have been edits to double-digit comics recently which might be considered improvements. As such, there are really only two 'sensible' direct courses of action:
  1. Completely remove the Incomplete tag, from use, as all pages are only ever as complete as the eye of any particular beholder, and the more recent pages are obviously incomplete by their being barely 15 minutes (or a day, or maybe a week) old. Or being so huge (or Time-like!) that they clearly still haven't been 'completely' documented. Maybe the BOT can add a Created By The Bot tag that gets wiped out by the first serious attempt at human editing, but if we wish to lose this part of our site culture so readily then why ever have it at all? A wikivote system is not really that accurate under these circumstances, for a number of reasons that I needn't explain, so go straight to assuming that any such 'vote' would pass, right from the off...
  2. Embrace it for its THING OTHER THAN A BOT usage, alone. Don't be so eager to remove them just because you have no personal changes you'd wish to see. (Votes or not, there could always be another editor along in a minute who has, unlike the rest of you, picked up on an obscure visual pun rendered in what turns out to be hieroglyphs, or similar.) If we have to cull them (not a given!), then let it be an unstated rule (or a stated one?) that if there are more than (e.g.) half a dozen then the 'least amusing' may be removed by the first editor who wishes to express a critical opinion. Just the one at a time. No reinstating, no resurrection, no adding to old articles that never ever had a 'joke Incomplete' before, no entirely new joke (but you can refine what's there, to a degree), just a rolling (and not necessarily consecutive!) set of the "finest natjve explainxkcd wit". Or at least the least objectionable surviving examples of same.
As a practical guide, the "reason why you think it is Incomplete element" could be entirely served by in-line tags (the "What?" and "Why?" and "Date?" things you might see elsewhere). Perhaps we could even do both things by instead having a "Complete" tag explicitly for BOT-REPLACEMENT-type tomfoolery (and tongue-in-cheekness about Completion, as we might currently be about Incometeness) from the off. That might confuse the newbods, of course. At least until it doesn't, and then they're not newbods anymore...
The companion tag, for Incomplete Transcript, is presumably going to serve as it currently does (as a still serious hint as to actual Incompleteness), albeit that I've noticed a trend for the first editor of a brand new published comic to (possibly after doing the BOT-replacement joke, or after the editor who did only that) go straight in and enTranscript it (to varying degrees of accuracy and completion), whether or not they also then remove that specific tag-template at the same time. It seems that some people are more comfortable at providing a Transcription-service than they are at establishing even the seed of an Explanation. (Or they only have enough time to do the latter, to the level of detail they wish to achieve in the moment open to them.)
This is, of course, a cultural issue. All the above (from me) is just my own perception of practical aspects, notwithstanding those opinions already expressed before that (and elsewhere). I don't speak for everyone. And, as a perpetual IP, technically I should say that I don't speak for anyone, either... 172.70.160.140 14:21, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I like the idea of removing the Incomplete tag. What do you think? PDesbeginner (talk) 14:57, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I greatly approve of a {{what}} tag, as a Wikipedian that's actually really funny. I would want to keep the Incomplete tag, as I think it has purpose, even if it no longer represents a goal to achieve. I think this website will never reach 100.00% completeness and that is good, actually. Maplestrip (talk) 14:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Okay. If someone wants to they can just ignore the incomplete tags. PDesbeginner (talk) 14:37, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

"As of <now>"...

What would be rather useful is an {{As of now}} template (or similar wording, and perhaps an "as of now"-cased alternative for use mid-sentence). There are many articles that will have words along the lines of "this has not yet happened, as of August 2024" or "this situation is continuing, as of August 2024". Every now and then, someone will come across one of these with an older date (perhaps only just out of date, perhaps years old) and edit it accordingly. You could also seek them all out, deliberately, with a bit of effort in the search-bar.

(Note that "as of" does not always need updating, there are non-dated examples such as in 1074: Moon Landing#Trivia, static transcript versions, like 1071: Exoplanets#Transcript and other instances where the text "as of", with or without a date, really does not need to be changed... but sometimes is anyway by a well-meaning passer-by.)

Sometimes, this can be done along with another useful edit/update/revision that is spotted, or is just one of the revisions that some other need for change conveniently allows. But it seems a bit vague to rely upon occasional attention. Instead the template will implement something like "As of {{Monthyear}}" (here having to use {{#time:F Y}}, ..."As of December 2025"...), though there's the possibility that a parameter-mediated switch can let it alternatively become a to-the-day-level format option (at which point you could even implement/calcuate something like {{Yesterday}} would be) or just to the year-level. (Or add {{As of this year}}, {{As of this month}} and {{As of this day}} separately.)

This would negate the need to just poke and prod any article that happened to 'need' updating every month (or year, or possible day). And to deal with the possibility that some of these cases might actually need to be edited because "as of" does not now apply, include within it a Category:As of membership, letting anyone who is interested keep an eye on these aggregated 'As of's, ready to jump in there and change it to some straight up "Up until <fixed date>" equivalent should any one of them actually no longer apply.

...obviously, I can't even begin to create the template page required, but I'd be happy to work on the exact wikimedia code required if anyone thinks it needs anything but the most basic transcluded formatting and doesn't know how. Open to discussion, and I'll tag on more if I happen to see that discussion developing. 172.70.162.186 18:04, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

As an addendum/change to my above suggestion, considering a simpler {{as of}} (and {{As of}}) which does no automagical continuous updating (just gives the "as of" literal on its own), but still guarantees "Category:As of" membership, so that it doesn't actively give wrong (new) date+circumstance relationships in the likes of 1047: Approximations. In that, the several mentions of populations can safely stay as old years until someone rewrites the proposed value and assessment as well, but it still could be a task to pursue every new year after checking the Cat for likely comics needing a quick check'n'edit.

“Grammar Bot”

I’m working on a python based bot written with the Pywiki library that aims to use the replace.py scripts to fix simple grammatical mistakes, e.g. correcting Citation needed placements, cleaning up extra spaces, etc. I will be posting the code in a few weeks after I finish it (I’m a bit busy at the moment with school and orchestra) so the entire community can view it. Any thoughts on the idea? Thanks. 42.book.addict (talk) 21:05, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

First thoughts are that there are going to be so many exceptions. I definitely agree with the idea of {{Citation needed}}s being made consistent (if only it weren't sometimes complicated[citation needed]), as well as that of mysterious extra spaces. But that's not really grammatical. Punctuation, in the first case. I fear a full (or even fragmentary) grammar-checker is going to be complicated and give many false positives.
At least at first, perhaps have it report what it thinks it has found. You may discover definite times that it isn't necessary and it would indeed create new errors.
At the very least, run it with two checklists: One to do an automatic replace.py and one to just report. Start with the first list empty. Introduce potential ones to the latter, review all the reports carefully, then move any sensible-looking ones to former.
And have it not fighting other bots (particularly theusafBOT), perhaps selected users (e.g. the likes of Kynde, and of course yourself) or indeed itself (if it makes a change that might inadvertently trigger another 'check') by excluding such changes for a recheck/rechange. Keep a record of what it changed, so that if anybody reverts/recorrects something that seems to have gone wrong it doesn't force it 'wrong' again. At the simplest, give a whole page a decent time-out and/or number of subsequent limits before it considers a new change. Implement from the start the option of a 'whitelist' (of pages it can ignore) or 'blacklist' (of rules it shouldn't apply, or at least actively apply, to a given page), so you can quickly manually add a throttle-down by simple config-file rather than have to add in a code-kludge when something obviously (in hindsight!) needs correcting about the way it works. And also maybe throttle it to have no more than one bot-edit per hour (while starting from scratch) to not swamp the system and give the rest of us time to assess any errors it has made (and its successes!) - you can unstick that throttle later, when you consider it tested with all its backlog of microcorrections.
...there are a few other guidelines I would suggest, but the cautiousness already present in the above approaches might mean that they are left as not so important. Just consider what could go wrong before unleashing it on our world.
And all power to your elbow, it is of course something we all might have considered (I know I have... not that I have the login for it, but what really stopped me was knowing how badly I could mess it up by getting just one detail wrong if I tried it).
Among changes/alerts I would have it make would be cases of {{cn}}, {{citation needed}}, etc, instead of the 'main' template. Plus []-links to either wikipedia pages (most of them should be {{w}}-templated) or explainxkcd.com pages (most of them should be [[]]ed), although there are even then some exceptions. It'd also be nice if it can identify all Talk (and Community Portal) contributions that were not signed (more complex, as some may be after the fact, or have been after several years and further editings). I know how I'd do all this, or think I do (only upon starting to do it can I be sure I've actually theorised it correctly!), but I mention this mostly to point out how you might want to cautiously implement your ideas. HTH. 172.70.86.15 00:07, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
you have made plenty of wonderful points that I clearly have not thought about-quite the critical oversight on my part. Is anyone interested in collaborating? I don’t think that my skills are good enough to satisfy all of those points. 42.book.addict (talk) 01:06, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
hello? Anybody? Please help… 42.book.addict (talk) 17:38, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
I believe this would be a great idea and also an incredibly complicated feat. Randall is no stranger to using weird punctuation in comics or misspelled words. I think it would be neat if it weren't automated and just reported errors it found so we could manually fix them, which would make its development much easier, but at that point it's very similar to a series of search queries for misspelled words, which we can already do. I have no coding skills so I'm not going to be of help. FaviFake (talk) 17:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Update

I have found a solution to fix most grammatical mistakes, I just need to make sure that it doesn’t correct character names like “Cueball”, not edit war with other bots, come up with a system to log the edits it makes so that it doesn’t revert again, and fix Citation needed templates. I already know how to make sure that it asks me before editing, so I want to create an account to test it out. Does anybody have ideas on what to name the bot? I don’t want to call it 42.book.addictBOT, since the username would be a bit clunky. ToriBOT could work, but I’m also open to any other names. Feel free to reply to this or reply to me on my talk page! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 20:30, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

"dark mode"

add dark mode Caliban (talk) 09:54, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

See User:Certified nqh/common.css or copy/paste my old common.css page history into your common.css page: -42.book.addict 172.69.134.208 16:10, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
ha, thx tori, nqh's common.css works like a charm :) Caliban (talk) 08:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

reddit

Add reddit- Anonymous 172.71.214.80 (talk) 08:31, 21 November 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

You probably need to explain what you mean by that. Add reddit discussions to here? Add this site to reddit? Add some simple link to one from the other? Something else? 172.70.162.163 13:02, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
>Add some simple link to one from the other?
I have no idea what they meant either, but I hadn't thought of this! I could see the addition of a simple link to the comic template, like "https://reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/{{PAGETITLE}" or "https://reddit.com/r/xkcd/search/?q={{PAGETITLE}"
I don't partecipate much in the r/xkcd subreddit, so i'm not sure if they have structured post titles or even if they posted all the comics, or if it's automated, but I think this could be cool! Some people will likely come from Reddit, so it would be a straightforward way for them to go back. Thoughts? -- FaviFake (talk) 16:55, 11 January 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

viewer

i propose to add random page to comic viewer 172.71.150.14 (talk) 00:17, 25 February 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There's already a "Random Page" link.
If you mean (it's ambiguous!) a "Random Comic Page" link, then I'm not sure it's needed. There are so many "Comic pages" that it's a fairly good chance that you'll land on one of them for any given click, much more chance within two clicks. The likelihood of not getting a comic within three clicks will be tiny. Another way to do it is to just use the xkcd.com "Random" button, then (whichever comic you land on, which will be any but 404), change the "xkcd.com" bit of the URL to "expxkcd.com" and... you end up here.
If none of that really does what you want (especially if you mean something completely different from what I read it as), some more explanation would probably be appreciated. 172.69.79.164 01:02, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
If you want to make sure to land on all comics, you can go to "Special pages" on the sidebar, scroll down to "Random page in category", and enter "All comics". As far as I'm aware, there isn't really a way to automate this, so you have to keep inputting it manually. guess who (if you desire conversing | what i have done) 06:38, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
I think they meant a button on the {{comic}} template. Would it be technically possible to make it such that it works exacly like the one on the official site? --FaviFake (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
It should be a matter of using Special:RandomInCategory/All Comics, I think, but doesn't seem to work when I try that exact attempt. Perhaps mediawiki or the mediawiki extension is not updated enough, or else I'm getting my wikisyntax slightly wrong.
Functionally, though, where the website has its Random button, we have our "go to the xkcd.com original", so more thought is needed before we just "add a button". If we do, we want it where the 'mothership' website does, but we still ought to have our details-and-link-to-original given, and I like it as a (faux) button.
Perhaps the {{comic}}, where it currently has header 'buttons':
[|<<] [Prev] [#9876 (Grune 32, 2525)] [Next] [>>|]
Needs to be changed to maybe:
      [ #9876 (Grune 32, 2525) ]
[|<<] [Prev]   [Random]   [Next] [>>|]
...or equivalent. Haven't checked, but if it's a one-line table, can be easily made into a two-line one with colspan=3 (or 5?) in the right bit. If it's just centred, then it should come out Ok, in a simple way. But I'm not too keen on that change, really, and you'd need to actually have the Random->Comic link working first, anyway. So I'm giving you my opinions and (slightly lacking) knowledge, in case that can at least make for the better outcome than either nothing (though not sure that's bad!) or some half-hearted ideas from elsewhere. 172.70.86.116 21:52, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
Unless someone can figure out the requests made by the random in category, a workaround could be to use a (pseudo)random number generator (mediawiki has a template on their website) to get a random number in the range of 1 - {{LATESTCOMIC}} and put in a link to that comic number using [[number]].
Note: There already is a "Random" template, but it was just using random page and was blanked by the person who made it guess who (if you desire conversing | what i have done) 03:50, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
 ✓ Done!!!  I tried that wikimedia templaete but couldn't figure out how to make it work. I did it using Special:Random, hoping there aren't too many non-comic pages. Check 3176 for an example of how it looks and works. --FaviFake (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
thanks! (i hav an account now) me, hi (talk) 22:30, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
No problem! There's also a special custom-designed navbar for the original comics: try clicking the "|<" button! (It's not complete yet, but i'm slowly finishing it!) --FaviFake (talk) 22:36, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Contentious Topics Template

I propose that we create a unified template to slap on contentious and possibly controversial comics, with a warning similar to the one I (and a couple other people added on) wrote in 3073: Tariffs. Now, since I don’t know how to create a template and don’t understand how they work, this is my request for help. If you are available to help write it or have any tips for me, please contact me either in this thread or on my talk page. Thanks! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 18:01, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey, I just wanted to ask why you think a new template is needed. {{notice2}} and {{notice}} seem pretty solid. How would a new template differ from them? Btw, I switched the template in Talk:3073: Tariffs from {{notice}} to {{notice2}} so it's more like a warning, feel free to revert it if you prefer {{notice}}. --FaviFake (talk) 16:56, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I read the idea (which I'm not too enamoured with, but wouldn't argue against either) as being to create a {{contentious}}-like template in its own right that (perhaps by using {{notice2}} within it) had a standard "This comic, and its explanation, covers a particularly contentious subject. Take even more care than usual when adding to or editing this Explanation/Talk Page" (or similar) text with it.
It would probably also have the ability to add further (or alternate) info, by standard template parameters, in case you want to personalise it to the exactnature of the contention.
But, my reasons why I didn't volunteer my ideas immediately are:
  • It paints targets. Anybody who wants to can look at all "pages using the Contentious template" and then troll-bomb them specifically
  • Looking at the Tariffs-comic warning, that's huge, and catering for that with a "standard text + additional notes" would be awkward... if you really believe it should be so huge in the first place,
  • Just by being so obviously available, there'd be creep. "Hey, this comic talks disparagingly about Newton's belief in alchemy... Surely that needs a warning too!", or start off with "Well, nobody's warning about our attitude to the US Senate in this comic, so I can be disparaging" which then practically forces another contentious-tagging (possibly useful, but maybe in making a bolt for the barn door only after the horse has already made its own bolt through it) as it gets toned-down/-back again.
And, though I also imagined the Tariff comic would get some push-back (there was some minor bits, but we seem to have kept it mature enough, IMO), it seems to be quiet. Can't say for sure it would have been without the warning it now has, but it survived ok before that was added. Hence why I'm meh about the very proposal. Hard cases make hard laws, and hard situations may prompt hard solutions. But I'm dubious about the actual case for the need. (As you say, we have 'freeform' notice+notice2, and I haven't seen proof even that was necessary as it was used.)
But it would be trivial to implement, give or take some fine-tuning. I'll say that as a positive for the idea. Even if we never really use it as much as we could. 162.158.216.83 20:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. Maybe it's a good thing that we have to craft one for each comic we want to tag; this makes sure only actually contentious comics get tagged. An upside to having a specific template is that we wouldn't need to type <noinclude> every time, to avoid it displaying on the transcluded talk page.--FaviFake (talk) 21:00, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
mm. all of these are good points. now that i think about it, copy-pasting old warnings and tweaking them as needed is probably better than creating a new template. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 16:45, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Proposal for template page

I was thinking that making a template page with instructions about what should and should not be included in which sections would make it easier for new editors to help. I have no idea how I would do this, though.BobcatInABox (talk) 11:49, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Which particular template? Many templates do contain instructions (from basic to rather thorough), and some common ones are also gone into in the FAQ page. 172.70.91.245 20:25, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

The newest stuff goes at top

I’ve been thinking the newest comments should go at top and replies are under the chose comment with a colon or more. Because every time someone makes a comment but not replying to you, you still get a message. So you only get notifications when someone replies to you. And the always get notifications not related to you is kind of annoying. Aprilfoolsupdate! (talk) 04:30, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

(Ah, so you found it, before I even wrote my directions down on how to get here.)
Not sure this helps.
Firstly: Top-posting is the work of the Devil... burn it! Burn it all! very hard to read.
A: Because it's in totally the wrong order.
Q: Why is Top Posting bad?
(Yes, I know you want top-posting threads but retain bottom-posting thread replies, but can you even imagine the chaos involved with people not properly realising what's top- and what's bottom-posted. Or inter-posted into an existing hierarchy? Not with this 'flatfile' structure, anyway.)
Secondly: Does this count for headers (like == The newest stuff goes at top ==)? For 'no-colon' starter comments under a Discussion header? For both?
Thirdly: what are we doing with all the past pages and pages of things that are (more or less..) consistently chronological and bottom-posted? To make new additions work, someone (and probably before the first commentator who wants to add a brand new one-line witicism to the top of any multi-year-idle page) has to go into every Discussion page (and more?) to reshuffle it all by whatever Top(ish)-Post Criteria are adopted.
Fourthly: It wouldn't even change how frequently you get notifications. (Actually, it might make it worse, as inveterate bottom-posters have to be 'corrected' by the followers of the 'new rule', as well as for any actually idle pages that get redone as part of the "thirdly" point.) But I don't think Notifications are clever enough to imagine that a new section above what you previously wrote doesn't possibly interest your registered "watch and notify" intent upon any given page.
I have a Fifthly and Sixthly, too, but I assume I've made my general opinion quite clear. (And I noted that this is not the only Community Portal edit you made, just before arriving here. Will check the other in a moment.) 172.68.229.142 06:19, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Never mind. I don’t even need to read the whole thing to know it is complicated. To many words -- Aprilfoolsupdate (talk) 07:54, 15 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Short version: It's complicated, confusing and troublesome to change to. And won't even solve your problem. 172.70.160.197 12:22, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Agree with this message but disagree with the proposal. --FaviFake (talk) 09:28, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

By the Numbers

Greetings all,

So we all know that Randall numbers each XKCD comic with an ordinal number in a simple ascending sequence. I have become exceedingly intrigued by the particular properties of numbers now, especially their factors and primes. The most recent prime-numbered comic is 3109 and we'll soon see another one with 3119. Does Randall ascribe any meaning or humor to the numbers that happen to appear as the posts play out? He certainly celebrates special dates! As a math-humor-based comic, there certainly must be jokes or surprises hidden therein. I'm not sure I've noticed any yet, though. 386 is certainly notorious, though doesn't seem to have a direct sort of Intel connection. 42 is unremarkable.

I once read a novel with an autistic protagonist, and each chapter was assigned a prime number. I will henceforth be on the lookout for interesting numerical happenstance as Randall continues to post! Anyone else? Elizium23 (talk) 08:56, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Misc pages

I would like to propose the creation of an additional category for "miscellaneous pages" that aren't really comics, and which generally have a URL slug that's an English word or phrase instead of a number. This includes xkcd.com/YES and xkcd.com/NO, both of which currently have articles. It also includes these ones:

[Note by User:FaviFake: I organised this section and moved the links below]

...and others as they are found or recovered. If only we could access the forum thread mentioned on the YES and NO pages! I was able to find a link to the thread here, but it's inaccessible. A It's the one labeled "Hidden pages on xkcd": [1]. I was able to find the pages above via Reddit: [2] [3] --Rumbling7145 (talk) 00:16, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Update: I got into the forum page! [4] We can now add these pages to the list: Rumbling7145 (talk) 23:37, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Pages

https://almamater.xkcd.com/ (archive only)
and errors out: https://almamater.xkcd.com/ (archive only, errors out)
warning!!.png

This is not a comic, but a webpage on xkcd.com

There are many other similar xkcd webpages, some of which are explained here. Explain xkcd is trying to decide how they should be treated. You are welcome to help us decide how we should categorise, call, or present these kinds of explanations. Kindly leave a comment here.

This page should not be categorized until we decide how to explain these non-comics (see discussion above).

You can monitor the pages that are using this template (so the brand new webpage explanations) by going to Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:misc_page

How should we treat them?

This is great! I think we should first create an article for each of them, and after we have a few articles then we can start to figure out a good name for the category and answer some questions, like:

I love the idea! I currently don't have time, but I will create these pages eventually. If anyone else wants to chime in, please do! --FaviFake (talk) 16:11, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

"Unnumbered publications", or similar, could cover anything that wasn't xkcd.com/<digits>. Wouldn't cover replacements (2642: No One Was Hurt was originally 2642, for example), but that's a different class from deliberately off-series items. Also, given that often they are entirely non-image (the Yes and No), or straight text and multi-image (as per Blue Eyes, or other articles with a WhatIf-ish feel to them), I think calling them "comic"s is stretching the term.
Though "miscellaneous pages" sort of covers this, I've a feeling that there's at least one... 'entity'... that is built upon multiple actual 'pages', but the list of candidates above doesn't contain any that look like they're what I'm vaguely thinking of. (Neither was it anything like the xkcd survey, or other interactive (numbered) comics, but maybe I'll bring it back to mind sooner rather than later.)
As to the use of {{comic}}, I think we could spring to a (modified, 'inspired-by') template specifically for all these no-number/off-sequence explanation headers. Either explicit "prev=" and "next=" (per comic, could get quite mixed up if not kept uncontradictory) or a "position=" which could help maintain a list (and, from that, an auto-generated first/prev/next/last 'page ring') without having to subvert expectations of fitting in with the normal Template:LATESTCOMIC system.
With the Comic template already equipped to deal with "no-number 'comics'", there wouldn't (in the first instance) be much work needed to "decomic" the new copy, with the exact method of resequencing (if desired) as a parallel series being the biggest question. 172.70.85.49 17:20, 11 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the last sentenc means, but I like the idea of a new template! However, I don't think we should call the category "Unnumbered publications". Isn't that just Category:Extra comics but without comics Disappearing Sunday Update and No One Was Hurt? We should establish a criterion to add pages to this category and then figure out a name i think. --FaviFake (talk) 15:42, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

On this subject, is there any reason why it's YES and NO (currently the valid links) rather than Yes and No / yes and no (currently invalid links)? And I don't mean "why aren't there redirects?", which I don't even think is the right way of resolving this, but what was the thinking? (Which then didn't result in DOT, etc, so there's definitely some inconsistency, one way or another.) 172.68.205.92 21:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see inconsistencies. The name of the browser tab for the yes page is "YES" by Randall, same for NO. Instead, the page for dot is called "xkcd.com/dot/". We could use that, but that's likely not what Randall intended and might have been a coding oversight. --FaviFake (talk) 16:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I've created the {{misc page}} template for these pages and removed the incomplete template until we reach consensus on what to do with them. --FaviFake (talk) 14:40, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Ahem, I'd like to remind everyone that they can feel free to comment on the best way to manage these. Or if they should be included in the wiki at all. FaviFake (talk) 21:38, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

New page "Spiral"

I found a new page at xkcd/spiral. what should I do? Thanks! This is my first post, sorry it's not formatted correctly. -- 73.169.159.188 00:27, 12 October 2025‎

Welcome. Good find! Any suggestions? -- Dtgriscom (talk) 01:47, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
I've moved this over to Coordination and uploaded all images on spiral. I'll be making the page soon. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 05:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
Moving to correct location where we're discussing these pages. More discussion about how we should treat them is welcome! FaviFake (talk) 18:00, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Category:Extra pages

I've created a category called Extra pages for all of these pages. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 03:14, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

So, right now we have "Category:Extra pages" and "Category:Extra comics". Some are unnumbered comics (plus at least one "was a number, then replaced") and some are 'merely' pages (with possible a fuzzy line between for 'pages' that show images-that-aren't-comics), perhaps we should be consistent between which are which, and how they relate to 'standard' numbered comics.
For example, being an Extra Comics was (officially, but you could also manually add it) initiated by the "extra=yes" param to {{comic}}. This also (theoretically, problems with the randomness backend aside) adds them to the Random Comics link-choice, without adding them to the Comic List numbers (such that it states "we have #### comics", where #### should not be different from the latest comic number, as recently established).
Perhaps:
  • Make the comic template accept "extra=comic" or "extra=page", instead of "extra=yes".
    • Perhaps "extra=yes" 'remains' to default to one or the other? ...nah, just make sure all the current "=yes" ones are assigned beforehand.
    • "extra=no" just defaults back to behaviour without any "extra=" at all, of course, pretty much as currently.
  • Each of these new distinctions assigns to the 'Extra' category that fits it, but keeps it out of the All (numbered) Comics list, as being not numbered (and some not being 'comics')
  • Either just keep Extra Comics feeding to the Random Comic list (All Comics+Extra Comics, as we've painstakingly set it up to do, recently) or also include Extra Pages (it being AC+EC+EP in the Special:Random target list/whatever). TBD, depends upon whether you like a strictly "non-comic page" potentially popping up as a 'treat' for people.
...that's all a little extra work. Some of which I could probably do right now (though maybe some pages are Protected against my input, haven't checked), but I think this needs discussion before doing any actual refining of the current setup.
Might have been better to have proposed and discussed the Extra Pages details before starting that, too, but I'm happy to use this setup as a stepping stone given that it's been done already. 82.132.244.89 14:20, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Visual Editor?

I, being a nerd in high school, edit on more than just this wiki. For example, I edit on Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, the default editing mode is a visual editor, which automatically converts your wikitext into the final product in real time. It's useful on many levels, and would save all of us a lot of time (I've spent at least 2 hours total fixing broken wikitext). I feel that using this tool would increase overall productivity in the wiki, and probably lessen the amount of people who are intimidated when attempting to edit, allowing more people to join and contribute to the community. --DollarStoreBa'alConverseMy life choices 22:43, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Good luck telling that to jeff! --FaviFake (talk) 12:22, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
Ugh. Well, he's gotta come back eventually, right? He's paying for the domain, after all. --DollarStoreBa'alConverseMy life choices 16:43, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
Or maybe he just forgot and we actually don't want him to come back. Who knows! --FaviFake (talk) 16:45, 11 August 2025 (UTC)
Name one person who wants Jeff to just not come back. Either way, I want him back, and I suggested this just in case. This would also be really cool for me, as I joined after jeff's last known user page edit in 2018. --DollarStoreBa'alConverseMy life choices 23:31, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
Jeez that was a joke. Ofc I want him back lol. FaviFake (talk) 20:09, 15 August 2025 (UTC)
still no response from Jeff or any of his friends on: Reddit, X/Twitter; GitHub; Bluesky; Mastodon; and email. Oh, and I asked some person on YouTube with the username lcarsos (as in the other 'crat on here) but I think that he deleted my comment on his video (multiple times). (just a little fyi) 42.book.addictTalk to me! 18:17, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Does he even remember this? Maybe they all got struck by lightning at the same time while calling someone who just sneezed and saying 'bless you'. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 16:28, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

Unicode emoji support

This suggestion was made in response to the discussion above. I was completely unable to realize that FaviFake was joking. I feel that Unicode emojis would drastically improve the wiki and allow for more detailed conveyance of thoughts and feelings, and prevent catastrophic misunderstandings not unlike the one above. Other people have insulted me due to the fact that I was unable to convey enough emotion. --DollarStoreBa'alConverseMy life choices 17:18, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Text-only media, like this, always has the issue of not being understood, but if someone forgets (or consciously declines) to put a "/s" or ";)" in there, they'll probably also not add an emoji.
Of course, one person's very dry humour might go so far over the head of another person that not even a strong hint helps, whereas another's sense of fun might be so obvious that gilding the lilly even sends the wrong message about it. 92.23.2.228 20:03, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
I don't understand your suggestion. 😕 The site appears to allow such emojis to be included; I just copied and pasted. There's also the HTML entity option, e.g. &#128533;. 😕 Or are you asking that the site include code to make it easier to insert emojis? BunsenH (talk) 16:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

Custom User-based Signature Template

DollarStoreBa'al and I came up with a pretty interesting idea: a template called "sig" that can hold the signatures of other users. This is to allow users to have signatures longer than 255 characters, which is the hard limit set by MediaWiki. To call the template, we can use {{sig|User:XYZ}} and encode the template with wikitext so that each user's signature can be pasted in without confusion. To make things even easier, users can adjust their signatures in Preferences to call this template so that the 4 tildes (~~~~) can still be employed. If enough positive feedback is received, I would love to work on it with the community. If anybody is interested in helping out, please mention it! The template could also function as a signature museum, where you can view other user's custom signatures and get inspiration. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 16:50, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

Update. I have found another solution. By creating a sig page, you can call {{User:XYZ/sig}}, which enables you to literally copy-paste whatever's in that page into another page. This was first discovered, I believe, by User:Omega. I don't believe we need the template anymore, but the signature museum would still be cool! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 19:10, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Not quite sure what it will do. Seems to me that for instance you and DollarStoreBa'alconverse already have very advanced signatures (using Dollar's here as another example). My own preferences would be a normal signature, where it is easy to see who has made the comment and where the links takes me... But since you can already make this complicated signatures anyway, I'm not as such opposed to the idea. Am I correct in assuming I need to do something in order for this to be possible as the only active admin at the moment? As I will not come by here regularly, then let me know when there has been some relevant activity. Not just a reply to these questions here. But once some other than you two has chimed in. Else I might forget to come back to look! (I wrote this and then had an edit conflict with 42. So maybe this is not relevant anymore? But I will post it now none the less. But this was as a reply to the first proposal) Kynde (talk) 19:16, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Hi Kynde. Yes, I believe that we don't need your assistance anymore. The need for a template is erased by the existence of /sig pages, and we can create a museum by ourselves. Thanks for trying and chiming in, though! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 19:18, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I do believe the template would work fine... that way it wouldn't show the full wikitext of the signature. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 19:46, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

bad bad bad bad idea, the sig character limit is 255 for a reason, see WP:SIGLENGTH.

a sig template is an even worse idea, because every instance of it will call #ifexist, an expensive parser function. these make a page take even longer to load, which this wiki definitely does not need. also, expensive fucntions are capped at 500, so you're making a maximum of 500 signatures (not counting other templates). raeb 04:50, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

As well as the WP:SIGLENGTH bit, if anybody actually cares about the precedent set by 'mother Wikipedia' then various other dos-and-don'ts from Wikipedia:Signatures might well apply to some extant personal signatures, from the "don't make it look like it's not your signature" through to being inconsiderate of the colour-blind and those otherwise vision-limited.
It also gives some nice demonstrations of what can be done (within reason). Though I still say that just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. "Looks complicated, codes simply" would be my suggestion. Elegance of spirit, not a bloomin' juggernaut, if you're inclined to take my advice at all. You can still use personally distinctive signatures, and probably should. (Though, quite possibly, by the middle of next week, half the latest Talk comments are going to have orange-background. Don't care about that possibility, as much as I's like having vaguely recognisable namepage and timestamp bits to it that don't take effort to discern properly either when rendered or in raw code.) I have simple tastes, perhaps more than others... 82.132.247.193 05:45, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Fully agree with raeb here, the last thing we need is more server load.
  • If you transclude them, then there's the server load and maximum transclusion problem.
  • If you substitute the template each time, the issue of hard-to-parse editing views gets worse. It's already annoying having to mentally "remove" your html codes when adding a comment, and we also don't have the VE, which would hide the code. FaviFake (talk) 13:52, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
I got edit conflicted, dangit. Anyway, both your complaints are either invalid or could easily be solved. The #ifexist limit could easily be bypassed if we simply delete the signatures of people who haven't contributed in, say, 6 months. The wikitext complaint is also invalid. Using the template as a signature would simply show {{User:XYZ/Sig}}, not the wikitext required to display the signature.' Sincerely, --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 14:14, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
Hi
simply delete the signatures of people who haven't contributed in, say, 6 months
What?!
Also, my 1st point wasn't mainly about #ifexist but about server load. It's as if you were adding the amount of code roughly equivalent to {{incomplete}} to every single page you commented on, multiple times on the same page. This absolutely causes a ton of unnecessary server load. Imagine adding {{incomplete}} hundreds of times to dozens and dozens of talk pages across the entire wiki. The software needs to keep all of them up-to-date. FaviFake (talk) 16:47, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
What's wrong with deleting signatures? They can just make a new one, and 6 months seems like a good cutoff for 'they aren't coming back.' I know Tori was away for more than 6 months, she's an exception. The server load is an issue though. Maybe we need to wait for that until Jeff is able to fix the current server issues. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 17:26, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
I randomly drop in every 6–12 months, for what it's worth. Maplestrip (talk) 13:52, 5 September 2025 (UTC)
Why penalize people who only occasionally contribute? What does it buy us? -- Dtgriscom (talk) 17:49, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
DSB, the Template is a horrible idea, ok? I slept on it and after further reflection, it really doesn't add much. People can always subst in signatures through <nowki>{{_}}</nowki>, and it'll also strain the server way too much. There's also a reason why sigs are capped at 255 characters-it'll become impossible to read talk pages if everyone had hulking 1000+ character sigs (like the one that I created). Please stop fixating so much on this specific idea. Also, it is quite rude to penalize people who only occasionally edit (and I don't want to be a special case or something like that-please stop treating me as some godly figure who is better than everyone else.) 42.book.addictTalk to me! 19:02, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, you're right. The 255 character limit stands. Thread over, back to explaining. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 14:46, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Explain XKCD Discord/Social Media Server?

I was experiencing Cloudflare errors in the past 24 hours that had prevented me from accessing this website. It's working now, but I'm worried that something else would happen again. Would anybody be interested in organizing a group chat/server or something of the like outside of Explain XKCD? I would personally love if it was on Discord, as it's easy to use, convenient, is built great, and I use it often. If anybody else has suggestions, I'd be open to hear them! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 20:24, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Me too. It greatly worried me. If you want, I can set up a discord server. Personally, I prefer discord as it's very simple and has a clean interface. Again, only if you're interested. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 15:38, 15 September 2025 (UTC)
Here you go! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 00:38, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
NICE! I wonder if we should message Kynde and see if he'll add it to the global messages. The more people, the better. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 01:17, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
I didn't want to influence your original choice, but it would have been nice if you'd have chosen something less 'commercial', as a platform. Hope it helps, just don't forget about everyone else! 82.132.238.131 09:07, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
Discord is free. I feel it should be easy for everybody to join, even if they didn't already have discord. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 12:53, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
"Freemium" would be a better description, with all the Nitro-mandating stuff. But I already deleted my more specific past observations about all that. And see no point in resurrecting my original Discord presence as you probably can do more chatting about the rest of us without too many random strangers like me turning up, whatever the other IP-onlies decide to do. ;) 82.132.246.82 17:18, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Updating the global message board

Moved from User_talk:Kynde#Updating_the_global_message_board FaviFake (talk) 19:40, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I am excited to announce that explainxkcd now has a discord server! I was wondering if you could add it to the global message board (idk what it's called, actually. The one with the incomplete explanations message.) to include the discord invite link? The more people who join, the better, just in case cloudflare decides to have those issues again. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 13:01, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi. you did not include the link? Also I would like to know if other frequent editors think this is a great idea? Not all who edit here wish to be contactable on other platforms. I do understand where you wish the message to be though, and if this is a good idea we can put it there. I'm not certain what other people thinks though? --Kynde (talk) 13:12, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
I, for one, think it's a good idea. It's managed by Tori, so it's in very good hands. The only thing I'm afraid of is that discussions may not take place here, but I don't think that's enough of a reason not to promote it.
The link is at User:42.book.addict, in the second notice. I think we should say something like
In case this site goes down, we have created a Discord server as an emergency form of communication. (link)
We aren't "excited to announce" a backup form of communication. Discussions must be public, not on external sites. This is merely a backup. I think it can then be removed from the sitenotice after a month or less, and mentioned on another page somewhere else, discretely. FaviFake (talk) 15:23, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for chiming in FaviFake. Can you find a good place for this, because I would like to link to a local page from the sitenotice. I do realize that people will have to go to this discord before problems arises, but I guess that is the way it ism and that wont change no matter how we announce it. --Kynde (talk) 15:49, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
But 42 does intend for this to be used as "a fun place to connect with each other". Leaving it discrete would make it impossible for this to happen, because people won't see it. Also, for the record, FaviFake, 42 and I were. Multiple people. Me and her. That's how the English language works. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 16:41, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
Yes you two are the ones who wishes for it and FaviFake was the first to chime in. Don't patronize me please! --Kynde (talk) 16:44, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
I have no idea what you're saying regarding the "English language", but please refrain from saying... whatever that was.
But 42 does intend for this to be used as "a fun place to connect with each other"
Could you stop talking on behalf of 42? I believe you've been asked many times not to do that. You can either tell us what you think, or let others speak for themselves. 42 isn't a goddess and is able to engage in this conversation without someone "defending" her opinions.
I'll create explain xkcd:Discord but need to think more about how this is supposed to be pitched. I do not want people to be incentivised to use a private, inaccessible discord server to, for example, talk about the newest comic. --FaviFake (talk) 19:32, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
I moved this discussions back here because it's relevant to the entire wiki, not just Kynde' talk.
Moved from User_talk:Kynde#Updating_the_global_message_board FaviFake (talk) 19:40, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, I was just trying to simultaneously defend both of our opinions and state the facts. Also, thank you to FaviFake for moving this conversation to the proposals. This seems to be happening with Kynde's talk page a lot recently. (that being twice, but I've never seen it happen before, soo...) --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 20:02, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
Hi, it's me. The "global message board" DSB was referencing to is the site notice. If Kynde could add it in the format that FaviFake said, that would be great! Also, I had thought that the server could be a fun place for us to bond/talk, but that can obviously be conducted in DMs. FaviFake's reasoning for having all conversations on-site makes perfect sense to me. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 20:35, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
So THAT'S what it's called! I am one of today's lucky 10,000. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 23:35, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I'm wrong or not, but I think of the discord as 2 things:

Again, please correct me if I'm wrong. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 15:23, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Dark theme?

I saw a post about this in the archives that went unanswered, so I'll ask it here: Why doesn't the wiki have a dark theme? I feel it would be very useful for those who don't want to be blinded by editing. Wikipedia's got one, and it looks great! --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 15:27, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Dark mode IS a thing. You need to create a common.css page to use it though. Copy paste in this to get dark mode (make sure to hit "Show preview" to test it out before you save!):

/* NQH's totally cool and amazingly radical dark mode */ /* Licensed CC0-1.0, no rights reserved. */ /* Sets everything to dark background. */ body * {background-color: #111 !important; color: #DDD !important;} div.mw-body, div.mw-body * {background-color: #222 !important;} /* Vector */ .mw-wiki-logo {background-color: #00000000 !important; filter: invert(100%);} /* Monobook */ div#column-one > div#p-cactions > div.pBody > ul > li > a {background-color: #222 !important;} /* Modern */ div#mw_header, div#mw_header h1#firstHeading {background-color: #000 !important;} div#mw_content {background-color: #222 !important;} /* Cologne blue */ /* Diff. */ td.diff-context, td.diff-context * {color: #777 !important; border-color: #333 !important;} td.diff-deletedline {border-color: #F33 !important;} td.diff-addedline {border-color: #3F3 !important;} del.diffchange-inline {color: #F55 !important;} ins.diffchange-inline {color: #5F5 !important;} /* Numbers in history view. */ span.mw-plusminus-pos {color: #5F5 !important;} span.mw-plusminus-neg {color: #F55 !important;} strong.mw-plusminus-pos {color: #0F0 !important; font-size: 1.2em;} strong.mw-plusminus-pos {color: #0F0 !important; font-size: 1.2em;} /* Links. */ a[href$="redlink=1"] {color: #F00 !important; text-decoration: line-through !important;} a:not([href$="redlink=1"]) {color: #88F !important;} a:visited:not([href$="redlink=1"]) {color: #AAF !important;} a:hover:not([href$="redlink=1"]) {color: #AAF !important; text-decoration: underline !important; font-weight: bold !important;} a:active:not([href$="redlink=1"]) {color: #FFF !important; text-decoration: underline !important; font-weight: bold !important;}

--42.book.addictTalk to me! 19:01, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

In response to DSB, in your userpage... The links being white... Which links? See the "/* Links. */" section. The various links are #F00 (red, the invalid ones), #88F (light blue), #AAF (lighter blue), or #FFF (white). If you don't like them, change them.
The other things can probably be fixed if we know exactly what you're getting and what you actually expect. Also a good idea to check for typos/miscopying, via basic troubleshooting. 82.132.246.204 22:43, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
I got edit-conflicted with... seemingly no change. Anyway, I found a better version which I now use. It's much cleaner and looks like it belongs. Only issue is that the sidebar templates have inverted colors? But very minor. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 01:24, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
CODE!!!/* WikimediaUI Dark Mode * * Wikimedia Design Team 2019-2021 * Original authors: * - Volker E. – [[User:Volker_E._(WMF)]] * - Alex Hollender * - MusikAnimal * - Carolyn Li-Madeo * - Jdlrobson * * Original at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Volker_E._(WMF)/dark-mode.css * Version for Gadget CSS skin override usage only. * Basically removed of all interaction element styles and * set to `html` instead of JS injected `.client-dark-mode` class. * * Last updated: 2021-04-20 * */ /** To prevent 'jumping' effect within #p-personal in Vector/Monobook. Overrides [[MediaWiki:Gadget-dark-mode-toggle-pagestyles.css]] **/ body.skin-vector-legacy :not(#pt-darkmode) + #pt-watchlist::before, body.skin-monobook :not(#pt-darkmode) + #pt-watchlist::before { content: "Light mode"; } @media screen { /* set height for monobook and timeless, because the filter in FF needs dimensions to get it to apply */ html { height: 100%; } /* Filter needs to reside on `html`, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T221425#5153917 */ html, /* All other selectors have `filter` double-applied to turn back to “normal” by inheritance */ html img:not( .mw-invert ), html video:not( .mw-invert ), html ogvjs:not( .mw-invert ), html svg:not( .mw-invert ), html iframe:not( .mw-invert ), html .mw-no-invert, html .cdx-no-invert, html td .diffchange, html .wvui-typeahead-suggestion__thumbnail, html .skin-minerva .mw-notification-visible .mw-notification-content, html .oo-ui-searchWidget-results .oo-ui-iconElement-icon, html .list-thumb, /* Extensions */ html .media-viewer .image img, html .media-viewer .mw-file-description img { filter: invert( 1 ) hue-rotate( 180deg ); } /* Reset overrides, needed where double application above isn't working. */ /* Vector modern */ html .skin-vector .mw-logo-wordmark, html .skin-vector .mw-logo-tagline, html .skin-timeless .mw-wiki-title > img, html .wvui-icon svg, html .mw-ext-score img, html .skin-invert img, html .skin-invert-image img, html .mw-hiero-table img { filter: none; } /* Backgrounds */ html table, html table.ambox-content, html table.toccolours, html .mw-notification, html .mwe-popups, html .infobox, html .toc, html .thumbinner, html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Thumb'], html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Frame'], html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Thumb'] > figcaption, html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Frame'] > figcaption, html .wikitable, html .cbnnr-main, html .cx-callout, html .overlay.media-viewer, html #simpleSearch, html #simpleSearch #searchInput, html #siteNotice #centralNotice .cnotice { background-color: #ddd; } /* Borders */ html body, html h1, html h2, html h3, html h4, html h5, html h6, html table.ambox-content, html table.toccolours, html .mw-notification, html .infobox, html .toc, html .thumbinner, html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Thumb'], html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Frame'], html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Thumb'] > figcaption, html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Frame'] > figcaption, html #mw-head, html #mw-panel, /* Vector 2022 uses a transparent border for margin collapsing (T312822) so don't apply this rule there */ .skin-vector-legacy #content.mw-body, html #simpleSearch, html #simpleSearch #searchInput, html #siteNotice #centralNotice .cnotice { border-color: #cdcbc8; } /* Links */ /* Links: normal */ html a, html .vector-menu-tabs li a, /* Backwards compatible VectorTabs, deprecated in MW v1.35. */ html .vectorTabs li a, html .toctogglelabel, html .mw-parser-output a.external, html .mw-parser-output a.extiw, html .mw-parser-output a.extiw:active, html #mw-panel .portal .body li a { /* color: #69f; Proposal below for level AA conformance, see also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T233266 `#36c` is transformed by :root `filter` to be closer to chosen `#69f`. */ color: #36c; } /* Links: visited */ html a:visited, html .mw-parser-output a.extiw:visited, html #mw-panel .portal .body li a:visited { /* color: #709bbd; Proposal below uses to-be-standardized color from https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213778 */ color: #6b4ba1; } /* Links: red */ html a.new, html .vector-menu-tabs li.new a, html .vectorTabs li.new a { color: #ff6e6e; } /* ::: Special Element Treatments ::: */ /* Image thumbnails */ html .thumbimage, html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Thumb'] > :not(figcaption) .mw-file-element, html figure[typeof~='mw:File/Frame'] > :not(figcaption) .mw-file-element { border: 0; } /* Content image (thumbnail) SVGs */ /* `*not( .mbox-image )` exception doesn't work for unclear reasons */ html .image img[ src*='svg' ], html .mw-file-description img[ src*='svg' ], html img[ src*='Wiktionary-logo'] { background-color: #fff; border-radius: 1px; } /* Dealing with false positives from selector above */ html .mw-echo-ui-notificationItemWidget-icon img[ src*='svg' ], html .mbox-image .image img[ src*='svg' ], html .mbox-image .mw-file-description img[ src*='svg' ], /* Emoji generated by [[Template:Emoji]] */ html .emoji .image img, html .emoji .mw-file-description img, /* Vote symbols on Talk pages */ html .image img[ alt^="Symbol" ], html .mw-file-description img[ alt^="Symbol" ] { background-color: transparent; } /* Page previews */ html .mwe-popups { box-shadow: 0 30px 90px -20px rgba( 0, 0, 0, 0.3 ), 0 0 1px #000; } html .mwe-popups.flipped-y:after, html .mwe-popups.flipped-x-y:after { border-top: 11px solid #ddd; } html .mwe-popups.mwe-popups-no-image-pointer:after { border-bottom: 11px solid #ddd; } /* Contributions menu */ html .cx-callout-1:after { border-bottom-color: #ddd; } /* Mobile Wikipedia logo mobile header */ html .branding-box img { filter: brightness( 0 ); } } @-moz-document url-prefix() { body { background: #000; } } @-moz-document url-prefix() { @supports (overflow-clip-margin: 1px) { body { background: #fff; } } }

--DollarStoreBa'alconverse 13:27, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Page Creation site notice for new accounts

Many, many, many new people come around and ask other users about how to create their own user pages. Personally, I think we could stop the confusion by coding a different type of 'you do not have permission to create this page' error for new accounts, which would look something like this:

'To create new pages, your account must be at least a week old and have 50 edits. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page.'

Just a thought, in case admins can do that without Jeff's involvement. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 20:02, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

I'd {{Actual citation needed}} on the "many"s, unless you're aware of off-site discussions about this one. It's actually pretty infrequent, so I feel you must be counting over several years, having found a number of historic examples dotted around on pages such as this. That said, it is currently as much an FAQ as anything else (as actually mentioned there, for anyone who bothers to read it). And we do sometimes get a new-users, the ones freshly post-validated to create pages merrily 'helping out' all those they think need their help in that regard.
Can I suggest that we do not have the exact number of edits so prominantly, though. Within the last day, as a matter of fact, we seem to have had someone making many useless edits (mostly of the form of adding extra spaces into seemingly random places within seemingly random articles), possibly in order to have created a new page of their own. And that's really not to the spirit of things. Inviting, or at least suggestively hinting, the possibility of near-vandalism (hopefully not actual vandalism) for the impatient who just see it as a 'target' to try to reach. And the truly and genuinely eager to contribute can easily have clocked up that number of edits to existing pages with no edit-tallying motive by the time the mandatory week has also expired.
The caveat, I know, is that saying "a week and a certain number of edits", aluded to but unspecified, will have the some of the same uselessly-editing people chasing an arbitrarily high edit-tally in order to be 'ready' for the week finishing. But that kind of person is already of the wrong initial mindset. And people desperate to create new pages with perhaps little more than a week of having, in most other respects, full editing rights (which is only marginally more than IPs like me have, as there only a few key places that I am prevented from editing) tend to find themselves likely to be contributing to the Category: Pages to Delete list (perhaps courtesy of more established editors).
On balance, perhaps the page you mention should instead briefly contain a link to the existing FAQ section, via link text explaining that there are reasons, but "see here" for details, or similar non-specific wording. Anyone who hasn't read the FAQ could benefit from being aware that it exists. And if anything ever changes (rise or fall of the time or tally limits, even removal or addition of specific criteria), the FAQ will probably be sooner updated with the new details before anyone thinks to edit the 'error page' again (a particular page that long-established users will have rarely, if ever, seen). Assuming, of course, even that anyone can edit that level of page content right now. 82.132.184.204 23:08, 30 September 2025 (UTC)
I don’t have time to read ip's comment but i definitely think the number shouldn't be so public, and i don’t see a need. i would support a small editnoce for letting users know they have to vaguely contribute more. FaviFake (talk) 16:17, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Some suggestions surrounding the use of the {{unsigned}} and {{unsigned ip}} templates.

Where I just reference the {{unsigned}} template, there should also be an obvious extension of the same principle to the {{unsigned ip}} one as well.)

These are some interelated proposals, that could be implemented singly/incrementally (as desired and agreed upon). But might deserve doing in 'one go', at least the agreed upon elements. I'm just putting each bit into different subsections for isolated discussion (or ignoring) of the specific merits/otherwise of each. 2.98.65.8 21:33, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

TD;DR;s added, if you don't like the author's original verbosity. 82.132.244.30 19
07, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Aesthetic/semantic change

Issue: Not often, but sometimes, comments that are 'unsigned'-tagged (with the words "please sign your comments with ~~~~") invokes retrospective use of ~~~~ by those who take the words at face value. This can result in a (previously) 'unsigned' message having a later timestamp than its replies, or later 'top level' messages more immediately signed by their editors.

The more 'proper' way to replace an {{unsigned}} tag, for those that want to, would be to copy-paste a valid signature of the same type and replace the username(/IP) and datestamp as already (usually!) given in that initial pester-tag. But this is by no means made obvious in the above message.

Proposal: Wording to be changed to something like "in future, please sign your comments with ~~~~", or "this comment should have been signed with ~~~~". Or other wording, to be agreed upon, to make as snappy as the original ("was not signed with ~~~~"). The aim is to omit the implicit request to anachrnistically sign, however.

Overall effect: Any change to the template(s) will transclude to what would probably be an overwhelming majority of Talk pages (at a guess), plus other 'discussion' pages like these Portal ones. But there's no change in functionality or any individual page-updating, just the slightly different text when viewing in future.

Justification: The need may be slight, but it's also a trivial tweak to implement (or even to trial) with a marginal but maybe useful long-term gain. But we'll need a proper discussion of what wording to move to, or else that it's not necessary. 2.98.65.8 21:33, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Case in point the few edits that led up to here. Didn't really 'spoil' any actual chronology but shows how easily it is obeyed wrongly. 2.98.65.8 18:04, 24 October 2025 (UTC)
TL;DR;
Change the text from "please sign your comments with ~~~~", slightly. 82.132.244.30 19:07, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Additional templates to complement 'unsigned' ones

Issue: Retrospective 'honest faking' of previously missing signatures is mildly awkward, as mentioned above. It's easy to get wrong, even easier to just not bother at all with it. (Either leave 'unsigned' or create the issue from the prior item.

Proposal: Complement the template usage {{unsigned|<username>|<timestamp>}} with one that is {{retrosigned|<username>|<timestamp>}}. Take the same parameters (except the 'alternate pester text') but return just the effective ~~~~-style format, now no longer with the 'please sign...'-type appended message.

There are a number of possible uses for this:

  1. user1 forgets to sign; user2 spots this, invokes {{unsigned}} to it; user1 acknowledges their goof, by simply changing the template-invocation of "unsigned" to "retrosigned" and the rendered page is left neater (any "whoops, my bad!" apologies can be given in the edit-comments, as unused third-parameter, etc, if they wish),
  2. user1 forgets to sign; user1, themself, spots this (before anyone else) and applies this as easily as they would apply a {{unsigned}}. Slightly easier than 'honest faking' that involves the valid copypaste-method (again, with "whoops!, my bad!" opportunities, should they feel like it),
  3. user1 forgets to sign; user2 spots this; knows that it's an oversight by a regular contributor who just slipped up, and there's no reason to make it a 'pester message'; so user2 just goes straight to using Template:retrosigned, and doesn't bother with the 'pestering' or 'blaming' implications inherent in Template:unsigned),
  4. user1 forgot to sign ...a decade ago or more!; We know that (for example) User:Jeff is unlikely to benefit from being reminded/pestered/shamed, so it just seems better to let the more recent editor 'retrosign' any such example that gets discovered,
  5. or possibly, with care, and honesty: someone, as newusername, wishes to associate themselves with comments made by oldusername, or even any given ip-address contrinution they previously used; that's something I wouldn't do myself, but I could see the appeal.

Justification: The idea is to allow for the 'tidying up' of the front-facing pages with less convoluted and more honest back-end edits. I don't expect, or want, anyone to retrospectively convert historic 'unsigned' tags just for the sake of it, but it adds a tool to the kit of anyone who is already prepared to 'correct' these things (their own, or others) in any given page-source.

I'd potentially use it for long-standing editor's lapses (the "Template:retrosigned" version), to feel less guilty about apparently nagging them about it. Or upon myself (the "Template:retrosigned ip" version), if I slipped up, to feel less guilty for going back in and 'honestly faking' what I had forgotten to sign, but (as noted above) there are several other applicable uses. 2.98.65.8 21:33, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

TL;DR;
Let there be "retrosigned" and "retrosigned ip" to be used where {{unsigned}} and {{unsigned ip}} are not (any longer) what is needed somewhere. 82.132.244.30 19:07, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Tracking parameter underutilisation

Issue: Early implementation, and sometimes more recent, of the {{unsigned}} template may use its most basic {{unsigned}} form with no parameters given. This gives an 'error', of sorts, due to having no official check-and-fallback upon not being given the username parameter. The error is visual only, and may have been allowed/forced to happen as a way to force its correction (though, at least until recently, it sees not to have done this as much as it should have).

Other times, perhaps immediately after the first parameter (contributor name) started to be routinely added, {{unsigned|username}} is used without the timestamp parameter that we now mostly take for granted.

(While the current third parameter, the 'alternate "pease..." text' is entirely an optional and a mostly unused feature, future changes may require/encourage further elements (perhaps 'named parameters') and leave our default "unsigned|username|timestamp" format lacking.)

I've been known to update any discovered 'bare bones'-unsigned formats, if I find any in pages I edit. Someone else seems to have adopted it as a task of its own, recently. This relies upon spotting the non-standard (or at least non-modern) usages.

Additionally, there is the in getting the rather ugly -- [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]]) (please sign your comments with ~~~~) 'error' for all no-param versions that exist.

Proposal: Firstly, just implement the 'catch' code upon the (lack of) first parameter. Make it 'fail cleanly', or at least less 'errorlike'. This is trivial to implement (i.e. {{{1|}}} instead of {{{1}}}). (I'd do that right now, if I could.)

Secondly, within the 'failover' half of the 'non-parameter' parsing, give it a Category: membership.

I have several possible suggestions for the style of Category membership:

  1. If the 'userID' isn't given, perhaps "Category:Unsigned no-UserID", if the 'timestamp' isn't given, "Category:Unsigned no-timestamp", and any others.
    • Note: the system could be extended to other templates, such as "Category:Incomplete no-reason" or perhaps "Category:Comic no-image", but that's not officially part of this suggestion.
  2. More simply, just have "Category:Unsigned-error", without specifying. (Or even "Category:Template-error" for far more generalised use.)
  3. Differently specific, use the category re-indexing (something like [[Category:Template-error|blah]]) for handy grouping-with-differentiation

Obviously, the appropriate category-page needs to be there to show any (and all) invocations. Similar to the Category:Incomplete explanations one, etc, it would invite action to remove membership as examples are sorted.

Justification: This is a solution for 'meta-problems', really. Which 'category membership' option is used would define how much additional editing(/correcting) this might prompt for historic problems, as well as identifying improperly added new template-invocations. But it might be good to know exactly how wide or narrow a scope people might wish to apply to this, before going ahead and creating many new 'error' categories... one even just the single catch-all one. 2.98.65.8 21:33, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

TL;DR;
Make it easier to find 'incompletely implemented' templates (initially the Unsigned ones), so they can be fixed by anyone who would like to. 82.132.244.30 19:07, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

This looks AI-generated. FaviFake (talk) 18:36, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Really? Unless AIs are doing 'accidentally on purpose' typos, I think it just looks like someone with more ideas trying to burst out onto the page than they can easily (and accurately) summarise. And I'm also that type of person, so I can easily relate. There, but for the grace of God any-unspecific-generalised-universal-force-of-non-deterministic-fate goes I! 82.132.245.237 18:50, 12 November 2025 (UTC)
Added a "Too Long; Didn't Read;" summary to each, as I understand the intents. ;) Now I'm wondering if there are any other things I might do that for! 82.132.244.30 19:07, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Banning the phrase "WhatsApp"

I've noticed that lately, much of our vandalism has come out of scamvertisements asking you to contact the scammers on WhatsApp. As I don't believe Randall has ever actually used WhatsApp, and as such it is unneeded, I feel we should just prevent any edits containing the word 'WhatsApp' from going through if the edit removes more than 90% of the page's byte count (let's be honest, nobody is going to delete that much from a page). --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 17:37, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

The standard protection is to have user:theusaf to refine/expand what theusafBOT reacts to. Which it seems they occasionally do.
I don't know whether they're paying attention, but I'd hope they'd pick up on such things. Given that it's the Feedback/etc comics that regularly get spammed like this, I'd hope they'd at least try to see what someone else reverted in leiu, and adapt accordingly, when they get the time.
I don't know the various sets of exact criteria in use (some seem generally obvious enough, key patterns and keywords involved) and I think something to at least start with "blanked page and replaced with ...", on specific sets of pages, as an edit comment could be a good predictor with minimal false-positives. But I wouldn't want to explicitly suggest that (or your idea), lest the more attentive spammers made a trivial change to their future edit plans to by-pass it.
...though I frankly think those responsible in this case don't care/think too much about it, it's more for all the other things I'd rather leave trivially unguessable how to get round. 82.132.244.138 18:30, 29 October 2025 (UTC)
I'll look into this. —theusaf (talk) 22:34, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
Hey look, an admin that isn't Kynde! That's... actually the first time I've seen an admin that isn't Kynde in person. Cool! --DollarStoreBa'alConverse 17:15, 7 November 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm not super active in the discussions, but I occasionally edit and check that by bot is still working and not destroying anything. The whatsapp check has been added. —theusaf (talk) 05:00, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Adblock popup

This wiki uses ads as a way to make money and keep the website up, and many people use adblockers (the absolute state of YT ads is insane). So, why don't we add one of those AdBlock popups that they have on some sites? Maybe the message could be:

So, about that AdBlock...
explain xkcd uses ads to keep our server online. Please consider turning off your AdBlock so we can continue providing quality explanations. Thanks!

This would be an optional thing and easily closable, but it could provide at least a bit of extra revenue. Maybe we could also make a 'thank you' screen for people who do actually turn off their adblocker (it would only pop up once, after they turn off the AdBlock):

Thank you for turning off your adblocker! Sincerely, the explain xkcd community.

What do you guys think? --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 15:58, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

categories template

Hear me out: I've been doing a lot of category adding to mostly files that are uncategorized (BTW, we have a 11,000-12,000 backlog of pages-any help (or maybe a bot!) would be greatly appreciated). I think that we should make a template called Category or "cat" so that we can add categories faster. Of course, HotCat exists, but it only renders when there are already existing categories. For all the uncategorized files/pages, we would have to manually add it in. My strategy currently is moving my mouse to the edit button, clicking it, hit return to make a whitespace (for organization), hitting CTRL-V, moving my mouse to the "Save changes" button, and clicking it. And that's only for the really repetitive ones, like the comic images or Hoverboard or Time. Does anybody have any thoughts/objections to this? Of course, we would still need to edit, but it would be a lot easier than typing out [[Category:___]] IMHO. Additionally, I've studied up a bit of template code (Lua) and I've sort of fleshed out some code. I don't really know if it works, but if there's anybody more experienced feel free to look through it! I've included Pages to delete (ptd) and Helper comic images (hci) as examples.

{{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|ptd| [[Category:Pages to delete]] }} {{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|hci| {{#if:{{{2|}}} | [[Category:Helper comic images ({{{2}}})]] | [[Category:Helper comic images]] }} }}

Thanks, --42.book.addictTalk to me! 10:17, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

That's actually a good idea! So, it would be: {{cat|Helper comic images (1190)}}? That would be quite convenient. --DollarStoreBa'alConverse 20:53, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
As written, I read it as...
If "ptd" in the first spot, i.e. {{cat|ptd}}, that would give the Pages To Delete category.
If "hci" in the first spot, i.e. {{cat|hci}}, then it would instead Helper Comic Images
If "hci" in the first spot and a number in the second, i.e. {{cat|hci|1234}}, then it would instead give you Helper Comic Images (1234).
There are maybe a few minor issues with it, as written. I'd use {{{1|}}}, for starters, and nest it so that any non-specified (including blank) param would give out an obvious mis-use error result. And you'd probably end up having {{cat|<whatever>}} sitting in your paste buffer (or would {{subst:cat|<whatever>}} be better?) exactly the same as you'd have had the basic Category, anyway.
But I really wouldn't know where it sits in the 1205: Is It Worth the Time? scale... Almost a "death by supernova neutrinos" issue, I suspect... ;) 78.144.255.82 21:37, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Technical

RSS FEED: If you're here for the broken RSS feed, please see #RSS FEED!
Random Button Glitch: If you're here for the broken Random Comics button, please see the Miscellaneous portal!

ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS

Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Technical.

Unable to view "what if?" page

The link to the page for the what if? blog displays an error: "No input file specified." JBYoshi (talk) 03:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

This also happens to me on 1205: Is It Worth the Time? Must be something with the ?s in the titles. 172.69.22.66 15:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
I've noticed that as well. I made a page in my userspace that redirects to the what if page, and for some reason that seems to work. (here is the link to the page) Blue screen of life (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
I have also noticed this but it is not just on pages with questions marks. Both 259 and 1705 show the same thing. A full list (as of 22 June 2020) of the ones i found is in the last reply to my report found here #2138_page_issues TomW1605 (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Both 259 and 1705 have an (e-with-accute-accent, Unicode U+00E9) in the URL, so for those pages, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?
For the "what if?" page, I had recently added a redirect from what if (blog) to get to it, and the What If disambiguation page has been updated with it, so at least we can get to it that way; and for the comic explanations, at least we can get to them by linking to their number-redirects (as 58 instead of 58: Why Do You Love Me?); but not sure how to fix it overall. At the following page, it suggests tweaking an Apache rewrite directive in .htaccess (or a CGI setting in PHP if it's running on IIS):
So maybe something about that has changed recently? Documentation:
Summarizing a few points from this related discussion:
  • Only one of the site's 10 administrators has made recent edits (SlashMe).
  • Neither of the site's 2 bureaucrats (Jeff and Lcarsos) have made any edits recently.
  • For admin access to the server itself, my limited understanding is that Jeff might actually own the server, but may have also given admin access to Dgbrt; however, neither of them have made edits recently.
But "most recent edit" might not be a good indicator, so I wonder of some of these folks are still involved in the project?
– Yfmcpxpj (talk) 05:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Looks like it happens for any page that has a percent-encoding in the title. PoolloverNathan[stalk the blue seas] 16:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Known broken pages

(Redirects work, whereas links to the actual page are broken.)

Title containing e-accute-accent:

Title ending with question mark:

Moved

I moved the what if? page to the what if (blog) page which I then changed to simply what if to fix this issue and because anyone new to this site would type that any way to see it. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Still trying to wrap my head around it – so just to summarize, we currently have:
For completeness, we also have...
...and the disambiguation page...
...and these troubleshooting pages from User:Blue screen of life:
Given that the actual content of the "what if?" article now lives at what if, I've started updating pages (except for Talk pages) to link directly there instead of the other redirect pages. All that's left to do are pages that link to the what if? redirect-page (which is broken). Its "What links here" special page is broken too, so it's difficult to find what pages link there – but now that it redirects to the what if page, you can see them indirectly from that page's "What links here" special page. These are the pages that still link there. There are still a lot of them to go.
Also, should the following redirect-pages be simplified to have them redirect straight to the new what if page, instead of redirecting through the intermediate what if? page (which itself redirects there anyway)?
– Yfmcpxpj (talk) 17:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Fixed the double redirects, don't ask me why we have so many pages for the same thing. PoolloverNathan[stalk the blue seas] 16:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion not displaying with comic

I am using FireFox on a Win10 machine. When I come to the site I can see the comic, explanation and transcript. But the discussion section is hidden. Even when logged in.

Any ideas?

You say "when I come to the site". If the address bar says you are on Main_Page and you see the heading "Latest comic", then it's simply working as designed. Above the comic, click on "Go to this comic explanation" and you will see the comic plus discussion.
Also, Steve, please sign your comments every time, with four tildes. That expands into your user name and a timestamp. Like this -- JohnB (talk) 10:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Random page sometimes takes me to an invalid address

Sometimes, when clicking on "Random page" in the left sidebar, the site will be blank apart from the text "No input file specified. ".

An example of such an URL is: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/111:_Firefox_and_Witchcraft_-_The_Connection%3F


I've noticed this happens for all URLs to comics that end in a question mark (or possibly any special character). Interestingly, this doesn't happen if you go to the comic from the search bar. Danish (talk) 23:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Bug on the main page

Bug Enviroment(Might work on other enviroments): Ubuntu 20.04LTS Firefox85.0 2021.2.7

Bug: The front page reads: `Welcome, Main Page, to explain xkcd!` with `Main Page` formatted as a username,can someone fix this?

Xkcdjerry (talk) 09:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Occasional error via Cloudflare

Just a note that I'm getting Cloudflare errors of "origin not reachable" (sounds wrong to me, in my head it should be 'destination', but never mind) three times now in the last ten to fifteen minutes - of maybe a dozen general site-requests.

I've also been getting seemingly .CSSless formatted pages over the past few days, which I've been putting down to slightly dodgy wifi at my end (not unknown) but if I'm getting Cloudflare's error cleanly then perhaps it's been entirely upstream/downstream/however-you'd-describe-the-Explain-server. (Obviously CSS resource requests, as with images, are additional HTTP calls, but I still lump it into the single site-request per page in my 'dozen' estimate above. No obviously lost images, though, in incomplete pages - not that can't be explained by .CSS non-following, anyway.)

I had copy-buffered some of the exact info, but due to incompetence I recopied over it before coming here. If it happens again, I'll try to bring it over here. But (the way these things go) maybe it won't. FYI, though. 141.101.98.52 12:04, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Not a Cloudfare error (looks like an error of the actual explainxkcd server) but every now and then (like just a few minutes ago) I get an error page that generally goes away if I immediately refresh. To whit:
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Not really a problem (occasionally happened while submitting an exit, and I have to confirm to the browser that I wish to repost the data, but this particular copied instance was through a more 'read-only' link-click, like most of the instances) but... in case someone finds this to be new and useful information... here you are! 141.101.98.192 03:45, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
OP, here, of the above 503 error report/casual mention. Obviously this is the same message that happened for an extended period of time over a number of days, but I've only just happened to find the site responding again and have not yet looked to see if it is explained as the same or different cause to the old intermittent issues (at root). I hope things are resolved from the major outage (server quota? bill payments? renewal/reconfiguration blips?) but wonder if I should report any future minor outages? I'm still smarting from the total loss of the fora.xkcd.com platform, a few years back, and while I'm not active enough here to consider a proper login (lurking as a freeloading anon-IP is good enough, usually, for my intellectual enjoyment, with all due apologies) I did have a slight pang of emptiness while it was out-of-order. 141.101.99.79 15:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Add TemplateData

Add the TemplateData extension to allow setting data for templates. This will help editors because they will be able to see the data of templates.

MediaWiki 1.30.0?!

This wiki is currently on MediaWiki 1.30.0 (release notes), the first of three releases of a version of MW that reached end-of-life in June of 2019 (mw:Version lifecycle). It's thus missing multiple important security updates from 1.30.1 and 1.30.2, not to mention the two years' worth of security updates since 1.30.x reached end-of-life. Even 1.31.x will be reaching end-of-life in just over a month.

If the sysadmins here update to MediaWiki 1.35.2 (release notes), that version will be maintained till September of 2023, with only a few security updates in the meantime. I would strongly encourage y'all to update to 1.35.2; to promptly update if there's a .3, .4, etc.; and to make sure you switch to the next LTS release (which will presumably be 1.39) well in advance of September of '23. (Note that this will also require updating to PHP 7.3.19 or later.) PinkAmpersand (talk) 07:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Uptime

Did the website just go down? Beanie talk 13:06, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

It was definitely down this weekend! https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/nxrm65 ProphetZarquon (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Comic template lappend breaks for standalone comic links

For example, https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html is changed to https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html/ which isn't valid 172.69.90.15 15:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Template here, I think it needs to be changed to solve this https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Template:comic

exkcd page here https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Blue_Eyes

May not be your problem, but FYI.

My typcal setup: Android tablet, with Chrome for Android (latest update), but also Firefox for Android (ditto), using default Gboard (likewise) for input.

Occasionally (notably within the last few weeks/maybe a month or so), when going in to edit an explainxkcd page through Chrome (it's how I divide up my browsing), I'm getting the cursor in the textarea box which can be used to Cut/Copy/Paste (as applicable and useful), but the on-screen keyboard isn't popping up. Page is fully loaded (can be refreshed, doesn't have the "stop loading" alternative), can go back (page viewing) and try to go back to the page editor (often to same result). Sitting and waiting doesn't pop the keyboard up, either (sat there for minutes). Happens both on home wifi and mobile connection.

If I transfer my attentions to the page to Firefox (copy URL, to use there... but I don't use that by default for expxkcd stuff) there's no problem, but then if I come back to Chrome again it seems to start working again anyway so not sure if it's just avoiding/flushing a transient problem that would also initially crop up with Firefox if I used that more.

Because editing is a different (mobile-optimised) process on Wikipedia and I can't be sure about any the equivalence of any other wiki out there (and it doesn't happen with anything else I regularly key into on Chrome) it's not something I've reproduced outwith this site, and of course desktop page-editing doesn't require touch-screen keyboard because there's a physical one.

Not getting much feedback with Chrome (really can't get on with their bugrep processes, it's too huge a project to make headway, IME), not even tried to pester the Gboard team and I've not seen anything said on here about this being a site-issue (not sure how it could be, as it's outside the remit of the core web-page rendering process and more an Android or App level of incompetence), but I thought I'd make a note of it here for future reference. Make of it what you will. Annoying but not game-breaking. And I just wanted to vent a little. 172.70.162.147 16:54, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

special:interwiki

where'd it go? 172.69.68.200 05:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Please update MediaWiki + AbuseFilter

Seriously. Many scripts and such built for modern, supported versions of MW do not work here because it is so unbelievably undated. PinkAmpersand above basically covers the reason why. I also highly recommend adding the extension AbuseFilter (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter) as it immensely makes removing vandalism easier (by straight up disallowing or blocking those that do, esp if it's like the current formulaic massive-replacement vandalism.) CRLF (talk) 00:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Ditto. I feel like the main problem is that the sole person who has access to the backend either doesn't have time to update, doesn't have interest, or doesn't have the technical knowledge necessary. But yes, I agree - updating and installing an extension to help control vandalism would help this wiki tremendously. Obwankenobi (talk) 20:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

↑ ?

Why do some pages have ↑ at the very start? They can all be spotted by searching ↑ Is it a technical thing, vandalism, some sort of glitch? Maybe I'm just uninformed or being an idiot.

Edit logs tell me that an IP user manually reverting vandalism somehow inserted one or more extra characters while manually reverting vandalism. Davidy²²[talk] 13:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
Should it be removed? It's not necessary and might be confusing for screenreaders... Mushrooms (talk) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Maybe not en-mass, I'd say. But I've dove in to delete a rogue leading <br /> tag left from a part of a prior vandalism (likewise, just before the {{comic}}-element) and I've promised myself that I'll remove any more that I spot (and now that arrow) in any future whole-page edit I make. Plus a small shopping-list of inessential but useful edits like making {{Citation needed}}s flow better when they're mispunctuated/etc.
But that's my solitary opinion. I'm sure hunting out and squishing this isn't a problem at all. I'm just balancing my own peculiar brand of OCD with what is somehow my also my own version of casual apathy towards other details. (Also, it probably looks better for a named account of recognised good standing to start editing potentially hundreds of pages in a session, rather than myself... potentially indistinguishable from the IP who seems to relish worn out memes in a general page-trashing.) 162.158.159.121 12:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Is there anything else we can do to prevent vandalism?

There's been quite a significant uptick in vandalism recently, and I don't feel we have any effective tools to combat it. I believe one of the biggest issues here is due to the way logged-out editing works on this wiki. Blocks are completely ineffective at slowing vandals, and IP editors can vandalize with basically nothing we can do to thwart them other than revert-warring. Is there a better way?

There's been some discussion of installing AbuseFilter, but I'm not sure anything became of it. We could disable logged-out editing, but that would likely be counterproductive as we get lots of legitimate contributions from logged-out users. If there's a way to switch to location-based IPs, we could rangeblock problematic users as well as proxies. Does anyone have any ideas? 162.158.78.145 16:11, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm sort of making server side changes via telegraph so an extension is probably going to take a while to get installed. Takes a bunch of emails and followups to get single variables changed in the mediawiki settings file. There is an email verification option, and some edit frequency variables that could be set to make spam more time consuming. Don't love range blocks but wouldn't mind getting the CDN IPs dealt with so we can actually use the IP bans again. Davidy²²[talk] 17:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm very grateful that you're working on changes under the hood. What do you think is the best way to deal with disruption in the meantime? Vandalbane (talk) 17:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
Could borrow a patrol bot like the ones people on main wikipedia have, could ask around. Davidy²²[talk] 18:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
There's not really a drop-in solution that you can use, especially since the server's MediaWiki version is not in sync with Wikipedia's (so a lot of the APIs etc have completely changed; when initially reverting vandalism I tried importing some scripts from enwiki but they failed as a result), but also because the bots have gotten pretty complex (using machine learning provided by the Wikimedia Foundation, for example). CRLF (talk) 03:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
Oh I do notice mediawiki hasn't been upgraded in a while. Looks like new version of mediawiki should be dropping extremely imminently, would be nice timing for an upgrade Davidy²²[talk] 04:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Rollback

Does the rollback permission exist on this wiki? Vandalbane (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

The rollback permission of course exists but there's no group called "rollbacker" like you'd find on Wikipedia (limited to admins). You'd need the sysadmin to change the configuration to add one, which as established is not really an option right now. CRLF (talk) 03:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

What happened to custom JavaScript?

I put some code in User:Some user/common.js, but it is not alerting 'hi' every time I load a page. Why can't we execute JavaScript anymore? Is it in response to the crapping incident? Some user (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Entirely because of that, yeah. Davidy²²[talk] 04:51, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

My IP

Why is my IP address a Cloudflare address in Norway? Is this a joke of some kind that I'm missing?

Other wikis like Wikipedia are showing me my actual IP when I go to Special:MyContributions, so I suspect this is a wiki misconfiguration. It changed again while I was typing this. 162.158.222.194 16:55, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

All IPs (as this one will be) are from Cloudflare gateway IPs, because that's the default IP that the Wiki understands as the source. Cloudflare mediates all the traffic, and perhaps to some advantage (not being privvy to the logs, I can only guess how much it insulates the true server from extreme problems, but I bet it does in some way).
There have been suggestions before to change some setting (in the MediaWiki implementation? ...can't recall exactly) to have it pick up and use the IP that the gateway reports (in its meta-request) was the origin, but that's not been enacted for Idunnowhat reason.
Because the black-box that is the Cloudflare traffic shapes in various ways, you will find that a single user will jump around 'apparent' IPs, and I've also been in the relatively embarassing situation of replying to another IP's info and finding that I've registered on the exact same IP so that it looks like I'm stooging myself, or something.
On the whole, though, it's a harmless quirk. And given the trivial nature of deliberately spoofing origins (even on top of assuming you get an effectively static NAT from your ISP in the first place) I don't personally see it as a problem to 'solve' this. But neither would I complain if the 'fix' were implemented if this query reminds someone that they were going to try and do the necessary tweak.
As a lay-answer, I hope that fills you in a little. If those who have more knowledge/control of the process want to add anything or correct me, I'm sure they'll do so as soon as they can, but here's a reply to keep you going for now... 172.70.85.24 01:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
fyi it is supported in MediaWiki through $wgCdnServers. See MediaWiki’s introduction. -- 物灵 (talk) 06:58, 6 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Main page in categories

Ambox notice.png This discussion is marked as duplicate. See this discussion.

Main_Page was found wrongly appearing in some newly-created categories, such as Category:Cosmology. Could you fix it? --ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 17:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Never noticed this myself, but I'll take it as read. Before checking myself, I'm wondering if this could be when the main page 'inherits' tags from the Current Comic that it features. And thus solve itself (whilst gaining others) upon a newer Current Comic. (Must surely inherit "Monday Comics"/etc, on schedule every week.)
If it is that, perhaps the solution lies in the details contained within https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories#Categories_and_templates_(transcluded_pages)
Or maybe I'm wrong about it. But I have no rights to edit (thus at least examine the 'code' of) the Main page, to check my snap theory, as with most people. 172.70.162.46 19:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

This happened again in Category:Airplane banner. I27.O.O.I (talk) 09:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and it lasted as long as the latest comic was still one with particular categories. I don't intend to worry about it. If someone goes to a category that interests them and looks at the main page, as temporarily advertised, they're likely to find (as part of it) a comic which is indeed in that category. Doesn't sound like a big problem to me, except for determinin why some cats (e.g. Friday Comics) don't link to the Main page when they might be expected to...
(PS, I know for sure that I27.O.O.I isn't the same person as ColofulGalaxy (and various others, beyond even those with the bloomin' obvious "CG" initials or other recent spoofs on the RFC1918 addresses), and I don't think I mind too much, but faking disagreements between your various IDs isn't helping, anyone... smells too much of trying to establish alibis in advance of your next attempt to vandalise the site with stupid stuff. And doesn't impress me, so I doubt it impresses anyone else either. As long as you're just doing sane things, however, I'll accept your little idiosyncracies.) 162.158.74.32 19:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
(PPS: You left your fingerprint on this latter attempt to 'rescue' this page. - Spammer a few minutes before midnight, my IP reversion happened shortly after. A little later "Elisabeth" then re-spammed (modified), then another IP immediately jumps on it to restore it but with the modified undo-summary line clearly indicating that some sort of a game is being played. Please don't, it's not clever.) 172.70.90.34 02:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This doesn't happen to date categories, but it happens in manually added categories such as Category:Statistics. ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 21:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Cannot create user page

It says: There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page. 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

(Removed alternative text in the link involved, to not hide behind trickery.) I think you know that there's no problem with 2659: Unreliable Connection itself, except that it had become one of several pages targeted for spamming, the only one then locked down, then finding that the spammers just retargeted to its Talk page, etc.
I'm torn between "not assuming bad faith" and "don't feed the trolls", as competing principles, so I'm spelling out the situation. However much a tribute you might think it could be, I don't think there's a future in having a new username that's directly referencing a comic which has become so frequently seen in the recent history of this wiki's edits.
Obviously any genuine contributions are more than welcome. So prove me wrong, why don't you? 172.70.91.151 03:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Could you help now? 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 09:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I've created your talk page. I guess that what you intended is to have a backup or mirror page for comic 2659. Am I right? ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 20:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Fanmade comics

A fanmade comic appeared on xkcd. Could you edit the template? 172.69.23.100 07:21, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

You're going to have to say more about it, at least for me. Apart from the Sandbox attempt to make a page, I haven't seen the comic you're describing anywhere. Certainly not anywhere official. Link, for our benefit? 172.70.85.66 10:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Why doesn't this code block work?

Does anybody know why the code block at the end of this page doesn't work? I've tried everything and it still looks like plain text

Can't add RSS feed because of pubDate value on 27 Nov 2015

When I try to add the RSS feed in Nextcloud News feed reader I get an error Impossible to convert date : Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time.

W3C Feed validation says that pubDate must be an RFC-822 date-time and points "Pacific Standard Time" portion as the cause of the error: <pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2015 17:24:34 Pacific Standard Time</pubDate>. Can you please fix the timestap for this?

Admin request posted here because of vandalism

I can not currently access the admin requests page because it has been vandalized... can someone please protect the latest comic page (2805). There is some pretty childish vandalism going on there right now. Thanks!

It's not the latest, seems like ALL. I went back to 2804, 2803, jumped back like 15 comics, all the same thing. To me the most offensive part is doing it with a nonsensical image. And why pipe it through Archive somehow? NiceGuy1 (talk) 02:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
UGH. the vandals are back at it again... we need to lock xkcd pages @NiceGuy 172.70.39.2 00:59, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Way to contact the site hosters?

As many have pointed out the software this wiki runs on is horribly outdated. WikiEditor also isn't here for some reason. Quite a bit of messages here have seen no action. Is there some kind of contact form to reach the hosters? -- Aaron Liu (talk) 00:36, 10 October 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There are various levels of admin who do intervene, as and when jecessary, but I understand that the (active) ones closest to the actual hosting level of intervention are not really ready to do the (increasingly greater) degree of uprooting necessary to get a "working" system to be "marginally better working", by way of that very dangerous middle-ground of potentially being ruined entirely.
I appreciate and anticipate the counter-arguments regarding letting it go totally unupdated, of course, just I've personally seen enough failures (participated in some, or been the actual invokee, myself) to be very sympathetic to the "if it aint (too) broke, don't fix it" tendency. But that inertia is not the only factor, of course, and the full motivations (or lack of them) of those involved is not for a lowly IP like me to explain, even if I think I know... 172.69.195.42 01:24, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Have they posted some sort of statement? It also is most definitely not “marginally” better working, compare the source editor to that of Wikipedia and look at topic subscription etc features. Not to mention a lot of security fixes haven’t been added and this version has reached EOL long ago. Updating also would not ruin this entirely…Aaron Liu (talk) 17:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Some have also said that quite a bit of assistive scripts for modern versions don’t work. Visual Editor, while horrible, is still easier for new people to get started with. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I've found a new reason: This wiki doesn't even allow loading userscripts! Aaron Liu (talk) 01:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

That might actually have been a conscious decition, after a 'certain user' caused chaos here, not so long ago. 162.158.74.25 19:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
It was about a year and a half ago. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. 172.68.174.143 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Huh? What happened? Is there a place to request gadgets then? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
"What happened" involved automated vandalism (from someone who been doing it manually, then found the "better way") though I couldn't tell you the exact details, there were automated 'unvandalism's made in response, and theusafBOT/etc does some of that still, in response to non-automated(/off-site scripted) vandalism/errors that it can actually catch before ordinary users (or IPs like me) can. But certainly a certain brand of scripting was turned off to curtail the 'high intensity' vandalism phase.
You're more or less in the best place to request things, right here. Whether updates, (re)adding functionalitu or tweaking site settings. Can't tell if those who can do these things can't or won't do them... Or are actually absent, instead of just not replying. The cavalry has been known to come running in when necessary (e.g. when "what happened" happened) so it could be any manner of non-response (until you get one). Not necessarily the best state of affairs, but better than being confirmed absentees.
I ran a bot to mass-edit pages by replacing their content with the word "crap" repeatedly. I was 15 then, and I thought it was funny. It wasn't. 172.68.174.143 06:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
As an occasional but infrequent actual-Wikipedia editor, too, I must say that if the Visual Editor is what I currently have to use for that (at least as an anonIP when using a mobile device, which tends to be when I get the urge most) then I like the unaugmented editor here more. Straight up, honest, un'wizarded' interface, where you only have to get used to markup details and not a WYSIWYG editing environment (as well?). Not sure I'd be happy with an even more 'assistive' script imposed upon me, like I dislike modern generations of Windows (and 'user friendly' linux dists). So can I just ask that functional/visible changes of the kind you seem to be asking for, if made available, aren't overimposed/left as options rather than the default (or only) choice...? Ok, so I can (or would have to) adapt, but I'd rather not. Of course, I have no weight to pull in this matter, it's just an afterthought (even as I wish you good luck with raising an admin's eyebrow, in some useful manner). 141.101.98.135 05:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I am not asking for VisualEditor, which no one likes on Wikipedia either. For some blasted reason they made it edit HTML instead of Wikitext and it’s clunky and loads for a very long time.
I’m asking about the WikiEditor, aka Wikipedia’s source editor. In VE, click on the pen next to the publish button and click on “source editing”. That editor makes this one look like freaking Stone Age, syntax highlighting is especially a game-changer. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
There’s also the annoying ReCaptcha v2 every single edit… it seems like it would be relatively easy to switch to v3 which only makes you do the challenge when you’ve visited a bit too much. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that would make things easier for someone who wanted to do mass vandalism like I did. If it didn't do it every time, someone could still edit quite quickly. 172.68.174.192 18:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, I can tell you that it doesn't always demand that I fulfil more than a tickbox (most trouble I have is when it fails to connect to give me the tickbox (or respond with anything useful when I do), for which I'm forced into one or more Previews until it will. When it does ask me to do something about it, I do often get forced through two or more request to identify traffic lights, motorbikes, stairways, bridges, hills, tractors, buses, etc, etc, etc... But I think that's more the Tesla-training Algorithm being nust greedy for my attention than the Robot-sentry having a less casual attitude to my attempt to edit. (I believe I'm on a usually untroublesome source IP/Cloudflare gateway, but it could also depend on how many others try to do things via (part of) the same route. Very, very rarely I get Google Search requesting something similar of me ((It: "You have made a lot of searches", me: "Of course I'll have play your little game, but this is my first lookup today...")), which I'm sure isn't Cloudflared, so it might reach back to my ISP's gateway and what fellow users are currently getting up to.)
As for the guy above (and you, Liu), can't speak for how well or badly others on your own 'choice' of gateways behave. Or yourselves. Luck of the draw? For the first part, at least. 172.69.195.174 20:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
MediaWiki 1.40 automatically tags all edits that remove over 90% of page text with "mw-replaced". You could block all edits in mainspace with that tag, either if MediaWiki has it or through the AbuseFilter extension. While I can complete the CAPTCHAs, it's very annoying to need to Captcha every edit on a place where the main focus is edits. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Plus, v3 doesn't just do nothing. It tracks how your cursor moves to see if it's robotic, while v2 annoyingly gives you the challenge every time. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Presumably for touchscreen control (like mine, right this moment), it does something else than track a nonexistent mouse-pointer's passage across the monitored elements of the display... ;) 172.70.90.190 12:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
There are a few MediaWiki plugins that help keep vandalism/spam under control without requiring users to solve a Captcha every time they make an edit. I use https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Moderation on the wiki I maintain, and it works very well. However, it does require that there be enough active moderators to approve edits, as it basically requires every single edit to be approved before it's posted. Thus, it also introduces some "lag" between when stuff is written and when it can be seen by others. I think it could work if the extension could be installed (I'm not even sure if it's supported on this version of MediaWiki) and if a good list of moderators could be put together. Obwankenobi (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
I disagree with requiring edits to be approved. Unless we have extremely high vandalism, just filtering out the above tags I mentioned and using ReCAPTCHA v3 would be enough. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:16, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Ok, fair point. However, that wouldn't stop human vandalism, just vandalism from bots. I'm not sure how much human vandalism there is, though, so it might not even be a problem. Obwankenobi (talk) 12:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
It's hard (for us 'civvies') to know how much bot-vandalism is stopped but probably a lot, most of which we never see, with occasional ones we might see having be dealt with. (I'm guessing these things are rare (temporarily-)successful 'bots, because flesh-and-blood vandals wouldn't be occasionally doing essentially the same insta-reverted thing on a thematically-small set of pages, over several years without moving on. It has to be a lucky unattended script-based effort that just keeps trying the same things over and over with an easily revertible but tangible result happening only infrequently.)
More obvious human vandalism tends to rumble on, with occasionally a spate of it as someone gets short-term kicks for it. Though some of them seem may repeat themself after a break. Friendly humans and friendly 'bots both tend to provide the main anti-vandalism responses fairly quickly, though, depending upon what kind of a mess they caused. I've seen worse places, definitely, and it's by no means a losing battle against chaos, just regular skermishes.
Not wanting to tempt fate, of course. I guarantee that there'll be some fool that takes all this as a challenge, so I just have to trust to the Good Guys keeping on keeping on. 172.70.90.71 14:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

heyo, is there a way to add actual citations to explainxkcd instead of the template citation needed? couldn't find anything, but i'm pretty new here - thanks in advance. Nigga (talk) 21:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Not that I have much faith in your usernae lasting long (you're 'that guy', aren't you? ...in which case you know anyway), but for the sake of anyone else who needs to know:
  • If you mean "add an actual 'citation needed' tag", then it's {{Actual citation needed}} that you'll use.
  • If you mean "add an actual citation link to somewhere", then:
    • Link to URLs with [].
      • A link such as [<url>] will give you a superscript-number link, which isn't pretty, IMO.
      • A link such as [<url> <text>] (that's a space between the two) will link <text> to the URL, just work it into the sentence you're writing, fairly easy
    • Link to internal (or cross-wiki) pages with [[]].
      • [[<page title>]] will make a literal link to <page title>.
      • [[<page title>|<text>]] (with a pipe) is how you make the <text> your link.
    • You can use the last to link specifically to wikipedia's cross-site format, but for that it's best to use {{w}}
      • {{w|<page title>}} (w-pipe...) uses the page title
        • It will use the link as if the first character is uppercase, so you don't need to capitalise that. Other case-sensitivity is preserved.
        • {{w|<singular page title>}}s will link the obvious pluralisation of the page title, just to save you effort
      • {{w|<page title>|<text>}} (w-pipe and pipe) lets you use entirely alternate text.
    • There's also templates that shortcut (or make easier on the eye, or add appropriate warnings) for some other commonly referenced external sites, from xkcd's own what-if to TVTropes.
...hope that helps everyone that doesn't already know these few simple bits as relate to wikis in general or this wiki in particular. 172.71.242.218 22:24, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Confirmation Email Bug

Hi. I've been trying to get my email confirmed so that I can get pinged when pages are edited, but I just can't find it, even after trying multiple times. I use Gmail, and yes, I have checked my spam folder. Has anyone else had this issue? EDIT: I see that others have had this issue, but the admins haven't done any action to solve it, except for one sarcastic comment by Davidy22 back in 2014. 42.book.addict (talk) 00:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Lack of Userpage

Hey, I joined a few years ago, but I still do not have a Userpage. Can you make one for me? I do not have the permission to do so. GreyFox (talk) 22:47, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

This is actually your very first post, after joining a bit more than a year ago ("18:35, 14 November 2023 User account GreyFox (talk | contribs) was created"). I'm sure someone can oblige (not me, for obvious reasons), but you've not done much to contribute (at least under this account), which would have then eventually brought you to the point where you can just self-create your Userpages/etc. So your request is a bit out of the blue.
Just so long as we all know where we stand, though. 172.69.194.227 09:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Oh, thanks! Do you know the exact number of edits I need to create it?
50 to be autoconfirmed. Also, please sign your comments. 42.book.addict (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

server errors

is anyone else constantly getting 503 errors? youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 17:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

yup, been seeing those all the time. Also seeing that the server is down a lot of time-it suggests me to Google for what I’m “looking for” 42.book.addict (talk) 17:18, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
503s are fairly common (often when I'm in a rush), and have been for... well, certainly years, maybe more than a decade (though more common during major vandalism/anti-vandalism surges). I had, however, noticed a recent blip (during the last day or so) of the Server Down/Try Google page that you refer to, which I haven't seen for a long time (not really sure when, but maybe five years or so ago). In fact, I probably got Cloudflare 'rejections' more, during aformentioned vandal-overloading.
Without any access to the admin logs, I can only speculate as to what might be sparking it. But service (notwithstanding the brief page-refusals themselves) seems to be happily unaffected. 172.70.160.249 20:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Allow new users to edit their own page

I found someone asking if we could change this in the proposals page (Community portal/Proposals: Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed (not a typo)). PDesbeginner (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Technical difficulties?

I keep getting a message that says: "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Cannot access the database)" It's happened a lot so I was wondering if there was a specific cause behind it and perhaps a way to fix it. 172.68.54.65 00:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

yeah, I’ve been getting those errors too. I can’t even log into my account before it says that there’s an error again. I’ve been steadily receiving them for a couple months, but never like today. From Recent Changes, it doesn’t look like anyone is spamming the wiki, so maybe it’s an attack of some kind. You’ll need to contact the admins who have access to the server and can poke around, but good luck getting User:Davidy22 or User:Jeff online. 172.69.135.130 17:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
update: I’ve been poking around a lot of websites, trying to see if the website is being attacked. The websites all say that the server is down. I’ll try to ask Jeff on this and pray that he checks his email. 172.69.135.129 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The site is collapsing

503's are to be expected, but i've got them and the "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading." error way, way too much. it's actually getting really hard to edit stuff because of them. youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 01:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

heck, i just got a 503 when posting this topic. also, load times are noticeably longer. and i'm getting "loss of session" errors when i try to edit... youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 02:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I’ve messaged Davidy22 and Jeff about it, hopefully they see it and reply. It looks fine right now, appears that it works horribly at times and fine later. Due to the on-off nature of it, I would suspect DDoS attacks, as a 503 error means that the server can’t process the request, which occurs with DDoS attacks. 42.book.addict (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
update: I’ve made a Reddit post, as I’ve seen Davidy22 active on Reddit and respond to older threads on r/xkcd. Hopefully they respond! 42.book.addict (talk) 18:50, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
October update: Davidy22 responded to my emails and said that he has emailed Jeff multiple times. Apparently Jeff is ignoring his emails and not responding. I’ve been checking Jeff’s Twitter/X/Whatever once a week and it shows that he uses it semi-regularly. Apparently Jeff is a podcaster too? Anyways, nobody has really responded to me on r/xkcd, so I’m thinking of sending a DM to Jeff via Twitter. I have a to-do list for Jeff listed on my User Page, feel free to give any thoughts, proposals, comments on anything else you want him to do in this thread. 42.book.addict (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Agree, the situation is not terrible but feels extremely unstable. What happens if the wiki just breaks, and nobody can even contact Jeff? I feel like these errors are happening more and more frequently. --FaviFake (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
Were you around for the (hacking-enforced) sudden ending of the xkcd fora? All things end.
But (touch wood) the 503s/other connection refusals are a lot less frequent right now, so I'm not actually quite so worried as I might occasionally have been. What's more likely to happen is that the hosting plan, physical hardware and/or domain reaches an end and then... that's probably it unless someone with the wherewithall somehow manages to drag it back up again. 162.158.74.14 00:09, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
I really don't like the idea of this site becoming permanently unavailable :( This makes me want to contribute less! I was not around back then, no. --FaviFake (talk) 15:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
I've been getting these errors a lot as well all of a sudden. Sadly from what I've read on these pages, the sysadmin has basically left and ghosted everyone. The moment the site fully breaks for whatever reason, ExplainXKCD will be history. 172.71.178.58 15:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
It's probably not the site breaking (as in, it's not intrinsically failing), just that unrestrained useless traffic to it (I theorise, elsewhere that it's a sudden rise in inconsiderate AI-training has led to a rise of ungoverned degrees of site-scraping) is marginalising our more legitimate attempts to interact. It would help to get some Administrator-led process to mitigate it, but it really should be better dealt with more towards the gateway-side of the connection (or the scrapers gradually toning their scraping down, but I doubt that'll happen). It, say, Cloudflare itself gets a good solution in place to dissuade such high attempts to access all the sites it otherwise proxies for, then we'll be back to just the site bumbling along in its slightly unmaintained condition. We then still have a couple of sub-administrators, a Bot and a good population of other users to keep things running against more trivial issues (short of hardware/infrastructure/financial failures). 172.68.186.141 16:55, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

List of All Comics

I think that FaviFake and I have accidentally broken the All comics page. When clicked, it brings you to the page List of all comics, which displays the comics 3000-3002 (as of right now) instead of the list of all comics (oops-my bad). How do we fix this? There’s also the page List of all comics (3000-3500), but the TheusafBOT ignores it. Can someone more technical help troubleshoot this problem? Again, sorry for making a muck of things. 42.book.addict (talk) 18:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh I'm sorry, I created a new topic for this and I didn't see this one. I noticed the List of all comics (3000-3500) today and scheduled it for deletion because we never make such a page until we have exactly 500 comics to put there. Also, the name is wrong, it should say 3001-3500.
The page List of all comics is supposed to display comics 3001-3005, not all comics. You might be confusing it with List of all comics (full), which would work perfectly if List of all comics displayed the last 3 comics. I have no idea why the bot stopped updating it. Maybe it will work now that the wrong page is scheduled for deletion? FaviFake (talk) 05:15, 31 October 2024
Wait a second, why did you move the List of all comics to List of all comics (3000-3500)? It seemed to me like everything was working fine before you moved it FaviFake (talk) 05:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
I was trying to copy the content to List of all comics (3000-3500), and accidentally broke it. Sorry! 42.book.addict (talk) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Yeah I can confirm the content and the entire edit history was moved to the incorrectly-titled page that's now scheduled for deletion. I guess maybe we didn't really need the edit history on that page, but who knows.
Weirdly, the bot seems to have restored the page as it was and then stopped doing its thing. Since we're the only ones here, I suggest you manually create the missing rows for the new comics and we'll see if that works when the next comic drops. If it doesn't, I'll contact the maintainer and creator of the bot myself. Sounds good? :) FaviFake (talk) 18:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Sir yes Sir! 🫡 42.book.addict (talk) 04:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
Great, thanks! I can also do it this afternoon if you don't have time. I realise my previous messages read like orders lol, they were supposed to be suggestions to try and fix the issue. FaviFake (talk) 07:18, 1 November 2024

The List of all comics is no longer being updated automatically

Hey everyone, I noticed the bot isn't updating this page anymore: List of all comics. There are supposed to be five comics in it but there are only two at the moment. Is this supposed to happen? FaviFake (talk) 05:06, 31 October 2024

2034: Equations error?

One of the TeX math-thingies (sorry for the informal writing), is showing this error: "Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \oint". Idk why it's showing this, can someone fix this? 108.162.237.48 19:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

It's a long-standing error, to do with the background processes that turns the TeX-style markup into embedded images. All equations (or whatever it might be that the particular MathML was being used to render) that were originally given cached-imagery still work fine, but it seems a later update made it so that if you adjust it at all (even slightly), it no longer has the route to produce the embedding cleanly.
It can probably be solved by rolling back some module(s) that got refreshed quite some time ago, though the advised fix is to actually fully update them (and/or reconfigure the backend scripting) to work with all the newest versions of the original tools. Unfortunately, the people (or maybe person) who would do this is not too active at the moment (may also not be up to speed on everything, either, if it involves a bit of more tricky administration), so we're left with the occasional problem establishing the texvc handler.
Not sure which page you're encountering this on, but sometimes if you look back in the edit history you can find a working version of the thing you're seeing go wrong. If it's an aesthetic difference (e.g. the presence or absence of a spacing character), you might be able to just restore the render-cached version and make do with it not looking quite right.
If it's a necessary change that was made (e.g. "dt" instead of "dx", which is definitely wrong the old way), or it seems never to have a valid render, then there's two obvious solutions:
  1. Make your own image of it as it should be and (with a suitably auto-validated account, or via a handy external image hosting service and/or a more mature account here) get that embedded in place of the markup-source, or
  2. Replicate its appearance in more basic (by standard) but complex (by source needed) markup. Combinations of basic wikimarkup and HTML can do most 'fiddly positional' things, see 2614: 2 for a numerator/denominator layout, for example.
Not as 'simple' as TeX-markedup. But, on the other hand, the "\oint" symbol is "∮", so perhaps all you need to do is copy'n'paste that actual unicode symbol to wherever you found the problem, and use that instead, and forgo the TeX version altogether? (Might not show on some displays, but probably enough to make it a minority issue.) 172.70.90.105 22:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Had the brainwave that I could probable search for the offending \oint, actually. Did so, found 2034: Equations, noted that it was the only (current) rendering issue and therefore just did the pasting over myself. Looks good for me, but obviously might not help (but not make worse) others' viewing of it. 172.69.195.54 22:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

...Why didn't I think of just pasting the Unicode equivalent. I'm dumb, but thanks for fixing it. 172.69.70.10 13:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Esolang wiki bug

The "esolangs.org" wiki is also experiencing a similar bug. The server was repeatedly changing a particular user's signature in his posts. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Fucking bullshit. One, this doesn’t belong here and I’ve copied it into the Technical Community Portal. Two, I saw your talk page on esolangs.org, which you brought up this “bug”, which the local admin (who’s probably just as sick and tired of you as I am) called BS on. If the server was changing your sig to my sig, it would be 42.book.addictTalk to me!, not the sig that you faked in. You’re obviously seeking attention and are being abusive and childish. Please see the bottom of https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esolang:Introduce_yourself to see a full list of complaints. I will be asking Kynde to ban you and all of your alt (or shared) accounts. -tori 162.158.167.98 05:36, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Additionally, the complaint doesn’t even make sense. The 2 wikis are running on different servers and different MediaWiki software and should in no shape or form be having the same bug across 2 different systems. Plus, why is the CAPTCHA in the esolang wiki so damn difficult? (Just a side note :3) 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
I just realized that they've changed my signature as well. That's strange. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 06:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Once again they suddenly redirected my username to the Main Page. And the bug even forgot to remove "User:". ConscriptGlossary (talk) 13:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

It's working normally now. ConscriptGlossary (talk) 13:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The wiki may have been hacked. I checked it and got "HTTP 429" error message. ChristmasGospel (talk) 19:14, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

No, it has not been hacked. The error message means that the server that is hosting the wiki is under a lot of stress and load. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 19:20, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes and no.
429 Too Many Requests (RFC 6585)
The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time. Intended for use with rate-limiting schemes.
...it generally means that (in the opinion of the server), the person getting the 429 has been bashing the connection too much. This could be because they happen to be going through the same proxy as an actual prolific user (or several sub-prolific ones that similarly got lumped together to add up to "too much"), but load-sharing systems generally account for that already. General 'stress and load' is more likely to invoke a 500s message (depending upon what actually is happening).
But, either way, if you get one of them then you're advised to pause, take a breath, perhaps wait a little before your next refresh/reload attempt, but if that goes wrong then wait a bit longer still (double your patience, maybe), and again more (further doubling) as necessary.
Either it's not your fault, but you probably don't need to add to the problems, or it is your fault (e.g. you're webscraping in the background at full throttle) and you really need to stop causing those problems (and try not to do it again later). 172.70.90.109 20:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Oops-you’re right. I just did a cursory search on google with the Google AI, so that explanation is more correct. Thank you! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Hint: even if you don't entirely trust Wikipedia not to be written (or rewritten) wrongly, you don't get the whole world of possible wrongness of a mostly uncomprehending AI repeating a load of mangled fragments put together on an "at least it looks grammatically correct" basis. If you trust AI so much that you don't go looking anywhere else (there are plenty of technical sites out there, including the actual official RFCs which say what servers should be doing and saying) but Wikipedia is also far from wrong and pretty thorough on this point.
Ask Google's AI for entertainment, or to start to put together a school report (but be prepared to check everything, as well as edit enough not to be caught by AI-detection as well as Plagiarism-detection). But not for insta-expertise, if you've not got enough grounding in the subject to at least sanity-checking what you're being told. Truth-checking and reality-checking are always necessary, of course, no matter what the source. 141.101.98.36 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
Noted and acknowledged. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 14:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Total amount of accounts created on this wiki?

I was editing explain xkcd:Museum and I was wondering how many accounts have ever been created. Is there a way to access this? -- DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 15:52, 17 March 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Hey, I moved your message from the Coordination portal. --FaviFake (talk) 16:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
The base information you need is from the special page that is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Log/newusers - although bear in mind that an overwhelming number of created accounts are spam-attempts (that get no further), so perhaps the count needs to be qualified as "users that have then gone on to post" (a few of which are still spam-only contributors, but now an insignificant amount rather than a probably overwhelming majoriy).
How you go about counting and classifying valid accounts is up to you, of course. 162.158.74.68 21:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
How would one actually count these? Is there an easier way? --FaviFake (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
There's [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}]], that gives you the value 153,156 (it was 142,958 when I wrote this), for the total number of registered users (including no-input pre-spammers, only-ever-spammed contributors, "I only created this account to say..."ers who didn't realised they could do as much as an IP, maybe some banned, sock-puppet/legitimate-alts/forgot-my-old-login duplicate accounts, maybe not some totally excised by top-tier-admins).
There's also [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}]], with the value 119 (119, as I write this), which I think is everyone active (+registered) in the past 30 days.
Possibly there are other "magic word" values for more useful in-betweeny values (nearer the top end of the first), e.g. of everyone who has made at least one edit ever. But not sure I know what that might off the top of my head.
I can think of ways to interrogate the wiki for one or other (better) counting criteria, but it would be horribly intensive. If anyone wanted to do this (it already needing a bit more technical ability than merely using inbuilt auto-value magic words, and preferably you'd need to not be a 'mere' scriptkiddie jumping in with both feet without knowing how to do it sensibly), I'd suggest ensuring a very throttled-back process that may take its time over days. Then, once 'completed', a not-quite-so-throttled-back version can just 'top up' its stats with everything from the last point you'd reached the last time round until the present (to never hammer the site).
Please please please, though, you should probably only try any of this if you're already sure of everything I've been suggesting. There are also far easier ways to attempt a DoS, but it would be ironic if you did this while trying to be helpful... 141.101.98.65 20:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Oh neat that's exactly what we needed! Could you add these magic words to the museum, maybe calling one "total accounts" and the other one "users active in last 30 days"? --FaviFake (talk) 16:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

email confirmation

my email confirmation did not get sent even after a week. is there anything wrong? - (((((((((((((([...](((((((((((((( (talk) 21:36, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

been broken for a decade i think. --FaviFake (talk) 08:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
WE REALLY NEED JEFF BACK !!!!!!!! hi (talk) 16:12, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

MediaWiki error when visiting 1270: Functional or 1270

When I go to 1270: Functional or 1270, there is a MediaWiki error. This does not occur at 1269 or 1271. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 13:57, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Could not replicate.
1270 redirects to 1270: Functional, so does it happen for you if you go via Functional and its redirect? How about https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1270:_Functional (as URL) rather than what you may be doing (but so did I, at first, still to find no error) in plugging the text into the "Search explain xkcd" field..?
Unless it's an off-page edit (some template, broken and then fixed), the page itself seems to have no recent edit to explain any changes (to broken and/or to unbroken)... I think we may need more info. Including myself in "we" in case it's an error even I can fix, which isn't unknown but not guaranteed! 172.71.178.160
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: Functional: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/L5icGdZ9nBzw.png?o=1
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/1nP1qunLk86a.png?o=1
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting Functional: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/7S3Ct5wghTIH.png?o=1
Screenshot of MediaWiki internal error when visiting 1270: Functional via index.php: https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/HghYaRj9wA1f.png?o=1 Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 14:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
I can see the history page, but the same error occurs when I visit any diff links, old versions, and the talk page. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 14:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Anybody else? None of that happens here.
Could it be somehow browser-specific, or even extension-related? One thing to try is if you any further browsers handily installed (or installable) that you can use (even if just just for this one purpose, you don't need them to be the default system one). As of right now, though, I'm flumoxed and don't have any obvious other steps, and I dont believe anybody else has the means to enable the debug options.172.69.79.190 22:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
This occurs on a Chromebook managed by my school, so I can't install any browsers besides Chrome and I can't manage the extensions. I can see the editing page but I get an even less elegantly presented error when I try to preview the page.Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Couldn't replicate either, Windows 11 Chrome Canary. --FaviFake (talk) 17:14, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Figured out the problem. This error occurs on any page using the <math> tag. I don't know why, though. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Yep, added <math>This causes an error.</math> to the top of explain xkcd:Sandbox and now it gives the same error. Dgrilawidbanana (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
This bug has been around for at least 7 years. Here's the fix: #Mediawiki exception on some pages. --FaviFake (talk) 21:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Captcha repeat

When you've finished editing, there is an "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA.

But if you preview the changes before saving, that gets reset, so you can't just say "yup, looks good, go ahead and publish this change."

How hard would it be to make the CAPTCHA sticky, so that it doesn't need an extra interaction/mouse movement after previewing?

Or, alternatively, to not display either the CAPTCHA or the Save Changes until after a preview. -- JimJJewett20:40, 14 April 2025 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

If you're going to Preview (which can often be a good idea), don't bother ticking the "I am not a robot". Previews (also the "Show Changes") are 'free' and don't need you to feed the CAPTHA machine.
What's wrong with 1) editing, 2) previewing, 3) going "Yup, looks good" and ticking the box, 3a) if required, fulfill the Captcha, 4) Submit..?
It's exactly the same amount of work as having the Captcha-fulfillment at position (1a) and 'sticky'
Also, however hard it might be to 'sticky' the CAPTCHA, there's a reason that a validated CAPTCHA isn't held over willy-nilly. Theoretically, an automated system (or semi-attended one) that relied upon finding out if it could post an edit, before it even bothered to try could benefit (if only by a smidgen) from first having a pot-shot at authorisation and only then (presumably before any 'time out' kicked in) pushing the latest spambot stuff.
I see no value in allowing that, even if there was anybody who might have enough of an 'in' on the server code to enable such a thing. 162.158.33.248 23:02, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Moved this to technical portal. --FaviFake (talk) 17:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Request for feedback about {{comic}}

Hey, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the random button on our comic template, please see this page: Template talk:comic#Random button should link to Special:RandomInCategory --FaviFake (talk) 08:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone here know how to create a random link that fetches pages from two different categories? --FaviFake (talk) 10:12, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Random comic/explanation glitches

For some reason, I cannot press random without being sent to either the Verizon comic-thing or comic #4 (this is one of my first times commenting, no clue how to do links). I’ve now pressed the button for random comic 8 times and keep getting these two pages, any idea for fixing this? AH24Ammit (talk) 00:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

update: it’s now added repeatedly sending me to 1057:Klout and 2875:2024. I can’t get it to send me to any other page through the random button. After 23 random comic presses, I got each of these four comics 6 times and the latest comic once. AH24Ammit (talk) 00:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Incessant 503 errors

I cannot keep contributing to this site if the 503 errors continue. The time it takes to perform a single action is about 10 times greater than it should be, some pages never load, and almost everything is broken and outdated. The situation will get worse if we do nothing. We have to do something :(   --FaviFake (talk) 15:47, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

I've not yet found any page that won't ever load, can you give an example?
Updating the website, though useful for other reasons, also cannot help this problem much. Different hosting might help, but mostly different proxying. Site-side changes, of the kind we've perhaps been waiting for, would be minimally useful to this external issue. Maybe we'll get some changes out of this crisis, maybe we'll just get the site closed down as not worth the additional effort. (Just going read-only might not even help, and would still be gruelling loss.) 172.71.178.10 16:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
Can't do much better than Cloudflare for proxying, at least not on a budget. If the DDOS is from an AI-scraper or a malicious-but-not-paying-attention source, temporarily shifting everything to a new domain and having explainxkcd.com just be a placeholder with human-readable instructions to het to the temp site might help, at least until the adversary adapted. 162.158.167.16 19:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
Well anything would be better than the current situation, except a total shutdown. Why is nobody worried this entire wiki is dying in front of our eyes and the owner doesn't even remember it exists? Jesus --FaviFake (talk) 16:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
Same issue. What could be causing this? 162.158.114.253 (talk) 14:49, 27 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
The server's seemingly being hammered by a new batch of unregulated traffic, that's been hammering many other sites. Your attempts to connect are getting lost in the overload, until the instigators get bored, smarter/kinder or someone implements a better way to stop the offending connections better. 172.70.162.160 16:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

wtf is going on with the server??

why is the site giving a db error 90% of the time? is something wrong? how/when will it be fixed? (can it be fixed at all?) update: the db crashed AGAIN while i was writing this. also its not like above section, since it currently *specifically* gives db errors. "cannot access the database." An user who has no account yet (talk) 16:54, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

See the sub-header above (and other contributions by people in the last two or three comic Discussions), but imagine you're at a party, trying to talk to your friends, and people you don't know keep coming over and trying to start various inane conversations that just keep distracting you, and they just won't leave you alone!
So: 1) Too much traffic. 2) Not with the server. 3) Difficult/not quickly (it's not really a server-fix). And the DB isn't fully crashing (that'd do something else). It's just unable to reply to everyone, every time, and even saying "No I can't talk to you" takes up time.
Ideally, you get someone else to intercept anyone coming over to talk to you. Maybe a VIP-section "red rope", and a big guy with a clipboard of guests/a personal secretary to vet newcomers. Doing that yourself is just going to distract you more. (Or you can take enough amphetamines to become enough of a party animal to comfortably be at the centre of the wildest of parties, but that takes finding a dealer with the right product, as well as other problems. And the tendency to overextend your analogies.) 172.68.205.72 19:36, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
That reads like the "explain" of an XKCD that I want to see. :P 162.158.175.131 21:17, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Special:ContributionScores on Main Page busts caching, causing load

Long story short, the Main Page transcludes a top contributors table, Special:ContributionScores/10/30, which marks the entire Main Page as dynamic (not cacheable). This means that (1) Cloudflare is not serving up a static version of this page, even to those not logged in, (2) the Main Page wikitext is getting reparsed on every hit, and (3) the parser is recreating the table from scratch on every hit, consuming a lot of database connection time, roughly between 0.5 and 1.0 second each. This is...suspicious, given the wiki's technical difficulties. I suggest an experiment with removing it to see if technical issues improve. If so, and if people wish to keep the table, I suggest creating a static version of the table that is updated only occasionally (even once every few hours by bot should be fine).

Expand for details...
The whole story is: While browsing overnight, I noticed that the issues with page loads seemed caching-related; pages never seemed to load on the first click, though refreshing was often successful, at least during the presumably lower-load overnight hours. Research led me to the possibility that some broken caching system was leading to the database running out of connections (even on a cache hit, one is still needed to determine whether it is a cache hit or miss), so I started looking at some technical indicators, eventually leading to the parser profiling ("NewPP") and transclusions block at the end of the parser output here.

For the main page, it outputs: 

NewPP limit report
Cached time: 20250528101640
Cache expiry: 0
Dynamic content: true
CPU time usage: 0.059 seconds
Real time usage: 2.564 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 273/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 2367/1000000
Post\u2010expand include size: 17895/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 714/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 7/40
Expensive parser function count: 4/100
-->
<!--
Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template)
100.00% 1762.386      1 -total
 65.93% 1161.960      1 3094
 33.89%  597.347      1 Special:ContributionScores/10/30/nosort,notools
 22.59%  398.159      1 Template:comic
 16.62%  292.973      1 Template:incomplete_transcript
 15.21%  268.077      1 Template:incomplete
  6.34%  111.727      1 Template:comic_discussion
  6.20%  109.319      1 MediaWiki:Mainpage
  0.21%    3.766      4 Template:w
  0.09%    1.566      5 Template:LATESTCOMIC

The 2.5 seconds taken isn't itself necessarily a problem, but notice that the page is considered dynamic content with immediate cache expiration. This contrasts with a normal page like the latest comic: 

<!-- 
NewPP limit report
Cached time: 20250528111305
Cache expiry: 86400
Dynamic content: false
CPU time usage: 0.060 seconds
Real time usage: 0.333 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 324/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 2362/1000000
Post\u2010expand include size: 63936/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 1609/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 9/40
Expensive parser function count: 3/100
-->
<!--
Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template)
100.00%  160.074      1 -total
 37.56%   60.117      1 Template:comic
 20.70%   33.133      1 Template:comic_discussion
 19.54%   31.277      1 Template:cn
  8.81%   14.101      5 Template:w
  8.31%   13.303      1 MediaWiki:Mainpage
  7.86%   12.585      1 Template:incomplete_transcript
  5.26%    8.424      1 Template:incomplete
  4.83%    7.739      2 Template:notice
  1.38%    2.212      2 Talk:3094:_Mass_Spec
-->
</div>
<!-- Saved in parser cache with key expla0_db423085716:pcache:idhash:29008-0!canonical and timestamp 20250528111305 and revision id 378578
 -->

From a quick search, it sounds like transclusion of a special page will always cause the parser cache to be bypassed, causing all of the parsed output to be regenerated on every hit by any visitor, logged in or not, via the API or not, etc. (While it's not technically wrong that increased number of visits may be causing issues, this would be a multiplicative exacerbation of that.) Combined with the fact that the page is recreating a pretty heavy database query to count and tabulate the last 30 days of edits, this seems Really Bad. AySz88 (talk) 11:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Edited for corrections and clarity. Also, one can generate and profile the cost of any bit of wikitext using the API: https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores would create and time the processing time needed to generate {{Special:ContributionScores/10/7/nosort,notools}}.
I'd noticed that there was a recent change from 7 to 30 days of scoring, but it turns out that doesn't make a big difference in processing time. In addition, the parser considering the content static doesn't seem to be enough for Cloudflare to start caching a page, so that might not be as easy to change. Still, simply allowing the parser output to be saved and regenerating the table for the vast majority of visitors' hits might be a big help. AySz88 (talk) 13:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
Does this affect other pages? If not, then the main DB issues aren't fixed... but if it does, then why is the contribs page loaded for EVERY page? Also, I *support* removing this... it's just a showcase that exists for no good reason if shown to every viewer, the recent contribs should probably be restricted to users only or something 162.158.8.176 08:30, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
The contrib table doesn't load on every page, but the vast majority of hits are going to be to the Main Page. And (my hypothesis is) it holds database connections open while it's running, which consumes that limited resource on the server. (We could just raise the cap, but we don't have access to the server.) A lot of the lag time in the profiler above is just sitting in a queue for the next database connection, which affects everything. So in that sense, it affects the whole wiki. AySz88 (talk) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi. I changed to 30 days on suggestion by FaviFake. But that was in March. Just changed it back to 7 again just to try it. Of course I can also try to remove it for a period of time. But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor. So I would hate to remove it. Also it has worked with 30 days for more than two months and with the 7 days for as long as I have used the site (since 2012). So it seems weird that it should suddenly be the front page that breaks it all. It is also not the first time we have had these issues. Not sure how they where resolved last time but strange if it suddenly is the main page that causes all these problems Kynde (talk) 13:29, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
(Un)Fortunately(?) I suspect the technical caching issue is more relevant, where naively transcluding a Special page via {{Special:...}} causes everything to re-process on every hit. That doesn't mean losing the feature entirely (or even the 30 days); I can help make a bot that can send the output (inside https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=parse&text={{Special:ContributionScores/10/30,nosort,notools}}&title=Special:ContributionScores&format=json) to a template, automatically updating once per short interval (an hour?). The delayed version can also be Main Page only; the live version can always still be linked, and/or the full page linked to.
You're right that perhaps this isn't necessarily the proximate "straw that broke the camel's back" cause. And there are a lot of other problems and solutions that could help - like simply raising the DB connection cap, or all the stuff about crawler traffic, and that Cloudflare doesn't seem to be caching the basically-static CSS from tool.php, etc. etc... But without admin access to diagnostics or settings for the database and Cloudflare, we can only work with the tools we have. Even this specific widget itself does some caching in a newer update, but we don't have access to updating it. (That said, I'm still keeping an eye out for other things that might have changed recently.) AySz88 (talk) 17:53, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
As it did not help making it 7 days again I have now removed it. Seems to make no difference to begin with. But lets give it some time to work. But I'm not optimistic. Let me know if I moved the correct bit, I'm no expert just sadly the only active admin and we cannot get hold of Jeff... --Kynde (talk) 07:34, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Since the removal of the Rankings table, I haven't noticed a downtick of connection errors. (That said, I dislike people aiming to be in the Rankings, I consider that editing should be its own reward, so personally I'd be happier without it anywhere quite as prominent.) Haven't done a full technical analysis, but I estimate that from a prior peak of maybe 1.5 "technical difficulties" or "also, a 503 error" responses, generally varying between zero issues (straight in) and normal worstest-case scenario of three attempts (fourth attempt is Ok, maybe unstylsheeted), in the last 24 hours it's been more like 2.5:1 fail to success ratio. (i.e. reaching up to maybe 6th-attempt success, worst case.) Not nice, but survivable.

Though got a new one, just a few minutes ago. An actual Cloudflare error: "SSL handshake failed Error code 525 // Visit cloudflare.com for more information. // 2025-05-30 20:01:57 UTC". In case that interests anyone. Looks like the server was temperarily so incapacitated as to not be able to even handshake with the proxy. But I don't currently expect that to recur, just thought I'd note it as a 'new' glitch, in passing. 172.71.241.123 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, right now things seem more stable. But during Friday just after the change, when pages could load at all, I noticed they were loading faster, but the availability was just as bad or worse for a while. I'm not really sure how much credit to the latest improvement goes to changing the contribution table. AySz88 (talk) 00:59, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
Everything seems to be good now. No constant DB errors, and it's now smooth! 162.158.8.142 07:00, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
Should I try inserting the contribution score to see if the problems return, because it would be nice to know if it was this or just random. Also even though some might dislike this score it has been there always, and should not just be removed because one person writes negatively about it. But of course if it was really the reason behind the problems it has to stay of the front page. But a link could be inserted. Kynde (talk) 10:44, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
To clarify, I wasn't saying I disliked the score, per se, just that it encourages edits-for-the-sake-of-edits and (though I rarely see the Main Page myself) is prominent enough for the new discoverers of the site to take as a challenge (in well-meaning ways, as well as less so). I have sympathy with "But for us that makes a lot of contributions that list is a motivating factor." Just pointing out the functional inverse that it is a motivating factor to make a lot of contributions. (And that I personally abstain from that competition, buried within the contributions of various other IPers, no temptation at all to edit without decent cause.)
A version of the table weighted against new accounts might make me happier, but too many ways of doing that (hard threshold, to kick in at an arbitrary 'account maturity' age, so no-one appears on the list until 'old enough'; a formula that slopes from 0 to 1 at the "maturity" time, multiply the contributions by the current value; ditto, but a smoother function that becomes assymptotic to 1) that probably also involve scripted conversions and various arbitrary choices. So not something I'd imagine being done.
I do think it's a good idea to re-add it for science. Give it a week to settle down, without it as an issue. If (as it seems) it has died down properly, add it again for a further week (or less, if it becomes obvious it has reintroduced the same DoS-like scenario). Let the outcome shape your further decision, or fine-tuning. Not mere yay/nay preferences, like mine, regarding it.
It's also very likely only a factor in the slow-down. It was ok (in both 7 day and 30 day versions) for aong time, but together with increased amounts of site traffic (as per anecdotal evidence from elsewhere on the 'net) it went bad on us. The improved situation could also have been due to the perpetrators turning their (accidental?) web-hammering scripts off, having finished their project, or now making them far less aggressive. The 'benefits' of the League Table might not now cause such side-effects. But also it's still possible that the problematic traffic comes back and hobbles the site gain, regardless of the absence frontpage League Tabling.
And you can always add the Special:ContributionScores(-slash-whatever) information as a link to go to, rather than transcluded (if you've decided that it's still trouble to have where it was). But cross that bridge if you come to it. 172.70.90.109 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
PS I also gets 0-2 errors at the moment, so it is not all good, had to reload twice to get the comment above posted. Kynde (talk) 10:45, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
My observations: still 'terrible', maybe even slightly worse, Friday and early Saturday, UK time, noting the Friday Comic didn't get Bot-imported until well into Saturday PM (theusaf might have failure logs?), but I'm sure I saw it on xkcd.com on Saturday morning (but still had showed Wednesday as of Fri/Sat midnight, UTC+1, or thereabouts, i.e. early Friday evening Randall Time, not untypical for such updates). The table-transclusion was removed at least a full day before. Don't know if anything else caused lag in the proxy's response.
Since Saturday evening, more or less ok. Some errors, in line with "background levels" before this recent splurge actually hit. If I get a "technical problems", an imminent refresh sorts it (doesn't return another error), gets on with things. Not perfect, might mean a bit more RAM/swapspace might further help, or a higher quota of shared processing threads (if there are any that can be spared from whatever else is running in whatever rackspace unit it might be). Livable, if also still vulnerable to the next period of increased pressure. Keeping an eye on it, and still trying to eventually get through to the hardware-owning sysops, would be wise. 172.70.90.109 16:31, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
A note for the future: the new (current) version of this extension caches data for half an hour (by default), so if we ever get an update, the bot wouldn't be necessary anymore. AySz88 (talk) 07:46, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

What would it take to clone ExplainXKCD?

What would it take technically and financially to clone this web site?

Installing MediaWiki and cloning the wiki pages should be fairly straightforward. There may be some pain due to differences in MediaWiki versions.

Cloning or rewriting the bots may be a chore.

Paying for hosting and Cloudflare will take a steady stream of income.

There's also legal issues, like how to protect everyone from liability if someone wants to sue, even if it's a frivolous suit.

There will need to be multiple administrators at every level so we don't have the "if one person disappears for awhile and problems arise, we are stuck" issues.

My guess is that between the existing administrators and regular contributors, we have the technical skills to do this. It's the financial and legal issues that give me pause.

Yes, I'm an occasional contributor, and no, I haven't created an account yet. 162.158.175.119 19:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

It would help if we didn't want to clone all page history. Already, it would bar those bits hidden behind admin-level deletions, etc, but limiting the actual depth of history scraped up and made available on a new platform would be wise from a 'start over' POV, especially if not having direct access to the core database. Possibly a 'bot could maintain an "anything new on old site gets reduplicated to new site" until a phased cut-off, with enough thought, dyluring the duration of the migratory process, but you need a solid base (maybe with further back-filled history as much as you can).
Removing page history might violate the "attribution" part of the CC-BY-SA license (but I am not a lawyer so don't take my word for it.) 183231bcb (talk) 17:46, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
And then there's user accounts. Maybe there's a way to confirm your rights to an original-site username on the new-site (potentially complex things, or just something to do with logins on both, posting "it's me" on the new site, then "yes, that new-site claim me of being me is indeed correct" on old-site, but you still have to deal with potential claim-jumping/identity-gazumping). Which also needs trust of the new-site admins to play fair with potential disputes.
And it'd be a good opportunity to clean some up things (everyone can think of several inconsistecies that they'd deal with, given the opportunity), but only with a lot of hands on effort. So factor that in for potential work.
On the whole, though, best just to 'start fresh'. A task in itself, perhaps use and acknowledge this site's "best material" (I think copyright might be not so much an issue if based upon a fair and dutiful copy, due to the details of explain xkcd:Copyrights, but that's of course something that needs advice sought for any particular implementation). That, of course, needs community acceptance not to be seen as an "upstart usurper" site, perhaps, and could create a schism where some would refuse to partake in the new project at all.
i.e. you raise good questions (and prompt others), but I'm not sure there are undeniably objective good answers to them all. Trying it and seeing how it goes is probably the only way to bash out the many details. Not an easy project. 172.71.241.144 21:19, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
I think it would be absolutely awesome to move to something that *isn't* self hosted, something that as far as I can tell this wiki is. If we move or clone, may we see Weird Gloop as an option? They have a lot of experience and will probably not turn into another fandom and will not be bought by them. 172.69.130.250 15:33, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
Oh ye gods... Yes, whatever you do, don't go anywhere near Fandom, as a solution. Not that I think this will be a convincing argument on its own, but you'll absolutely lose me as an 'explain' reader (never mind contributor) if it goes onto a Fandom/ex-Wikia hosting model. I've no experience of Weird Gloop (yet), but the URL (about why they're different) certainly does vicerally appeal to me on first glance. Do your own independant research, though, anybody tempted down that or any eqyivalent route. 172.71.241.123 20:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
Wikidump can get all page content with full history (for pages that have not been deleted). It doesn't require admin privileges to use. 183231bcb (talk) 21:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
The site seems stable now, at least for the last half-day. I'm not sure if the attack/scraping ended, or if there's a real back-end fix in place, but here's hoping it stays stable. 172.68.26.73 02:11, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
Replying to my comment of 02:11, 1 June 2025 immediately above: I spoke too soon, I got two "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties." errors in less than 5 minutes. 172.69.67.217 03:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
Why should we do this in the first place? 162.158.8.165 07:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
So we can manage things when someone with server-level access is required. For example, if someone with server-level access was around during the last week or two when we've been having intermittent-but-sometimes-heavy site-is-too-busy-try-again-later errors, we (or, rather, the server operator) would have more insight to the problem and would likely be able to do something about it. 172.71.170.157 16:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)
The resources at Mediawiki/Manual:Grabbers seem useful - they seem written for the new server administrator to have the new server save things into the new wiki. (I worry about the note regarding MediaWiki version 1.39+ since we're stuck on 1.30, but I think that might be about the version of the *new* wiki installation.) In particular, there exists a Special:Export page (and associated API) that also exports the page history. There are a few options for migrating people's accounts; Extension:StubUserWikiAuth seems most promising so far. AySz88 (talk) 09:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

new and exciting 522 and 524 cloudflare errors

everyone else saw that, right? this website's domain expires in august 02:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

From at least midday (UK time), yesterday. But given the lack of any recorded edits for 4/Jun (UTC), only being broken by your (and other) early-hours edits of 5/Jun, was a lengthy period of whatever-went-even-more-wrong. (I had kept notes, I probably got 522s and 524s, when I checked back every few hours. Might have been other 52Xs, but not got that bit of scrap paper with me right now.) 82.132.234.190 12:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
Expires. Will that mean that if it is not prolonged this entire site will vanish? Kynde (talk) 06:22, 6 June 2025 (UTC)
Read User talk:Lettherebedarklight (to the bottom!) for one Q&A that was done on it. I know I also previously discussed LTBDL's 'discovery' (before they decided to break their own User Page in suggesting this was going to be an issue), but they also ignored me. As they still have their alarmist signature up, despite the other explanation, thus alarming you.
Short version: the domain potentially expires every year. Every year, so far, it has been renewed. It's not the first time. Chances are low that it'll be the last.
Or, to rephrase your question, this site may vanish if it isn't prolonged (the auto-renew is not auto-renewed, perhaps the person paying for it gets fed up doing it).
PS. is it just a coincidence that, since the 'day outage', we're now getting many IPv6 contributors? (And vastly different IPv4 ranges/submasks.) Seems like a Cloudflare-led thing, assuming that nobody has been reconfiguring the explainxkcd server in any way (which is the current 'complaint'). ...Not worth a seperate new header to mention, but thought I'd mention it in passing, as I'm here. 82.132.213.196 10:32, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Problem Sending a Question to [email protected]

I tried to send a question to [email protected], and I got an automatic mail from google that "It was failed to send to the group", does it means that the question was sent, or that it got blocked entirely? 2a06:c701:9640:fa00:75b3:1b2f:6aeb:fc01 (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2025‎ (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yup, that's a known error. See the notice on what if? for more info. --FaviFake (talk) 09:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Monobook style categories bug

I recently switched to the monobook style in preferences, and I saw this on the main page:

Monobook Font Bug.png

Is this something that's inherent to the monobook font or something that I can fix on my end? --DollarStoreBa'alConverseMy life choices 15:03, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Bug on Modern style

I encountered this UI bug opening up the site. Is this one-time or have others experienced this? UI Bug.png --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 16:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

that's just broken css. if you refresh it, it should render correctly. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 16:57, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I'm sure you've occasionally had a "page cannot load" error on the HTML (a few months back, it was particularly bad, but it's fairly rare at the moment). But imagine if you luckily escaped the issue of the HTML file loading. It tells your machine to ask for the CSV, as well as things like the images it needs. And then the inability to get the CSV happens. It could have been the image that didn't load, also. The lack of stylesheet
A refresh of the page is usually what I'd try next. Or a hard-refresh, possibly, depending upon which browser I'm using. Either it all appears fine or the HTML totally fails the second time from whatever glitch is plaguing the system at that time. If you get exactly the same.
I'll have to admit, though, but it took me quite a few moments to find what was wrong with the UI... maybe I'm innured against the occasional version of this issue. Unless I was looking for the Recent Changes link, for example, I'd probably just read the page as normal and then move onto the next page I want to check/editing the Talk page, all of which likely loads correctly and leaves me none the wiser that I'd missed a minor reshuffle.
Tell you what, though, the "Recent Changes" page looks quite a bit different without Stylesheet-styling. And you can even invoke that, if you want. Depending upon browser, you can either choose which (or no!) stylesheet gets applied, also useful to see a site using its "mobile" settings from your desktop. Or you may be able to use whatever the equivalent of Object Inspector is for your page code and 'break' the particular ".css"-line that governs it. Sometimes gives interesting and useful results, on more awkward sites that try to enforce "no copypasting" or selectively hide/obscure things. 92.17.62.87 23:29, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

Upgrading MediaWiki

Moved from User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki FaviFake (talk) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi! If you aren't already aware, the wiki's MediaWiki software is many years out of date, 1.30 became end of life in 2019. This likely opens up the wiki to security issues, and presumably some annoyance from the users due to lack of newer features. It seems that Jeff never got around to this. If you have access to the wiki server, please upgrade the wiki, or have someone else do it. I think the recommendation to avoid compatibility issues is to go from LTS to LTS on upward, so 1.30 > 1.31 > 1.35 > 1.39 > 1.43 (it seems that you can go straight from 1.30 > 1.35 > 1.43 although the errors may be more difficult to read, based on the FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#How_do_I_upgrade_from_a_really_old_version?_In_one_step,_or_in_several_steps? ).

If you want assistance with MediaWiki upgrades, this organization called Professional Wiki seems to also performs this service. https://professional.wiki/en/mediawiki-upgrade-services In any case, they would probably follow a form of the procedure outlined in the official MediaWiki manual.

To check the wiki's current version: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Version

Version lifecycle: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle

Upgrading procedure/manual: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading

Thank you! Cam1170 (talk) 19:32, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi Cam1170, thank you for your proposal and thought! Unfortunately, we are unable to update this wiki's MediaWiki software because the owner has gone AWOL. He is a bureaucrat on here, and the other 'crat is also inactive. Despite multiple times to reach out to him both on-site and through other platforms, he has not responded. We are assuming that this wiki will stay frozen like this unless we migrate (which I have no idea how will be done-or if it's even possible!). 42.book.addictTalk to me! 01:30, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
Noting that even migrating would probably involve someone (active) taking it upon themselves to provide the 'blank' new server on a new host (and new domain!) upon which the existing available information is to be written. (N.B., possibly still to a limited degree, without the access also required to upgrade or grant a further third party the access required to upgrade, unless there are some truly weird backdoors. Everything I know indicates that even making sure that everyone can reproduce their accounts in the new system would be a tricky achievement to get right.) And then we'd probably still have this place's 'box' (or boxes, or cloud-like bundle of cooperating resources) happily but redundantpt continuing in whatever 'protected stasis' we'll have then placed it in, as we try to re-establish the SEOing/etc that leads to our new doorway.
This isn't the first time, probably won't be the last, that we've been advised of the 'issues'. And been only able to state that our active most-priviliged users seem not to be priviliged enough to even consider the direct server-level access needed to up-patch/re-install the core backend. Nor to properly migrate everything (leaving this service running as a 'ghost' site, to a greater or lesser extent), from the box(es) it runs upon all the way to the original registered domain.
I had written more, but it boils down to the conspicuously absent progenitor being the main hurdle, likely for reasons beyond even their control. Though perhaps there are further missing administrators who might have enough access to (if they don't entirely break everything, in the attenpt) assist us, should they be coaxed/cajoled to return.
Personally (as if my opinion counts), I see no urgent need for (e.g.) a more visual editor. Dealing with entirely new and more complex bugs, compared to what I think is far simpler to work with, is one thing that I know will at least annoy me.
As for security issues, I believe we're at not a bad 'stuck' stage, compared to some (newer!) stages we could be at. And 0-day exploits are an ever present (intangible) risk at the bleeding edge, of course. ;) But you'd be also right to question what I know of all this, as an effectively unknown voice from the wilderness. 82.132.238.27 05:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
Ahem...
I see no urgent need for [...] [the] visual editor.
Tables --FaviFake (talk) 09:47, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
Seems like others have made it clear why I cannot help. I ended up stuck as the only admin without bureaucrat powers... Also I'm not very tech minded so not the best admin you could have. but at the moment the only active. :-/ Not quite sure what Favifake means though? --Kynde (talk) 09:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
Yes, of course! You're still unable to do anything, just like everyone else.
I replied to IP, which said the Visual editor wasn't necessary. Tables are incredibly hard to set up without the visual editor, so I think it's the most important feature we're missing right now.
[Moved from User_talk:Kynde#Upgrading_MediaWiki FaviFake (talk) 09:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)]
Easier to custom convert 'raw' tabular data to "tabular data under wikitable format" than to painstakingly arrange it in a visually-'aided' WYSYWYG table, actually. Making a casual table might be easier, but making a well thought out table with any complexity benefits from knowing the abilities and limitations of the markup.
I had thought someone would object on a different sisue, actually, but that would also be something for which actually caring about the back-end markup (and using Preview judiciously) certainly doesn't hurt, with "dumbing up"/abstraction often not being an overall advantage. 82.132.245.43 21:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
Sorry but I unfortunately didn't understand anything of what you just said :( ㅤ FaviFake (talk) 11:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
I think they're saying that the raw markup isn't exactly difficult. And further that a WYSIWYG interface (which was typoed!) can often create suboptimal layouts, just because it was tweaked to 'look right' in the rather limited context of the composition editor.
And I probably agree, to an extent. Wikitables are designed to be far more simple/uncluttered, at source, than the equivalent HTML code. You can easily hand-craft them to both render nicely and be intelligable by future editors. It's not rocket science.
And then there was something about creating wikitables from non-wiki data, which might not actually be totally relevant. But is something I sometimes do, and I'd definitely consider a visual editor an impediment if I was doing that. The difference being that you can (hopefully) just toggle that option away. Or, rather, not bother toggling it on. Either way, I'd do what I think looks best for later editors, like leaving nice/logical text-spacing in monospace font by judicious use of whitespace/newlines - often lacking/badly done otherwise. If you want my opinion, too. 92.17.62.87 21:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
"the raw markup isn't exactly difficult" yes is is? Merging cells is a nightmare, adding new cells to the rowspan/colspan is a nightmare, moving text around is annoying, clicking preview constantly is time-consuming... i could go on and on. FaviFake (talk) 14:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)
I concur. Especially with large tables, it's hard to find where you need to edit, simply because it all looks the same. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 13:09, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
that's actually quite scary that the person who pays for the server has gone awol. That means this wiki is just 1-2 unpaid bills away from being shut down for good without any means to recover it. I think updating the software is the least of our concern. I mean, if the current admins should retire as well, then there's no one who could even appoint new admins. 2.204.192.65 09:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
As said before, when the domain-name was "mere months from expiring" (n.b., it seems to be annually renewed, automatically, so is forever potentially mere months from expiring), there are all kinds of other ways for a site to fail. Some, like the hosting/hardware rental, might be tied to the same bill-paying cycle as the domain, so any such interruption might happen across the board as a grand-slam. (Interruptions might not mean the loss of the account-holder, and the loss of the account-holder might not mean an interruption... Would depend on how someone organises (or fails to organise) such things.)
Other failures could happen any time. Glad to see we're back from the outage: my initial guess was that someone had tried to update the site, somehow, but had got it horribly horribly wrong and left it unworkable. This would have been our invisible benefactor, perhaps, unless a "guerilla hacktivist" had taken a big chance and bigger risk. Probably not any of that, though, or at least it was someone who could still revoke the broken changes.
And then there's just a vital rapidly spinning disk shedding its magnetic coating or even fragmenting, or its circuitry develops a dry-joint/whisker of solder. The lifetime of an HDD is said to be "3 to 5 years", by one source I found (though I'm personally using ones that are >30yo, in near constant use, and I've seen far earlier failures, so I don't know how useful that is). If it's now sitting on SSD, that has read/write-cycle 'limits', instead. So, if it's not RAIDed with someone able to hotswap replacement drives, potentially some time (perhaps in a darkened but air-conditioned room) there may be the momentary shriek of metal (or silence, at least compared to the general humming of everything else) and at best we'll revert to the last valid automated backup... If there is one, and someone can fix it. (My second theory about the blackout was this. But I don't remember anything new to the site that didn't come back when it returned.)
As for the WYSIWYG (cheers, yep!) thing, I've had to use enforced-visual editors, elsewhere. A right pain. I sure would hope it's optional, for my part. I also think it's healthy for people to not rely on too much 'wizardry' and know more about how everything works, but then I'm someone who has thirty-year-old HDDs running forty-year-old OSes. 82.132.237.89 11:50, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
Based on what I'm seeing in terms of recent changes, it appears that the cloudflare errors appeared about 2:00 UTC September 11th, and left about 14:00 UTC September 12, making for around 36 hours of total downtime. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 21:57, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

A precaution

In approximately 2 hours, MediaWiki will be switching something on the server-side, so be ready for a temporary read-only period starting 15:00 UTC. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 18:04, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

I wonder what will happen with this wiki's old-ass MediaWiki version...I hope everything will go back to normal... --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 18:05, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

that's for wikis supported by the WMF, and we're not. unfortunately. It’s the WMF doing the thing, not the MW software. FaviFake (talk) 15:50, 26 September 2025 (UTC)


RSS FEED

I've created a megathread for the broken RSS feed since this keeps being brought up. FaviFake (talk) 14:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

RSS Feed: XML not well-formed

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

Location: https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml?_SLWxoPenuRl=nOtinFEeDPREVIew

Line Number 31, Column 18:

	<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^

PHP-Fix:

$title = str_replace("&", "&amp;", $title);

or

$title = htmlspecialchars($title);

Same problem here. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the first time an xkcd title has included an ampersand (as far as I can see from List_of_all_comics_(full)). 141.101.99.85 14:16, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

rss feed

Hello

the rss feed is broken, could you fix it ? 

Error : 
try{(function overrideDefaultMethods(r, g, b, a, scriptId, storedObjectPrefix) {
    var scriptNode = document.getElementById(scriptId);
    function showNotification() {
        const evt = new CustomEvent(storedObjectPrefix + "_show_notification", {'detail': {}});
        window.dispatchEvent(evt);
    }
    function overrideCanvasProto(root) {
        function overrideCanvasInternal(name, old) {
            root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
            Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
                {
                    value: function () {
                        var width = this.width;
                        var height = this.height;
                        var context = this.getContext("2d");
                        var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height);
                        for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
                            for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
                                var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
                                imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
                                imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
                                imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
                                imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
                            }
                        }
                        context.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0);
                        showNotification();
                        return old.apply(this, arguments);
                    }
                }
            );
        }
        overrideCanvasInternal("toDataURL", root.prototype.toDataURL);
        overrideCanvasInternal("toBlob", root.prototype.toBlob);
        //overrideCanvasInternal("mozGetAsFile", root.prototype.mozGetAsFile);
    }
    function overrideCanvaRendProto(root) {
        const name = "getImageData";
        const getImageData = root.prototype.getImageData;

        root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = getImageData;

        Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, "getImageData",
            {
                value: function () {
                    var imageData = getImageData.apply(this, arguments);
                    var height = imageData.height;
                    var width = imageData.width;
                    // console.log("getImageData " + width + " " + height);
                    for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
                        for (var j = 0; j < width; j++) {
                            var index = ((i * (width * 4)) + (j * 4));
                            imageData.data[index + 0] = imageData.data[index + 0] + r;
                            imageData.data[index + 1] = imageData.data[index + 1] + g;
                            imageData.data[index + 2] = imageData.data[index + 2] + b;
                            imageData.data[index + 3] = imageData.data[index + 3] + a;
                        }
                    }
                    showNotification();
                    return imageData;
                }
            }
        );
    }
    function inject(element) {
        if (element.tagName.toUpperCase() === "IFRAME" && element.contentWindow) {
            try {
                var hasAccess = element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement;
            } catch (e) {
                console.log("can't access " + e);
                return;
            }
            overrideCanvasProto(element.contentWindow.HTMLCanvasElement);
            overrideCanvaRendProto(element.contentWindow.CanvasRenderingContext2D);
            overrideDocumentProto(element.contentWindow.Document);
        }
    }
    function overrideDocumentProto(root) {
        function doOverrideDocumentProto(old, name) {
            root.prototype[storedObjectPrefix + name] = old;
            Object.defineProperty(root.prototype, name,
                {
                    value: function () {
                        var element = old.apply(this, arguments);
                        // console.log(name+ " everridden call"+element);
                        if (element == null) {
                            return null;
                        }
                        if (Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object HTMLCollection]' ||
                            Object.prototype.toString.call(element) === '[object NodeList]') {
                            for (var i = 0; i < element.length; ++i) {
                                var el = element[i];
                                // console.log("elements list inject " + name);
                                inject(el);
                            }
                        } else {
                            // console.log("element inject " + name);
                            inject(element);
                        }
                        return element;
                    }
                }
            );
        }
        doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElement, "createElement");
        doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.createElementNS, "createElementNS");
        doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementById, "getElementById");
        doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByName, "getElementsByName");
        doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByClassName, "getElementsByClassName");
        doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagName, "getElementsByTagName");
        doOverrideDocumentProto(root.prototype.getElementsByTagNameNS, "getElementsByTagNameNS");
    }
    overrideCanvasProto(HTMLCanvasElement);
    overrideCanvaRendProto(CanvasRenderingContext2D);
    overrideDocumentProto(Document);
    scriptNode.parentNode.removeChild(scriptNode);
})(24,14,-9,19,"ojkrt", "ltwvx");} catch (e) {console.error(e);}Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé
Emplacement : https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml
Numéro de ligne 63, Colonne 18 :
	<title>3015: D&D Combinatorics</title>
------------------------^


172.71.130.228 (talk) 08:58, 12 December 2024‎ (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

RSS

RIP RSS feed yet again. 23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)23:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[insert signature here] (talk)

Is there something new we should know? 172.70.58.6 00:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

the rss feed seems to be broken

the rss feed button on the side leading to https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml throws up and error making the feed not load properly in rss readers.

"This page contains the following errors: error on line 463 at column 18: EntityRef: expecting ';' Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." 172.71.241.19 (talk) 20:38, 5 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I think this is the continuing issue as of #RSS Feed: XML not well-formed, you're talking about. As far as I'm aware unfixed and (with the current smattering of active admins at their limits of admin-levels) unfixable. Because of a 'bare' ampersand (or two) being misinterpreted as a failed attempt at a character-entity reference. If that was fixed, without me noticing, then I'm sure someone will be along to try to fix your new issue too.
People have been trying to prod other people who can prod the server back into shape (insofar as that issue), but I've not yet been privy to anything coming of that, and presume you're just trapped in the exact same glitch. 172.70.91.30 21:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
What exactly happens if it's broken? Is it just unusable forever, or is just that one comic that's broken? Or something else? I'm curious. --FaviFake (talk) 15:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
It's unusable so long as the "I'm parsing this is an '&Thing;' ... oh, wait, it has no closing ';'... ARGH!" happens to it. If you click on the RSS feed, to the left, you can see how it shows the (not quite humanly-readable) lines of the RSS feed (most recent, chronologically backwards) until the last line it shows is the comic imediately after the most recent "D&D" entry. (Actually, depends on browser. Sorry, just checked. It does that on Android Chrome, but currently I'm on Windows Firefox and it 'only' complains. But if you'll take my word for it.)
Someone really needs to go into the https://explainxkcd.com/rss.xml file (who can edit it directly) and find the two "D&D" instances and make them "D&amp;D". (Note to editors: Had to "amp amp" the "amp", here in this edit, to get it to appear just as amp... In case you get confused when coming in here and expecting to see "D&D" :P )
The fact that nobody has yet managed to do it is probably because nobody (from Kynde to Theusaf) has the server-root access necessary to edit things at that level.
Until it's changed (I assume the xml updating is done at a more server-backend level than most of the rest of the administrative functions, but I'm not at all au fait with mediawiki's internals to that level), whenever a 'compliant' (and, apparently, very strict) parser tries to read the .xml it'll 'quite rightly' tell you that there's a bare ampersand and then refuses to do anything more.
Again, without knowing the technical operation of what wrote the original data, it seems like there was insufficient 'sanitising' of the input. It applied the bare-ampersand without forward-converting it to an ampersanded ampersand-entity. That maybe also needs fixing (in case we get more), even if the existing ones get manually changed. I don't use any RSS feeds, myself, being too new-fangled ("Initial release: RSS 0.90 (Netscape), March 15, 1999; 26 years ago; Latest release: RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.11) March 30, 2009; 16 years ago"... yeah, to me that's still new-fangled! :P ) so all I know about how this one fails is what people have talked about above, and trivially clicking on the left-sidebar link to look at it myself, and venture what I think is the logical nature of the glitch (both cause and effect). Maybe somebody knows more about it, but I'm filling in until that person comes along and says oytherswise (and/or more) about it. 162.158.33.193 20:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
It's not being "very strict" to reject an unescaped ampersand: it's just part of the XML spec. 162.158.216.67 09:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
Now it says there's an error on line 767...--DollarStoreBa'alconverse 19:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
Same error, of the same (second of two, once it had added its influence to the first) comic that did the "&D" problem. But just with more non-invalid lines before it. Check it again after another few comics and it should be line 770+. This isn't the new <City> thing, for several reasons, if that's what you were thinking it was. (Though there appears to be another issue with it, which is masked and made moot by the &D-breakage.)82.132.246.227 04:55, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

RSS Feed doesn't seem to contain anything after 3 August 2025

There do not seem to be any new entries in the RSS Feed after the third of August. 216.212.38.209 (talk) 16:01, 23 September 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That's been noticed. But not much chance trying to fix that (manually adding in, if necessary) until we can properly (and manually?) fix the ampersand-D issues. For which there seems to be no-one with sufficient access. 92.17.62.87 22:12, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

May I ask why my PHP-Workaround for the broken RSS Feed has been removed without any explanation and not included in the the new RSS-Feed section? (see history) or is this another wiki edit hell not worth wasting another constructive thought? 2003:6:53B1:1546:C5D5:2F07:E2E6:772B 21:36, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that FaviFake forgot to add it into this mega-thread. I've pasted it back in. Sorry! 42.book.addictTalk to me! 22:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
Yes sorry! FaviFake (talk) 22:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
Apology accepted 2A01:599:444:E43A:5D04:9DC4:8A10:3A9D 20:01, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

PHP Workaround for Broken RSS Feed

The following PHP-Code creates a RSS-Feed from the "All comics" page on explainxkcd: (with kind help from Kimi K2) 

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

// php-xml module available
if (!class_exists('DOMDocument')) {
    die("Error: DOMDocument class missing. Please install php-xml");
}

// configuration
$url = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_all_comics_(full)';
$url2 = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/';
$feedTitle = 'xkcdExplain';
$feedDescription = '';
$feedLanguage = 'en-en';
$maxItems = 40;


$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_URL => $url,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36',
    CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 20,
    CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => true,
    CURLOPT_ENCODING => 'gzip, deflate',
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8',
        'Accept-Language: de-DE,de;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7',
        'Cache-Control: no-cache',
    ]
]);
/* */
$html = curl_exec($ch);

if (curl_errno($ch)) {
    die('cURL-Fehler: ' . curl_error($ch));
}

$httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($httpCode !== 200) {
    die("HTTP-Fehler: $httpCode");
}

curl_close($ch);

// DOM-Verarbeitung
$dom = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTML($html);
libxml_clear_errors();
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

$items = $xpath->query('//tr[ .//a[starts-with(@href,"/wiki/index.php/") and contains(@href,":")]]');
if ($items->length === 0) {
    die("Nothing found.");
}


// creat RSS
$rss = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
$rss->formatOutput = true;

$rssRoot = $rss->createElement('rss');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('version', '2.0');
$rssRoot->setAttribute('xmlns:atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$rss->appendChild($rssRoot);

$channel = $rss->createElement('channel');
$rssRoot->appendChild($channel);

$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', $feedTitle));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('description', $feedDescription));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', $url));
$channel->appendChild($rss->createElement('language', $feedLanguage));

// Atom Self-Link
$atomLink = $rss->createElement('atom:link');
$atomLink->setAttribute('href', (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? 'https://' : 'http://') . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
$atomLink->setAttribute('rel', 'self');
$atomLink->setAttribute('type', 'application/rss+xml');
$channel->appendChild($atomLink);

foreach ($items as $item) {
    if ($maxItems-- <= 0) break;

    $cells = $item->getElementsByTagName('td');
    if ($cells->length < 4) continue;          // Sicherheits-check
    $number = trim($item->getElementsByTagName('th')->item(0)->textContent);
    $title  = trim($cells->item(0)->textContent);
    $link   = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com' . $cells->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->getAttribute('href');
    $image  = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/' . trim($cells->item(2)->textContent);
    $date   = trim($cells->item(3)->textContent);   // YYYY-MM-DD

    // RSS-Item erzeugen
    $rssItem = $rss->createElement('item');
    $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('title', htmlspecialchars($number . ': ' . $title)));
    $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('link', htmlspecialchars($link)));
    $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('description',
        htmlspecialchars('<img src="' . $image . '" alt="' . $title . '" /><br>' . $title)));
    $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('pubDate', date(DATE_RSS, strtotime($date))));
    $rssItem->appendChild($rss->createElement('guid', htmlspecialchars($link)));
    $channel->appendChild($rssItem);
}

header('Content-Type: application/rss+xml; charset=utf-8');
echo $rss->saveXML();
?>

2a01:599:442:d8ec:967c:b1b4:cb3e:2bc2 (talk)  (please sign your comments with ~~~~) 20:08, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Can't we just rename the two pages?

This edit made me think: can't we just rename the two pages to something like ...DnD ... to fix our RSS feed? Would that work? FaviFake (talk) 18:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Only if that propogated to (overwote/superseded and deleted the old entry) the RSS file. But with (for totally different reasons?) there not having been any updates since 8/Aug/2025, I don't even see that happening. And a number of reasons to think that even if it replaces the items: a) it won't remove another wrong aspect, b) it won't let us (easily!) add all the missing ones since that point.
I think it still needs someone with server-side editing priviliges to just correct it, perhaps add some text-sanitising to the script that updates it and investigate why the updating script isn't still running.
Though you could try renaming the first (i.e. chronologically last) page that pops up. If it makes it update that entry (revealing the other D&D error as the new stopper), then make the second change... (surely if it's kick-started to respond to that, then it's kick-started to start adding new things, but no idea if you'd then need to change/unchange everything since the current last, in order to prompt them to be added). But my guess is that you'll change the page, nothing will happen, you'll wait... eventually you'll want to undo the change back to how it currently is. (Or look for every page that references the changed page to get them pointing at the new-name... as not leaving a Redirect page on the old name might be the only way to make it 'RSS official').
Or I'm totally wrong, and it's all much simpler. Can't test any of these hypotheticals and predictions myself. 2.98.65.8 20:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Fix Random Comic RNG

The random comic button seems to not work properly since it wont show comics before 2022. 174.168.56.208 (talk) 16:41, 17 October 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This is a known issue, please see explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous#Random_Explanation_Button_bias_towards_newer_articles. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 17:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Main page comic number

The main page currently states that there are 3,161 comics. However, the latest comic as of today is 3159, resulting in a discrepancy of three comics. Is there a reason for this? --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 20:02, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Moved from Kynde's talk, they've said enough times that they aren't a technical user. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into this, but I'm sure someone will. FaviFake (talk) 20:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
The main page is, through the magic of the instruction {{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}}, taking the number from those listed in (and as enumerated at the top of) Category:All comics. At the time of writing, that has comics 1 to 3159 , plus ngram charts and verizon, giving a total two more than the numbers would suggest.
The possible changes are to either remove non-numbered comics from the All Comics categories or (such as when some people were wondering whether the 404 'non-comic' should count in the total), make a hard-coded mathematical adjustment to the counted number within the Main Page to 'correct' it. (And be prepared to re-hardcode it if the number of non-number comics changes later.) If you think it worthwhile. An even more useful change would be to have a way to auto-adjust for non-number comics via a bit of extra categorisation and counting being fed into the subtraction. Depends on how much work you want to do! ;)
Or... you could also just add ", including non-numbered comics", or your choice of wording, to the "We have..." text and then (regardless of how many such oddities occur, and why) it might not be considered any kind of problem. Simple enough, just not within my power to do for you!2.98.65.8 21:06, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
How can people miss such a huge message, ffs.
warning!!.png

This is not a comic, but a webpage on xkcd.com

There are many other similar xkcd webpages, some of which are explained here. Explain xkcd is trying to decide how they should be treated. You are welcome to help us decide how we should categorise, call, or present these kinds of explanations. Kindly leave a comment here.

This page should not be categorized until we decide how to explain these non-comics (see discussion above).

Fixed by marking them as extra. FaviFake (talk) 22:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
They were marked as not-extra again...
Just found the other more recent suggestion(s) I saw, about this:
Makes sense to me. But I couldn't implement it, even if I wanted to change how everything works (admitedly, so that it works better, after maybe a little messing around)
Tempted to check exactly which pages are "extra=no" (i.e. have been changed, looks like should be "extra=page") and "extra=yes" (probably candidates for "extra=comic" treatment). But anybody can find that info, especially people who can do something about it. 2.98.77.121 00:45, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
Yep, there's been the paradox that non-numbered comics don't count as comics (for numbering purposes) but non-numbered non-comics do.
I give you three(+) options to 'solve' it (there could be more), in increasing order of complexity. By both dsscription (sorry!) and implementation.
  1. Change the main page to say something like "We have #### comics and other pages explained", don't bother to change anything (except maybe abandon "Extra Comics" idea and stop using "extra=yes", although that does more work than recategorising), potentially have all extra comics and extra non-comic pages in the count, but nobody's now particularly bothered that this count is higher than the highest comic number and nobody[actual citation needed] ever complains about this again, ok?
  2. Accept that non-comic extra pages are "extra comics", make them "extra=yes", excludes them from the count (keeps them in the Random Page, as broken as that is), makes the "number of comics" correct again, the counting complaint ends until something else different needs pondering about in the future and further decision needs to be made.
    • Slight variation: do that, but change all "Extra Comics" to "Extra Pages" as the sole "extra=yes" result/repository, without distinction.
  3. Have both "Extra Comics" and "Extra Pages" 'infrastructure', i.e. categories, etc. Then have the comic template expanded by one further "is there an extra= term, and is it's value [1) 'yes', or perhaps 'comic', 2) 'page']?" nested search term to assign accordingly. (Benefit of being able to check just if {{{extra|}}} is blank/nonblank for the comic template check to see if next/previous, etc, are needed, without comic/non-comic distinction.) Anything that uses a comic-template that needs not to appear on the 'number of comics' needs one or other valid "extra=" value. Count is accurate, theoretically the Random Comic can be made to go to any number-comic, no-number-comic and (optional) non-comic extra explanation.
    • Similar, but use extracomic=yes and extrapage=yes, with appropriate choices. Complicates matters (don't get the benefit/script optimisation described above), setting both extracomic and extrapage is accidentally possible (though shouldn't matter, it'll act only on the first), anything still "extra=yes" will be treated as a normal comic until changed (as it would if you chose to go with "extra=comic" template choice-change, above, but you could at least find 'illicit' hangers-on in the "All comics" list" to then change them accordingly). Again, numbered-comics, not-numbered-comics and not-comics are dealt with seperately (where it counts) but can still be grouped for Random Comic (or perhaps better "Random Explanation"?) purposes, such as it is.
Simplest item is the first. Even the last isn't too complicated, for someone who has more than basic template-editing experience. (Please, nobody who has just followed the ill-advised "How to make a template" course in the FAQ. That's too basic for this, and also far too much "Hey guys, just make loads of templates, yeah!?" for comfort.)
Your choices, however. Perhaps discuss first, though? 82.132.236.65 08:39, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
I would like to vote for using extra=page and extra=comic. 42.book.addictTalk to me! 20:17, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

What If? Toolbar button

The button called 'What If?' on the left-hand toolbar currently links to What If? Chapters. However, users would be clicking this link possibly to go to the article about the blog or the articles about the books. So, I think we should have that button link to the disambiguation link instead. --DollarStoreBa'alConverse 14:41, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Comic number off again

The comic number is now a full nine numbers off? What's happened? <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 16px;">--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#E3C6BE">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|<span style="color:#CC9A8B">Converse</span>]]</sup></span> (talk) 00:14, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

See the subsection two above this... 2.98.77.121 00:27, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Design


ARCHIVED DISCUSSIONS

Most of the discussions on this page have been archived. The archive is available at explain xkcd talk:Community portal/Proposals.

Removing unnecessary 3-comic categories?

I count eight categories on explainxkcd that satisfy the following properties: 1. They have only three comics in them. 2. They aren't really a comic series; they just feature or reference a comic theme. 3. They aren't Featuring some person or character. In short, they seem to have no real reason to exist. (They're thesones.) So my proposal: remove them. -Account (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

In addition, there are thirteen more four-comic categories that also seem rather in need of deletion.
Shouldn't the community at least have some time to expand on these categories, in case they're currently incomplete? For example, Category:The Matrix is on your list and now contains 7 strips, and Category:Tournament bracket got its 5th entry after your post. Even if they're not, a theme category can save some typing in the search box (and is probably also cheaper in terms of server resources than all the searches it'll eliminate). Promethean (talk) 22:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
So what do you think the limit should be for categories? Should we create a category when two comics mention the same topic? Three? --Account (talk) 16:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Three seems reasonable to me, and I could see a case being made for two. Categories aren't expensive. Promethean (talk) 00:17, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

New transcript

The transcripts in the comic pages are quite inconsistent, especially in the brackets where you have to describe what happens in the panels. If I understand correctly, the transcripts are for people to copy the text in the comic without having to type them out. If that's the case, then I think propose a new transcript. This transcript should have the comic with the words erased, and then the copy-pasteable words on top of that. Such a transcript would have no room for error, which would let anyone contribute to a seamless transcript.

The aim of the transcript is to provide a text-only version of the comic that would allow someone who is visually impaired to use a text-to-speech converter to understand the comic and also in a machine readable format for searching (see the Editor FAQ). Anything using mark-up, images or anything other than plain text will interfere with this and so should be avoided in the transcript. AlChemist (talk) 18:22, 23 November 2019 (UTC)User_talk:DollarStoreBa'al

Add title text and heading to transcript section

It has always bothered me that the transcript did not include the title text since it contributes so much to the humor of the comics. Also, it looks to me like the comic heading is sometimes included as part of the transcript and sometimes left out. I checked the previous proposals and did not see any discussion of these issues. Please consider having a policy going forward of including the heading and the title text within the transcript. Rtanenbaum (talk) 22:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

To my understanding (and also others, see discussion directly above) one of the main points of the transcript is to make the comics searchable, the other is, to make it readable when images are not an option. In both cases the comic's name and the title text mentioned above and below the image should be sufficient. I personally think this convention is fine. Lupo (talk) 08:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Pardon me -- (and, thanks for your patience) -- if this is too off-topic (/slash "boring") or TMI (see Information overload#Web accuracy e.g.), ...OR if this should have been posted elsewhere ...instead of here.
IMHO the term "title text" is a misnomer. I think the term is used to refer to the little (or, BIG!) pop-up -- (kinda like what is sometimes called a "tooltip", but ... aren't those usually pretty small?) -- that appears when one "hovers" his mouse [pointer] over an XKCD cartoon. ...at least, according to the "Talk:" page section Template talk:comic#The template field called .22titletext.22 which was added almost 3 years ago. I think that calling it a "BONUS text" would be even better than calling it a "caption". However, [to me], either one of those terms would make sense WAY more than calling it a "title text" ... for reasons which are stated in the [Template] "Talk:" page section mentioned (and ... LINKED TO) above.
Any Comments? . . *** Thanks! *** for listening! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 08:57, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi Mike, I see your point, and yes, something like "bonus text" might be a bit more descriptive. But FWIW, I think the reason it's called "title text" is because that's the text that appears in the title attribute of the HTML <img> tag of the comic's image on the xkcd.com site. For example, at https://xkcd.com/2364/, the code for the comic image looks like this:
<img src="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parity_conservation.png"
     title="Bloody Mary is made of antimatter. It explains so much."
     alt="Parity Conservation"
     srcset="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parity_conservation_2x.png 2x">
In there, you can see the title text as title="Bloody Mary is made of antimatter. It explains so much." See here for more explanation about that, and some discussions about it here. – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 03:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
While the current layout suits the first purpose (ease of search), I would argue that having the "title text" come before in the page layout, and in a completely different section, makes it fail the second (accessibility). Often the contents of the title text are a continuation of the humour in the strip, so it's about as useful as having the explanation ahead of the transcript as far as accessibility is concerned. My suggestion on this matter is to either a) move the transcript to the top of the content, maybe within a collapse section or b) not claim it for accessibility.
As for the secondary topic, I've seen it called "Author Text" before, as it is text by the author and most people won't care what the element attribute is named. 64.114.211.89 06:55, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia links.

I think the links to Wikipedia should have symbols, so it's not confusing which ones lead to other comic pages.

It's time to remove the HTTPS lock icon

Explainxkcd should do the same thing that browser makers have done: treat HTTPS as the modern standard, and mark HTTP as the deviation instead.

Here are appropriate replacement icons: 

* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unlock_Icon_Red_(32_bit).png
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unlock_Icon_Red_(4_bit).gif

- Frankie (talk) 12:49, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

New page for Randall's regular column in the New York Times

Randall Munroe has been writing and illustrating a monthly science column in the New York Times. I suggest a page in this Wiki, indexing those columns. For some reason the New York Times itself does not provide such an index. If they ever do add one, we would still have a topic article here, similar to the one we have for the What If blog, that could link to their index. --JohnB (talk) 00:47, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

New York Times column: Good Question

Good Question is a more-or-less monthly column written and illustrated by Randall Munroe in the Science section of the New York Times, beginning in November 2019. The columns give serious answers to science questions, in Munroe's inimitable style.

The New York Times website ordinarily requires registration, and its content is always protected by copyright. Most particularly it is not under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License the way xkcd is. The good news: anyone can register for a free digital subscription to the New York Times, with access to 'recent' Science articles among some others, but outside of that only five articles per month. See Free Articles.

Unlike for many of their other regular columnists, the New York Times does not provide a clickable link either on the byline Randall Munroe or on the column title Good Question. The following tables are intended to correct that omission.

New York Times columns by Randall Munroe
Column Headline Byline Date
SCIENCE What Makes a Red Sky at Night (and at Morning) Randall Munroe Aug. 13, 2019
GOOD QUESTION If I Touched the Moon, What Would It Feel Like? Randall Munroe Nov. 12, 2019
GOOD QUESTION Is Earth Getting Bigger Over Time? Randall Munroe Dec. 10, 2019
GOOD QUESTION How Fast Can a Human Run? Randall Munroe Jan. 21, 2020 / Feb. 7, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What’s the World’s Worst Smell? Randall Munroe Feb. 17, 2020 / Feb. 26, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What if Galileo Had Dropped Bobsleds From the Tower of Pisa? Randall Munroe March 10, 2020
GOOD QUESTION How’s the View From a Spinning Star? Randall Munroe April 7, 2020
GOOD QUESTION What’s the Sweetest, Crispiest Way to Stay Safe in a Car Crash? Randall Munroe May 11, 2020
GOOD QUESTION Can You Boil an Egg Too Long? Randall Munroe June 9, 2020
GOOD QUESTION Could You Make a Snowball of Neutrinos? Randall Munroe July 7, 2020
New York Times columns about Randall Munroe
Column Headline Byline Date
LINK BY LINK This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix Noam Cohen May 26, 2008
BITS Tech’s Favorite Cartoonist Enters Mainstream Publishing Noam Cohen March 14, 2014
SCIENCE He’s Glad You Asked Kenneth Chang Nov. 3, 2014
BOOKS Randall Munroe Explains It All for Us Alexandra Alter Nov. 23, 2015
SCIENCE Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High School Kenneth Chang March 21, 2016
SCIENCE Randall Munroe of ‘XKCD’ Explains the Human Body, Elevators and the Saturn 5 (Actual pages from Thing Explainer) March 21, 2016
Looks goods to me, you should probably make that an article of its own, maybe New York Times: Good Question? --SlashMe (talk) 22:58, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Ambox notice.png I went and added the page, here: New York Times: Good Question --JohnB (talk) 02:42, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Bring back the {{{1}}} template! please

Can someone restore the {{rw}} template? I insist on its existence. I further assure that it will be of much use. It was deleted by an admin. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

nm, did it myself. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 04:15, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Link to high-resolution images?

The wiki includes the "standard" resolution images, but would it be worth adding a link to the higher-resolution image on each page? It appears that this could be automated in at least a strong majority of cases: if the standard image is xyzzy.png, the hi-res one is xyzzy_2x.png . BunsenH (talk) 22:10, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Please stop adding this to the explanations. This is not needed. Kynde (talk) 08:56, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
The high-resolution image was quite useful in parsing the "Amelia's Farm Fresh Cookies" comic. I'm not convinced that the hi-res images are commonly known. I've been reading xkcd for about 7 years and hadn't heard about them until I stumbled across a mention of them in one of the Discussions here. What is the harm in having a one-line link here? -- not, I emphasize, the actual image, which would take up a great deal of space. BunsenH (talk) 17:00, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
I didn't know about the high-resolution images either. While it might be a bit repetitive to add a full sentence to every comic's explanation, I agree that having some easy way to link to the hi-res image on xkcd.com could be handy. For example, maybe a "hi-res" or "2x" button before the "Next >" button above the comic in Template:comic? That's a bit extreme, but I added an example template, derived from the existing Template:comic, to demonstrate how that could work:
With those changes to the template, for all comics as of 1084 the "2x" button would automatically appear. (No need to go back and change all comics.) This assumes the images hosted on explainxkcd generally have the same filename as on xkcd.com, but there are optional parameters to override the filename or omit the "2x" button altogether for specific exceptions. I'm not suggesting we actually go ahead and implement this; but if there was enough interest, an admin would be needed anyway, to make the changes within Template:comic, which is currently protected. – Yfmcpxpj (talk) 23:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, I like this. BunsenH (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
My proposal is that a bot should add it automatically to the description of each comic image when available so that it does not take up space anywhere and is easily accessible. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 13:49, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to replace the top section with this...

I have come up with a new design for the top section of all community portals... It’s located here... https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=explain_xkcd:Sandbox&oldid=199882 — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 14:15, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Crystal Clear app ktip.png
Proposals

Ideas to improve the wiki's design and organization can be added here. (+post)

Crystal Clear app package settings blue.pngCrystal Clear teamwork.pngMop.svgInternet-group-chat.svg

I made a template for welcoming new users.

Logo.png
Welcome, Community portal, to explain xkcd!
 Dialog-information on.svgPreferences-system.svgEdit-find-replace.svgTools-hammer.svgHelp-browser.svg
  • Be sure to give our FAQ a read so that you can learn to participate as effectively as possible.
  • If you are interested in editing the wiki, you can help reduce the number of incomplete explanations and transcripts.
  • See the Wikipedia pages on editing if you are new to editing wikis in general.
  • Browse all the xkcd comics by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
  • Check out our community portal for general chit-chat about the site and xkcd.
  • Remember to sign with --~~~~ when leaving a comment.

Any ideas? Suggestions? Objections? — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 16:35, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

this is now in at the top of the Main Page --Jeff (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
Why? This looks like a template intended for (newly created) UserPages. And it replaces interesting data from the frontpage with something not useful for casual visitors (or even non-casual lurkers). I'd undo this change in an instant if I had authority to do so. ((The template looks good, to clarify, just obviously not intended to be in that location.)) 141.101.76.154 01:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Jeff is the owner of explainxkcd you dingus. Beanie talk 13:46, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

comic groups

i think we should have a tech problems list of comics ( as there are quite a few)

We already have a category for it. Category:Cueball_Computer_Problems. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 13:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Archiving interactive comics?

Has the possibility of archiving interactive comics been discussed? Of course, users can view them on the original website, but it’d be nice to have a working backup of sorts, especially considering some of the interactive comics haven’t aged too well in terms of compatibility or support (e.g. Umwelt displays a blank page for me.)

It probably wouldn’t be possible to do so directly from mediawiki, but I’d be happy to experiment with cloning a few of them on another server, or as simple PHP pages that could be embedded, if it would help. Most of the interactive comics appear to be implemented mostly in client side JS anyways, so replicating them shouldn’t be too bad.

Tague (talk) 13:12, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Replace head shots of characters in the wiki with these new and high quality head shots!

https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/n2u28r/i_took_head_shots_of_the_reccuring_characters_and/

These are not only upscaled, but are all squares and have all the features of the characters. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 03:33, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I think you should do it (because higher quality = better) :] Beanie talk 13:42, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
There seemed to be no objections, so I went ahead and did it. — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 12:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Cleaning up Special: Wanted Templates

I decided to take a look at the list of wanted templates. Imagine my surprise when I see that a lot of the templates wanted were mis-capitalizations or misspellings of existing templates. I hereby request permission to create redirect pages for some of the most popular errors. I intend to do five, wait a week, and do another five as to not spam the wiki. I will not begin for a week, at which point I will only proceed if nobody has said no OR a moderator has said yes. May I proceed? {)|(}Quill{)|(} 11:34, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Knit Cap

Sometimes Knit cap has long hair, sometimes short. Is Knit Cap meant to be a male character that sometimes has long hair, or is Knit Cap sometimes female? I want to clear this up before I finish editing 1350: Lorenz. Beanie talk 13:40, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Hm, in the 'Enemy Pikachu used theft' scene in 1350: Lorenz, Knit Cap's hair looks merely slightly unkempt. From this, I will assume that Knit Cap just sometimes has long hair and is always male. Beanie talk 13:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
Ok, the official transcripts say that Knit Cap is 'A guy in a knit cap'. I will take that to mean that Knit Cap is definitely male.

We still need to complete some explanations like this one:

I think should change the banner shown at the top of every page to show a comic that is still incomplete, like Hoverboard or something. Sure (talk) 21:32, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Update MediaWiki

explainxkcd is running MediaWiki 1.30.0, which reached end-of-life in June 2019. There are likely security issues because of this, so please update MediaWiki to the latest version (or LTS) using the instructions here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading Cam1170 (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

It seems like the mysql is too outdated for the upgrade Starstar (talk) 17:37, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
Upgrade MySQL thenAaron Liu (talk) 03:16, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Does anybody know how to contact an admin for this? I have no clue. Cam1170 (talk) 03:25, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Allow Users to Edit their own talk page if not auto confimed

I can edit this page, but I can't create my own talk page! Starstar (talk) 17:34, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Upgrade Icons

The icons look quite old fashion (the ones on the sidebar and the ones above the editing text area), could they be replaced? Starstar (talk) 23:07, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

They probably could be, but changing icons the moment they're not absolutely cutting-edge just means using new icons that are as easily edged-out (as tastes change yet again), meanwhile annoying those who prefered the first set and rather wouldn't see a revolving door of ever-evolving aesthetics.
If I had a vote, I'd say keep the simple glyphs we're used to. If any are not totally obvious (perhaps some would not be, without the text captions) consider revising, but I think you'll get less agreement on what new images to use than that which would advocate the retention of the current ones.
Alternately, it would definitely be on-theme to find Randall-drawn illustrations to replace them all. But the constraints of adapting (say) any particular stick-figure-world depiction of randonmess to meaningfully replace the current Random Page icon (at the same scale!) might be less than optimal.172.70.162.57 01:08, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Make searchbar not case-sensitive

The way the search bar is currently set, it only suggests comic links when what is being typed is capitalized ("Assigning Numbers" rather than "assigning numbers" for instance). Would be nice if we could make it not case-sensitive :D Wielder of the Staple Gun (talk) 02:48, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Good idea. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:46, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Do not allow ordinary users to edit redirects that are just numbers

This overrides the default page you're sent to when you check a comic; e.g. recently a vandal edited the page entitled "2614" so it overrode the actual page, 2614: 2 on the main page.

The problem would be when creating a new page and the overrides are needed... ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

ExplainXKCD discord (or other platform)?

I'm just saying if we had instant messages, pings etc. there would be a lot faster reaction to vandals. The community portal is hard to get attention from and comments are all very well and good but conversations on Discord could get very quick response, and people could request edits, organise page re-writing etc. Idk if we can get "official" backing by anyone high up but we could make one anyways?

The problem with platforms like Discord or others is that we can't guarantee that everyone has access to them; on the wiki, anyone can edit, while some people may not have access to discord or such. A possible solution would be having a sort of service built into the wiki, but not sure how that might be done. Besides, this is a wiki, not an xkcd chat site. This is a good idea, though. ⟨Winter is coming⟩ Marethyu (talk) 17:43, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Anyone can create a discord account like anyone can create an account on this wiki. You don't even need a dedicated client/app as it can run in browser. Just like the wiki. Just my two cents. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 11:28, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
Some user may not wish anyone to be able to contact them outside this wiki. You do not need an acount to edit this wiki... Kynde (talk) 17:14, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

So, I got a question about transcripts.

A lot of comics show links (e.g.: all the ones with a drawing of wikipedia on it), and the transcripts don't really have a standard. In the transcript, should it be an actual link or just blue text or what? 162.158.79.52 15:03, 2 June 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

I'd say that if the linked thing (presuming it's a real linkable target!) is linked in the Explanation, it doesn't need to be (re)linked in the ostensibly flat-and-descriptive Transcript.
And I know that some Transcripts are hypertext formatted to emulate the thing they are transcribed from (whether bolded, enbiggened, sub-/superscripted and and/or given the hue) but maybe primarily the "[:Text that describes the text]" should be explaining the details, in case the screen-reader (or text-searching algorithm grepping the Transcript text for "green text" or "superscript" instances can't quite work it out from the various style-tags that can be applied to that effect in so many an various ways.
But this is IMO, I don't know if there's a specific policy about it, but it is how I've seen it vaguely applied... Not everywhere quite so consistently, though. 172.70.91.128 20:28, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
We try to keep links and explanations out of the transcript. The link and the explanation goes in the explanation section above. Kynde (talk) 17:12, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Use 2X Images

Apparently xkcd.com provides double-sized versions of almost every comic if you add _2x to the end of the image name. For instance,

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/watches.png

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/watches_2x.png

Since we are in 2022 and computers can load high-resolution images just fine, and they are easier to read, I propose that this website should use the provided double-sized images. Really, I think Randall ought to be doing this himself as well. 172.68.18.107 12:22, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

While I agree with using the higher quality images which are default on xkcd.com for many people, there has been discussion about this issue already. At the moment, the consensus seems to be to continue using the 'standard' size to 'use less space,' and instead link to the higher quality image on the image page. —theusaf (talk) 14:35, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
I think I may have mentioned it on that link (or similar), but often when the 2x image is used (or even an unwise too wide image/unbreakable-line-of-content) the explainxkcd site cannot sensibly handle it and it forces the default 'page width' of stuff into a zoomed out narrower column to the left (including the margin-line normally inset a dozen or so pixels in from the right) so that browser-window can display the whole of this wide element.
While "saving space" does apply to server resources and viewer download bandwidth/quotas (e.g.53kb vs 109kb) may seem insignificant, screen-space can be badly hit by this.
The motherlode xkcd site has code behind it to (usually?) serve the right image for the right displays, but explainxkcd isn't currently equipped to do the same choose-and-provide (which would need both images uploaded to it and a revised {{comic}} implementation, once we work out the method it could use). And I've never seen any case where the 'low quality' comic is conversely too small and narrow to appreciate (though occasionally the larger one reveals minor drawing details that have been obscured by the downscaling), just when the _2x one makes everything else too small.
...this may not apply to everyone's browser implementation, but it definitely happens, and consistently, on my usual Chrome and/or Firefox on Windows and/or Android platforms (according to which system I happen to be on at the time). 172.70.162.147 21:20, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
ExplainXKCD actually does have the capability to do this. For example, see 1079:_United_Shapes. It generates multiple images, automatically choosing one based on screen size (similar to how xkcd.com does it). The bot could use the `imagesize` parameter to keep the image within the page's width by using the 'standard' image size. This does add a button labeled "click to enlarge," but if that is annoying, the comic template can be modified to hide that button if specified.
Here is what it might look like:
Collapsed content
Capri Suns
[As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"
Title text: [As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"