Talk:256: Online Communities

I'm gonna try and put together some sort of explanation at all for this one. A couple of things I could use help on in terms of location if people want to chip in: series of tubes within myspace; the Icy North; the islands bounded by the Ocean of Subculture, Sea of Memes, and P2P Shoals; and the location of some of the tiny islands around the map (e.g. why is the Lonely Island near friendster, Google's Volcano Fortress off the IRC Isles, etc.). Thanks in advance!! Amurfalcon (talk) 20:30, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I've found Googling some of the more obscure things and half-readable things helps a lot. It's how I got Xu Jinglei. 141.101.99.219 17:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

The Lonely Island may be a reference to the comedy band of the same name. Shortly before this map was made they blew up after appearing on SNL. I do not know if this is relevant to its location on the map. CloverOtsworth (talk) 00:03, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Can someone remove that stray line break before "A larger version..."? It irks me and I don't know how to get rid of it.

bay of trolls

Might this be a reference to bay of pigs? 173.245.48.135 03:58, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Possibly, but, well, it'd be rather speculative to include it, and there's lots of other "Bay of X" places, e.g. Bay of Fundy. 141.101.99.235 05:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Map of the Internet

I don't know if or how much this art was inspired by this comic, but if you like 256 you'll love the Map of the Internet. — tbc (talk) 16:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

"World of Warcraft ... based on a previously-existing RPG series" i'm not sure about this statement. The first thing that most people think about would be Warcraft but that's not an RPG series (they are strategy games) unless we are considering it so for the minimal RPG elements in Warcraft 3. Perhaps it's referencing an other series (maybe Diablo) or I'm missing something and since i'm far from an expert in either WOW or xkcd i'll let someone else decide if it should be changed (a possible minimal change would be changing "RPG series" to either "game series" or "video game series"). 188.114.111.125 07:49, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

There's no explanation of the "anthropomorphic dragons" bit. I mean, I'm sure many of us know what it means (wink wonk), but some may be confused. 108.162.246.33 03:31, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

what is a one-syllable way to say "practical" or "practicals"? New editor (talk) 07:05, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

As a noun? I suppose "prop(s)" fits that ("a practical effect", as supposed to a special one, for something in a movie scene). Or "skill", in context of what a practical ability is. Or "test" (i.e. a "practical exam"), if you think "trial" is >1 syllable (I say 1.5!)... As a non-noun, never pluralised in any context I can think of and I'm short of 1-syllable answers, but I'm sure a visit to a dictionary+thesaurus site would help greatly. But I'm now wondering why anyone even asked this question here... Perhaps I need to reread the page for long-forgotten context? 172.70.162.5 09:51, 5 April 2022 (UTC) - addendum: Ahah! The compass rose! Lemme think more about the word. Or let others find your question, equipped with an innately more at hand answer... - additional addendum: it refers to those who "can", maybe? The "Cans", with the Intellectuals opposite being more like the "Coulds", rather than dimetrically Cannots. The 1S limit is rather restrictive. Can't even role out "able(rs)", or the like. But I presume you have singly-short-style names for the othe three (or seven?) points of the rose... Have fun. Hope you get better ideas from the next editor! -- ~sameIP~~slightlylater~

A couple of the explanations given for certain sites seem a little outdated, for example, yahoo no longer owns Tumblr and (I think?) Friendster is defunct now.