explain xkcd:Editor FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions for editors

This FAQ is a short description about editing pages at this wiki. Please read this careful and when there are further questions do not hesitate to enter them into this talk page.

For general questions please read first the MediaWiki help pages about Editing pages or look at the full overview here: Help Contents. You also can use your preferred search engine by entering "MediaWiki mytopic". Change mytopic to the theme you're searching for, i.e. "MediaWiki tables" will show you many useful sites about editing tables.

This FAQ focuses only on topics related to this specific Wiki.

What is the general layout of a comic page?

In general you don't have to care about this because the pages are generated by a bot nearly immediately after a new comic is released. If the bot fails please follow exactly the instructions here User:dgbrtBOT to do all the needed changes here.

The layout is always this:

• Comic picture with the title text below
• Explanation
• Transcript
• Trivia (optional)
• Discussion (embedded Talk page)
• List of non standard categories

What shall I write at the explanation?

Everything is welcome as long as it explains the content of the comic. Everybody can edit here and when others disagree about your contributions they may change it.

What is the format of the transcript section?

The transcript should describe the content (think about talking to an impaired person) in a compact manner and all written words. Every line begins with an indent (a simple : at the beginning) and every panel from the comic is separated by a blank line. The transcript must not contain any links. Also tables should be avoided, even when not all transcripts comply with this. Check older comics and you will understand.

What belongs to the trivia section

As the word says it's just not important odds-and-ends related to the comic. Since this wiki focuses on explaining this section is not part of the default layout.

How do I behave at the talk page (discussion)?

Everybody can add here any thoughts about the comic and more. Please follow the common netiquette and don't be rude. Every comment has to be signed at the end with ~~~~ or just click the sign button at the top of the editor.

What does the incomplete tag mean?

There are two templates to indicate that an explanation or the transcript do need further rework. Just enter {{incomplete|YOUR REASON}} or respectively {{incomplete transcript|YOUR REASON}} and don't forget to enter a proper reason. The reason at the transcript is not shown to the viewer.

How do I enter links to other pages?

The three mostly used options are:

• an internal link like [[Cueball]] which renders like this: Cueball
• a link to the English Wikipedia should use this template: {{w|Page}} links to the wikipedia article on "Page" or {{w|Page|Display}} prints "Display" which links to the wikipedia article on "Page"
• other external links can be done in three ways:
  • just write the uri and it will be shown like this: http://www.example.com
  • put it into single brackets: [http://www.example.com] and you will see this [1] (please avoid this)
  • and add a text: [http://www.example.com Example Homepage] everything after the first space is shown: Example Homepage

Why I can't upload pictures here?

Only registered and trusted users can create pages or upload images. Trusted means that the user must have done a small amount of edits before.

How do I embed images here?

This Wiki isn't a picture book, use this feature only sparingly and reduce the size as much as possible. An example can be seen here: 1400: D.B. Cooper. The syntax in this case is [[File:DBCooper.jpg|thumb|150px|Cooper]] and the picture is taken from Commons, the main source for Wikipedia images. The full syntax can be found at MediaWiki.

You also can upload pictures directly to this Wiki by using the Special:Upload link from the menu. But do not violate any copyright rules or it will be deleted. And when the picture is available at Commons there is no need to upload it here.

The picture at xkcd was updated, how do I upload this here?

Sometimes the initial picture at xkcd contains typos or other errors. When that has been fixed the comic picture here should also be updated. Save the picture from xkcd to your local PC but be careful, there are two versions available. We here use only the smaller version picture.png and not the larger one picture_2x.png. So change https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/picture_2x.png to https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/picture.png when your browser shows the 2x version.

To update it here just click the image in the comic page and then click "Upload a new version of this file" below the file history. And please be patient, you wont see your upload immediately because it still comes from the cache at the server. But when you see your upload in the file history everything is OK. Just wait...