Talk:Xkcd/Archive 1

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Artistic assertions

About this line: "Although the comic uses stick figures, it's clear that this is by choice, not by artistic limitations. The quality of art in some of the strips is actually quite high, mainly in scenes which feature landscapes." I love this comic, but definitely NOT because of its artwork. The mentioned landscapes are not very brilliant, either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.37.209.65 (talk • contribs) 18:51, 30 August 2006

Yeah, it should probably not be making artistic assertions in the first place. I'm changing it to be more of a factual sentence about the content. --Xkcd 17:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)Xkcd

By the way -- I did make a couple of edits (like the above) back when the article was first created, but I think overall it's good policy for me not to edit my own comic's page, so y'all are (and have been) on your own :) --Xkcd 05:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Xkcd

Name

what does xkcd stand for anyway? should this be in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ybbor (talk • contribs) 02:41, 6 September 2006

A lot of people would like to know :) I hardly think this is where they will find out though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.205.147.131 (talk • contribs) 01:52, 15 September 2006

I think xkcd has something to do with schrodinger's cat. Wiki used to redirect there, until this article was made. However no direct mention is on the page. I know there have been previous comics about schrodinger's cat on xkcd, so any help would be appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.144.37.4 (talk • contribs) 22:06, 31 October 2006

From about page: "It's not actually an acronym. It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation, said 'ecks kay see dee.' However, my favorite suggestion so far has been 'DuckX backwards, sans vowel'." --Alec 21:01, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, theres been discussion about it on the forums. Where was the comic about schrodinger's cat; are you thinking of the fourier transform one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 07:41, 3 December 2006 (talk • contribs) No-genius

i THINK it has something to do with Linux. it's quite obvious that he's a Linux user. it could be a combination of xfce and kde.--janyu86 10:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Read the article and the sources it links to. Munroe himself says that it is meaningless [1].--Ybbor^T 01:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

But... In the FAQ, it is also said that it "stands for the comic, and everything the comic stands for!" Shouldn't this be mentioned? Ever wonder 13:00, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

just a thought really. artists do have a tendency to do that you know. hehehehe. anyway,i emailed him. he said he hasn't heard of either xfce or kde at the time that he made up the name. so i guess that kills my theory. hahaha. --janyu86 1:13pm - Feb 9, 2007(GMT +800)

Stub

is this really still a Stub? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frank duff (talk • contribs) 17:56, 27 September 2006

Sure. Compare with any other webcomics article. Surely more can be said. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well other comics have recurring charecters, which makes things easier. I would be in favor of renaming it a start-class article myself. --Ybbor^T 03:21, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Original Research

The "Recurring Characters" section was made up on the assumptions of the author. There is no evidence to support said claims, no citations. As an example, there is not evidence the unnamed girl is the same one, or that the male character she has a relation to is xkcd. It is possible for multiple people to fit similar roles. If you write some set of comics on similar subjects, you will end up with several similar characters, these do not need to be the same ones though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.205.147.131 (talk • contribs) 07:43, 30 November 2006

Better now? Tar7arus 16:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

It still makes the assumption that the characters are recurring, which is not necessarily the case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.57.188.167 (talk • contribs) 18:56, 3 December 2006

XKCD comments on it here: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=794 . I think the entire section should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.86.75.32 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 3 December 2006

Yeah, I went through and erased all but the hate guy as per authors request.Kurasuke 01:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Does he really need a section to himself though? Maybe he could be squished into the Recurring Themes part, or not anywhere at all. This new "Forums" section needs to be completely re-written or deleted, as it is currently only written to give some XKCD forum user a fuzzy feeling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.86.75.32 (talk • contribs) 02:04, 4 December 2006

Fixed I guess. I also guess I better start checking around here periodically to see what else people just add ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.205.147.131 (talk • contribs) 09:35, 8 December 2006

Also, he's not a native of Chesterfield, in the born-and-raised sense. I would say more or less, but I don't really want to inspire someone to go searching for his birth certificate or something. Suffice it to say his family moved here when he was in middle school. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.57.188.167 (talk • contribs) 06:42, 26 June 2007 UTC

Naming

I took the liberty of correcting my name and adding a link to the BBC site that actually listed xkcd. Someone might want to clean up that BBC link. davean is defined as ALWAYS having a lower case first letter, and Davean is explicitly not me. It was listed as Davean in the article, but I, "davean" am the site admin. It is a case sensitive name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.253.207.5 (talk • contribs) 15:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Merging

Is there really much else that can be said? The majority of the article deals with the subject's other works, not the subject himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.120.0.214 (talk) 18:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Randall Munroe Doesn't really talk about XKCD. And there's still plenty more that could be added, like his biographic details. Also, he could go on to do many projects other than XKCD. It may need to be expanded, but not merged into. --Ybbor^T 18:32, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it doesn't discuss XKCD much, but the majority of the article still discusses other projects (BestThing, The Funniest, The Fairest, and The Cutest); with respect to Randall Munroe as a person, the article in question hardly mentions anything that the article on XKCD doesn't already. I agree that plenty more could be added, but as it stands this entry just doesn't seem that informative (or even necessary). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.120.0.214 (talk • contribs) 20:01, 2 January 2007

I think the better solution would be to expand the Randall Munroe article. --60.241.171.45 11:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the articles should remain separate as they have separate topics. --Matthew 02:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree as well, the Special relativity and Einstein have their own pages so why not xkcd --128.208.46.19 09:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The Einstein article contains enough information to make it worthwhile, pertaining to Einstein as a person. The Munroe article contains only 2 sentences about Mr. Munroe, which already appear in the xkcd article. There is a marked difference between the two. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.120.0.214 (talk) 05:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC).

Oppose Merge per everyone above me. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 13:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Giving 'hat guy' an identity

Judging by the shape of the hat, I believe the head covering 'Hat Guy' is wearing to possibly be a fedora. Does anyone else agree with me, or believe this suggestion to be worth contemplating or receiving clarification about? Limp Trizkit 05:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

he is specifically indetified as "hat guy" here in thw alt text by Munroe himself. --Ybbor^T 01:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm...I have no idea how I missed that. Thanks. Limp Trizkit 04:22, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Mirror Links

I think that the one mirror link should be removed due to inapropriate content for minors. The cu.nningl.us or something link, even though it is a mirror, should be altered or removed IMO 168.212.76.197 19:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Opposed. Wikipedia is not censored, and does not have to clean up for what may be deemed inappropriate to minors in cases where the content has relevance. See WP:NOT#CENSORED. Limp Trizkit 06:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to link to any of these mirrors. Wikipedia is not a link directory. 64.160.39.153 03:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Article picture

The picture used in the article is, in my opinion, pretty bad. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the comic. I'm debating removing it. Thoughts? --Beezhive 18:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Seconded. --Pentasyllabic 19:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thirded. Should replace with a panel from the comic. --Gmarsden 20:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I'd suggest using Comic 214. I believe that we can reproduce the comic due to it being under CC-BY-NC 2.5. --Beezhive 13:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

We could still only use it under fair use. NC licenses are not and have not been permitted for a long time now. --Gwern (contribs) 18:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Oops, should have read your email before posting :) After uploading it to Commons, then realizing it's not allowed, I uploaded to Wikipedia under fair use and updated the page. --Gmarsden 19:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that - the reason I didn't upload it myself is that I wasn't sure of the licensing (as User:Gwern clarified). --Beezhive 19:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the comic is really that representative of his work as a whole. It'd be nice to have something with a stick figure. --Ybbor^T 22:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that was my initial reaction, too. My second thought was that it seemed reasonable, since it does represent a good portion of the comic. However, flipping through archives, it looks like the stick figure comics are far more common than the one-offs. Perhaps we should vote on a comic before changing it again? Nominations? --Gmarsden 22:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I admit that I was just browsing the archives and found the Wikipedia self-reference of #214 amusing. I've no objection to changing it to a comic featuring a stick figure, as you are correct in that they are more representative of the comic in general and are part of what the comic is known for. --Beezhive 23:05, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

And from an anal policy point of view, we are supposed to avoid self-references. --Gwern (contribs) 23:42, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Nominations for picture?

Well this is getting kinda hard to read, so I hope you don't mind starting a new thread.

Do we want to feature a whole comic, or just a panel from a comic? Do we want to feature it in the infobox, or as part of the article. (If it is in the info-box should the alt-text be used as the caption?). Anyway, assuming we're shooting for use in the info-box, I think our best bet may be Sudo make me a sandwich. If we want to echo the scientific themes found there's also String Theory. For the cruelty, I like the bottom middle panel of Words that end in Gry, the first panel of classwhole, or attention shopper. As far as just plan craziness, I like the last panels of working for Google and Philosophy.

--Ybbor^T 23:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I prefer a single panel from a multi-panel strip. Of the ones Ybbor mentions, I like the last panel of Philosophy. I also like the first panel of Blanket Fort. --Gmarsden 01:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

72 hours and only 1 comment? descions are made by those who show up. I think the super soaker one captures the comic as a whole better dealing with both the complex (existentialism), and silly (water guns). If no one else comments within 24 hours, I'm going to change it. --Ybbor^T 19:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Ha, looks like we came to the same conclusion, except I was less patient. --Gmarsden 18:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

That one works for me. --Beezhive 21:52, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

All but one...

The statement "All but one of the comics have tooltips..." appears to be original research, inaccurate, or both. If someone knows which comic is missing the tooltip, please add a citation. Preliminary research of my own indicates that none of the image tags are missing their title attributes. (Specifically, every file c*.html contains at least one line that matches the regex '<img[^>]*/comics/[^>]*title'.) I don't want to say that "All of the comics have tooltips" if that's not true, and I'm inclined to give the current sentence benefit of the doubt until I know for sure.
--George A. M. 02:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

We can change it to "generally have", after all, even if they all have them so far, he might stop doing it in the future, making the information incorrect. Gigs 04:14, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I seem to remember being curious about that myself, so I checked and it was somewhere early in the beginning, but looking back, all the early ones seem to have it. It's probably heresy to say so, but perhaps he retroactively added one? In any case, the line should probably be removed. --Ybbor^T 12:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I do occasionally fix typos and things but to my knowledge none of the comics were ever missing a tooltip. It's all in a database (overbuilt, I know) and I think I would have noticed an empty field. More likely someone was just confused by their browser's erratic tooltip display behavior. Sometimes you have to do little incantations (or mouse over a link and then back onto the picture) to get them to appear. --Xkcd 20:39, 6 April 2007 (UTC)xkcd

I have changed the article to state that each comic has a tooltip. Thank you for the clarification. --Ybbor^TalkSurvey! 20:46, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

AfD?

The comment has made its way pretty thoroughly into nerd culture. Any comic which can get Cory Doctorow to wear a red cape, and Richard Stallman a katana, has made enough of an impact to stay in wikipedia. (As noted on the xkcd blag) 71.166.148.216 04:26, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

As much as I agree that the article is keepworthy, I do not feel that your argument holds water. I could do one sketch now with Doctorow, Stallman, Abraham Lincoln, and Moses juggling spears, katanas, and pineapples. Does that make it noteworthy? At most, I would say that the fact that it has earned official recognition from Doctorow grants it some Whuffie noteworthiness, but... samwaltz 04:39, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Of course the drawing alone wouldn't be noteworthy. But no matter how minor an artist you are now, when, at the next Con, Moses shows up and hands Stallman a pineapple and demands that he juggle, I say you've earned noteworthiness. 70.21.9.85 03:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this adds to the comic's notability or detracts from Doctorow's notability, but I had never even heard of Cory Doctorow until the cape thing. I had to look him up here to get what was going on.--72.130.143.25 05:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there any way to restore the old talk page now that someone has restarted it, or will we have to just start anew? --LuigiManiac 04:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Restored. --TheSeer (TalkˑContribs) 13:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

April Fools?

Can we add the April Fool's joke that Mr. Munroe perpetrated? Any thoughts? dave 04:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

What was the joke? Konraden88 20:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The joke was that he was being syndicated and could no longer make crude sex jokes, jokes about math above high school level, etc...--Cadet hastings 15:02, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Not encyclopedic unless it becomes an annual theme Tar7arus 08:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Stub Class

Do we have any plans on enhancing the article so it is no longer marked as a stub?--Cadet hastings 15:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not a stub. Ask for it to be rated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Article Classification#Requesting an assessment and maybe they'll do it for the WikiProject Webcomics banner as well. –Pomte 20:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

It says that it is rated as a stub on top of the discussion page. I am also asking for an assessment--Cadet hastings 00:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)