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Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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I'm planning to import all comics automatically. Please have a look at [[User talk:Jeff#Automatic Import]], I need more feedback. --[[User:SlashMe|SlashMe]] ([[User talk:SlashMe|talk]]) 06:03, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
 
I'm planning to import all comics automatically. Please have a look at [[User talk:Jeff#Automatic Import]], I need more feedback. --[[User:SlashMe|SlashMe]] ([[User talk:SlashMe|talk]]) 06:03, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
 
== Date? ==
 
 
How do I find the date a comic was first posted (to put in the comic header here?) [[User:TheHYPO|TheHYPO]] ([[User talk:TheHYPO|talk]]) 12:26, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
 
  
 
== Template improvement suggestion ==
 
== Template improvement suggestion ==

Revision as of 04:43, 4 August 2012

This page is for discussion of the Main Page. Other issues probably belong at the Explain XKCD:Community portal.

As a new user, I think the first page is very important. So I thought why not begin a discussion here what to have on the first page every user visits.--Relic (talk) 05:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT) Re-signed here - b/c I broke the comment in two when I added the "List of comics" header. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 23:01, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Contents

List of comics

I was thinking of having a quick link to the list of comics that is explained. Right know, it took me a while to even see any of them. Eventually I found the "List All Pages" (found it in Special pages) where I could find the comics that have been explained. What do you think?

A category tag will do that for you automatically. Having a list of comics indexed by its number would be a little different.--Relic (talk) 05:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
Sounds like a great list - I think it'd have to be manually maintained until/unless we get someone who knows how to make a bot update it. Categories will be useful, but they only work if someone added the category to the page in the first place. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 07:21, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
A (somewhat) related question - should Category:Comics be sorted alphabetically or by comic number? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 07:43, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
I think Category:Comics should be sorted by comic number. If you are looking for a specific comic, you will use the search field. Is there a way to make that happen? --Jeff (talk) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
They are two different functions. For the former, instead of adding [[Category:Comics]], add, say, [[Category:Comics|1]]. For the second, we can create redirects. Normally, I'd say just make sure the search term was in the article text, but since numbers are going to be use for other purposes than just comic titles, it may be better to create 1 and Comic 1 as redirects to the relevant articles right off the bat. --08:24, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
We could also have a comic-list template on the Main Page, I suppose, or perhaps two - one for number and one for name? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 08:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
Here's what I was thinking of for that: {{Comics navbox}} Thoughts? Philosopher Let us reason together.
(outdent) It's ugly, but a sortable wikitable (click here for example) could be used as a checklist to see what has been uploaded and what hasn't. What's the project namespace here, anyway (analogue of "WP:")? --SurturZ (talk) 03:04, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
OK, I've found a way to get all the titles of the comics, so I was confident enough to create

Explain XKCD:Checklist

which can be used to fill in the gaps. --SurturZ (talk) 03:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
I'm liking the checklist! That should do quite nicely as a "tool for editors". (I'm linking to it at the Community Portal). We still need the "template for readers." Did you think {{Comics navbox}} was on the right track or should we do something else for that? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:09, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
Better idea - I'm throwing it directly onto the Main Page. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:10, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Admin list

You can find a system-accurate list of admins here, so that might good to share, along with the manual list. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 07:13, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Added to page. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 08:10, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
That's exactly what I wanted, but couldn't find the auto page for it. I knew it was somewhere. I don't see any reason to keep the link to the manual page. Do you? --Jeff (talk) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
Not unless you want it. I'll remove it. Should I add the similar link for 'crats or is that unnecessary at this point? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 08:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
To be honest, I have no idea what the Burecrats role does. Might be unnecessary now but helpful in the future? --Jeff (talk) 11:16, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
Bureaucrats can turn other users into administrators (or indeed, other bureaucrats). That privilege isn't available to ordinary administrators. I'd keep it to yourself for the time being. :-) --Yirba (talk) 17:39, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
You can actually see a technical list of which rights each group confers at Special:ListGroupRights. As the wiki grows, you might want to spin off a few, such as the ability to grant rollbacker and autopatrolled, to admins as some other wikis have. But for the time being, at least, there's really no reason for the wiki to have more than one 'crat. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 17:07, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Community portal

I've created the Explain XKCD:Community portal as a tools/help page. If that's not what you want, feel free to change/move/whatever it, but I thought it'd be nice to save this page for discussion of the Main Page and discuss the wiki as a whole/ask for help there. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 08:36, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Direct link to latest comic

There should be a direct link to the latest comic at the top of the Main page. A nice thing about going to explainxkcd.com was that the latest comic is right there at the top. For those changing their default link to the wiki, there should be an easy "Latest Comic" link that quickly takes them there. I'm sure some folks actually skip xkcd.com and come directly here instead to read the latest offering from Randall. They shouldn't have to search for it. - CFoxx (talk) 11:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Maybe the page latest should redirect to the most recent comic? Could that be taken care of by some sort of script/template so it doesn't have to be manually updated? Should each explination page also have "next", "previous", "random", "first" and "latest" links, possibly also generated automatically via scripts/templates? Additionally, shouldn't the number page be the canonical one? It seems like Internal monologue should redirect to 1089 rather than the other way around - certainly it would make a bunch of scripting types of things a lot easier. J-beda (talk) 13:02, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
If you wanted, we could even use wiki-magic to show the title of the page as the Comic name, but the URL as the number - in order to parallel the actual XKCD website. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 17:09, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
Shouldn't there be a way to programmatically find the comic with the highest number that has a page with content? That would work as long as no one puts future comic pages up. --Jeff (talk) 20:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
It's all sounding like folks are over-complicating something quite easy. All I'm suggesting is a prominent link to http://www.xkcd.com/. No need, I think, to list which number the latest is, or include the next/last/random buttons, etc. - CFoxx (talk) 11:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

You can transclude the latest comic on the main page like this: {{:pagename}} e.g. {{:Internal_monologue}} --SurturZ (talk) 00:25, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I've started with just a manual link to the latest comic. Ideally it will be automatic, but a manual link will work for now as I've had quite a few people ask for it. --Jeff (talk) 21:09, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Automatic Import

I'm planning to import all comics automatically. Please have a look at User talk:Jeff#Automatic Import, I need more feedback. --SlashMe (talk) 06:03, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Template improvement suggestion

Can I suggest that we work on improving {{ComicHeader}} - I wish I had time to do it myself and then edit all the comic pages, but I would suggest the best way might be to start a new template (perhaps design it a bit more like an infobox) and start converting the old pages over to new ones.

The feature I think should be added is that, where the template currently includes teh comic number and date, and creates the nav header, the template really ought to include the image name, and the alt text. In that way, the template can produce the entire part of the article that displays the comic and its alt text (and the alt text, as mentioned, could be more like a caption, instead of just looking like a generic section of the article - it's part of the comic, it shouldn't look like part of the article on this site (no offence, Jeff, but that's one thing I always didn't like about explain XKCD - the image text should be bold or underlined or italics or something to signify that it's part of the comic and not the explanation.

I'll see if I can work on a prototype. TheHYPO (talk) 12:29, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

What does everyone thing of this as a better layout? Blown Apart TheHYPO (talk) 13:09, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
May I link to my request for feedback? --SlashMe (talk) 15:52, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Centralize discussion?

There seem to be three main places for discussion about the wiki, and we need to centralize these so people can all be in sync and prevent having a mess nobody can navigate. I suggesting redirecting this page (talk:Main Page) to the Community portal, and add a large notice to Jeff's talk page also suggesting using the Community portal instead. Current discussions can be moved there. What do you think? --Waldir (talk) 16:07, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Seems a good idea to me. --SlashMe (talk) 17:00, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
There are some suggestions on how to organize the community portal here (basically using subpages for different purposes, similar to Wikipedia's various Village pumps). Please comment :) --Waldir (talk) 17:04, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
I agree - my talk page is probably not the best place for general wiki discussion, this is better, but best to keep everything together! --Jeff (talk) 20:10, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
I'm importing wikipedia:Template:Village pump to set something like that up. I'll put a working draft in place, feel free to modify as needed, ofc. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 21:24, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Transcripts

Do we need to add a whole section on "Transcript" for each comic? That could get very long for some comics, and basically pushes the explanations down further (which is what people generally come to explainxkcd for). If anything, perhaps the transcripts could be in a minimizable box like some navboxes do on wikipedia? I don't see a majority of users coming to read the transcripts... TheHYPO (talk) 19:15, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

What about putting the transcripts at the bottom of the page?
BTW: If you agree, this discussion should be moved to Explain XKCD:Community portal, as Waldir suggested. At least for new discussions. --SlashMe (talk) 19:19, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
No problem there. Feel free to move it. TheHYPO (talk) 19:29, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Adding a new comic

This is the process I use to add a new comic. YMMV... Feel free to update this as/if needed to provide some consistency...--B. P. (talk) 19:22, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I start by uploading the image using the name from XKCD's page.

I create the new page using the comic number(not the name), e.g. "http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1"

I (currently) insert using the "Comic" template:

{{comic
| number    = 1
| date      = September 30, 2005
| title     = {{PAGENAME}}
| image     = barrel_cropped_(1).jpg
| imagesize = 
| alttext   = Don't we all.
}}
==Transcript==
This is the transcript from xkcd
==Description==
Wow what a cool comic!

I "Show preview" to ensure the image shows up and everything looks good.

I "Save page".

I click the "move" link on the down-arrow drop-down menu to the right of "View history" (at top of page).

I rename the page from "1" to the page title from XKCD.

This will automatically create a redirect from "1" to the correct page name without having to do it manually. --B. P. (talk) 19:22, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Please, have a break here. When we agree on a page layout, I can do this automatically. I repeat, when we agree on the layout (which should also include the direction of the redirects) --SlashMe (talk) 19:25, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
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