Help Us Help You Help Us
by Jeff
In the attempt to become the one stop shop for all explanations for any and all xkcd posts, there is a bit of a hole in our swing. We have every comic every day, but we don't have any explanations of comics before comic 610, with the exception of randomly explained comic 605. We started the site back in August of 2009, and back filled some comics, but not too many and certainly not enough.
So, this is where I get to my request. A lot of you know a lot of things about xkcd, so if you want to get your name, site, email, whatever on the site or just show off your xkcd explaining skills to your friends, this is your chance.
Take any comic before 610 (except 605) and explain it. Submit the explanation to me at submitATexplainxkcd.com. Send me what a line or two about yourself for the blog and and anywhere you would like me to link for your shoutout. (I will edit your byline only for offensive and abusive language.) And if I deem the explanation worthy (or I'll pick out the best one if I get a bunch for the same comic.) I will post it on the site. And since this site is in blog format, I'll backdate it to the day the comic was posted and put it on the blog.
If you get your post up, I'll email you back with the link, so that you can share with all your friends.
Perhaps, at the end of each week I will put up a post with links to the new explanations of old comics for that week.
What do you all think? Ready, set, explain!
December 22nd, 2011
An excellent idea, will there be a page to monitor progress of which ones have been completed?
December 22nd, 2011
Yes, I’m currently working on that as well. It will go under “Pages” on the top right.
December 22nd, 2011
It is up in the top right, now. Under “Pages”.
December 22nd, 2011
I think that is a great idea! Please make sure you add links to the new stuff though, I would love to read it and would hate to miss out on it because it is not on the front page
Hope this works.
December 22nd, 2011
I know this isn’t the right place for it, but I’m requesting help. http://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd is moderated by racists and misogynists, with the moderator soccer being the chief offender. They are currently advertise two hate groups in the “recommended” links in the sidebar, one that is anti-jew, and one that is anti-women. I’ve been banned from the subreddit and everyone that comments about their abuse has their comments deleted. If you use reddit, please help and message the moderators that you will not stand for this. Thank you.
December 22nd, 2011
For some reason i can’t seem to find the website to submit the explanation
December 22nd, 2011
Juan – just shoot us an email at submitATexplainxkcd.com (obviously replacing the AT with an @)
December 22nd, 2011
Oh great; something else to facilitate procrastination! I’m sure I’ll send in a nice handful of em. Great idea.
December 22nd, 2011
I’m working on a few. Some of them actually take research. Now I see just how hard Jeff’s job is.
December 22nd, 2011
Some are easier than other depending on if it is in your subject of interest and the complexity of the comic.
December 22nd, 2011
I’m trying not to take all of the easy ones.
December 22nd, 2011
Wait, is that submit@explainxkcd.com or submitATexplain.com?
Just to be totally clear.
December 23rd, 2011
Also, should the alt text be included in the description?
December 23rd, 2011
I included it anyway, along with tag suggestions. Until we get further clarification on the system we should be going by, I propose improvising.
December 23rd, 2011
Alt text would be nice, make it easier and faster on me.
and yes.
submit@explainxkcd.com
December 23rd, 2011
It is common for people to replace the @ symbol in emails with “AT” or ” AT ” so that spam bots trolling the internet do not find the email address and begin spamming it; of course you’ve now posted the actual address and rendered it moot.
December 23rd, 2011
Oh. Sorry about that.
December 23rd, 2011
I was looking forward to jumping in on the explanation for today (Zeno), as here in UK we’re up early. Shucks, it’s not up yet!
Well, I’m sure everyone will get it…
December 23rd, 2011
It just went up, and the explanation is pretty self explanatory, not much to explain about in the comments
December 23rd, 2011
The webcomic itself is numbered without mention of the date of publication.
The list of “Comics What Has Been Explaint” is indexed by date, then by title, without mention of the number. Until you click into each explanation-link and then the number of the explaint comic is in the usual (self-explanatory) place.
For those of us (and maybe I’m the only one) who are willing/eager to assist but want to browse the comic for topics we’re conversant in, I’m not sure how best to incorporate the Comic Number higher up in the index.
But that would really help me, to help you to help us help you.
Whether or not that can be done, Count Me In!! here come de Splains.
December 23rd, 2011
Jeff has posted a link to the xkcd archive:
http://xkcd.com/archive/
The hover text shows the date when the archived comic was posted.
However for comics 1-44 it shows 2006-1-1 for all of them – seems a bit of missing history, here!
Comic no. 45 “Schrodinger” has “2006-1-4″ as date. Obviously the format is year-month-day.
January 2nd, 2012
And while we are making changes to the website, and talking about the cominc’s number, do you think you could set the routing so the (say) explainxkcd.com/997 goes to the explanation of comic 997 in much the same was as xkcd.com/997 goes to that comic on the main site.
February 7th, 2012
Um…what’s happened to the user-submitted explanations? I haven’t seen any weekly explanation round-ups lately, and none of the ones I submitted have yet shown up. I’d kind of like to know that they didn’t get trumped by someone else’s submissions of the same ones…