More reasons to love XKCD

[prog]

* The ambiguity of this comic:

Slashdorks will read it and be like "rofl i deal with idiots like this at work every damn day, but they'd fire me if I hung up on them for real", even though I'm fairly confident that's not the joke. Something for everyone!

* The comic is hand-lettered. I have probably already mentioned this as a reason I like the comic, but I'll say it again. Hand-lettering makes any comic look about ten times better to me. (And you could make a "zero times ten" wisecrack here, but I would retort that there is a basic charm to the art. Very basic, sure, but still.)

* There are no comments or ratings or anything attached to the comic. Everyone likes getting comments, and I'd understand if he wanted to have comments so that every comic would have an ever-growing beard of public "LOL ^^;" messages attached, but I wouldn't like it.

* The cartoonist invites and even encourages direct linking to the cartoon images, even printing the necessary HTML code beside each one. That's great.

Comments

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

LOL ^^;

[doctor-atomic.livejournal.com]

The slashdork reaction didn't even occur to me when I first saw this comic. In fact, I thought it was making fun of slashdorks, and as you note, that is likely the joke rather than the other way around. Interesting.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is without a doubt the intended joke. But I can totally see the crowd it's mocking as laughing without irony that the dude deserved what he got for not RTFM, and feel like I can call that interpretation wrong but not invalid.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I thought it worked perfectly on both levels, and both are valid. "RTFM" is a deeply satisfying response to hapless newbies, for some value of "deeply satisfying" that has mostly to do with my inner chimpanzee. On the other hand, would we be as (in)tolerant if everyday objects behaved in the same bizarre and unexpected ways software does?

And on the third hand, the mouse-over text says, "Life is too short for man pages, but occasionally much too short without them." Having on occasion flirted with death for want of RTFM'ing, I'd say there's something too that sentiment.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

and me, I just thought the idea of a toaster sticking a knife in someone's face is funny!

it is.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

LOL I deal with software designers like this all day!!11!

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

In my experience it's more like this:

USER: Help the toaster stabbed me ow

ME: Do you remember that you asked me to build the auto-stabbing feature into the toaster for you? Here, I'll forward you back your email in which you specifically asked for this. Is it not working correctly?

USER: (no reply)

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah.

Although sometimes it continues:

USER: But when I said I wanted an autostabbing feature in the toaster I didn't mean it should stab me!

ME: Remember when I explained that it would have no way of knowing who it would be stabbing because the perceptual universe of machines is too narrow to accommodate notions of identity?

USER: I remember you used a lot of big words I didn't understand.

In fairness to users, clearly stating the consequences of requirements is incredibly hard, as it requires an ability to reason about conditional probabilities. If the Monty Hall problem has taught us anything, it is that most people are completely incapable of doing that.

Ergo: prototype and user-test. Rinse, repeat. Although if you can figure out a way to get users to user-test the systems they want you'll make a million out of it.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

Most of our users refuse to do testing. They're "too busy". They'd prefer to waste future time dealing with problems and misdirected design rather than think things through up front (yet another persistent human trait).

[spatch]

There are no comments or ratings or anything attached to the comic. Everyone likes getting comments, and I'd understand if he wanted to have comments so that every comic would have an ever-growing beard of public "LOL ^^;" messages attached, but I wouldn't like it.

That's when you start listening to your own sycophants and that's how trouble starts. It was one of the reasons why I cut User Friendly out so many many many moons ago.

I am of the firm belief that even in this AMAZING BRAVE NEW WEB WORLD2.0, where "content is king" (but redundant servers and/or colos aren't) there are just some times when one's work doesn't need or require instantaneous feedback. The Boston Glob got such flack from the BLOGORAMASPHEROIDS about not having comments on their frequently-updated online columns. "You need comments!" they cried. "That's what this is all about!"

Yeah, and the Herald's section is a pure salon of independent and rational thought of comments. Of course the hell not. Newspapers have editors and letter screeners for a reason, and if there's one thing that should be taken from the Quite Predicted Imminent Death Of "Mainstream" Media (and what becomes Mainstream when the Mainstream is dead?) is that you need some kind of quality control with regards to feedback and flamewars waiting to happen.

In fact, short of maybe one or two long-term exceptions, I cannot think of a single site which has seen great benefit from either adding a comment structure or building upon it. The IMDB Message Boards are pure cesspools of idiocy, the YouTube comments are full of people who couldn't even hack it over at the IMDB boards, and yeah. What a wonderful community the world is.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the only blogs that are improved by their comments are ones that are built a little like a newsgroup, with multiple (though often limited) top-level posters and a self-selecting community of smart, active commenters. The SF-lit/lefty-pol/first-aid(?!) blog Making Light is a prime example.

Two years ago I might've included Daily Kos but I've since abandoned that for the echo chamber that it is. And looking in my "News" bookmarks folder, I see Boing Boing and Language Log, both of which once had comments but now don't. You'd think that LL would fall under my rules, too. So it's clearly not an easy thing to pull of well.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

I wonder if xkcd's encouragement of direct links acts as a kind of selection mechanism for positive comments. Since it's fairly easy (especially for a smart chap like Mr Xkcd) to check what's linking to his comic, he can see at a glance what people are saying about it...

Also, he does have a blog (or "blag") that's one click back from the main page. It's a great mechanism for avoiding stupid comments while fostering a sense of community etc: it filters out the drive-by "FIRST COMMENT"s and so on, while giving the fans a place to chatter.

Or something.

Anyway, yes, I agree with you. Especially about YouTube, where anything remotely creative is FAKE!!

[prog.livejournal.com]

Argh. Minutes after writing my first reply to this I learned that (a) there's been a newsworthy accident in a friend's family and (b) the newspaper that covered it apparently allows comments on every single article it puts on-line. So first came the WHAT EVER HAPPPENED TO COMON SENSE??!! people and then came the people insisting that this showed why state taxes ought to be abolished. And then lots of comments calling them all idiots and offering sympathy, but really, nothing was gained by any of them being there.