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.

[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)

[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.