xkcd

by **Euler** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:04 am UTC

Title text: I hate when I read something like '...Tension among the BASE jumpers nearly lead to wingsuit combat...' and I get excited because 'wingsuit combat' is underlined, only to find out that it's just separate links to the 'wingsuit' and 'combat' articles.

I can just imagine his interpretation of 'wingsuit combat'...
One of my favorite recent comics, indubitably.

by **sherlip** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:06 am UTC

I have the same peeve as Randall in both the comic and alt-text. Wow.

by **Ameseree** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:18 am UTC

Due to my fear that I'll drop dead any second and people will look through my search history on all my devices and browsers I clear then constantly to make sure I'm not rememberd as the akword person I am. Well I'm off to clear my history again befor I sleep.

by **Story** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:19 am UTC

I hate when they do that multiple link thing too.

by **iamnotreallythedoctor** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:24 am UTC

The weird thing is, I was just reading the Wikipedia article about Enchanted...

by **kleingordon** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:26 am UTC

Ah, this is much nicer than last time. Peace shall reign on these walls, unless perhaps people have really strong opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of Enchanted .

by **Linux0s** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:27 am UTC

No problem with visited links. But that damn browser auto-complete... grrr!

(Oh wonderful. Now every "g" is "grrr".)

by **CyberCod** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:31 am UTC

"his his..." just sayin.

by **Djehutynakht** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:40 am UTC

Yep. This happens to me.

Side Note: Does anyone know which article this is/what it's about?

by **whateveries** » Fri May 04, 2012 4:45 am UTC

wait is this a wikipedia joke that won't* end up with wikipedia being vandalised? xkcd may have just lost its way.

as far as the links in wikipedia go, I suspect that they cause many lost hours of productivity. worse than facebook. or forums.

oh and

Linux0s wrote:No problem with visited links. But that damn browser auto-complete... grrr!

(Oh wonderful. Now every "g" is "grrr".)

this makes it a grrr spot. which seems about right.

*deleted an apostrophe. tsk.

by **mtavs** » Fri May 04, 2012 5:19 am UTC

Djehutynakht wrote:Yep. This happens to me.

Side Note: Does anyone know which article this is/what it's about?

I can't seem to find it either...
Maybe he just wanted everyone to read all the corresponding articles.

by **Quicksilver** » Fri May 04, 2012 5:23 am UTC

whateveries wrote:wait is this a wikipedia joke that won't* end up with wikipedia being vandalised? xkcd may have just lost its way.

as far as the links in wikipedia go, I suspect that they cause many lost hours of productivity. worse than facebook. or forums.

oh and

Linux0s wrote:No problem with visited links. But that damn browser auto-complete... grrr!

(Oh wonderful. Now every "g" is "grrr".)

this makes it a grrr spot. which seems about right.

*deleted an apostrophe. tsk.

TVTropes is worse.

by **Falos** » Fri May 04, 2012 5:36 am UTC

...and I get excited because 'wingsuit combat' is underlined...

That's it? Excited? I got hard.

by **907Code-G** » Fri May 04, 2012 6:10 am UTC

So have we already made a "wingsuit combat" page to add? I'll get the ball rolling.

by **Pfhorrest** » Fri May 04, 2012 6:19 am UTC

That image is just begging for "Ride of the Valkyries" to accompany it.

by **Azkyroth** » Fri May 04, 2012 6:28 am UTC

Could be worse. At least "auto-erotic asphyxiation" was probably followed from "David Carradine."

by **Patteroast** » Fri May 04, 2012 6:33 am UTC

Ha! A nice one, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this one, myself included. Although from that selection of text, I'd definitely have viewed Dos Hermanas, Andalusia, Spain, Burmese-Siamese War, and Thailand. Mostly because I'm a huge geography nerd, and when I'm randomly strolling through Wikipedia, I usually end up looking at lists of provinces of Zimbabwe.

Although to be fair, I had to just go check to see if provinces were the correct subnational division of Zimbabwe. And I now see that I haven't actually viewed this before, because I don't recognize the arrangement at all, and Manicaland is a funny name, and augh blarg it got me.

by **BlitzGirl** » Fri May 04, 2012 6:40 am UTC

Suited and ready for battle!

by **Kimble** » Fri May 04, 2012 7:39 am UTC

I searched for <"a pioneer of literary social realism"> and didn't get any hits. I went back to post 1 to try to find other clues to whom it could be and saw the link for "third novel". I said to myself, "Aha! I'll just mouseover that to see what it links to!"

That didn't work.

(I also have the same issues the caption and alt-text have.)

by **fernie** » Fri May 04, 2012 7:41 am UTC

I wouldn't say that wikipedia is a pure "loss of productivity" site... then again, I only absorb it on my own time, or only at work when its actual research time, which technically is a net gain of productivity.

I'm slightly more concerned with my iPhone's history... whatever I see on a billboard/menu/t-shirt/flyer I tend to look up, which many times results in uh, "interesting" history on safari's history.

Another one that's funny/odd is when your parents ask you to fix their computer, and you notice the "personals" in craigslist purple 0.o

by **FarmerJoe** » Fri May 04, 2012 7:59 am UTC

Tried to Google the terms "wingsuit combat". Maybe Randall was inspired by today's Doodle?

by **The Moomin** » Fri May 04, 2012 8:25 am UTC

I've had a look and can't find any such article matching the one depicted.

It seems to me the only logical course of action is that we should persuade any XKCD readers born in Dos Hermanas to begin pioneering new avenues of literary Social Realism and follow the career path described.

by **tjunction** » Fri May 04, 2012 8:42 am UTC

This comic is all the evidence you need to prove that the Firefox devs were stupid to remove the option to auto-expire history after a certain period of time. (Now you can clear your recent history, but not say "keep history X days and no longer".)

by **kram2301** » Fri May 04, 2012 9:09 am UTC

I wonder how long it will take until every single word in every Wikipedia article is a link.
Going off to a disambiguated page.
Where the headline, "xyz (disambiguous)" leads to a disambiguated page of the word "disambiguous".

by **peewee_RotA** » Fri May 04, 2012 10:19 am UTC

Best one in a while. xkcd returns to comic gold

by **MonkeyBoy** » Fri May 04, 2012 11:02 am UTC

This reminded me of an old girlfriend who posited the theory that following Wikipedia links (or just links in general) for long enough will eventually reveal your true obsessions. For her, this meant that if she browsed and clicked long enough, she would invariably end up reading another article about either communism or anal sex.

Yeah, she was an odd girl.

by **dotancohen** » Fri May 04, 2012 11:31 am UTC

MonkeyBoy wrote:For her, this meant that if she browsed and clicked long enough, she would invariably end up reading another article about either communism or anal sex.

Fixed that for us. Interestingly, one of those links seems to be followed already in my Firefox.

by **wknt3** » Fri May 04, 2012 12:08 pm UTC

This reminded me of an old girlfriend who posited the theory that following Wikipedia links (or just links in general) for long enough will eventually reveal your true obsessions. For her, this meant that if she browsed and clicked long enough, she would invariably end up reading another article about either communism or anal sex.

Yeah, she was an odd girl.

What's so odd about that? Rick Santorum would tell you that those 2 subjects are always connected.

by **iamspen** » Fri May 04, 2012 12:28 pm UTC

MonkeyBoy wrote:This reminded me of an old girlfriend who posited the theory that following Wikipedia links (or just links in general) for long enough will eventually reveal your true obsessions. For her, this meant that if she browsed and clicked long enough, she would invariably end up reading another article about either communism or anal sex.

Yeah, she was an odd girl.

And you let her get away?

by **BrianB** » Fri May 04, 2012 12:30 pm UTC

Seems XKCD has spawned Wikifiti^TM & ^(C) (Wikipedia Grafitti - You heard it here first)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsuit_combat

by **jqavins** » Fri May 04, 2012 12:40 pm UTC

Pfhorrest wrote:That image is just begging for "Ride of the Valkyries" to accompany it.

Or something from Queen.

"Dive! my... um... colerfully costumed... gliding... urr... people."

by **VectorZero** » Fri May 04, 2012 12:57 pm UTC

Title text wrote:I hate when I read something like '...Tension among the BASE jumpers nearly lead to wingsuit combat...' and I get excited because 'wingsuit combat' is underlined, only to find out that it's just separate links to the 'wingsuit' and 'combat' articles.

#firstworldproblems

by **peewee_RotA** » Fri May 04, 2012 1:25 pm UTC

Wingsuit combat. Better than a kingsuit wombat.

by **J Thomas** » Fri May 04, 2012 1:27 pm UTC

BrianB wrote:Seems XKCD has spawned Wikifiti^TM & ^(C) (Wikipedia Grafitti - You heard it here first)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsuit_combat

Oh my god.

http://gizmodo.com/5418253/special-forc ... -wingsuits

Did you look at the picture?

Flying turtles, man. Flying turtles.

Satellite was right. Turtles can fly.

by **thesingingaccountant** » Fri May 04, 2012 1:33 pm UTC

jqavins wrote:
Pfhorrest wrote:That image is just begging for "Ride of the Valkyries" to accompany it.

Or something from Queen.

Perhaps the music that accompanies "2001: A Space Odyssey"? (Sorry, can't remember the title of the work itself...)

Also, did no one else notice "embarrassd"?

Typos aside, great comic. This is why I have my own computer that my fiancé doesn't use.

by **richP** » Fri May 04, 2012 1:46 pm UTC

Azkyroth wrote:Could be worse. At least "auto-erotic asphyxiation" was probably followed from "David Carradine."

I assumed the reverse was true...

by **Fire Brns** » Fri May 04, 2012 1:58 pm UTC

I invariably click on what I don't know about on wiki whether that leads to population statistics in mombasa or a civil war in australia. Autoerotic asphixiation and Disney movies would not be marked.

...

Wait that came out wrong.

by **behrat** » Fri May 04, 2012 2:06 pm UTC

I can completely relate to this commit, particularly the title text. However, why did Randal draw the hyperlinks with underlines? Aren't wikilinks always styled blue without an underline?

In fact, if they were underlined as drawn, we wouldn't have the adjacent-links problem because the line would be broken.

by **iamnotreallythedoctor** » Fri May 04, 2012 2:16 pm UTC

thesingingaccountant wrote:
jqavins wrote:
Pfhorrest wrote:That image is just begging for "Ride of the Valkyries" to accompany it.

Or something from Queen.

Perhaps the music that accompanies "2001: A Space Odyssey"? (Sorry, can't remember the title of the work itself...)

Also Sprach Zarathrustra.

by **freeTheInfo** » Fri May 04, 2012 2:29 pm UTC

907Code-G wrote:So have we already made a "wingsuit combat" page to add? I'll get the ball rolling.

Sadly, the wikipedia page is up for deletion unless we can put some more effort into it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wingsuit_combat

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