[latexr]

> On April 5th, xkcd released Machine, our 15th annual April Fools project.

Wait, “our”? I thought XKCD was just Randal Munroe.

> Machine’s backend was written in Haskell by davean and Kevin

So at least two other people. Three when counting the author of the blog.

The Wikipedia page for XKCD doesn’t show these names. Is XKCD a multi-people effort now, or are these “friends of the comic” who work on interactive stuff?

[defrost]

There's been a large "friends of the comic" group since day one, there was (and likely still is) an active IRC group that included Munroe that discussed old comics and generated ideas for new ones, the alternative text behind the comics and related facts sheets get a good going over by a small cadre of friends and regulars with an engineering | physics | maths | chenistry, etc bent.

[bell-cot]

(And besides - if Randall f*ing Munroe contacted a few people, who were experts at $Foo, $Bar or $Baz, with "I've got this really cool idea, but I'd need some help..." - how hard would it be for him to get some "yes" answers?)

[proaralyst]

I believe davean has been involved for a while, they're mentioned on the about page: https://xkcd.com/about/

[chromakode]

April fool's at xkcd is a special occasion where external folks join xkcd to build an experimental interactive comic.

Edit: I've updated the first para of the post to hopefully clarify this better