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by Dylan16807 561 days ago
Do you really think it needs explanation? Especially with the alt text pointing out the contrast between "kills" and "selectively kills"?
1 comments

There's an xkcd that adresses this better than i can.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

And in case it helps: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousan...

That's about showing something to someone in the first place, not about [over]explaining the thing you just showed them.

If I was criticizing mmiyer's comment that xkcd might be appropriate, but that's not what I'm doing.

It's the same thing. A brief explanation that assumes you know some term or have all the priors to deduce some meaning just creates a situation where we may have to apply the 10000 rule again. A thorough explanation on the other hand is more likely to help the reader be part of not only the 10k that get the commic today, but also the 10k that get some other fact (or several!) today.

Or to paraphrase the 10k alt text: saying "what idiot doesnt know the difference between kills and selectively kills" is so much more boring than telling them about it.

Telling them about it is great... which you can do by showing them the comic and the alt text. The wiki link is unnecessary. You could add an extra explanation onto almost anything, and do so recursively, but that quickly becomes a waste of time. When something has already been explained, explaining it again helps a lot fewer people than the 10000 rule would suggest. The returns diminish very fast, and you should wait for them to ask before piling on extra explanations. And the actual 10000 comic waits for them to ask before even showing the first, most basic version.