Reviewing Special:RecentChanges

[Haycat2009]

You've added new pages for several spaceships of questionable notability (e.g., 41P4H1V0, 51P5H2V0.1, p8 swan tagalong‎‎). Do these have a particular purpose?

The p8 swan tag along is notable for being the first of its kind.

[Sokwe]

The p8 swan tag along is notable for being the first of its kind.

It's notable enough to be included on the swan page, but not notable enough for its own page.

[confocaloid]

The wiki is not a database of patterns. When some wiki page about some topic very closely resembles an automatically generated database entry, that likely means that the wiki page should be merged or removed; simply because so far nobody was able to find any evidence of notability of the topic.

Maybe in future some or all of those topics will be shown to be notable. Maybe there exist some unique interactions or applications (yet to be discovered), involving those objects or patterns or reactions. Such unique applications or interactions could suffice to show convincingly that those topics are notable enough for separate pages.

Alternatively, maybe some of those topics will receive significant attention (from people other than the discoverers) for some reason or another, which could make those topics notable.

I think filling boilerplate pages about topics that currently lack evidence of notability is (mostly but not entirely) wasted efforts, and lost opportunities to do something else.

Code: Select all

x = 84, y = 28, rule = B3/S23
5b2obo7b3o$5bo3bo6bo$5bo4bo7bo7b2o$7b2o7bobo4b2obo$9bobo4b3obo2b2o$3o
12bo3b2o2b2o$o10b2ob4ob2o$3bo8b7o$o2bo43b3o$bo2bo43bo$2bo$4bobo42bo$6b
2o39bobo22b3o4bo$7bo6b3o29bo3bo20bo2bo3b3o$6b2o6bo2bo28bo3bo15bo11bo2b
o$5b3o5bo3bo26bo5bo14b2o5b2o6b3o$2ob2ob2o7bo28bo18b2obo3bob2o5bobo$o3b
ob2o9b2o21bo3bo3b2o15bo2b2o2b2o4b2o$ob3o2bo5bo6bo19bo4bo3bo18b2o2b2o4b
o4bo$5b2o8b3o3bo17bobo3b3o18bo11bo$4b3o14bo25bob2o12b2obo11bo3b2o$19bo
22bo4bo30bo2bo$20bo20b6o2b3o27bo$3b3o35bo$3b3o2$2b2o$2bo!

[muzik]

You've added new pages for several spaceships of questionable notability (e.g., 41P4H1V0, 51P5H2V0.1, p8 swan tagalong‎‎). Do these have a particular purpose?

These either represent minimal examples for higher periods of known spaceship velocities (e.g. c/4d, 2c/5o) or are among the five smallest known spaceships for a selected velocity.

[confocaloid]

I think the recent large-scale editing campaigns need to stop asap. Lots of edits across the wiki are made, while discussions of those issues are still active, without any evidence of consensus for any such changes, and even though there are already objections to such changes.

LifeWiki was created for the purpose of collecting existing knowledge about Life and related cellular automata, in a form accessible for readers from the wide audience of people interested in cellular automata and recreational mathematics.

Your editing campaigns undermine that goal. It is very hard to take seriously references to LifeWiki, when the wiki is actively edited by people who don't really care about documenting existing knowledge in an intuitively clear, helpful, adequate, consistent, self-explanatory way. The wiki is no longer trustworthy, everything becomes controversial, and a reader has to re-check every single claim against existing CA-related sources.


https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?targ ... tributions

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?titl ... 2024-08-27

viewtopic.php?p=189203#p189203

viewtopic.php?p=189381#p189381

There are many recent low-quality edits, including edits mentioned above. It would be nice to make sure that those changes are corrected, and that any further changes of the same kind will not have to be fixed again for the same reasons. [...]

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?targ ... tributions

I believe the recent large-scale hyperlinking campaign by User:Dvgrn violates LifeWiki:Dispute resolution, by pushing changes (adding links to their preferred page) without consensus for those changes, by ignoring existing disagreement with those changes, and by failing to attempt to understand legitimate objections of others / avoiding meaningful discussion of the matter.
[...]

[muzik]

Your editing campaigns undermine that goal. It is very hard to take seriously references to LifeWiki, when the wiki is actively edited by people who don't really care about documenting existing knowledge in an intuitively clear, helpful, adequate, consistent, self-explanatory way. The wiki is no longer trustworthy, everything becomes controversial, and a reader has to re-check every single claim against existing CA-related sources.


https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?targ ... tributions

..are you seriously making this complaint because I revised the isotropic non-totalistic page with the express intention of making it clearer for newcomers to understand?

[confocaloid]

I mean all of the recent changes. Again, lots of edits across the wiki are made, while discussions of those issues are still active, without any evidence of consensus for any such changes, and even though there are already objections to such changes.

Regarding still life infoboxes and kinetic symmetries, so far it is not entirely clear what is going on and what are existing possibilities. I think the thing to do would be to post in the corresponding forum thread, explaining in details what exactly are existing possibilities.

Regarding spaceships with dubious notability, see previous post viewtopic.php?p=192871#p192871

Regarding "revised the isotropic non-totalistic page", I don't believe your page moves and changes to the pages help readers to understand these topics. As far as I can see, those edits just shuffle pieces of content / move pages around, and make the topics even harder to understand than previously.

[muzik]

Regarding "revised the isotropic non-totalistic page", I don't believe your page moves and changes to the pages help readers to understand these topics. As far as I can see, those edits just shuffle pieces of content / move pages around, and make the topics even harder to understand than previously.

If someone new to the community wants to understand these weird "rulestrings with letters" that everyone is posting in the OCA forum, and went to the wiki page for isotropic rules, do you seriously think a massive list of obscure rulespaces which barely any programs support at all would be useful information at that point? I don't, hence why I've relocated these to a dedicated page and kept the main page simple. Overcomplicating a subject is inevitably going to scare away readers, and therefore information that's only of interest advanced users is relocated to where those actually interested in it can find it.

Are you sure you're criticising the outcomes of the page split, and not simply the fact that there were changes?

[confocaloid]

Regarding "revised the isotropic non-totalistic page", I don't believe your page moves and changes to the pages help readers to understand these topics. As far as I can see, those edits just shuffle pieces of content / move pages around, and make the topics even harder to understand than previously.

[...]
Are you sure you're criticising the outcomes of the page split, and not simply the fact that there were changes?

I'm criticising two things:

(1) extremely high volume of undiscussed changes across the wiki, on several different topics, made recently without any evidence of consensus for those changes and ignoring existence of objections / active discussions regarding those topics.

(2) the specific changes that were made.

In particular, the changes https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=150379 make the page worse in several ways:

• Previous explanation of Hensel notation in the section is replaced by more verbose and less clear text. You are unnecessarily replacing clear explanations with forum jargon, and adding unnecessary verbosity.
• The part "negates the 2i transition and adds the 4q transition" is meaningless gibberish, regardless of whether you're using local forums jargon or meaningful terminology from earlier CA-related sources. Neither "2i" nor "4q" contains enough information to be interpreted as an if-then rule in the context of the two-state isotropic CA with range-1 Moore neighbourhood. And of course neither of two is a state-to-state transition.
• In the section "Hexagonal grid", you added a claim regarding who created the current notation for two-state isotropic CA with range-1 hexagonal neighbourhood. That claim is incorrect. The original notation did not allow to distinguish possible configurations of exactly three alive neighbours:
  

  [...] It has the disadvantage that there is no standard extension to subsets of 3 or 4 neighbors. Fortunately, we don't need this for the rule used here. [...]

  An extended notation (allowing to distinguish configurations of three alive neighbours) was created later, by another person.
  In other words, you are misattributing the notation.

I could continue with other changes you made, over various pages. There are multiple problems with those changes. The biggest problems I can see are

• (a) lack of any observable consensus for those changes (immediately making them controversial),
• (b) apparent (to me) lack of respect for the LifeWiki reader, who will now have to parse through all the unnecessary verbosity, unnecessary jargon, loosely-relevant or irrelevant distractions, etc. -- where there were previously relatively good explanations before recent changes.

[hotdogPi]

The huge change is definitely an improvement. The previous version of the page included range-2 VN but not range-1 Moore, which is really confusing to a newcomer wondering what the vast majority of used INT rules are.

[confocaloid]

The huge change is definitely an improvement. The previous version of the page included range-2 VN but not range-1 Moore, which is really confusing to a newcomer wondering what the vast majority of used INT rules are.

Unfortunately I don't understand what you mean by "the huge change", or what you mean by "used INT rules".

I think a newcomer doesn't yet care about the vast majority of CA, simply because they do not yet understand the possibilities for such CA.

Earlier explanations of those possibilities were definitely better. I view recent changes as significant damage to the wiki, with unnecessary counterintuitive jargon replacing older human-readable explanations.

[muzik]

Previous explanation of Hensel notation in the section is replaced by more verbose and less clear text. You are unnecessarily replacing clear explanations with forum jargon, and adding unnecessary verbosity.

My intent was to do the exact opposite of this, and I at least would say I've succeeded. There have been subsequent revisions, but does

"Isotropic non-totalistic rules (on the square grid with range-1 Moore neighbourhood and two cellstates) are described using Hensel notation developed by Alan Hensel, an extension of the birth/survival notation additionally describing allowed or forbidden configurations."

really seem less jargon-heavy than

"For normal rules [with a superscript note clarifying what "normal" actually means], the following notation system is used. This notation is often referred to as Hensel notation, a system originally devised and named after Alan Hensel."

despite the fact that both communicate the same information? I would appreciate input from others here if this genuinely does inject unwanted jargon that would make this less newcomer-friendly, since the curse of knowledge could very well be in play here, but I'd say the bottom version is far easier to understand. (The part about the notation being an extension is not present in the latter, but this is made clear in subsequent sentences anyway.)

The part "negates the 2i transition and adds the 4q transition" is meaningless gibberish, regardless of whether you're using local forums jargon or meaningful terminology from earlier CA-related sources. Neither "2i" nor "4q" contains enough information to be interpreted as an if-then rule in the context of the two-state isotropic CA with range-1 Moore neighbourhood. And of course neither of two is a state-to-state transition.

I'm not sure what this actually means. Life is B3/S23, and tlife is B3/S2-i34q; tlife disallows survival on 2i, and permits survival on 4q, and otherwise operates identically to Life. There's a big table below that communicates what 2i and 4q represent.

In the section "Hexagonal grid", you added a claim regarding who created the current notation for two-state isotropic CA with range-1 hexagonal neighbourhood. That claim is incorrect. The original notation did not allow to distinguish possible configurations of exactly three alive neighbours:

[...] It has the disadvantage that there is no standard extension to subsets of 3 or 4 neighbors. Fortunately, we don't need this for the rule used here. [...]

An extended notation (allowing to distinguish configurations of three alive neighbours) was created later, by another person.
In other words, you are misattributing the notation.

Good catch! I'll fix this momentarily. Unsure as to why it's being listed here in this way, though - perhaps I'm reading things the wrong way but it seems as though you're presenting this as though false information was added intentionally, which is obviously not my intention with these changes.

Do we know who created the currently used standard for 3-neighbours isotropic hexagonal birth and survival, so they can be credited accordingly?

lack of any observable consensus for those changes (immediately making them controversial),

Do we need consensus to happen for every change? I can understand this for major changes affecting a large proportion of wiki content, but having to ask for permission over forgiveness for every single edit seems like a fantastic recipe for things to never get done. The standard Wikipedia practice of BOLD should apply here; if something ends up being a complete travesty, it can be reverted outright and discussions can start from there. Alternatively, if most people don't actually care about the changes, it's more likely than not that any negatives introduced are negligible at worst and nonexistent at best.

As for me, I'll continue to make changes as I see fit. Nothing personal against you, but others I've discussed the isotropic page changes with in the meantime have been neutral to supportive of the new version. If I absolutely destroy some page, good intentions or not, everyone here is free to stop me.

[confocaloid]

[...] There have been subsequent revisions, but does

"Isotropic non-totalistic rules (on the square grid with range-1 Moore neighbourhood and two cellstates) are described using Hensel notation developed by Alan Hensel, an extension of the birth/survival notation additionally describing allowed or forbidden configurations."

really seem less jargon-heavy than

"For normal rules [with a superscript note clarifying what "normal" actually means], the following notation system is used. This notation is often referred to as Hensel notation, a system originally devised and named after Alan Hensel."

Yes it does. It's fairly clear what the words "neighbourhood", "birth", "survival", "allowed", "forbidden", "configuration", "letter", etc. are supposed to mean. The old wording is fairly intuitive and self-explanatory in that part.

In contrast, you are adding unnecessary jargon that is not self-explanatory (it is not self-evident what "transition" is supposed to mean and the common sense suggests that it has to be something that happens, yet the context contradicts that). Also, you are adding unnecessary verbosity and lengthy sentences (e.g. "with the added liberty that individual counts can be appended with extra letters indicating specific arrangements of that number of cells surrounding the central cell" is hard to read).

AFAICT this change is a step in the direction of making the page harder to read, more obscure, more verbose and misleading.

[...]

The part "negates the 2i transition and adds the 4q transition" is meaningless gibberish, regardless of whether you're using local forums jargon or meaningful terminology from earlier CA-related sources. Neither "2i" nor "4q" contains enough information to be interpreted as an if-then rule in the context of the two-state isotropic CA with range-1 Moore neighbourhood. And of course neither of two is a state-to-state transition.

I'm not sure what this actually means. Life is B3/S23, and tlife is B3/S2-i34q; tlife disallows survival on 2i, and permits survival on 4q, and otherwise operates identically to Life. There's a big table below that communicates what 2i and 4q represent.
[...]

That means that the part "negates the 2i transition and adds the 4q transition" is meaningless gibberish.

In the discussion of Hensel notation, neither "2i" by itself nor "4q" by itself gives any rule prescribing that a certain transition happens under a certain condition. Both the current state of the middle cell and the future state of the middle cell are left unspecified.

"S2i" or "S4q" could be read as such rules, prescribing that a certain transition (survival) happens when a certain condition on the current states of cells in the 3-by-3 neighbourhood is met.

[...]
Do we need consensus to happen for every change? I can understand this for major changes affecting a large proportion of wiki content, but having to ask for permission over forgiveness for every single edit seems like a fantastic recipe for things to never get done. [...]

Your recent changes are an example of "major changes affecting a large proportion of wiki content", which should be discussed first before trying to implement them.
If nothing else, that is a possibility for reaching some kind of understanding for what is going to be done, and an opportunity to fix errors before those errors happen, or as early as possible.

[muzik]

Also, you are adding unnecessary verbosity and lengthy sentences (e.g. "with the added liberty that individual counts can be appended with extra letters indicating specific arrangements of that number of cells surrounding the central cell" is hard to read).

Is this any better? Because it's what I'm going with:
"...outer-totalistic rules. Letters can be appended to each number to specify what arrangements of cells are valid for birth or survival; a minus sign..."

That means that the part "negates the 2i transition and adds the 4q transition" is meaningless gibberish.

In the discussion of Hensel notation, neither "2i" by itself nor "4q" by itself gives any rule prescribing that a certain transition happens under a certain condition. Both the current state of the middle cell and the future state of the middle cell are left unspecified.

"S2i" or "S4q" could be read as such rules, prescribing that a certain transition (survival) happens when a certain condition on the current states of cells in the 3-by-3 neighbourhood is met.

So how exactly do we communicate how tlife differs from standard Life, as an example of an isotropic non-totalistic rule with a simple rulestring? As far as I can see, it's clear: survival on 2i does not happen, and survival on 4q does happen. How should this be phrased, if not in the current way?

Your recent changes are an example of "major changes affecting a large proportion of wiki content", which should be discussed first before trying to implement them.

Which changes exactly? Aside from the isotropic non-totalistic page split and the still life symmetries dispute (reply forthcoming), nothing from the past weeks appears to be controversial.

[confocaloid]

[...] So how exactly do we communicate how tlife differs from standard Life, [...]

I think the following is significantly clearer than what is currently written in the wiki page.
Longer, but more readable, and easier to understand intuitively.

An example of a cellular automaton with a simple rulestring is tlife. The only differences between tlife and Conway's Game of Life are:

• (a) In Life, the middle cell of a blinker survives in the next generation.
  In tlife, the middle cell of a blinker dies in the next generation.
• (b) In Life, two cells in the beacon's dense phase are overcrowded, and will die in the next generation.
  In tlife, those two cells instead survive in the next generation.

Both cellular automata can be defined by rulestrings written using Hensel notation. The rulestring of Conway's Life is B3/S23. The rulestring of tlife is B3/S2-i34q. The two rulestrings differ only in the survival conditions.

Survival on the condition "2i" does not happen in tlife (because of "S2-i" in the part of the rulestring that lists survival conditions).
Whenever Life follows the rule S2i, tlife follows the rule D2i instead.

Survival on the condition "4q" does happen in tlife (because of added "4q" in the part of the rulestring that lists survival conditions).
Whenever Life follows the rule D4q, tlife follows the rule S4q instead.

--------

[...] So how exactly do we communicate how tlife differs from standard Life, as an example of an isotropic non-totalistic rule with a simple rulestring? As far as I can see, it's clear: survival on 2i does not happen, and survival on 4q does happen. How should this be phrased, if not in the current way?
[...]

First of all, note that the way it is phrased in the quoted part of your forum post, does not match the current way how it is phrased in the wiki page.

The whole part about tlife is hard to read.
Instead of giving a human-readable explanation of the intended topic of that paragraph (= differences between two cellular automata expressible using Hensel notation), ...
... followed by a human-readable explanation of what are those cellular automata and how they differ, ...
... the page currently talks in length about so-called "transitions", ...
... apparently without either the reader or the author understanding exactly how "transition" should be interpreted in this context.

In more details:

• "2i" by itself can be read as a condition on the current states of cells in the 3-by-3 neighbourhood. It says that there are currently exactly two alive neighbours, both orthogonal, located opposite each other (arranged in one of the following two ways):

  Code: Select all

  0 1 0    0 0 0
  0 x 0    1 x 1
  0 1 0    0 0 0
  

  However, "2i" does not say what is the current state of the middle cell of the 3-by-3 neighbourhood (therefore it is not a fully specified condition). And it does not say by itself what will be the future state of the middle cell (therefore it is neither a transition nor a rule).
• "4q" by itself can be read as a condition on the current states of cells in the 3-by-3 neighbourhood. It says that there are currently exactly four alive neighbours, arranged in one of the following four ways:

  Code: Select all

  1 1 0    0 1 1    0 0 1    1 0 0
  1 x 0    0 x 1    1 x 0    0 x 1
  0 0 1    1 0 0    1 1 0    0 1 1
  

  However, "4q" does not say what is the current state of the middle cell of the 3-by-3 neighbourhood (therefore it is not a fully specified condition). And it does not say by itself what will be the future state of the middle cell (therefore it is neither a transition nor a rule).

[confocaloid]

(double post about another part of the page)

Also, you are adding unnecessary verbosity and lengthy sentences (e.g. "with the added liberty that individual counts can be appended with extra letters indicating specific arrangements of that number of cells surrounding the central cell" is hard to read).

Is this any better? Because it's what I'm going with:
"...outer-totalistic rules. Letters can be appended to each number to specify what arrangements of cells are valid for birth or survival; a minus sign..."
[...]

Link to the current revision of the page: https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldi ... quare_grid

• The section currently says "normal rules", but that is not commonly used established terminology AFAICT. Apparently it is invented in this recent wiki edit.
  The word "normal" is unnecessary newly-coined jargon, and should be discarded (expanded into a direct explanation of which cellular automata can be defined using Hensel notation).
• The section currently says "... valid for birth or survival ..."
  It is unclear what that is supposed to mean; what "valid" means exactly? It is unnecessary jargon, and should be reworded.

A rulestring written in Hensel notation consists of two parts: the part "B...." listing birth conditions, and the part "S..." listing survival conditions.

Note that the conditions are not specific arrangements. Instead, in this case each isotropic condition is a set of arrangements that all can be obtained from each other by rotations and/or reflections of the 3-by-3 arrangement of alive and dead cells.

Appending a letter to a number (in a rulestring written using Hensel notation) allows to specify which isotropic subconditions of outer-totalistic conditions are [included in the set of] living conditions (i.e. either birth conditions, or survival conditions, or both).

Writing "B3/S2-i34q" includes the isotropic condition "4q" in the set of survival conditions, and excludes the isotropic condition "2i" from the set of survival conditions.

[muzik]

I think the following is significantly clearer than what is currently written in the wiki page.
Longer, but more readable, and easier to understand intuitively.

Rewritten based on this. I don't think it's a good idea to use D in rulestrings in this context since it's not immediately clear what this means. Is the new version an improvement?

[confocaloid]

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?titl ... did=155568

The edit by Chris857 was a definite improvement, as far as I can see. (Updating the synthesis cost and documenting the history of improvements.)

Dvgrn rolled back the edit, without any explanations.

As far as I can tell, this is incompetence on Dvgrn's part, and abuse of the rollback functionality (which is only intended for reverting edits that are clearly and obviously problematic).

[dvgrn]

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?titl ... did=155568

The edit by Chris857 was a definite improvement, as far as I can see. (Updating the synthesis cost and documenting the history of improvements.)

Dvgrn rolled back the edit, without any explanations.

As far as I can tell, this is incompetence on Dvgrn's part, and abuse of the rollback functionality (which is only intended for reverting edits that are clearly and obviously problematic).

Thanks for pointing this out. I was looking over recent changes, and the "rollback" button is a single click on that page. The click must have happened while I was moving off the page; I would likely have noticed it the next time I checked the page. It's re-reverted now, with no harm done.

Next time, please refrain from calling me names while you're pointing out mistakes. You're familiar with the forum rules. Don't break them.

[Tawal]

…
[1]: by the way, several patterns currently shown in the page don't show the output (which in the wiki is normally done using a ghost Herschel), I think someone should correct the pattern RLEs to show the ghost Herschels (related post188149).

Done

[confocaloid]

The edit https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=152198 added a large pattern with caption that says:

Cheater on Honey Ring, the aforementioned P34 LCM.

Firstly, there are no links to sources/related discussion for the added pattern (making it hard to understand whether it is even notable enough to be shown on the page, or a simple in-text mention would suffice).

Secondly, the caption incorrectly uppercases "Ring" (should instead be Honey ring).

Thirdly, the caption incorrectly uppercases "P34" (it's an abbreviation for "period-34", therefore should instead be lowercased "p34").


Another edit by same user https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=154987 added a claim that is neither self-evident nor has an obvious notability, again without any links to sources/related discussion to verify the claim and/or its notability.

Another edit by same user https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=155752 added a claim that is not self-evident, again without any links to sources/related discussion to verify the claim.

There may be other issues with recent changes.

[WhiteHawk]

I apologize for messing up when editing these parts wiki. Please go ahead and change them if they are not correct or are incorrect syntax.

I do want to be a better contributor to the Life community and wish to be able to provide cleaner edits in the future.

Firstly, how should I go about citing posts and adding them to the citations at the bottom (I haven't done it because I have been unsure of how to do it)? I obviously don't want to erase the citations for other parts of wiki pages, yet I do still want to give credit where credit is due.

Secondly, where can I find resources on how to go about editing in the proper manner, since I would like to be helpful?

Thank you.

[confocaloid]

Please fix issues mentioned in the previous post. It is generally expected that editors do not create too much work for other editors.

Re: your questions, I suggest to read LifeWiki:Notability and Help:Quick editing guide.
For footnotes, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Cite (you can also look in the wikitext of other pages, to see how footnotes are created).