Resolution of race conditions due to delay between pattern discovery and reporting

[Scorbie]

Question Description

Let us assume two Life enthusiasts named A, and B, and pattern p.
Let us assume the following events occured. The events are ordered by timeline in ascending order.

Jan 1, 2024: X discovers p.
Jan 2, 2024: Y discovers p.
Jan 3, 2024: Y posts p on the forum.
Jan 4, 2024: X posts p on the forum.

In LifeWiki, who should be credited as the discoverer of p?

The dates are just picked arbitrarily; if it's important to your answer to this question it'd be helpful to know.

The reason I made this thread was because I thought people might disagree w.r.t the answer of this question.

viewtopic.php?p=137167#p137219

(For the record, blaming forum members for this topic is the last thing I intended from this, because I'm thinking the reason behind a dispute is precisely because of a lack of a system or consensus that resolves this sort of race condition.)

@mods please feel free to close this if you think this discussion is redundant or inappropriate.

[C28]

why can't we just credit both?

[hotdogPi]

why can't we just credit both?

I discovered the p16 glider gun back in 2021. I demand credit.

(not really, but someone could actually do this)

[confocaloid]

It is always possible that someone in the CA community discovered a pattern/reaction much earlier than LifeWiki says, but they did not share the discovery on this website (for some reason).
(Maybe they do not even know about this website to begin with. Maybe they don't have an account here. Maybe they did not consider the pattern/reaction important or interesting. Maybe they forgot about it. Maybe they discovered the pattern/reaction long before the website existed.)

Question Description

Let us assume two Life enthusiasts named A, and B, and pattern p.
Let us assume the following events occured. The events are ordered by timeline in ascending order.

Jan 1, 2024: X discovers p.
Jan 2, 2024: Y discovers p.
Jan 3, 2024: Y posts p on the forum.
Jan 4, 2024: X posts p on the forum.

In LifeWiki, who should be credited as the discoverer of p?

The dates are just picked arbitrarily; if it's important to your answer to this question it'd be helpful to know.
[...]

Credit both, for independently discovering the same thing?
(Unless people actually start arguments about that - in which case it becomes more likely that someone is being nonconstructive. Those issues become controversial and will have to be resolved in each specific case, due to differing details.)

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

Question Description

Let us assume two Life enthusiasts named A, and B, and pattern p.
Let us assume the following events occured. The events are ordered by timeline in ascending order.

Jan 1, 2024: X discovers p.
Jan 2, 2024: Y discovers p.
Jan 3, 2024: Y posts p on the forum.
Jan 4, 2024: X posts p on the forum.

In LifeWiki, who should be credited as the discoverer of p?

Probably both. Y almost definitely discovered p independently of X, since Y wouldn't have known that X had already discovered p since it wasn't reported yet.

[Haycat2009]

So, how do we proof this? Let me give a scenario:

Feb 29, 2036, 8.0.0: User: I found this sparkly p19 and I will name it "ZZZ"
Feb 29, 2036, 8.1.50: Another user: I found it in 2035.
Feb 29, 2036, 8.4.0: First user: Got proof?
Feb 29, 2036, 8.7.0: Another user: ... NOOOOOOOOO FAIR!
Feb 29, 2036, 8.10.0: First user: ZZZ it is. You tried to steal my credit! *recreates ZZZ page*

[Sokwe]

I think the credibility of any such claim would need to be assessed by the community. The first to publish should absolutely be acknowledged, and any highly credible claim of earlier discovery should be mentioned as well.

Here's a famous example of this issue:

In 1805 Legendre published the method of least squares, but in 1809 Gauss claimed that he had been using it since 1795. Legendre is still credited with the first publication, but Gauss' claim is often mentioned alongside it. There seems to be little doubt about the veracity of Gauss' claim.

[Haycat2009]

Another question: look at this scenario:

Random user: I found the p15 gun! (Gives statorless gun with lower population and same bounding box)
P1GG: No, I found it!

In that case, who gets credit in the wiki?

Or even, when users are blocked:

Feb 29, 2036, 8.0.0: Blocked user: I found this sparkly p19 and I will name it "Cobson"
Feb 29, 2036, 8.1.50: Another user: I found it in 2035.
Feb 29, 2036, 8.4.0: Blocked user: Got proof?
Feb 29, 2036, 8.7.0: Another user: Its on my userpage.
Feb 29, 2036, 8.10.0: Blocked user: No, I found it back in 2034 but I was blocked from the wiki.

[confocaloid]

(Gives statorless gun with lower population and same bounding box)

Which means it's a different pattern, and a different discovery. Two different persons discovered two different patterns. What is the perceived problem, exactly?

[Haycat2009]

(Gives statorless gun with lower population and same bounding box)

Which means it's a different pattern, and a different discovery. Two different persons discovered two different patterns. What is the perceived problem, exactly?

Who gets in the discoverer info box? P15 gun is vague and refers to no one gun.

[confocaloid]

(Gives statorless gun with lower population and same bounding box)

Which means it's a different pattern, and a different discovery. Two different persons discovered two different patterns. What is the perceived problem, exactly?

Who gets in the discoverer info box? P15 gun is vague and refers to no one gun.

Which means that wiki pages about classes of patterns (such as "period-15 glider gun" or "period-46 glider gun") shouldn't really get any infoboxes at all.
The page is not about a single specific pattern; instead, the page is about a type of patterns. There are many different period-46 glider guns, interesting for different reasons, useful in different contexts.

In the context of this forum thread, that means there shouldn't really be an infobox on such a page, and the credits / discovery information should instead be given in the article text.

[confocaloid]

Linking related discussions:
viewtopic.php?p=165714#p165714
viewtopic.php?p=192172#p192172
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5985
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6387