LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2022

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The following is an archive of tiki bar discussions started in 2022.

Proposal for niemiecsynth infobox parameter

Are there any objections to me adding a parameter to the pattern infobox which would link to a given object in Mark Niemiec's synthesis database. Despite its outdatedness, I've personally still found the database extremely useful due to the number of alternative syntheses it has, and I imagine many other people would as well. This would be far easier than manually uploading synthesis files to the pattern collection.

Note that this is distinct from niemiecid, which does not necessarily determine where a synthesis is found. For example, boat does not actually have a niemiecid as far as I can tell it, and its synthesis file is actually located at 0/5bt.rle. Non-still-life patterns also appear to not have IDs under the #.# system. Ian07 (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Linking to Niemiec synthesis database is nice, but not necessarily shown in infobox in my opinion. An alternative method is to use {{LinkNiemiec}} in the External links section. There have been a bunch of pages doing that; previously I edited some for 12-cell still lives (e.g. this one) so that the link goes to the particular synthesis RLE directly instead of the general "The <count> <pop>-bit still lives" panel. I have not done this to other smaller still lives, though. GUYTU6J (talk) 04:24, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Linking directly to a downloadable file in the External links section (or in a footnote) may be unexpected for a reader. I think it is usually better to have links to webpages that link to downloadable files, rather than linking to downloadable files directly. This helps to provide some context about the file rather than jumping directly to the download. Such URLs may also be more permanent while filenames are subject to change. Confocal (talk) 02:12, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
I do not have objections against having a dedicated parameter in the infobox with a direct link to the synthesis file, as long as it is done consistently and it is reasonably clear that clicking on the link will immediately proceed to the download of a RLE file with synthesis. Confocal (talk) 02:33, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Do LCMs need their own pages?

134P39.1: Keep. It's historical, and we don't know of any non-p3/p13 p39s anyway.
22P4.3 on 56P27: Merge to 56P27.
258P3 on Achim's p11: Unsure. I might say it's not needed at all.
44P7 on Beluchenko's p13: Redirect to Beluchenko's p13, mention on both pages.
48P9 on rattlesnake: Redirect to rattlesnake, mention on both pages.
65P48: Keep; this is a rephaser where large oscillator doesn't have its own page.
69P48: Keep for the same reasons as 65P48.
72P68: Merge to honey thieves.
74P85: Merge to honey thieves.
77P77: Redirect to rattlesnake, mention on both pages (rattlesnake and 41P7.2).
87P26: Either keep or merge with 53P13.
90P51: Merge to honey thieves.
Blonker on Rich's p16: Delete (there's already a delete tag).
Boring p24: Keep; it's natural.
Caterer on 28P7.3: Merge to 28P7.3.
Caterer on 42P7.1: Merge to 44P7.2 (42P7.1 is a smaller but lower-clearance variant of 44P7.2).
Caterer on 44P7.2: Redirect to 44P7.2; no need to show.
Caterer on 68P32: Delete, no longer smallest.
Caterer on Beluchenko's p13: Merge to Beluchenko's p13.
Caterer on figure eight: Redirect to figure eight, mention on both pages.
Caterer on Jason's p22: Merge to Jason's p22.
Caterer on Merzenich's p31: Merge to Merzenich's p31.
Caterer on rattlesnake: Merge to rattlesnake.
Figure eight on 22P36: Merge to 22P36.
Figure eight on Beluchenko's p13: Merge to Beluchenko's p13.
Figure eight on centinal: Redirect to centinal; no need to show since it's p200.
Figure eight on Jason's p22: Delete, not the smallest.
Figure eight on pentadecathlon: Keep, natural.
Figure eight on rattlesnake: Merge to rattlesnake.
Fumarole on 34P14 shuttle: Merge to 34P14 shuttle.
Fumarole on Achim's p11: Delete, by far not the smallest.
Fumarole on Beluchenko's p13: Merge to Beluchenko's p13.
Fumarole on p18 bi-block hassler: Merge to p18 bi-block hassler.
Fumarole on Rich's p16: Delete; overtaken by Rob's p16.
Fumarole on Rob's p16: Merge to Rob's p16.
Mold on 34P14 shuttle: Merge to 34P14 shuttle.
Mold on 41P7.2: Merge to 41P7.2.
Mold on fumarole: Merge to fumarole, mention on both pages.
Mold on Jason's p22: Delete, not smallest.
Mold on Jason's p33: Merge to Jason's p33.
Mold on Merzenich's p31: Merge to Merzenich's p31.
Mold on pentadecathlon: Merge to pentadecathlon.
Mold on rattlesnake: Merge to rattlesnake.
P6 thumb on Beluchenko's p13: Merge to Beluchenko's p13.
Pentadecathlon on 37P7.1: Merge to 37P7.1.
Pentadecathlon on 56P27: Merge to 56P27.
Pentadecathlon on snacker: Delete, not smallest.
Pentadecathlon on thumb 1: Merge to thumb 1
Pseudo-barberpole on Jason's p22: Merge to Jason's p22.
Pseudo-barberpole on rattlesnake: Merge to rattlesnake.
Snacker on 38P7.2: Redirect to 38P7.2, mention on both pages.
T-nosed p4 on Merzenich's p31: Delete, not smallest.
Thumb 1 on queen bee shuttle: Merge to thumb 1 (queen bee shuttle has a lot of other uses, and this would add clutter).
Tumbler on Rich's p16: Merge to tumbler; tumbler was chosen over Rich's p16 as people wouldn't expect tumbler to have sparks.
Twin bees shuttle on 22P4.3: Delete. We don't have a page for 22P4.3, and it ties the non-LCM record anyway.
Uninteresting p24: Keep, natural.
Unix on 34P14 shuttle: Merge to 34P14 shuttle.
Unix on 41P7.2: Delete, not smallest.
Unix on Rich's p16: Merge to Rich's p16.

HotdogPi (talk) 14:15, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Well the first entry on this list certainly didn't age perfectly.
I agree with most of these proposals, although I'd prefer it if the cases marked for deletion were instead made into redirects to the current smallest, with their existence as the smallest at one point in time given a passing mention. - AwesoMan3000 (talk) 14:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)


I also agree with most of these proposals, but there are a few I would do differently:
258P3 on Achim's p11: Keep or merge to Achim's p11; it's historical.
134P39.1: Merge to cheater 2.
72P68: Merge to cheater 2.
74P85: Merge to cheater 2.
90P51: Merge to cheater 2.
87P26: Move 53P13 to 50P13 and merge with 50P13.
Caterer on 42P7.1: Delete; no longer the smallest.
Caterer on 44P7.2: Delete; not the smallest.
Pentadecathlon on thumb 1: Move thumb 1 to p9 thumb and merge to p9 thumb
Thumb 1 on queen bee shuttle: Move thumb 1 to p9 thumb and merge to p9 thumb
Twin bees shuttle on 22P4.3: Already redirected to a smaller LCM p92.
~Sokwe 22:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
If an oscillator was the smallest known oscillator with this period at some point in time, that is sufficient for me to consider it notable, even when a smaller oscillator is found - my preference would be to keep the page, and only update it to refer to a smaller oscillator found later. Confocal (talk) 06:30, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

OCA RLE

Two hours ago our site admin User:Nathaniel added a collection of other cellular automata patterns to the main page under the name of oca.zip, and I noticed something that is worth discussing.

Firstly, click on "Expand" to the right to view the list of the filenames (currently there are 75). 

1308p7.rle
2c5ladders.rle
2x210cellstilllifes.rle
2x22cellstilllifes.rle
2x23cellstilllifes.rle
2x24cellstilllifes.rle
2x25cellstilllifes.rle
2x26cellstilllifes.rle
2x27cellstilllifes.rle
2x28cellstilllifes.rle
2x29cellstilllifes.rle
2x2blockoscillators.rle
2x2glider.rle
2x2linepuffer.rle
2x2oscillators.rle
2x2period2oscillators.rle
2x2stills.rle
4c13ladders.rle
4c9ladders.rle
b3578s238replicator.rle
bomberpredecessor.rle
briansbrainp3.rle
c3ladder.rle
c3ladders.rle
candlefrobraitself.rle
croaker.rle
dayandnightfireball.rle
flutter.rle
griddle.rle
highlife10cellstilllifes.rle
highlife11cellstilllifes.rle
highlife12cellstilllifes.rle
highlife13cellstilllifes.rle
highlife4cellstilllifes.rle
highlife5cellstilllifes.rle
highlife6cellstilllifes.rle
highlife7cellstilllifes.rle
highlife8cellstilllifes.rle
highlife9cellstilllifes.rle
highlifereplicatorxp96.rle
honeyfarmgenerator.rle
jasonsbow.rle
jellyfish.rle
lifehistoryexample.rle
lifewithoutdeathquadraticgrowth.rle
longlivedsparks.rle
maze2cellstilllifes.rle
maze3cellstilllifes.rle
maze4cellstilllifes.rle
maze5cellstilllifes.rle
maze6cellstilllifes.rle
maze7cellstilllifes.rle
maze8cellstilllifes.rle
maze9cellstilllifes.rle
mazeperiod2.rle
mazestilllifes.rle
mazewickstretcher.rle
moon.rle
movepuffer.rle
movestilllifes.rle
nontnosedp15.rle
nontnosedp8.rle
pedestrianlifeobliquespaceship.rle
pedestrianlifep106gun.rle
pedestrianlife_obliquespaceship.rle
pedestrianlife_p106gun.rle
pole2rotor.rle
pole3rotor.rle
pole4rotor.rle
replicator.rle
replicatorpredecessor.rle
semitnosedp16.rle
semitnosedp8.rle
ttetrominotlife.rle
uniquefatherproblemsolved.rle

Then, the issues.

Finally, the former suggestion of creating an independent OCARLE namespace looks reasonable to me. Would this be implemented?

(Meanwhile, happy Pi day!) -GUYTU6J (talk) 03:54, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I have fixed the script so that patterns with "rule = Life" and "rule = LifeHistory" are now placed in all.zip instead of oca.zip. The script runs on the server once every 24 hours, so these changes will take up to a day to appear. Nathaniel (talk) 12:32, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Good, how about the remaining questions? For consistency, I went ahead and fixed the nonstandard "rule = Life" in the RLE above as well as in RLE:46p4h1v0 synth, both of which were produced by User:Dvgrn. Related to the second issue, RLE:Quetzal54 appears to be generated by User:Book's personal website and the link is broken; can you rewrite the comment so as to match LifeWiki standards? -GUYTU6J (talk) 12:56, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Category:Polyominos

I propose that recently created Category:Polyominos should be renamed to Category:Polyominoes, to follow S. W. Golomb. See also polyomino. The actual renaming will involve editing every page in the category - otherwise I probably would just do it myself. Confocal (talk) 07:15, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Done. Atavoidirc (talk) 18:56, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Mobile LifeWiki

Greetings from a passing wiki editor! This site looks great and well-moderated. But on a smartphone, just noticed that you don't have a Mobile frontend extension installed. Why? GUYTU6J (talk) 17:36, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

  • The linked page says: "Before installing MobileFrontend [...] you should review your content to see whether it is mobile friendly. [...] MobileFrontend will not magically fix this for you!" It seems that ensuring that the actual content will render nicely is a non-trivial task. There may be a good solution to the problem - I'm only saying that it is not obvious what is an improvement and what is not. Confocal (talk) 22:47, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Single-digit links in templates / links with very short displayed text

There are templates such as gliders and period, which are used for embedding short (often single-digit) links to categories. I suggest to modify such templates so that links become e.g. period-3 instead of period-3, and likewise 5-glider instead of 5-glider. I think this would be an improvement because clicking on the longer link would be much easier for a reader than clicking on a single-digit link. Confocal (talk) 02:47, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Seconded. Glider is linked from the first sentence of the category page anyway, so it should still be easy for someone to find that link.
~Sokwe 08:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Small update: slcells is another similar template; there may be more. Confocal (talk) 19:17, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

I modified {{gliders}}, {{period}}, {{periodS}} to use long displayed link text in non-brief mode. Probably {{cells}} and {{slcells}} should be handled by a more experienced editor semiautomatically (because that will involve editing large number of pages where these templates are used). The current usage is like e.g.

The frobnozzle is a {{cells|22}}-bit p3 oscillator.
The snargehive is a {{slcells|6}}-bit still life.

That should be changed in articles to

The frobnozzle is a {{cells|22}} p3 oscillator.
The snargehive is a {{slcells|6}} still life.

and the templates should be modified accordingly, to provide "-bit" as part of the displayed link text. Confocal (talk) 00:16, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Good ideas. Book (talk) 00:28, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Missing OCA rules

Currently

  • 3D Life
  • Codd's cellular automaton
  • Critters (cellular automaton)
  • Langton's loops
    • Byl's loop
  • Paterson's worms
  • Rule 30
  • Rule 90
  • Rule 184
  • Turmite
    • Langton's ant
  • Von Neumann cellular automaton
    • Nobili cellular automata

And the following Cellular automata related topics:

  • Asynchronous cellular automaton
  • Block cellular automaton
  • Bootstrap percolation
  • Continuous automaton
  • Elementary cellular automaton
  • Lattice gas automaton
  • Majority problem (cellular automaton)
  • Mobile automaton
  • Movable cellular automaton
  • Network automaton
  • Reversible cellular automaton
  • Second-order cellular automaton
  • Stochastic cellular automaton

Atavoidirc (talk) 19:44, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

  • A minor remark: even if Wikipedia has a page about something, that does not mean that the subject of that page meets Wikipedia's notability criteria. More significantly: assuming that it is good to have a page about a certain subject here on LifeWiki, I think it would be much better to have that page written by someone who knows enough about the subject (i.e. knows what it is all about), and who is able to write it down in a clear understandable way. I think there's not much point in quickly creating lots of new small stubs that do not really provide much useful knowledge. Confocal (talk) 02:47, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Sections for lists of patterns

There is a number of lists of patterns which can be found in Category:Lists of patterns, with multiple viewers on each page. Would it be an improvement to split such pages into sections in some consistent way? It may help readers to quickly navigate e.g. to a specific period. It may enable categorized redirects to sections for patterns without their own articles. Confocal (talk) 21:32, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Maybe List of still lifes with 4 to 12 cells should be split into several pages to reduce its length in the all-content-shown mode. Confocal (talk) 19:45, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
Was why the sections were collapsed, which I know you oppose. But ok by me to split. Book (talk) 20:17, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
I plan to make the large sections separate pages. This is a multi-step process over several days. Book (talk) 22:13, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
11 and 12 have their own pages now. Created "4 to 10" page, however, perhaps better to move "4 to 12" to "4 to 10" to preserve editing history? Book (talk) 23:19, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
Does this mean that 15- and 16-cell oscillators should be given their own pages as well given the similar counts? - AwesoMan3000 (talk) 14:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
Seems reasonable. Book (talk) 18:05, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

11-cell and 12-cell still lifes

Recently, Carson Cheng added a notability tag to a decent number of 12-cell still lifes and a few 11s, and Book redirected them to List of still lifes with 4-12 cells. Confocal is arguing against this. There are now only 96 out of 121 in the Category:Strict still lifes with 12 cells category and 40 of 46 in the 11 category. In addition, the ones that were redirected are a bit arbitrary. Should the redirected ones be restored? HotdogPi (talk) 13:11, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  • I'm currently editing pages that are not redirected, to make relatively minor formatting fixes. I'm also removing notability templates which are present in pages about 12-bit still lives, since it seems more reasonable to discuss this kind of questions for all similar pages at once, rather than one-by-one. One possible solution is to keep all pages for 12-bit SLs (and de-redirect redirected ones). Confocal (talk) 13:17, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
(Added later:) I think the same applies to 11-cell SLs. One issue with List of still lifes with 4 to 12 cells is that a significant part of the content is collapsed-by-default; I think it is usually better to have all content shown by default. Confocal (talk) 18:18, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I would say that in general we do not have a good process for adjudicating notability tags. Assuming interested parties will stumble across those pages and comment on the discussion page in a timely fashion is hit or (mostly) miss. I've attempted to raise individual page issues on the forums without much success, and that's cumbersome, especially when there are a lot of open tags. I also don't think letting those tags linger interminably (and I know we all have different ideas about timeliness) is good practice. It seems to me that getting a thumbs up or down should be possible in short order, but I'm not clear on how to do this in a process-driven way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Book (talk • contribs) 28 July 2022‎
  • Since this is somewhat off-topic in this tiki bar discussion, I attempted to write a partial answer on the forum: link to the post. Feel free to reply there. Confocal (talk) 10:28, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I restored the 6 pages for 11-cell SLs. I suggest to restore the 25 redirected pages for 12-bit SLs as well, unless there are good reasons to not do so. I think in this case a separate page for each object is better than a single long list with mostly collapsed-by-default content. Confocal (talk) 18:35, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

The 25 previously redirected pages for 12-bit SLs are restored. Confocal (talk) 21:56, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Should the pages for barberpoles up to at least 13 cells also be restored for much the same reasons? - AwesoMan3000 (talk) 15:35, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Redirects

Should redirects like p52 pipsquirter be in categories? Atavoidirc (talk) 15:00, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

It would be good to state in a more clear way exactly which redirects are meant by "redirects like p52 pipsquirter". For example, categorizing redirects to sections for interesting objects without their own pages seems helpful to me. Confocal (talk) 15:10, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
This one was explicitly made to appear in Category:Oscillators with period 52 and similar. I don't expect anyone to type in the name "p52 pipsquirter"; it's meant to appear in categories. HotdogPi (talk) 18:54, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
  • In my opinion, there should be some kind of protection against someone overenthusiastically creating lots of redirects that are apparently never used anywhere for any purpose. Isn't the wiki supposed to be primarily about writing good pages (as opposed to making lots of redirects to relatively few existing pages)? Ignoring any disk space-related concerns (that may or may not be negligible), redirects require maintenance, e.g. when the content of target page changes, the redirects may need to be changed. (I'm adding this reply to an existing discussion, because the title of this section is "Redirects", and there are already at least four discussions with "Redirect" in the title - I do not want to create yet another redirect-related Tiki bar discussion.) Confocal (talk) 01:02, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Forums error

An error occured on the forums: 

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined constant "Patchwork\Utf8\MB_OVERLOAD_STRING" in /home/psstoref/conwaylife/forums/vendor/patchwork/utf8/src/Patchwork/Utf8/Bootup.php:45 Stack trace: #0 /home/psstoref/conwaylife/forums/includes/utf/utf_tools.php(28): Patchwork\Utf8\Bootup::initMbstring() #1 /home/psstoref/conwaylife/forums/common.php(97): require('/home/psstoref/...') #2 /home/psstoref/conwaylife/forums/viewtopic.php(20): include('/home/psstoref/...') #3 {main} thrown in /home/psstoref/conwaylife/forums/vendor/patchwork/utf8/src/Patchwork/Utf8/Bootup.php on line 45

GUYTU6J (talk) 15:34, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Popover, Pi portraitor, Pentoad 1H2, Pentoad 2

Pages Pi portraitor, Popover, Pentoad 1H2, Pentoad 2 were redirected by Carson Cheng, as far as I can tell without any previous discussion. My attempt to restore these pages was reverted with edit summaries "Added redirect; Alternate stabilizations of something known generally aren't notable on their own." and "Undone the removal of redirects by Confocal".

What should be done with these pages? I would prefer them to remain separate, to avoid overloading pages Gourmet and Pentoad. At least, such mass merges should be previously discussed and explained in edit summaries. Confocal (talk) 13:35, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

The three p32 pi variants are pretty much identical. They don't need three separate pages. HotdogPi (talk) 13:42, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

List of Life-like cellular automata

I propose that the named patterns with red links be made redirects to this page. It is where in the wiki they are defined and someone could find them and most have been long red. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Book (talk • contribs) 27 August 2022

  • These are rules, not patterns. I would prefer them to remain red links. Red links encourage people who are interested in the subject to do the documentation. In this case, redirects to a long table would not be very helpful, and would simply hide the problem instead of solving it. Confocal (talk) 22:30, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
    • I of course meant rules not patterns. I still think we should make finding these named rules easier. We do so with a lot of (this time I mean it) patterns in tables. It says "here is where you can find something about this thingy." Book (talk) 23:28, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Imprecise redirects

Examples of imprecise redirects:

  • As stated in the reason for the proposed deletion, Cyclotron should (eventually) become an article. However, until someone becomes sufficiently prepared and enthusiastic and writes that article, it should be a red link. Confocal (talk) 00:22, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
  • People is an unused cross-namespace redirect to Category:People.
    • People used to be accessed from "all categories" but was moved to another namespace; this redirect was for people who could no longer find people. Book (talk) 00:12, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
  • title=Θ&oldid=114490 and Theta are imprecise redirects to Big-Θ notation.
    • Please see discussion tab on these pages Book (talk) 00:12, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Replying here: there is no need to explain letters and their names to people who are interested in cellular automata - it is very likely that those people already know letters, and even if not, that is solved by googling it. These redirects are imprecise - the notation is not the letter. Confocal (talk) 00:22, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

(There are also redirects from misspellings, see the relevant tiki discussion.)

These redirects are not alternative ways of referring to the target page. These redirects introduce confusion instead of helping readers. Confocal (talk) 23:48, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Catalysts vs Eaters

I have done a number of edits regarding the pages Catalyst and Eater, and the categories of Category:Catalysts and Category:Eaters to transfer content from the page of eaters to the page of catalysts. Should we simply merge these pages and get Eater redirect to Catalyst?

If so, how do we deal with the collection of glider eaters? Should we put it on another page (possibly the Catalyst page), create a new page (possibly in userspace) to accommodate it, or put it in an accessible place on the forums or in a major pattern collection on GitHub? Has this been done already?

Carson Cheng (talk) 00:15, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

What is the reason for the proposed merge? I think these changes (both already attempted and proposed) do not improve the wiki, and also are made without seeking consensus first. I suggest that Eater should remain a separate page from Catalyst, and also Category:Eaters should remain a separate category from Category:Catalysts. Confocal (talk) 01:07, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
The term eater basically refers to the term catalyst. You may argue against that, but the term eater is very rarely used now other than referring to eater 1, eater 2, eater 3, and other catalysts with "eater" literally in their names. On the other hand, the term catalyst is in much more common use, and is strongly preferred by the Life community. What's the point in keeping the page of eater? Carson Cheng (talk) 01:15, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
If a simple merge causes any confusion, we can just mention in the catalyst page that they can also be referred to as eaters, but very rarely. (talk) 01:20, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Quoting from CGoLM&C 2.3 "Eaters": 

(...) Deleting gliders is the simplest of these tasks, and it can be done with objects called '''eaters''': still lifes[11] with the property that if a glider (or another object) collides with them in the right way, the glider is deleted and the eater suffers no permanent damage.

[Footnote 11] Strictly speaking, an eater does not need to be a still life, but still life eaters are used so much more frequently than other types of eaters that it is often assumed.

Quoting from CGoLM&C 7.1.1 "Conduit Terminology": 

(...) Back in section 2.3 we discussed eaters, such as eater 1, that can delete other objects without suffering any permanent damage. Eater 1s are very common components in Herschel conduits. They do very often act as eaters, simply deleting unwanted output gliders, or deleting blocks or blinkers or other objects generated as the active reaction passes through the conduit. However, their function is not always limited to eating.

A more general term for the still lifes that make up a conduit is '''catalyst'''. Like an eater, a catalyst is not permanently affected by a passing active reaction. It is temporarily altered (unless it is a rock as described in section 2.3.1) but eventually recovers to its original form with no permament damage. That passing active reaction is not necessarily any well-defined object like a glider, block, beehive, or blinker. Very often it is simply some unnamed chaotic mess, and the catalyst just causes it to evolve differently from the way it would have without the catalyst's presence.

As I understand from these quotes, "catalyst" is more general than "eater", in that an eater is something that deletes (or prevents from forming) some reasonably well-defined object, while a catalyst in general is not required to delete something without trace. A catalyst changes an active reaction to a different reaction; an eater changes an active reaction to the absence of active reaction.

Also I do not agree with the claim that the term "eater" is rarely used. Currently for me forum search returns 4423 matches for the keyword "eater" (some of these results are in parts of names of numbered eaters) and 2266 matches for the keyword "catalyst". At least if you just look at the numbers without investigating specific search results, it seems like "eater" is actually used more commonly than "catalyst"!

Based on the above and on my understanding of these two subjects, I think "eater" should be kept separate from "catalyst". These concepts are related, but they are not identical. I think putting different concepts into one page often results in added confusion - a page that attempts to cover two or more distinct subjects, frequently fails to explain either of those subjects in a satisfactory way. Confocal (talk) 02:11, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I have added a few edits to the eater page to narrow down its definition on the wiki so that it's more precise (and hopefully more accurate), and also added references to section 2.3 and section 7.1 of the CGOLM&C book:
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Eater&diff=115157&oldid=115108
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Eater&diff=115161&oldid=115157
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Eater&diff=115162&oldid=115161
Let me know if there are any problems.
Carson Cheng (talk) 02:57, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

But what about the Category:Catalysts and Category:Eaters? The category of eaters is a subset of the category of catalysts, so there's no need to exclude things from the list of catalysts. But how should we judge if one catalyst page belongs to the category of eaters? Carson Cheng (talk) 03:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Category:Eaters can be a subcategory of Category:Catalysts. If there are no known ways for a pattern to eat something, the page can be put into Category:Catalysts only. If it is known that a pattern can function as an eater, the page can be put in both categories (so that a reader has the choice of either browsing all catalysts, or browsing only eaters). Confocal (talk) 03:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Page sizes

What are (if any) current limits of reasonability/politeness for page sizes? I'm asking after looking at Special:RecentChanges and Special:LongPages. The longest pages in the main namespace seem to be around 100 kilobytes. The longest page in my userspace is currently less than 50 kilobytes. I am not expecting to get a precise answer with exact numbers. But after half a megabyte or so per page, it does look somewhat unreasonable to me. Using the wiki as a file hosting may not be the best way to use the wiki. Confocal (talk) 04:37, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

(For the record, I'm referring to these page creations currently visible in "Recent changes" including new pages with sizes 459355, 342781, 333155, 288921, 265478, 167993 bytes.) Confocal (talk) 08:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

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