Talk:Knightship

Systematic nomenclature

Currently, as the article states, "knightship" has two different meanings. Calling a knightwise moving ship a knightship makes immediate sense, but calling a flamingoship a knightship is confusing and weird. Is that really established, or is there still room for improvement? If a collective term for spaceships moving neither rookwise nor bishopwise is needed, then it should be clear and distinct. The most straightforward term, which is already implicit in the definition of this article, would simply be "obliquely moving spaceship" or "oblique ship" for brevity.

Such a clear nomenclature allows us to move further. In case we want to distinguish elementary movements, such as (2,1), from multiples thereof, such as the (4096,8192) of Dave Greene's ship, we can do that also using fairy chess terms, namely those of riders. Two such terms have already been used in this article: "rookwise" and "bishopwise". Consequently, Dave Greene's ship would move "nightriderwise". All orthogonal and diagonal movements could collectively be called "queenwise". (Strictly speaking, we use those terms somewhat differently from fairy chess, since all our spaceships are riders in the fairy chess sense. But there is a neat one-to-one analogy between the two nomenclatures.) We then could call such spaceships "riders", which move "riderwise". Micromegas (talk) 09:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC) Green text added/changed for clarity 10:01, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it is (somewhat) confusing. And we should probably take care on the wiki to refer to "oblique ships" or so rather than "knightships", unless we really do mean ships that move strictly knightwise. Using more specific terms such as "flamingoship" etc. is also a good idea.

Beyond that however, as far as this article is concerned, our job's to document, not to prescribe; the term "knightship" is (sometimes) used as a synonym for "oblique ship", and the LifeWiki should reflect that, so long as it remains true. Apple Bottom (talk) 09:41, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

You're right, we need to respect existing word use. (There just wasn't a reference for that in the article, but I believe you that it is sometimes used that way.) So it seems we agree that there should be two articles, one for "oblique ship", and one for "knightship", covering knightwise moving spaceships, but mentioning the use for oblique ships and linking to that article. So, how to go about it? Should I move this article to the new name and then create the new "knightship" article (or change the redirect, if it the move creates one already)? Or should I create a new article for "oblique ship" and copy the bulk of this article there? Micromegas (talk) 10:01, 9 March 2018 (UTC)