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)

I think we need to start fixing the painting before we start fixing its frame. ;) The article currently uses either of the two meanings; fixing that so that "knightship" really only refers to knightships would be a good start.

I'm not sure breaking up the article is a good idea either. Even though they're distinct, the concepts are intimately related, and breaking up the article because they're not technically the same would be sacrificing readability/accessibility for the sake of conceptual purity. Nothing says that LifeWiki entries have to map bijectively to the concepts covered -- certainly not if that would get in the way of our goal of collating information, and informing people!

Another question to think about: there are ships with slope 2, and there are knightships. Technically, the latter are a strict subset of the former; if someone were to find, say, a Sir Robin variant that displaces itself by (4,2) cells every 12 generations, that would be a slope 2 ship, but not a knightship. (Looking at Wikipedia's article on fairy chess pieces I'm not even sure what that would be, exactly!) So we really have to be careful, and to try and grok what the terms mean and when they are and aren't appropriate. (On a side note, I think that these subtleties are another reason why we shouldn't have separate articles for oblique ships, slope 2 ships, knightships and all the rest.)

The remaining question (in my mind) is whether this article should be called "Knightship" or "Oblique ship". It probably depends on what we consider more important -- knightships (or slope 2 ships, anyway) in the strict sense, or oblique ships in the general sense --, and whether we want to emphasize that oblique ships are a generalization of knightships, or that knightships are a specialization of oblique ships. I'm leaning towards keeping it as "Knightship" for now, and making incremental changes to the article and the rest of the wiki as necessary and proper. YMMV, of course. (Anyone else have any thoughts on the matter? Dvgrn, perhaps?) Apple Bottom (talk) 10:27, 9 March 2018 (UTC)