Talk:Spaceship

I have made some major edits to this page as I found that the old page was somewhat difficult to read. I would like to see more added to the history section of this page, especially more references. My initial idea for that section was to provide information on the various searches that people had made, as well as the discovery of new spaceship speeds, but other information on the history of spaceships would also be nice. Also, if somebody would rewrite some of this page so that it used the word "spaceship" somewhat less, I believe that would be helpful.

I was wondering if separate pages should be made for each spaceship speed, in addition to the categories of patterns that travel at those speeds, as I find that the category pages don't provide the necessary information that one might be looking for when going to such a page. I also believe that pages should be made for individuals who have made significant contributions to life.

More in relation to this page, I was wondering if the table of smallest known spaceships for a given speed should get its own section in this article, or whether it should be put in a new sub-section with other information. I am assuming that the table of spaceship speed discoveries will be in the history section.

Update: I added more to the history section, I am also going to create a "Spaceship types" section (with a link to Types of spaceships) to describe things like grayships and tagalongs, as well as to put the table of smallest spaceships in.

Update 2: I added names for several unnamed spaceships missing from the tables on this page. These additions are, to the best of my knowledge, correct. The names refer to the following patterns:

295P5H1V1	25P3H1V0.1	25P3H1V0.2	46P4H1V0	30P5H2V0	67P5H1V1

I also added a new section (Spaceship types).

02:11, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Sokwe 17:36, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I would rather see the category pages themselves expanded to include any relevant information about the spaceships of that speed (the first one found, the smallest one known to date, etc) rather than creating a separate page for that information and then having the category as well. Similarly with the user contribution pages, though that might be more questionable if we have a lot of information for a particular Life guru (such as Conway, Hickerson and Bell). I protected some categories early on but I don't know why I did that, so I'll remove the protection from the speed category pages, and feel free to ask me to remove protection from any other page you'd like to expand/alter. Category pages can have text added in the exact same way as normal text pages.

Also, just so you know you can sign your post automatically by typing four tildes: ~~~~ will be replaced automatically by your name and timestamp. Also, I'll add some pattern pages for the spaceships that you added to this page. My thinking is that if a pattern holds a record that is notable enough that it's mentioned on another page, then that pattern probably deserves its own page. Nathaniel 03:56, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that the tables with spaceship speeds are organized by the size of their denominator. I was wondering if perhaps they should be ordered by relative speed (still keeping the directions separate), thus making the order: Diagonal: c/4, c/5, c/6, c/12; Orthogonal: c/2, 2c/5, 17c/45, c/3, 2c/7, c/4, c/5, c/6 (The first discoveries table could possibly be ordered by date of discovery). I've noticed that the convention in the life community seems to be the way in which the tables are currently ordered.

Sokwe 06:09, 19 April 2009 (UTC)