Attempt to apply proposed name 'caravan' with no established notability

[dvgrn]

EDIT by dvgrn: moved discussion of the attempted move of the 30P5H2V0 page to the name "caravan" to this new thread.

Notes added here on 7 January 2023:

There was no sign that the proposed term 'caravan' has been in common use for the 30P5H2V0 spaceship. By contrast, '30P5H2V0' has seen quite a bit of use. At this point there doesn't seem to be any reason to even mention the name 'caravan' on the 30P5H2V0 page.

It might make sense to add the 'caravan' alias in a year or two, but only if it becomes a commonly used and uncontroversial alias on the forums. We won't know whether that will happen until we actually wait a year or two.

[Haycat2009]

We ought to call the smallest 2c/5 spaceship Caravan - After a forum search, there have been 7 independent users using "Caravan" for this. Plus, you humans are bad at memorising random strings of letters and numbers - might as well use "Caravan". Also, might as well move the Lifewiki Page.

[b-engine]

We ought to call the smallest 2c/5 spaceship Caravan - After a forum search, there have been 7 independent users using "Caravan" for this. Plus, you humans are bad at memorising random strings of letters and numbers - might as well use "Caravan". Also, might as well move the Lifewiki Page.

So I'd done it. However, it's moved back to it's original page.

[Haycat2009]

We ought to call the smallest 2c/5 spaceship Caravan - After a forum search, there have been 7 independent users using "Caravan" for this. Plus, you humans are bad at memorising random strings of letters and numbers - might as well use "Caravan". Also, might as well move the Lifewiki Page.

So I'd done it. See Caravan.

I wanted to ask dvgrn to undo has decision, but I do not have the authority.

[confocaloid]

The undiscussed move from 30P5H2V0 should be reverted. Related changes in lots of other articles also should be reverted.
The spaceship is much more commonly known as search.php?keywords=30P5H2V0

Other issues:

Currently, the p13_domino_sparker article body does not have the 7th reference, but it is still in the source, causing a site error.

I think the pattern in Pi ship 1 is large enough that it would display better outside the infobox.
First, there is simply more space (width) outside the infobox.
Second, in this case there are two similar patterns shown in the article. Putting both patterns in a single gallery is a simple way to highlight the similarity and differences between them.

Compare two revisions of the article:

• pattern outside the infobox: https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=142472
• pattern in the infobox: https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=143842

Also, the patterns display better when ZOOM values in viewers are integer multiples of THUMBSIZE (which is either 2 or 3 in most cases).

(added later)
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=135461
(1) A natural description ("transparent long boat glider loop") is replaced with a more awkward description ("NW-2T16 and dependent syringe loop").
(2) Incorrect linking (the correct link would be dependent syringe).

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=142041
Removal of rulestring. Rulestring should be kept in the article, so that readers who are not familiar with aliases do not have to follow the link to know what is the rule.
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=141926 Add the rulestring so that readers do not have to follow the link to know what is the rule.
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=137731 Add the rulestring; same reason.

[Sokwe]

The undiscussed move from 30P5H2V0 should be reverted. Related changes in lots of other articles also should be reverted.
The spaceship is much more commonly known as search.php?keywords=30P5H2V0

Agreed. Almost all mentions of "caravan" are just naming proposals, and even then there aren't many posts about it. The name would need to be in common use by many different users in external sources before a wiki name change is justified. The only reason to change a pattern name this quickly is if the discoverer (in this case, Paul Tooke) wishes it.

Edit: the 30P5H2V0/Caravan page is currently in the early stages of an "edit war", as it was moved, then moved back (by a moderator), then moved again. Are there any objections to moving the page back to 30P5H2V0 while this dispute is discussed? I will consider a "like" on this post as support for moving the page back.

Remember to review LifeWiki:Dispute resolution.

[dvgrn]

Are there any objections to moving the page back to 30P5H2V0 while this dispute is discussed?

My guess last night was that my edit summary, when I moved the page back, would be enough of an explanation of my reason for the revert.

If I had been expecting an edit war, I would have also temporarily protected the page. That might be a good thing to do this time around, just until we hear back from b-engine/0-engine Cordership -- and now Haycat2009, I guess -- that they have heard enough feedback from the community to understand that this is absolutely not the way naming proposals work.

I'm trying a couple of ways to get Haycat2009's attention on this. Just sent the following private message, but it doesn't have any actual private content so it probably makes sense to post it here also:

@Haycat2009, your 30P5H2V0 -> Caravan changes have just made a big mess that somebody is going to have to clean up. If nobody else gets to it first, could you go through and change all of those back, please?

See Sokwe's post. What you did was basically an extended violation of LW:DR #3, since I had just reverted b-engine's change.

If you thought that those changes were a good idea, let's talk some more about it. "Caravan" doesn't come anywhere near the standards for name changes on the LifeWiki. There's one actual use of the term, it's only a day old, and it was made by one of the people proposing the name change.

You need dozens of uses, preferably by dozens of people not including the proposers of the term, over a period of a year or two, before a name change like this would make any sense at all. Even then it might not be a good idea, given all the existing uses of "30P5H2V0" as the standard name.

[HerscheltheHerschel]

The undiscussed move from 30P5H2V0 should be reverted. Related changes in lots of other articles also should be reverted.
The spaceship is much more commonly known as search.php?keywords=30P5H2V0

Agreed. Almost all mentions of "caravan" are just naming proposals, and even then there aren't many posts about it. The name would need to be in common use by many different users in external sources before a wiki name change is justified. The only reason to change a pattern name this quickly is if the discoverer (in this case, Paul Tooke) wishes it.

Edit: the 30P5H2V0/Caravan page is currently in the early stages of an "edit war", as it was moved, then moved back (by a moderator), then moved again. Are there any objections to moving the page back to 30P5H2V0 while this dispute is discussed? I will consider a "like" on this post as support for moving the page back.

Remember to review LifeWiki:Dispute resolution.

I do not agree with people that agree that the move from 30P5H2V0 should be reverted.

[dvgrn]

I do not agree with people that agree that the move from 30P5H2V0 should be reverted.

It's fine to hold that opinion, as long as nobody tries to act on it any further.

Meanwhile, I was hoping that Haycat2009 would take responsibility for cleaning up the mess that they created. But very likely their day ended just as mine was starting, so it makes sense that there wouldn't have been a response in the last few hours.

I've gone through and reverted all of the "30P5H2V0" -> "caravan" edits.

If anyone isn't clear on why the page can't be moved to "Caravan" at this time, please ask questions. I'll be happy to explain. I thought the edit summary on my initial undo of that page move should have made it very clear that moving the page again was not a good idea:

Page was moved based on this forum proposal viewtopic.php?p=172369#p172369 -- but proposals like that don't imply immediate name changes; it should take a year or two, with other community members besides the ones proposing the name, actually picking it up and using it.

Again: if in the next year or so, the term "caravan" starts getting used in conversations by lots of people who didn't propose the name change, then maybe it might be time to mention in the article that 'caravan' is a commonly used alias for '30P5H2V0'.

Even under those circumstances a year or more from now, it still probably wouldn't be a good idea to actually change the name of the article. The idea that the name needs to change is an extraordinary claim, so it would need extraordinary proof -- something along the lines of running a poll asking if the name should be changed, and getting several dozen responses with a supermajority in favor of the change.

-- Fair warning for "caravan" enthusiasts, though: please don't get your hopes up that a poll would turn out strongly in favor of 'caravan'. Naming campaigns generally just don't work out that way in practice, no matter how strong the name-proposers' opinions are on the subject.

[HerscheltheHerschel]

If anyone isn't clear on why the page can't be moved to "Caravan" at this time, please ask questions. I'll be happy to explain. I thought the edit summary on my initial undo of that page move should have made it very clear that moving the page again was not a good idea:

why can't it be moved

[dvgrn]

why can't it be moved

Long story short, it would set an absolutely terrible precedent.

One of the LifeWiki's declared purposes is to document CA-related terms and names that are in common use.

For "caravan", Haycat's summary wasn't at all accurate:

We ought to call the smallest 2c/5 spaceship Caravan - After a forum search, there have been 7 independent users using "Caravan" for this.

That's not what a forum search actually shows. I can only find one post actually using "caravan" -- and that was less than 24 hours ago.

Yes, there have been several users proposing the use of the word "caravan" as an alias for 30P5H2V0: muzik, Saka, and recently Haycat2009, HerscheltheHerschel, and b-engine.

Moosey, chenterodri, and johamwit can't be counted as advocates of "caravan". Some of them quoted muzik's suggestion, but Moosey suggested "pocketwatch" and "mobile home" instead -- and chenterodri seems to have suggested "Lost-in-the-space" or "Old-Robot" (it's a little hard to tell because the quote tags are apparently broken). johamwit suggested "Tooken".

Short Story Longer
Again, out of all of these previous mentions of "caravan", there has been only a single actual use of the term -- the one by b-engine, about a trick that only works in Symbiosis.

Proposals, no matter how many of them there are, are not "common use".

It's not clear that people could really write "caravan" today, with the meaning "30P5H2V0", and expect most readers to understand what they're talking about. Anyone who wants to be clear about their meaning, at this point, will probably just say "30P5H2V0". There's an existing article with that name, and many dozens of existing uses of the term.

Now, if someone had just invented 30P5H2V0 and wanted to name it "caravan", that would be a totally different story! But that's just plain not the case here. That spaceship already has a name, and it would make a big mess to try and change it.

Again, if people come back a year or two from now, and can point to lots of instances where people actually used the term "caravan" in conversations -- and the meaning was understood by everyone else in the community -- then that might be a good time to list "caravan" in the 30P5H2V0 article as a common alias. (It would probably take at least a few more years than that, with pretty much nobody using "30P5H2V0" any more, and pretty much everybody using "caravan", before it would make any sense to actually rename the article.)

But right now, the latest renaming proposal is just a couple of days old. There's no evidence that the term "caravan" is actually in common use. That pretty much means that "caravan" doesn't belong on the LifeWiki, and so nobody should attempt to add it for at least a year or two -- and not even then, unless the term actually starts getting used and not just mentioned or proposed.

Over-enthusiastic naming is far from being a new problem for the LifeWiki. Here's a post I wrote in 2019 giving fair warning about trying to get newly invented names added to the LifeWiki before they actually start being commonly used.

[dvgrn]

-- Also, this issue has gotten very silly very quickly.

@HerscheltheHerschel, no matter how much you disagree with a moderator's edits, please do not go around trying to continue edit wars by un-doing those edits.

That is exactly what you did a couple of hours ago, here and here and here and here.

Even if I had not been acting in my capacity as a moderator at the time, your decision to try to undo my undo of Haycat2009's changes -- after it had already been made very clear that those changes were controversial -- was a very clear step in the direction of a pointless edit war.

The next steps in LW:DR, after an issue has been shown to be controversial ... are supposed to be discussion and then escalation -- not just more pointless edits.

The next step is discussion, not editing -- a reminder for over-enthusiastic editors
I can't conveniently protect all of those pages -- but I can definitely start temporarily removing trusted flags until these kinds of problematic edits stop happening.

Just to make sure I'm being totally clear here: this is an official warning, in my capacity as moderator. Nobody should be changing "30P5V2H0" to "caravan" in LifeWiki articles, until and unless it becomes clear that the community has been convinced that that's a good idea.

Being bold and making experimental edits is a fine idea for non-controversial changes -- but being conservative is an equally good idea for changes that have turned out to be controversial.

As usual, there is absolutely no panic-inducing emergency here: the LifeWiki 34P5H2V0 (EDIT: 30P5H2V0, sorry) article in its current state is not even wrong. Everyone can afford to stop and talk things over -- and read LW:DR -- before jumping right in with more edits, due to some artificial emergency.

Notability of new names, as opposed to new patterns
EDIT: There wasn't any specific guidance in LifeWiki rules about the notability of proposed new names, as opposed to the notability of new patterns. I've tried adding a couple of paragraphs to the notability guidelines. Suggestions for improvements are welcome as usual.

[Haycat2009]

[ DELETED FOR A SILLY MISTAKE - I FORGOT THAT IT EXISTS ]

[confocaloid]

the LifeWiki 34P5H2V0 article in its current state is not even wrong.

Is that not wrong, as it does not exist?

https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?titl ... on=history
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=136594
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144161

[azulavoir]

random strings of letters and numbers

I think a lot of the pro-caravan people might not know how the systematic name is created - it's far from random.

If you know it's "the smallest 2c/5 orthogonal spaceship", then from that alone you can get that's its p5, and it travels 2 cells in that period. This gives you the "P5H2" part, and then since it's orthogonal it doesn't move at all perpendicular to its movement, so its vertical travel is 0. That's "P5H2V0". Then all that's left is to put the population in front.

Through all this I haven't seen anyone provide a rationale for the name "caravan." What about this ship makes it more... caravanesque than other ships? In Symbiosis, it can support a B-wave, which I could see using as a justification for the name in that rule, but in base Life?

[Haycat2009]

random strings of letters and numbers

I think a lot of the pro-caravan people might not know how the systematic name is created - it's far from random.

If you know it's "the smallest 2c/5 orthogonal spaceship", then from that alone you can get that's its p5, and it travels 2 cells in that period. This gives you the "P5H2" part, and then since it's orthogonal it doesn't move at all perpendicular to its movement, so its vertical travel is 0. That's "P5H2V0". Then all that's left is to put the population in front.

Through all this I haven't seen anyone provide a rationale for the name "caravan." What about this ship makes it more... caravanesque than other ships? In Symbiosis, it can support a B-wave, which I could see using as a justification for the name in that rule, but in base Life?

Silly me. But what do we do with objects that were given incorrect systematic names?

[dvgrn]

Silly me. But what do we do with objects that were given incorrect systematic names?

For the {n}P{p}H{x}V{y} systematic-name format, this happens so rarely that there may not even be a precedent to point to, to answer the question. Probably somebody would notice the problem very early on and say "Oops, that's not a 31P5H2V0, that's a 30P5H2V0" (or whatever), and then the name would get corrected.

More generally, for other types of systematic names, there isn't a single answer. It depends on whether there's a community consensus one way or another.

• Sometimes the incorrect name may be kept, if it has been widely used -- and if there seems to be a consensus that it would be more confusing to change the incorrect name than to keep it.
• Sometimes the incorrect name may get changed, usually with a LifeWiki redirect from the incorrect name to the correct name -- if there seems to be a consensus that it would be less confusing to change the incorrect name than to keep it.

Example
Here's a specific example that doesn't fit into either of the above categories -- not yet, anyway!

p26 glider shuttle and p31 glider shuttle are article names that I wanted to change back in July, because they don't match the definition of "shuttle". Shuttles (both real weaver's shuttles and CGoL shuttles) go back and forth, not round and round.

It doesn't seem like a consensus has appeared yet either for changing those names, or for keeping them the way they are. There were multiple objections (here and here) to the suggestion to rename those two articles. There also seemed to be a few people (including me) that thought it would be okay to rename those two articles to call them "p{n} dependent reflector loop" instead.*

So that was a case where a suggested edit was expected to be non-controversial, but turned out to be controversial after all.

The default action for controversial edits ... is not to make those edits until a wider discussion has taken place and a consensus can be reached (see LW:DR.) So those names haven't been changed.

* Two other more recently created names with the same problem seemed to be less controversial -- one of the above objections didn't apply:

The page p59 glider shuttle and p71 glider shuttle are created recently. For these two pages, I don't have a preference one way or another.

[confocaloid]

The recent renaming of the logarithmic replicator rule to a newly coined name not in common use is an example of a clearly controversial change, made before/without a wider discussion taking place, and without reaching consensus one way or another.

I'm aware that there was an executive decision by Nathaniel ( viewtopic.php?p=172942#p172942 ) and I did read LifeWiki:Dispute resolution
However, the executive decision arrived only after multiple attempts to push the new name to the wiki. And there is still no consensus one way or another. As it stands, that renaming story is a temporarily frozen conflict, likely to resurface again and again in different forms.

Good luck with convincing everyone that I'm wrong on this.

[...]
More generally, for other types of systematic names, there isn't a single answer. It depends on whether there's a community consensus one way or another.
[...]
So that was a case where a suggested edit was expected to be non-controversial, but turned out to be controversial after all.

The default action for controversial edits ... is not to edit anything until a wider discussion has taken place and a consensus can be reached (see LW:DR.) So those names haven't been changed.
[...]

[Haycat2009]

So what do we do with 20P2 and 21P2?

[confocaloid]

So what do we do with 20P2 and 21P2?

There was a discussion in thread for basic questions -

...
20P2 has 21 cells.
21P2 has 16 cells.
22P2 has 20 cells.
23P2 has 17 cells.
24P2 has 18 cells.
25P2 has 18 cells.
26P2 has 20 cells.

None of these objects seem to have those names in Achim Flammenkamp's census, or in Mark Niemiec's database, or on pentadecathlon.com, or in the Life Lexicon, or in any old email discussions that I can find.

I'd say this is an old non-standard naming convention left over from when the LifeWiki was first being created over a decade ago, and it's somehow persisted all this time without anyone noticing that they weren't real names. Let's switch over to naming those objects by apgcode, ASAP, and remove the redirects from "{n}P2".

I had always thought that these originally came from Achim's census - just arbitrary name assigned sequentially to various frequently-occurring P2s. I agree that the names are obsolescent, and should be deprecated.

[dvgrn]

The recent renaming of the logarithmic replicator rule to a newly coined name not in common use is an example of a clearly controversial change, made before/without a wider discussion taking place, and without reaching consensus one way or another... that renaming story is a temporarily frozen conflict, likely to resurface again and again in different forms.

Good luck with convincing everyone that I'm wrong on this.

Re: the sqrt replicator rule rename, related to the new dispute resolution procedures --

At the moment there doesn't seem to be any reason why anyone has to try to convince anyone else of anything.

As DroneBetter documented, there was a long-standing edit war on the topic of that renaming proposal, between the end of September until Nathaniel's December 10 executive decision. The disagreement resulted in a request for an executive decision. So Nathaniel made an executive decision.

So far no one seems to have chosen to follow the next step in LW:DR rules, to try to get the question escalated to the point where the admin/mod team takes a vote on the issue.

All of this seems like a very nice example of the LW:DR rules working exactly the way they are supposed to work. The renaming question hasn't filled up any more public discussion space since December 10. Maybe this is because the people involved have said everything that needs to be said already, and there's nothing particularly interesting left to discuss: the next step, if someone wanted to take it, would be an escalation step.

[Sokwe]

The recent renaming of the logarithmic replicator rule to a newly coined name not in common use is an example of a clearly controversial change, made before/without a wider discussion taking place, and without reaching consensus one way or another.

Regardless of whether that was the right decision, it represented a correction of an inaccuracy in the original name. By contrast, the change of 30P5H2V0 to "caravan" is arbitrary. For this reason, I do not view the two cases as analogous.

p26 glider shuttle and p31 glider shuttle are article names that I wanted to change back in July, because they don't match the definition of "shuttle". Shuttles (both real weaver's shuttles and CGoL shuttles) go back and forth, not round and round.

It doesn't seem like a consensus has appeared yet either for changing those names, or for keeping them the way they are. There were multiple objections (here and here) to the suggestion to rename those two articles. There also seemed to be a few people (including me) that thought it would be okay to rename those two articles to call them "p{n} dependent reflector loop" instead.*

So that was a case where a suggested edit was expected to be non-controversial, but turned out to be controversial after all.

* Two other more recently created names with the same problem seemed to be less controversial -- one of the above objections didn't apply:

The page p59 glider shuttle and p71 glider shuttle are created recently. For these two pages, I don't have a preference one way or another.

Unfortunately, the inaccurate "shuttle" naming goes back I believe to the "p49 glider shuttle" which appears to be my fault. In a sense, it's a naming convention I accidentally invented. I thought it was resolved when I moved the page to "p49 bouncer loop", but the p26, p31, p59, and p71 cases seem to have stuck around. Fortunately, the change appears uncontroversial in the p59 and p71 cases, so they can be fixed. Doubly fortunate that I discovered the p26 and p31 oscillators, so I declare by right of discovery that they be renamed to the proposed "p{n} dependent reflector loop" where {n} is their respective periods.

Note that in the cases of the p26 and p31 oscillators, no change was previously made, as a consensus to change the names had not been reached. This was the correct decision. However, in this case the original discoverer is making an executive decision to determine the names. This is a situation where a consensus is not needed, as the discoverer has the right (within reason) to name their discoveries.

Hopefully this forever clears up my silly mistake from over 14 years ago.

[dvgrn]

Fortunately, the change appears uncontroversial in the p59 and p71 cases, so they can be fixed. Doubly fortunate that I discovered the p26 and p31 oscillators, so I declare by right of discovery that they be renamed to the proposed "p{n} dependent reflector loop" where {n} is their respective periods.
...
Hopefully this forever clears up my silly mistake from over 14 years ago.

I've gone through and made the necessary changes in the four "p{n} glider shuttle" articles, and have re-uploaded seven relevant .cells and .rle files to the pattern collection.

I'm still working slowly through the process of changing links from various other articles. I should be done with that sometime today.

[Haycat2009]

Just moved 44P12.3 to Eye of Sauron, due to frequent usage (9 non-proposal posts, most posts that use 44P12.3 are 2021 and before). Disuss here if you want it to be reverted. (Ok, I will do it myself)

EDIT by dvgrn: moved this post to a thread better suited for discussion -- it was reported with the comment

"Not a suggested edit. The thread is not intended for extended discussion."

By the time most people would have had a chance to think about the post and respond to it, this was an "already completed edit" that would require a lot of cleanup if it had to be undone. As confocaloid mentions below, the proposed-move template -- plus waiting a more reasonable length of time -- would have been a much better way of handling this move. Please don't do this kind of thing again.

[confocaloid]

Just moved 44P12.3 to Eye of Sauron, due to frequent usage (9 non-proposal posts, most posts that use 44P12.3 are 2021 and before). Disuss here if you want it to be reverted.

I don't really understand why it seemed appropriate to edit multiple articles in quick succession to replace one name with another -- especially after performing a potentially controversial page move which was not previously proposed for discussion:
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=142969
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144703
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144704
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144705
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144706
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144707
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144708
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144709
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff ... did=144710

Especially with all the recent edit war stories over the naming, it is unlikely to be helpful to continue to do undiscussed page moves.

Please learn to use the proposed move template, and give time for others to provide feedback before performing large-scale changes.