Rule definition terminology

[Haycat2009]

[...] Conditions are Hensel notation configurations (4t, 2a, etc).

The string 'S4t' also can be used to specify a condition. Specifically, that is the following condition:
"the cell is currently alive and has four alive neighbours arranged like the T-pentomino inside the 3-by-3 neighbourhood".

It cannot. S4t is a transition as it is applied. Conditions are not applied like S4t.

[confocaloid]

[...]
It cannot. S4t is a transition as it is applied. Conditions are not applied like S4t.

I just explained in the previous post why it can. Read it again -- is anything unclear?

The condition S4t specifies more information than just '4t'. The former tells the current state of the cell, while the latter doesn't.

[H. H. P. M. P. Cole]

The trilogy of wiki pages is complete.

https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Transition_(disambiguation)
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Condition
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Transition_rule

I have changed the OCA:tlife and OCA:Pedestrian Life articles to use this terminology. There are many more pages that need to be changed.

[dvgrn]

There are many more pages that need to be changed.

There's a procedure for changing disputed changes, outlined in LW:DR. We haven't had much reason to make use of those rules recently, but this seems like a very good time to try them out.

Please immediately hit the Pause button on changing any more pages in the way that you've changed OCA:Tlife and several others up to 20P4. Those edits were violations of current LifeWiki rules, due to the standing executive decision about the OCA:Tlife page.

Try following LW:DR to see if the community thinks that it's a good idea to make your suggested changes to those disputed pages. Depending on the result of that LW:DR process, I'll either roll back your recent changes, or leave them as they are.

Please, @everybody else, don't make any further messes by doing any reverts or starting any edit wars on any of those pages. Let the appeal process work, if H. H. P. M. P. Cole wants to follow the LW:DR rules.

EDIT 6/6/2024: The appeal process has reached step 6 of LW:DR now. H. H. P. M. P. Cole has checked with another moderator (rowett) about overturning the existing executive decision; rowett agrees with the existing executive decision.

So the current message from the admin/mod team is that we should retain the existing uses of "transition" on the LifeWiki, and work on making those uses consistent and understandable -- until and unless a moderator shows up who disagrees with the executive decision, in which case we could try out step 7 of LW:DR.

EDIT: If other people besides confocaloid don't like the relatively new LW:DR system that includes moderators posting executive decisions about edit wars when that seems to be necessary, then please feel free to say so -- maybe we can improve the system somehow.

In the mean time, I'm planning to enforce the executive decision I made about OCA:Tlife, and later extended to other pages that use "transition" in the same sense -- until and unless someone uses LW:DR rules to overturn it.

If anyone besides confocaloid believes this nonsense about how that was somehow not an "actual" executive decision, please ask me questions about anything that is unclear! I'm happy to help resolve any confusion.

[confocaloid]

I do not see any significant issues with the recent edits. Looks like a good-faith attempt to actually "try something different" to make LifeWiki a better enclyclopedia of existing Life/CA-related knowledge.

[...] The result has consistently been awkward stalemates that leave the LifeWiki in an inconsistent state, where nobody seems to want to try any improvements for fear of unleashing a fresh flood of argument.

It's time to try something different.

[...] Do you have any suggestions for what could be done to help with my more immediate goal of making the existing LifeWiki uses of "transition" less confusing?

[...] To make the existing LifeWiki uses of the word 'transition' less confusing, I believe you should reconsider actually rewording some of those existing uses of that word. [...]

In particular,

[...] Those edits were violations of current forum rules, due to the standing executive decision about that page. [...]

The quoted claim is incorrect for at least two reasons.

1. Your post that you prefer to describe as "executive decision" says

   [...]
   Executive decision by dvgrn per LW:DR:
   Please don't use the definitions described here to justify changing existing uses of 'transition' in LifeWiki articles to 'condition'.
   [...]

   The recent edits did not use said definitions to justify changes. Hence your post does not really apply to them (regardless of whether or not that post can be considered an actual executive decision).
2. Your post that you prefer to describe as "executive decision" is made by you, while being involved in the disagreement as an actively participating side.
   For that reason, it's very hard to take seriously your claims that that post can possibly serve as an actual executive decision. An active participant of the dispute with specific preferences towards one of sides is highly unlikely to be able to distinguish good ideas from bad ideas.

[dvgrn]

I do not see any significant issues with the recent edits. Looks like a good-faith attempt to actually "try something different" to make LifeWiki a better [encyclopedia] of existing Life/CA-related knowledge.

It was indeed a good-faith attempt.

It doesn't do anything to make the existing LifeWiki uses of the word 'transition' less confusing, though! The only thing it does is to prematurely start the process of making those uses of 'transition' no longer exist at all -- before getting any kind of community buy-in about doing that. So it doesn't exactly answer the question I asked -- but that's okay.

I could be wrong, of course, but I doubt that that project is going to work out well, as things currently stand. It seems more likely that it's just going to start new edit wars. For example, Haycat2009's recent responses above are accurate renditions of calcyman's definitions of "transition" and "condition". It doesn't work to just wish away those objections by posting a "correction" that uses a different technical definition. It would have to be shown that there's some community agreement that calcyman's definitions shouldn't be used after all.

Last time this topic was active, ten-or-so people took the time to make posts that strongly suggested that they didn't think that transition -> condition changes to the LifeWiki should be made. It would be helpful if some or all of those people could just briefly mention what they think now, here on this thread. As far as I could tell, the community seemed to prefer the existing usage of "transition" by something like a three-to-one margin at least.

That seemed like classic edit war territory to me. So my executive decision was intended to hit the Pause button on edits until community opinion changed significantly.

Again, I could theoretically be wrong on this, but I don't think that community opinion has changed significantly. I don't have a strong opinion on this topic myself -- but I do have a strong interest in continuing to prevent silly pointless edit wars on this topic.

I do personally think that it's going to be much less confusing to keep the existing uses of "transition" and simply explain them, rather than going through with this wholesale terminology substitution project -- but I'm totally happy to defer to whatever the community wants.

If we reach the point where nobody objects to those transition -> condition changes being made any longer, I'll be happy to withdraw my existing executive decision.

... it's very hard to take seriously your claims that that post can possibly serve as an actual executive decision.

Please try harder to take this claim seriously. The claim is backed up by my current status as an active LifeWiki moderator, and the fact that I actually did make that executive decision. Claims that it is not an actual executive decision are just rule-breaking nonsense at this point.

I really really don't like removing trusted flags or instituting tempbans -- that all seems like a terrible waste of time. But I'm certainly willing to do that as needed, to get people's attention -- if the alternative is having to go back to the constant silly pointless edit wars that were happening on the LifeWiki before we instituted the LifeWiki:Dispute Resolution rules.

[confocaloid]

[...] The only thing it does is to prematurely start the process of making those uses of 'transition' no longer exist at all -- [...]

That's incorrect. A reason is simply because there's another thing it already did: creating new possibilities for resolving the dispute, in some other way that would not boil down to constant never-ending repetition of the same arguments followed by ignoring or dismissing those arguments.

What actually happens is another question.

[...] For example, Haycat2009's recent responses above are accurate renditions of calcyman's definitions of "transition" and "condition". [...]

That's incorrect. Those responses do not accurately reflect the ideas in that post.
In particular, it is unclear what "applied conditions" is supposed to mean; there's no sufficient explanation for the idea behind the word "applied".
Further, the following part doesn't make sense:

[...] Neither features a 6e condition, but both have a 2a condition of some sort and a 3i condition. [...] Life with the 4w condition can be either B34w/S23, B3/S234w, or B34w/S234w.

A reason is simply because every condition can actually appear in a pattern, no matter which set of rules you choose, as long as that condition is possible in principle.
The condition 4w can appear in a pattern that evolves according to the rules B3/S23.
The condition B6e can appear in a pattern that evolves according to the rules B/S012345678 (i.e. doesn't change).

Every possible condition can occur in a pattern, regardless of the set of rules. Every cellular automaton in a rulespace "features" or "has" every condition that's possible with the same neighbourhood.

Conway's Life (B3/S23) "features" or "has" all 18 fully specified neighbour-counting conditions, all 102 fully specified isotropic conditions, and all 512 fully-specified 3-by-3 conditions. It's just that some of those conditions are living conditions (i.e. either birth conditions or survival conditions), while other conditions aren't.

[...] If we reach the point where nobody objects to those [...] changes [...]

That's technically impossible, because at this point in this discussion it's perfectly clear that you will continue to object to those changes. That is clear, because you did state and re-state your preferences several times in this discussion. Your preferred "solution" basically amounts to being unnecessarily obsessive about "documenting existing usage" at the expense of clarity, intuitive understanding and ability to document existing knowledge.

Since you don't really want those changes, you will continue to object. That means it's impossible to reach the point where nobody objects to those changes.

[...] Please try harder to take this claim seriously. [...]

LifeWiki is not a glossary of common words/phrases. LifeWiki is a place to document existing knowledge about Life/CA.

As long as you continue to object (in whatever specific way) to that idea -- i.e., to clearly distinguishing between (a) common usage of words/phrases and (b) existing knowledge about Life/CA -- you can safely assume that I will continue to object to your so-called "executive decisions" on terminology-related issues where you are involved as a side. That's because I believe you lack sufficient understanding of such issues. Instead of helping, your actions end up being disruptive (by preventing further improvements and/or further productive discussion).

[dvgrn]

Since you don't really want those changes, you will continue to object. That means it's impossible to reach the point where nobody objects to those changes.

@confocaloid, stop trying to tell me what my motivations are, and stop trying to predict what I'm going to do. Your impressions and predictions are wildly inaccurate, and badly out of line with the forum rule about "assuming the best".

I'm sorry that I used the phrase "If we reach the point where nobody objects...". That version of the statement was perfectly true, but it allows for the above logic-chopping objection. It's clearer to say

If we reach the point where there's a consensus in favor of making those transition -> condition changes, then I'll be very happy to withdraw my existing executive decision.

Consensus doesn't require unanimity. What I personally think doesn't matter any more than what any other single community member personally thinks -- so please stop going on about that irrelevant point.

This is a public statement from me, telling everyone what I will do in the event of a major community change of opinion on this issue.

Now all you have to do is make that change of opinion actually happen, and provide some evidence that it has happened. You and H. H. P. M. P. Cole seem to have skipped the part about convincing the rest of the community, and have attempted to go straight on to making the changes that you want to make.

You've certainly repeated your arguments plenty of times -- but how many people have responded to all that repetition, to say that they've changed their minds?

[confocaloid]

[...] making those transition -> condition changes [...]

That's a misrepresentation of my position. A reason is simply because I believe that

• some occurrences of 'transition' should instead be changed to 'transition rule',
• some other occurrences of 'transition' should indeed be changed to 'condition',
• some other occurrences of 'transition' should be left unchanged,
• some other occurrences of 'transition' should be completely reworded, beyond the point where it would make any sense to talk about word/phrase replacements.

The part "those transition -> condition changes" is an incorrect explanation of the issue under discussion.

You could avoid this, by actually trying to understand the ideas behind words and phrases, and the reasons why some wording is more intuitive or self-explanatory, while other wording is counterintuitive or misleading.

I think it's unfortunate that, despite all preceding attempts at a discussion, you apparently never understood that the issue isn't about mechanical word/phrase substitutions. The issue is about clarity, intuitive understanding, and documenting existing knowledge about Life/CA in an accessible form.

[dvgrn]

The part "those transition -> condition changes" is an incorrect explanation of the issue under discussion.

Sorry, this is just more irrelevant logic-chopping.

Please substitute "those transition -> {something else} changes" for my previous wording. The basic message remains exactly the same.

In fact, however, the series of changes that H. H. P. M. P. Cole made recently ... really did change "transition" to "condition". So the existing executive decision really does apply, even if you insist on reading it absolutely literally instead of trying to understand the intent behind the executive decision -- which is to avoid pointless edit wars.

[confocaloid]

[...]
Sorry, this is just more irrelevant logic-chopping.
[...]
[...] even if you insist on reading it absolutely literally instead of trying to understand the intent behind the executive decision -- which is to avoid pointless edit wars.

What you describe as "logic chopping" is something that I consider an important relevant issue.

The fact that you are consistently misrepresenting my position and the issues at hand, by itself, suggests that you're misunderstanding my position and the issues at hand.
A person who does not understand an issue should not attempt to moderate the issue. Without understanding, it is impossible to help, and very easy to destroy, regardless of intents.

[dvgrn]

[...]
Sorry, this is just more irrelevant logic-chopping.
[...]
[...] even if you insist on reading it absolutely literally instead of trying to understand the intent behind the executive decision -- which is to avoid pointless edit wars.

What you describe as "logic chopping" is something that I consider an important relevant issue.

The fact that you are consistently misrepresenting my position and the issues at hand, by itself, suggests that you're misunderstanding my position and the issues at hand.
A person who does not understand an issue should not attempt to moderate the issue. Without understanding, it is impossible to help, and very easy to destroy, regardless of intents.

I've read all of your posts quite carefully. As far as I can tell, I understand your position and the issues at hand very well.

The problem is that there's a critical difference between understanding your position and agreeing with you that the solution you're proposing is actually workable in practice -- given the current lack of consensus in the community on this issue.

You haven't demonstrated in any way that there's a new consensus in favor of removing existing uses of "transition" from LifeWiki articles. Demonstrate that, and I'll happily rescind my executive decision.

Meanwhile, I think I'll try to stop responding to these inappropriate attacks for the time being. Apologies to other readers of this thread for my part in contributing to the noise.

[confocaloid]

[...]
I've read all of your posts quite carefully. As far as I can tell, I understand your position and the issues at hand very well. [...]

I cannot confirm that. In fact, as far as I can tell at this point, you did not understand the topic.

[...]
The problem is that there's a critical difference between understanding your position and agreeing with you that the solution you're proposing is actually workable in practice -- given the current lack of consensus in the community on this issue.
[...]

I think the actual problem is that it is impossible to understand the consensus on some issue, without actually understanding that issue first.

[...] the intent behind the executive decision -- which is to avoid pointless edit wars.

[...] Now all you have to do is make that change of opinion actually happen, and provide some evidence that it has happened. [...]

Without understanding the issue at hand, you cannot help with the goal of "avoiding pointless edit wars":

• When people talk to you to explain their opinion on the topic, you will not understand their opinions, simply due to not understanding the topic.
• When "that change of opinion" on the topic happens, you will be unable to see it, for the same reason.
• When someone collects some evidence relevant to the topic, you will be unable to understand it, for the same reason.

I know that some of the "will" above already happened multiple times in recent terminology-related discussions. I don't currently have a sufficient reason to list those cases specifically one-by-one, in part because I'm pretty sure that that will be ignored or dismissed without understanding.

[Haycat2009]

I do not get it - why are there so many interpretations of Transition VS Condition?

For example,
There is me + calcyman - B4t transition, 4t condition.
There is confocaloid + Harfordson Parker-Cole (this is not supposed to be an attack) - All are conditions
There is HerscheltheHerschel - Tough times call for changes
There are many others - most are transitions

[H. H. P. M. P. Cole]

Here is my position on this matter.

If the LifeWiki has internally consistent terminology then I personally feel that there is no problem. Personally I see no problem with changing the wording of articles as long as the articles are internally consistent with each other.

Suppose I made up a word "tressiancontlam" to mean something, say a large still life. Then one could say:

A 14-glider synthesis of [[tressiancontlam]]

with the appropriate link to where the term is first defined. Ideally such terminology, being dependent on each other, should not depend on each other cyclically (i.e. term a needs term b to be defined and term b needs term a to be defined without a suitable term c that occurs in the definition of both a and b).

How does this relate to the current discussion? The current usage of 'transition' in the CA community now is ambiguous, and often depends on context/user. I think a simple and unambiguous (but not necessarily popular) terminology would work better in an encyclopaedic site like the LifeWiki than a mostly ambiguous terminology which depends heavily on context.

[iddi01]

I have no problem with either terminology, but it's gonna be very hard for the thousands of people in this forum to change the way they speak, so i'm on the side of "transition".

Also, i think "condition" sounds a bit weird when left alone ("B4w condition") but makes more sense when paired with another word like "birth" or "survival" ("birth condition B4w").

[rowett]

[...]
I've read all of your posts quite carefully. As far as I can tell, I understand your position and the issues at hand very well. [...]

I cannot confirm that. In fact, as far as I can tell at this point, you did not understand the topic.

[...]
The problem is that there's a critical difference between understanding your position and agreeing with you that the solution you're proposing is actually workable in practice -- given the current lack of consensus in the community on this issue.
[...]

I think the actual problem is that it is impossible to understand the consensus on some issue, without actually understanding that issue first.

This post is in breach of forum rule #1. Please be careful how you word your posts, especially when you don't agree with someone. There will often be differences of opinion. It's not OK to continue to restate the issue or attack the other side if they disagree with you.

[confocaloid]

I have no problem with either terminology, but it's gonna be very hard for the thousands of people in this forum to change the way they speak, [...]

To clarify: the main question at hand is how to document / explain existing knowledge in the LifeWiki.
For that purpose, it is completely unnecessary to change the way people speak on the forums.

People will always discuss the same ideas in multiple different ways, that will often conflict with each other.
LifeWiki can and should collect existing knowledge about Life/CA in a self-consistent form that helps the readers to understand things better, gain deeper understanding, without requiring unnecessary efforts while reading.

See also LifeWiki:About, LifeWiki:Style guide.

Here is my position on this matter. [...]

I mostly agree, with a caveat.

If someone made up a new name for some specific object (e.g. for some specific large still life) or some specific discovery (e.g. some specific engineered spaceship), then that name would refer to that particular object or discovery.
Names of specific things can be (and often are) mostly arbitrary; there's no requirement for an "assigned name" to be "meaningful".

In contrast, terms that can be used to refer to many different things (such as 'pattern', 'transition rule', 'reaction', 'quadratic growth') should be meaningful. Such terminology should help the reader to understand the ideas behind the words and phrases. It is a big advantage when such terminology is self-explanatory and helps intuitive understanding.

[...]
How does this relate to the current discussion? The current usage of 'transition' in the CA community now is ambiguous, and often depends on context/user. I think a simple and unambiguous (but not necessarily popular) terminology would work better in an encyclopaedic site like the LifeWiki than a mostly ambiguous terminology which depends heavily on context.

I agree. This discussion is about terminology to be used in the LifeWiki to refer to (and distinguish from each other)

• conditions (such as "the cell is currently alive and has three alive neighbours"),
• state-to-state transitions (such as "the cell is born in the next generation"),
• transition rules (such as "if the cell is currently alive and has at least one alive neighbour then the cell will die in the next generation"),
• and potentially other relevant "types of entities".

Each of these is a term applicable to many different "things", rather than an "assigned name" referring to some specific pattern or discovery.
There are many different conditions, many different transition rules, and many different transitions.
This separates the current discussion from discussions about names of specific patterns or discoveries.

[H. H. P. M. P. Cole]

I have exchanged several PMs between confocaloid, dvgrn, and rowett regarding this issue, and the conclusion is that the mods' decision will be to not change the terminology (and as a result, occurences of 'transition') in the LifeWiki.

This situation is too much for me to handle on my own, dvgrn has been asking me terribly hard administrative questions, and overall this discussion has been devolving into two political 'parties' with one thinking that the other is just plain wrong without consideration of their opinions, possibly not considering that the other might be right.

I am unable to cope with this situation anymore. Others, feel free to improve the Transition (disambiguation), Condition and Transition rule articles. With this in mind, I will disengage from this argument, possibly forever.

Meet me again when I do some actual CA exploration.

(As I type this I am crying in my room, thinking about what kind of a mess I have gotten myself into. I hope that I have contributed something productive in this discussion.)

[confocaloid]

Meet me again when I do some actual CA exploration.

Completely understandable.

I think it's unfortunate that questions that could lead to an impersonal technical discussion, instead lead to something very similar to a political dispute.
Mathematics can be recreational, intuitive and fun, while still remaining clear, precise and honest.

[dvgrn]

Meet me again when I do some actual CA exploration.

Completely understandable.

I think it's unfortunate that questions that could lead to an impersonal technical discussion, instead lead to something very similar to a political dispute.
Mathematics can be recreational, intuitive and fun, while still remaining clear, precise and honest.

I agree heartily with everything confocaloid has said here.

Furthermore, @H. H. P. M. P. Cole, please don't worry in the slightest about having made any kind of a mess. As I said in private messages recently, it seems really helpful that you moved the discussion forward with the three new pages you created.

It was also even more helpful that you tried out the LW:DR rules for escalating this issue to another moderator (Chris Rowett in this case) -- and listened to the feedback that came back. These executive decisions and appeals are terribly blunt tools, and we'd rather just never have to use them at all.

But unfortunately, from the admin/mod team's point of view, following LW:DR rules is the best chance we have of encouraging impersonal technical discussions -- as opposed to the long-drawn-out edit wars that were happening before LW:DR was instituted.

So ... thanks again for giving all of this a try! And I am sorry that I've had to ask you terribly hard administrative questions. It's just that those were the questions that were raised when you started editing pages in ways that ignored the existing executive decision.

[dvgrn]

Okay -- here's what I've attempted so far, to get LifeWiki articles back to a more consistent state after rowett gave a second moderator opinion, supporting the "keep existing uses of 'transition'" executive decision that I made a few months back. EDIT: I've updated the link, now that there's a public post from rowett to link to; see below for a quotation giving the original link.

LW:DR rules aren't going to be able to stop edit wars effectively, if people are able to simply ignore executive decisions and make edits anyway. So I've rolled back several edits that added the term "transition rule" in place of existing uses of "transition" in LifeWiki articles. Notes on the details of those edits are appended below.

I've left the three new pages completely unchanged for now -- Transition rule, Condition, and Transition (disambiguation). I've added a link to "Condition" in an article or two, where that seemed to make sense.

Change of plans on "transition rule" ...
I was originally thinking of using that "Transition rule" article location for the explanation of "transition" in the sense that it's currently used in many places in LifeWiki articles (e.g., the seventeen uses in the Hensel notation article).

However, I didn't want to overwrite H. H. P. M. P. Cole's new page with that name, once it was created. Also, I've done quite a lot more research on the past usage of "transition rule" now. I think that I might have dodged a bullet on that one! -- I no longer think it's a good place to put my "green writeup" definition of "transition".

I'm no longer sure that "transition rule" is actually used (on the forums or the LifeWiki or anywhere else) often enough and consistently enough for that definition to work on the LifeWiki. However, that's a separate post, which I can finish writing up tomorrow probably.

Meanwhile, I've experimentally posted a version of the "green writeup" at Transition (rule definition). This is intended to be the specific definition of "transition", in the sense of "an elementary component of a rulestring or ruletable", that is in current use on a couple dozen LifeWiki pages.

Five links added from articles' use of "transition" to "Transition (rule definition)"
As I was rolling back the "transition rule" links in these articles --

https://conwaylife.com/wiki/OCA:Tlife
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/OCA:Pedestrian_Life
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Pedestrian_Life/Snippet
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Block_cellular_automaton
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/20P4
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/OCA:HighFlock
EDIT 6/8/2024: Completed the sixth article rework, as described in the notes below:
https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Tutorials/C ... stom_rules

-- I experimentally linked just the first instance of "transition" in each article to the new "Transition (rule definition)" page (except one, where a link wasn't appropriate). I mostly kept the "transition" wording in those edited articles the same as it was before the recent round of edits moving to the "transition rule" phrase. However, there certainly were various unrelated improvements made by H. H. P. M. P. Cole and other editors that I was careful to keep, and also some errors that I noticed and fixed along the way -- like the broken citation that had been in the 20P4 article since mid-March. So I think none of these edits were actually a simple "undo".

Anyone can feel free to improve that new "Transition (rule definition)" page further -- remove redundancies, split it into multiple pages, explain things differently, whatever. The page currently says more or less what I think I'd like it to say... but I definitely admit that I'm not the most succinct explainer-of-things in the world.

If that page ends up getting edited eventually to go into less (or more) detail, that will be just fine with me. My goal here is to somehow make it possible for someone who is reading, say, the Hensel-notation article, who isn't sure what "transition" means in the context in which it's used on that page ... to have a nice link that they can click to learn more about that term.

Notes on edits

Code: Select all

-- added more detail to several of the examples in the "green writeup"
-- created a new article called "transition (rule definition)" and put the edited "green writeup" there.
-- changed "transition rule" terminology back to "transition" in several articles.

-- changed terminology back to "transition" in [b]OCA:Tlife[/b]. The edits here mentioned the complementary transitions "A6", "A7", and "D2i"; the "A" and "D" prefixes aren't described anywhere on the LifeWiki, I don't think, except a passing mention now in the [[Transition (rule definition)]] article. The explanations didn't seem to need any mention of "A" and "D" transitions; given the lack of documentation or common usage, I would have to guess that those mentions would cause a lot more confusion than they would prevent. This article had several consecutive links to "transition rule"; standard practice would be to link just the first use of any term.

-- changed terminology back to "transition" in [b]OCA:Pedestrian_Life[/b]. "Transition rule" was linked twice in this article; standard practice would be to link only the first instance of each term.

-- changed terminology back to "transition" in [b]Pedestrian_Life/Snippet[/b] -- only one of two uses of "transition" had been changed to "condition", leaving the article a bit inconsistent.

-- changed terminology to "transition function" in [b]Block_cellular_automaton[/b] -- I think that "transition rule" was being used there to mean something more like "the overall CA rule", so a link to the new "transition rule" definition wasn't appropriate here.

-- changed terminology back to "transition" in [b]20P4[/b]
-- changed terminology back to "transition" in [b]OCA:HighFlock[/b]; only one of two existing uses of "transition" was changed

TODO:  (EDIT: completed 6/8/2024)  Changed terminology back to "transition" in [b]Tutorials/Creating_custom_rules[/b]. A lot of wording improvements had been made in this article, so it was important to keep those and make more improvements -- a simple revert would have been much too blunt a weapon to use here. "Transition rule" was linked many times in this same article; standard practice would be to link only the first instance of each term, to avoid too much "link clutter".

[confocaloid]

[...]
EDIT 6/6/2024: The appeal process has reached step 6 of LW:DR now. H. H. P. M. P. Cole has checked with another moderator (rowett) about overturning the existing executive decision; rowett agrees with the existing executive decision.
[...]

[...]
Okay -- here's what I've attempted so far, to get LifeWiki articles back to a more consistent state after rowett gave a second moderator opinion, [...]

That's incorrect. You are linking to your own post, where you claimed (in an edit) something.

As far as I know, rowett didn't [yet] themselves post their current opinion on the issue. Until and unless they choose to publicly communicate their current opinion on the matter, I believe it's incorrect and misleading to claim that they "gave a second moderator opinion". They didn't.

Added later: see viewtopic.php?p=187171#p187171 for an update on the above.

[...]
Meanwhile, I've experimentally posted a version of the "green writeup" at Transition (rule definition). This is intended to be the specific definition of "transition", in the sense of "an elementary component of a rulestring or ruletable", that is in current use on a couple dozen LifeWiki pages.
[...]
-- I experimentally linked just the first instance of "transition" in each article to the new "Transition (rule definition)" page (except one, where a link wasn't appropriate). [...]

There is currently no observable consensus for linking those occurrences of the word 'transition' to your proposed "green writeup", among those people who posted something about your "green writeup" specifically.

There is currently also no observable consensus that would support your claim that "an elementary component of a rulestring or ruletable" correctly reflects the intended meaning behind those occurrences of the word 'transition', among people who posted something on this so far.

Further, there is existing evidence of disagreement with your idea to add those links to your "green writeup":
viewtopic.php?p=186665#p186665
viewtopic.php?p=186668#p186668

[dvgrn]

I've already addressed confocaloid's various complaints above, to the best of my ability, in previous posts.

I've reported the above post as a violation of forum rules. If I've overstepped any bounds, or if confocaloid has, or if we both have ... then it is up to the rest of the admin/moderator team to let us know that.

I'm no longer sure that "transition rule" is actually used (on the forums or the LifeWiki or anywhere else) often enough and consistently enough for that definition to work on the LifeWiki. However, that's a separate post, which I can finish writing up tomorrow probably.

By now I have done quite a bit of research on past uses of the term "transition rule" in forum posts, and before that in 1972 LIFELINE. I'd like to report the results of that research here, since it has made me change my mind about the compromise solution that I was trying to work out.

Recap
A week or so ago I suggested a compromise where I wouldn't try creating a definition page under Transition, to help explain existing LifeWiki uses of "transition".

Instead I started from confocaloid's statement that the thing that I was trying to define in my "green writeup" was traditionally called a "transition rule".  I did some quick searches, and thought I had found some evidence that the use of "transition" could plausibly have evolved from the longer term "transition rule", with maybe "transition function" and "transition table" thrown in there somewhere.

After that quick sanity check I pretty much took confocaloid's word, that what I was trying to define was "traditionally called a 'transition rule'."

H. H. P. M. P. Cole then created a new page with a competing definition under "transition rule" -- which was the location where I had suggested putting my "green writeup". It seemed kind of rude to replace that text with my own, so I didn't do that.

Back to the drawing board...
Well... I now think that H. H. P. M. P. Cole's work might have helped me dodge a bullet on "transition rule", anyway! It doesn't seem like "transition rule" is actually used very often or very consistently, on the forums or the LifeWiki or anywhere else. So I no longer want to try to suggest trying to use it in some kind of compromise solution.

First, on the forums and in existing articles on the LifeWiki, the total number of uses of "transition rule" is quite small, compared to the number of times that just plain "transition" is used in the precise sense that I'm trying to define.

Second, when "transition rule" does get used, it's only about half the time (very roughly) that it's used with the meaning of "elementary component of a rulestring or ruletable". See below for details. The rest of the time, it refers to something significantly different -- often an entire composite CA rule, not just one elementary piece of it.

The attempt at a compromise
I had tried to settle on the term "transition rule" specifically because confocaloid had mentioned it as being "traditional". I was hoping that a definition of "transition rule" would be less controversial than a definition of "transition", while still allowing newcomers to understand how "transition" is being used in current LifeWiki articles.

I hadn't quite realized that a such a major part of the judgment of traditional usage was the September 1972 LIFELINE newsletter. That description is over a half century old, and it actually describes Life rules in quite an unusual way -- in terms of birth and death, rather than birth and survival. I've looked it over again, and I can't see how the terminology used there can really be much help to us in explaining details of rule explorations and discoveries on the modern-day LifeWiki.

The LIFELINE folks maybe didn't have any need yet in 1972, for the vocabulary that people are using now in 2024. But even if the LIFELINE terminology can be shown to be "better" by some metrics ... unfortunately that doesn't mean that completely ignoring current terminology is a good plan. Setting the clock back fifty years on rule definition terminology still honestly doesn't even look possible to me, let alone desirable.

Survey results with links
Of about fifty pages of forum posts that currently contain both words "transition" and "rule", I've gone through the ten oldest pages looking for places where the phrase "transition rule" is actually used.  I did a similar survey of the ten oldest pages of the thirty-four that contain "transition" and "rules".  This covers the period from 2009 up to roughly the end of 2017.

Code: Select all

Here are all of the cases that I found between 2009 and 2017,
where "transition rule" or "transition rules" are used to mean
something similar to "CA rule":

calcyman -- 2010:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=440&p=2737&hilit=transition+rule#p2737
quote from Paul Callahan from 1997:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=448&p=2815&hilit=transition+rule#p2815
Tropylium -- 2011:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=684&p=4865&hilit=transition+rule#p4865
alexv, 2014:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1293&p=10812&hilit=transition+rule#p10812
shouldsee and dvgrn, 2016:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=803&p=30929&hilit=transition+rule#p30929
Naszvadi, 2016:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2233&p=38206&hilit=transition+rule#p38206
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2598&p=38406&hilit=transition+rule#p38406

dvgrn, 2016 -- "transition rules":
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2202&p=30931&hilit=transition+rules#p30931

wildmyron, 2016 -- "transition rules":
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036&p=36666&hilit=transition+rules#p36666

Naszvadi, 2017:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2995&p=47179&hilit=transition+rule#p47179

Macbi, 2018:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3247&p=56049&hilit=transition+rule#p56049

Here are all of the cases that I found between 2009 and 2017 on the forums,
where "transition rule" is used to mean something along the lines of
"an elementary component of a rulestring or rule table":

Wojowu -- 12 December 2011:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=314&p=5714&hilit=transition+rule#p5714
Not sure about Wowoju's usage on 14 March 2013, but I'll include it for completeness:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=853&p=6397&hilit=transition+rules#p6397

Extrementhusiast and Andrew used "transition rules" to mean single lines of rule tables, also in 2011:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=681&p=4780&hilit=transition+rules#p4780
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=527&p=4258&hilit=transition+rules#p4258

I used "transition rules" a couple of times in 2014 to mean single lines of rule tables:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=999&p=14928&hilit=transition+rules#p14928
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=279&p=13143&hilit=transition+rules#p13143

Rocknlol used "transition rule" in 2017:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2030&p=38906&hilit=transition+rule#p38906
The same post also seems to use the term "transition" on its own to mean the same thing, though.
So that one doesn't seem like strong evidence of consistent usage of "transition rule" to mean things like "B3" or "S4j".

Andrew used "transition rules" in 2017:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2932&p=47216&hilit=transition+rules#p47216

After that there are uses by twinb7 and by Paul Callahan, involving relatively rare topics --
tag systems and Wang tiles:
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2706&p=39693&hilit=transition+rule#p39693
https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2868&p=43662&hilit=transition+rule#p43662

This partial survey got me to somewhere around the end of 2017. I was pretty careful and thorough, so if I've accidentally missed collecting any documentable uses -- besides, e.g., quotes or repetitions of the same usage in the same threads -- I think they're pretty rare.

By 2018 I started having to sort through a large number of false positives -- the word "rule" somewhere else on the same page as the isolated word "transition" used in in the exact sense that I'm trying to get documented and explained, describing things like "B3" or "S4j".  It seems to be quite rare nowadays to find actual uses of the phrase "transition rule" or "transition rules" with that intended meaning. But I definitely didn't do the full survey up to 2024 -- that would have taken days instead of hours, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have changed the overall picture.

I highly recommend that anyone interested in this topic should try doing their own searches for uses of "transition rule" on the forums, and draw their own conclusions from what they find.

Long story short, the above survey seems to be telling me that "transition rule" is an ambiguous term. Even a decade ago it was only being used to mean "an elementary component of a rulestring or ruletable" about half the time.

-- Now, I don't have any objection to "transition rule" being ambiguous, of course, as long as the meaning is clear from context! I think I was able to deduce the context successfully on a quick reading, in most or all of the linked cases below -- so there's no real problem there.

I just don't see how that particular term can work as a replacement for the existing uses of "transition" on the LifeWiki.

[confocaloid]

I've already addressed confocaloid's various complaints above, to the best of my ability, in previous posts. [...]

I disagree. I believe many issues relevant to the topic remain unaddressed.

LifeWiki is different from the forums (different purpose, different content, different target audience). Some relevant issues are consequences of that. Those issues remain unaddressed.

The Life/CA community is larger than just active people on the ConwayLife.com website. People are exploring and discussing CA outside this website. It is counterproductive to reject relevant knowledge merely because it happened to be shared outside these forums. These issues remain unaddressed.

For supporting something said in the wiki, two or three external CA-related sources that discuss the relevant concepts can easily suffice, beating dozens of forum posts with chitchat conversations and vague counterintuitive wording.

As I already wrote, there is currently no observable consensus regarding the changes that you're pushing to the LifeWiki with your recent edits, and there is existing evidence of disagreement with those your changes.

[...] A week or so ago I suggested a compromise where I wouldn't try creating a definition page under Transition, to help explain existing LifeWiki uses of "transition". [...] I was hoping that a definition of "transition rule" would be less controversial than a definition of "transition", while still allowing newcomers to understand how "transition" is being used in current LifeWiki articles. [...]

I disagree with describing that as a "compromise". Your specific proposed action (i.e., creating a page named "transition rule" aiming to define the concept of a transition rule, but avoiding use of the defined term through that page and instead using the local jargon 'transition') was not a viable compromise. As I previously tried to explain, doing that would only add to confusion. That would fail to solve any of the stated problems; the page would fail to "explain the usage", and the page would also fail to document the underlying concept and the relevant knowledge.

[...] Instead I started from confocaloid's statement that the thing that I was trying to define in my "green writeup" was traditionally called a "transition rule".  I did some quick searches, and thought I had found some evidence that the use of "transition" could plausibly have evolved from the longer term "transition rule", with maybe "transition function" and "transition table" thrown in there somewhere. [...]

[...] Of about fifty pages of forum posts that currently contain both words "transition" and "rule", I've gone through the ten oldest pages looking for places where the phrase "transition rule" is actually used.  I did a similar survey of the ten oldest pages of the thirty-four that contain "transition" and "rules".  This covers the period from 2009 up to roughly the end of 2017. [...]

Further evidence can be found in external CA-related sources that discuss the same ideas using the same terminology. I already posted about that and provided some links:

[...]
To avoid misunderstanding, I'd like to clarify that this terminology is old. It is not created by someone on these forums. The wider Life/CA community uses the same words and phrases to refer to the same ideas.

So it's not quite correct to refer to this as "proposed terminology" -- the terminology is already in use.

Below I'm crossposting links to some sources (and to forum posts with more links/quotes). Those sources are CA-related, and use 'condition', 'transition rule', 'transition', 'rule' to refer to the same ideas.

[...]
https://web.archive.org/web/20230928182 ... ary_03.htm
https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?titl ... 314#Page_2
https://web.archive.org/web/20040323172 ... ndixA.html

[...]
viewtopic.php?p=171596#p171596
viewtopic.php?p=171671#p171671
viewtopic.php?p=172091#p172091
[...]

Unfortunately AFAICT those sources were not taken into account, and were essentially ignored by the other side of this debate.

[...] First, on the forums and in existing articles on the LifeWiki, the total number of uses of "transition rule" is quite small, compared to the number of times that just plain "transition" is used in the precise sense that I'm trying to define. [...]

In conversations on the forums, just plain "transition" is rarely used in any precise sense. Many occurrences of the word on the forums are vague local jargon that relies on assumptions that no longer hold on the wiki.

Self-explanatory wording is always better than confusing wording; "the number of times" some word occurs on the forums is irrelevant.

Writing a definition does not make the wording any more self-explanatory. Whether or not you write a formal definition, it remains confusing and counterintuitive to use the single word 'transition' to refer to the idea of a transition rule saying that a certain transition happens whenever a certain condition on states of cells in the current generation is met.

[...] The rest of the time, it refers to something significantly different -- often an entire composite CA rule, not just one elementary piece of it. [...]

I disagree with "significantly different".

Intuitively, it remains the same idea. A transition rule is a way to prescribe how the cellular automaton behaves. The same intuition continues to work, whether there's just a single transition rule covering all possibilities, or whether there's a set of transition rules covering all possible situations without ambiguities or contradictions.

Logically, using just a single transition rule can be viewed as an extension of the same idea. When a transition rule is the "entire composite CA rule", it can also be decomposed into a condition and a transition. In this case, the condition becomes completely unspecified (and therefore the condition is always met, regardless of the states of any cells in the current generation), and the transition that happens is determined by evaluating a function taking the current states of some cells as inputs.

For example, Conway's Game of Life can be written as a single transition rule:

If (the cell's current state is c) and (the number of alive neighbours of the cell is n)
then the transition f(c, n) will happen in the next tick.

Code: Select all

def f(c, n):
   if n == 3:
      return (c, 1)
   if (c == 1) and (n == 2):
      return (1, 1)
   return (c, 0)

[...] the September 1972 LIFELINE newsletter. That description is over a half century old, and it actually describes Life rules in quite an unusual way -- in terms of birth and death, rather than birth and survival. I've looked it over again, and I can't see how the terminology used there can really be much help to us in explaining details of rule explorations and discoveries on the modern-day LifeWiki. [...]

That terminology is helpful because it is self-explanatory and intuitive.

Despite your repeated claims, there were no big changes on this topic since 1972. Just because people are now discussing multistate CA with rules that can "see" higher-range neighbours and can distinguish between different configurations of neighbours, doesn't in any way invalidate either the underlying concepts or the terminology in use. Regardless of the rulespace, there are transition rules that prescribe how the CA works; there are transitions that happen; there are conditions that must be met for a transition to happen.

Further, the distinction between "birth/death" versus "birth/survival" is not relevant here. Both possibilities are valid. There's nothing unusual in choosing "birth/death", either; indeed, RuleLoader ruletables assume either "abstain" or "survive" by default, unless one of lines in the ruletable specifies a transition rule whose condition matches the current condition of the cell.

[...] But even if the LIFELINE terminology can be shown to be "better" by some metrics ... unfortunately that doesn't mean that completely ignoring current terminology is a good plan. Setting the clock back fifty years on rule definition terminology still honestly doesn't even look possible to me, let alone desirable. [...]

Again, you are misrepresenting the position of the other side of the dispute.

The part "completely ignoring current terminology" is a misrepresentation. As I already wrote, explaining the usage is a different task that should be handled separately. One task is to define the underlying concepts; another task is to explain the current usage of words and phrases.

The part "Setting the clock back..." is a misrepresentation. As I already wrote, the same concepts were discussed using the same terminology in later CA-related sources after 1972. Both the concept of a transition rule and the related terminology are old, were in use, and still remain in use.

[...] I just don't see how that particular term can work as a replacement for the existing uses of "transition" on the LifeWiki.

In that case, I suggest to consider the possibility that someone else can see something you don't see.

Self-explanatory intuitive terminology that was in use for several decades is better than some relatively recent vague local forum jargon.
The term 'transition rule' correctly tells to the reader that the underlying idea is a rule that prescribes something. It definitely can work on LifeWiki, and it can be helpful there.

In contrast, your preferred choice fails that criterion. Following the local habit of (mis)using the word 'transition' to refer to a transition rule is counterintuitive and unhelpful.