ConwayLife.com

When you are working with an unknown oscillator, what should its code be? I mean, which phase of the oscillation should be taken into account bearing in mind that it can start at any time?
For example, (an easy example) the blinker should be horizontally placed or vertically positioned? Because for more complex oscillators you can have a bad time when looking for information due to the specific generation you looked for.

For larger oscillators, at LifeWiki we normally use the phase with the smallest population count.