Talk:Mazing

The "box" says Mazing has volatility .92, but actually the volatility is 1.00. (Mazing has 26 cells in its rotor, of which 24 have period 4 and 2 have period 2. Thus its _strict_ volatility is 24/26=.92, but its _volatility_ is 26/26.)

This error has caused Mazing not to be listed on the page of oscillators with volatility 1.

-- Don Knuth (I'm sorry that I don't know how to edit a box).

Cleanup

User:Confocal, I don't see any mention of inline links in the style guide pages. --Galoomba (talk) 23:00, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I think partly this is because (a) the help pages were last updated several years ago, (b) the help pages try to explain general guidelines instead of listing specific cases/consequences.
Note that LifeWiki:Style guide does say that it is designed to maintain consistency throughout the site, and there is a section LifeWiki:Style guide#Avoid cluttering links which also applies in many of relevant cases. There is also page Help:Links.
The basic idea is that external links should be clearly formatted to maintain consistency and avoid confusion (so that it is clear whether a link goes to another LifeWiki page or somewhere else). Some interesting specific cases are tables (if a single table column consists solely of external links, it may suffice to explain in the description text that that column contains external links) and footnotes (which commonly contain external links as references). However, inline external links in plain text/captions should be rewritten to ensure it is clear that they're external. Confocal (talk) 23:13, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

For me, external links have an icon next to them. Does this depend on the browser or something? --Galoomba (talk) 00:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The icon is small and easy to miss (especially when internal and external links are mixed together in a sequence that's supposed to be uniform, but in fact fails to be uniform). There's also no explanation of any kind on the page as to the meaning of presence/absence of the icon. The distinction becomes much clearer when "style=brief" is used instead of "style=raw" for Catagolue links or when the external links are moved to footnotes. Confocal (talk) 01:15, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

It's the standard icon for external links, it's not specific to this wiki. --Galoomba (talk) 17:13, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm saying that the icon is too small to rely on it as a way to distinguish external links that pretend to be internal links (i.e. are formatted as inline links). External links should be clearly formatted in a clearly different way (or better moved to footnotes), so that it is easy to tell them from usual internal links to other LifeWiki pages.
Since you mentioned other wikis (re: "it's not specific to this wiki") -- Note that there are guidelines in Wikipedia to avoid inline external links in article text. For example Wikipedia:External links states: "... External links normally should not be placed in the body of an article. ... This guideline does not apply to inline citations or general references, which should appear in the "References" or "Notes" section. ... With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article. ... " Confocal (talk) 23:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)