Forum Rules

For discussion of specific patterns or specific families of patterns, both newly-discovered and well-known.
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Nathaniel
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Forum Rules

Post by Nathaniel » March 18th, 2016, 8:52 pm

After over 7 years, it seems like it's finally time to formally write down the rules of these forums, especially with the surge in visitors that we've been experiencing lately.

Last Updated: May 14, 2021
  1. Be kind, honest, and respectful. This includes:
    1. Assume the best of others. If their comments can be taken in a positive light, do so.
    2. Do not pry for others' personal information or post it without their permission.
  2. This is an English-language academic forum:
    1. Minor usage of other languages is acceptable; entire posts in other languages are not.
    2. Foul language/profanity is not acceptable here.
  3. In order to keep the forums organized, please:
    1. Do not post multiple messages consecutively in the same topic. If your message is the most recent one in a topic, simply edit it if you have additional things to add.
    2. Do not post in topics that have been inactive for over a year without good reason.
    3. Keep the formatting in your posts simple. The use of bold/italics/underline/font color/font size is not necessary in most cases.
    4. Quoting earlier posts is fine (and encouraged), but only quote text that is actually relevant to your post. Do not nest quotes too deeply (e.g., do not quote a quote of a quote of a quote).
  4. This is an academic forum, not a chat or microblogging platform. Please spend some time doing some research to familiarize yourself with what is and isn't already known about the Game of Life before posting your discoveries. Some places where you can look up what is known about Life include:
    1. Jason Summers' Life page
    2. Mark Niemiec's pattern searcher.
    3. Our own LifeWiki.
    Some specific examples of discoveries that won't be of interest to this community include:
    1. A new still life.
    2. A methuselah that lasts fewer than 20,000 generations or is larger than a 20-by-20 box.
    3. An alternate stabilization for a reaction (unless it is smaller than the smallest currently known).
  5. If you decide to share your discovery with the forums, please do not post an image of the pattern. Instead, post the RLE code of the pattern within "pattern" tags. The easiest way to obtain the RLE code of a pattern is to select the pattern in Golly and then copy it to your clipboard.
    1. It's okay to use "LV" (i.e., LifeViewer) tags instead of "pattern" tags occasionally, especially when the topic of the post is an animation displayed by LifeViewer waypoint commands included in the RLE comments -- and especially when the [[ THUMBNAIL ]] command is used to reduce the amount of vertical space taken up by the viewer. But in most cases it's considered polite to let people make their own decisions about whether to invoke LifeViewer, by using predominantly "pattern" tags.
    2. Readers of your post should have a rough idea of what to expect when they open your RLE in LifeViewer or copy it into another program. Outside of the Sandbox forum, at least briefly describe (or quote another post that describes) what pattern(s) you're posting. Descriptions also make it much easier to find patterns by searching the forums.
Last edited by Nathaniel on February 16th, 2024, 11:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Tag names have changed

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Nathaniel
Site Admin
Posts: 861
Joined: December 10th, 2008, 3:48 pm
Location: New Brunswick, Canada
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Re: Forum Rules

Post by Nathaniel » May 14th, 2021, 5:45 pm

Updated the rules today. What used to be rule #5 is now rule #5(a). Rule #5(b) is new.

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