Talk:Electric fence

Heat

Oscillators like this really shouldn't have a "heat" listing IMO, because simply extending it by one more ant changes the heat. There are one of two possible courses of action to "fix" this, and I'm not sure which I prefer (though I think I'm leaning towards the first): either I should add a "hideheat" option to the template, which can be set to true, OR I could make heat not display at all unless it's specified. The reason I lean towards the first option is that it's easier to see where information is missing and needs to be added if the "Unknown" shows up by default. Thoughts? Nathaniel 01:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Of the two, I'd prefer the first for the reason you mention. However, I'd argue that it would be nicer to show the minimum heat, since there's certainly a bottom limit on it. Ideally, I'd want something like "10+8n", with a small note "where n is number of ants", but that's a huge stretch. Still, no real reason not to list minimum that I can see. Elithrion 01:55, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I like that 10 + 8n idea (perhaps just listing that in the infobox, and mentioning that n = number of ants in the article when discussing the heat). Nathaniel 12:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I've added heat now. Now to figure out a nice way to make the heat not auto-link if the inputted value isn't a number ;) Nathaniel 21:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Weeell, you could potentially make the 8n an extra parameter in the template (hidden by default), which would solve the issue. That said, only one oscillator would use it? Elithrion 04:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I found a way to make MediaWiki check whether or not the input is numeric, so problem solved. It now automatically ignores the categorization stuff if the heat contains non-numeric stuff. Nathaniel 16:35, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, same thing for bounding box? 46+5n or something? Elithrion 22:53, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah good call. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Nathaniel 23:03, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merging

I think that the short articles on Light speed oscillator 1, 2 and 3 should be merged into this one, since they are all based on the period-5 ants wick. Opinions? GUYTU6J (talk) 09:30, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree. HotdogPi (talk) 15:05, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Mmm, I had merged but later realized that the wicks are slightly different. My bad. So now there is an independent article for light speed oscillators. GUYTU6J (talk) 06:48, 26 March 2022 (UTC)