Cycle Length

    Keywords: Ko, Rules

A cycle’s length is the number of moves, be it pass or play, it takes to complete it. It always is even in Go.

Robert Pauli


Patrick Traill: Oppose removing content: I do not agree with removing this content, but (a) it should be descriptive, not prescriptive[1], and document all significant (¡wiggle room!) usages and (b) it might be more useful as part of Cycle (and an alias here), rather than in such a tiny page.

Herman: The descriptive content of this page would be something like "a Cycle's length is its number of moves", which IMO is a pointless article. There's simply nothing more to write about it.

Patrick Traill: Hallo Herman, I think you misunderstand me (I did emphasise the word “content”!). I think there are two questions: (a) what is worth saying about the length of a cycle? and (b) where should it be said? I also wondered what you found untrue, but see you have made that clear in the discussion at Cycle.

(a) It seems Robert Pauli wants to define it as the number of turns to return to the original situation and conclude that it is even. This is controversial and being discussed at Cycle: no point repeating that here!
(b) I agree that a page with as little to say as this is pointless; I feel that (unless and until someone discovers far more to say about it) it can better be remarked at Cycle, perhaps in a Terminology section. I think that the same may also go for “Cycle Completion”, which to some extent repeats Robert’s standpoint in the discussion at Cycle, though there he has also added a bit about using completion as a way of defining the end of the game. Fragmenting concepts and definitions over three pages makes them harder to understand!
[1] P.S. I was using descriptive and prescriptive in the linguistic sense: we should say how people do use words, rather than how they ought to.

Herman: Yes, I understood the reference to descriptive vs. prescriptive. The current discussion at Cycle is basically about that. Robert Jasiek and myself are arguing for the descriptive approach, i.e. that the page describes the term as it is currently used in the go community, while Robert Pauli is arguing the prescriptive approach, i.e. that the term should be defined according to what he feels is logical. Either way, I think we agree that this page in itself as is, is too short to merit its own page, and any content it has that is worth keeping should be mentioned at Cycle.

Robert Pauli: I object to removing this page. This is a definition you can't find anywhere else. Too small is no argument, this is hyperlink after all. You could object against always even, but I'll change Cycle as well. Some People think a cycles length could be one. I disagree. Don't count before it has completed! Established neither is an argument. If a term is misused, that can't continue.

Robert Pauli: Just added the alias cycle period. How would I've done this without it being a page, Herman?



Cycle Length last edited by RobertPauli on January 24, 2019 - 11:52
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