User talk:Godtone: Difference between revisions

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* I have a huge spot for cassandra and became one with it. Sorry if I come of as defensive or glaze it too much. Can't help myself.

That's all --[[User:Eufalesio|Eufalesio]] ([[User talk:Eufalesio|talk]]) 09:48, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

: It appears "minicomma" is an idiosyncratic term, so I removed it. I moved the discussion of cassandra to the bottom to avoid the feeling of repetition of information as that way it feels more like a summary of what 41edo, 53edo and 94edo have in common. I have no issue with describing garibaldi as "arguably the best extension to schismic for bestowing prime 7 effectively", and I doubt any other fans of it do either. Generally, the issue I take with your writing is it's written very similarly to general exposition for temperaments on the xen wiki, where I'd instead recommend to try to write in a way that explains more clearly what the temperament is actually doing in terms of tuning without simply stating commas. For example, "inflating the rastma to a single step" is only meaningful if you already both know what the rastma is and why you would care about it, so I removed it in favour of a different wording that essentially says the same thing. The spirit of this concern is also reflected in the next paragraph. Also, fwiw, the info of why 53edo's 5-limit is tuned better is already kind of implicit in the initial explanation, but I do agree it could be clearer, though I'm not sure how to word it.

: I am confident all the info for 53edo is reasonably useful cuz it's specifically how it handles interseptimals that explains how its handling of primes 5 and 13 is better, but I'm not sure how to improve the paragraph to feel less verbose.

: Regarding S-expressions: I don't see what's wrong with using S-expressions in writing given you can read what they mean from the expression once you learn them, however, to address your concern, I've made it more self-evident what it means. But generally, the target audience is the curious, as once you know how to read them it's often easier to remember than the base 10 ratios. For this same reason, it's recommendable to avoid mentioning commas without explanation - this isn't a rule, but it should probably be added to the style guide. Notice that we have explanations of structures for other temperaments on the page. For example, for schismic, it's mentioned that "[[#Garibaldi]] finds [[~]][[8/7]] as [[9/8]] * [[81/80]] by tempering out [[5120/5103]] = [[64/63|S8]]/[[81/80|S9]], so that it prefers a slightly-sharp or just fifth", where any further explanation would serve to clutter* and decrease the density of the information, while any simpler explanation would probably miss out important information. That's generally the idea of using S-expressions. *Specifically, what I mean is there's a line in writing where you can't reasonably be expected to explain ''everything'' that is unfamiliar to a reader just because your reader might be a complete beginner, because if you assume that, you will need to explain arbitrarily simple concepts. Instead, you should assume that a reader is comfortable with ignoring some (ideally fairly minimal, but often this isn't practical) amount of "new" content to learn. In the case of S-expressions, all we are assuming really in these two examples is knowledge of what S''k'' means. Given this perspective, my perspective from talking to people disliking the xen wiki in the past is that writing a plain ratio will potentially serve to alienate the reader with a sense that the ratios must be memorised or having to click through every ratio to find why that ratio might be worth caring about, so it seems to me that a notation that self-explains the meaning of the comma is a preferable method, especially if we combine with the ratio for reference and especially if we try to give some helpful hints in the writing, where I only suggest this because I do agree that it's ideal to be as self-explaining as reasonably possible without clutter. I included a mention of 325/324's S-expressions at the end as it was explained how the comma was reached so the S-expressions serve as further interpretations of what it does.

: I'd like to note that I took great care in my original edit, deliberately trying to preserve as much of what you wrote as possible while adhering to what I thought was clearer writing in the spirit of compromise, so the rewriting feels a little ad-hoc.

: Anyways, please kindly take a careful read of the edit I did and let me know if you think any key information is still missing.

: Also, if I'm being honest, I find [this version](https://en.xen.wiki/index.php?title=Bird%27s_eye_view_of_temperaments_by_accuracy&oldid=229781#Garibaldi) to be ideal so I'd be curious if you was willing to state what's wrong with that version, as it feels to me that all the important info is there and stated as efficiently as reasonable, which makes for a pleasant reading experience when reviewing temperaments on the page.

: --[[User:Godtone|Godtone]] ([[User talk:Godtone|talk]]) 13:20, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

@@ Line 143: / Line 143: @@
 * I have a huge spot for cassandra and became one with it. Sorry if I come of as defensive or glaze it too much. Can't help myself.
 That's all --[[User:Eufalesio|Eufalesio]] ([[User talk:Eufalesio|talk]]) 09:48, 7 May 2026 (UTC)
+: It appears "minicomma" is an idiosyncratic term, so I removed it. I moved the discussion of cassandra to the bottom to avoid the feeling of repetition of information as that way it feels more like a summary of what 41edo, 53edo and 94edo have in common. I have no issue with describing garibaldi as "arguably the best extension to schismic for bestowing prime 7 effectively", and I doubt any other fans of it do either. Generally, the issue I take with your writing is it's written very similarly to general exposition for temperaments on the xen wiki, where I'd instead recommend to try to write in a way that explains more clearly what the temperament is actually doing in terms of tuning without simply stating commas. For example, "inflating the rastma to a single step" is only meaningful if you already both know what the rastma is and why you would care about it, so I removed it in favour of a different wording that essentially says the same thing. The spirit of this concern is also reflected in the next paragraph. Also, fwiw, the info of why 53edo's 5-limit is tuned better is already kind of implicit in the initial explanation, but I do agree it could be clearer, though I'm not sure how to word it.
+: I am confident all the info for 53edo is reasonably useful cuz it's specifically how it handles interseptimals that explains how its handling of primes 5 and 13 is better, but I'm not sure how to improve the paragraph to feel less verbose.
+: Regarding S-expressions: I don't see what's wrong with using S-expressions in writing given you can read what they mean from the expression once you learn them, however, to address your concern, I've made it more self-evident what it means. But generally, the target audience is the curious, as once you know how to read them it's often easier to remember than the base 10 ratios. For this same reason, it's recommendable to avoid mentioning commas without explanation - this isn't a rule, but it should probably be added to the style guide. Notice that we have explanations of structures for other temperaments on the page. For example, for schismic, it's mentioned that "[[#Garibaldi]] finds [[~]][[8/7]] as [[9/8]] * [[81/80]] by tempering out [[5120/5103]] = [[64/63|S8]]/[[81/80|S9]], so that it prefers a slightly-sharp or just fifth", where any further explanation would serve to clutter* and decrease the density of the information, while any simpler explanation would probably miss out important information. That's generally the idea of using S-expressions. *Specifically, what I mean is there's a line in writing where you can't reasonably be expected to explain ''everything'' that is unfamiliar to a reader just because your reader might be a complete beginner, because if you assume that, you will need to explain arbitrarily simple concepts. Instead, you should assume that a reader is comfortable with ignoring some (ideally fairly minimal, but often this isn't practical) amount of "new" content to learn. In the case of S-expressions, all we are assuming really in these two examples is knowledge of what S''k'' means. Given this perspective, my perspective from talking to people disliking the xen wiki in the past is that writing a plain ratio will potentially serve to alienate the reader with a sense that the ratios must be memorised or having to click through every ratio to find why that ratio might be worth caring about, so it seems to me that a notation that self-explains the meaning of the comma is a preferable method, especially if we combine with the ratio for reference and especially if we try to give some helpful hints in the writing, where I only suggest this because I do agree that it's ideal to be as self-explaining as reasonably possible without clutter. I included a mention of 325/324's S-expressions at the end as it was explained how the comma was reached so the S-expressions serve as further interpretations of what it does.
+: I'd like to note that I took great care in my original edit, deliberately trying to preserve as much of what you wrote as possible while adhering to what I thought was clearer writing in the spirit of compromise, so the rewriting feels a little ad-hoc.
+: Anyways, please kindly take a careful read of the edit I did and let me know if you think any key information is still missing.
+: Also, if I'm being honest, I find [this version](https://en.xen.wiki/index.php?title=Bird%27s_eye_view_of_temperaments_by_accuracy&oldid=229781#Garibaldi) to be ideal so I'd be curious if you was willing to state what's wrong with that version, as it feels to me that all the important info is there and stated as efficiently as reasonable, which makes for a pleasant reading experience when reviewing temperaments on the page.
+: --[[User:Godtone|Godtone]] ([[User talk:Godtone|talk]]) 13:20, 7 May 2026 (UTC)