\n\n## Table of Contents\n\n## Contribute\n\n
\n\n
\n\nThe Busy Beaver Challenge is a collaborative project and there are many ways in which you can contribute to it. Our
reproducibility and verifiability statement outlines our philosophy regarding contributions to the Busy Beaver Challenge.\n\n\n\n
\n\n## Write deciders\n\nReaching
the goal of the Busy Beaver Challenge requires to decide the behavior of 88,664,064 Turing machines. We hope to do this automatically by writing
deciders which are programs that decide if machines halt or not.\n\nYou are invited to write deciders in order to further reduce the number of undecided machines in the
seed database.\n\nPlaces to look at if this task interests you:\n\n- The forum [maintains the list of all applied deciders](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/t/currently-applied-deciders/32)\n\n\n\n- The
undecided machines index file gives you the indices of the currently undecided machines in the
seed database\n\nIf you write a decider for the Busy Beaver Challenge we ask that you:\n\n1. Read our
reproducibility and verifiability statement\n2. Create a post on forum [following these instructions](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/t/currently-applied-deciders/32)\n3. Give the
seed database's indices of the machines that your decider has decided\n4. Write tests for your deciders against example machines and counterexample machines in the
seed database\n\nIf consensus is reached that your decider is correct, it will be applied to the
seed database and used to produce a new version of the
undecided machines index file.\n\n
\n\n## Write proofs\n\n
\n\n### Deciders\n\nAs advocated for in our
reproducibility and verifiability statement it is very important that deciders are proved correct.\n\nPlaces to look at if this task interests you:\n\n- The forum [maintains the list of all deciders](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/c/deciders/5) and is a good place to discuss about correctness and publish proofs\n- GitHub [maintains the formal proofs](https://github.com/bbchallenge/bbchallenge-proofs) in polished form, and shows the desired end state of all proofs.\n (You don't have to know LaTeX or be comfortable writing these to contribute.)\n\nYou can post your proofs on the thread related to the decider that you proved.\n\nWe would encourage the use of automatic proving tools such as [Lean](https://leanprover.github.io/) or [Coq](https://coq.inria.fr/) although it would be an extremely demanding endeavour.\n\n
\n\n### Individual machines\n\nIt is most likely that some machine will be needed to be decided by hand. For instance, see
Dan Briggs' github about
Skelet's machines.\n\nWe collect these individual proofs on the [forum](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/c/individual-machines/7). Please create a new post in [this category](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/c/individual-machines/7) for each proof indicating in the title the ID in the
seed database of the machine that you are deciding.\n\n
\n\n## Reproduce results\n\nTo increase trust in the results of the Busy Beaver Challenge it is important for independent reproduction of its results. See our
reproducibility and verifiability statement.\n\nThis can for instance be done by reproducing
deciders or the code that generated the
seed database.\n\nPlaces to look at if this task interests you:\n\n- The code that generated the
seed database is available [here](https://github.com/bbchallenge/bbchallenge-seed) and is discussed on the [forum](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/c/seed-database/6)\n\n- The forum [maintains the list of all applied deciders](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/t/currently-applied-deciders/32), you can pick one and try to reproduce it and see if yours decide the same machines\n\nIf you reproduce results of the Busy Beaver Challenge please share about your reproduction on the [dedicated section of the forum](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/c/results-reproduction/9).\n\n
\n\n## This website\n\nThis website is also written collaboratively, [its code](https://github.com/bbchallenge/bbchallenge) can be improved in many ways!\n\nPages like
/story,
/method,
/contribute are also collaborative and you can submit changes on [github](https://github.com/bbchallenge/bbchallenge).\n\n
\n\n## Share the story\n\nIf you are interested in the Busy Beaver Challenge please don't hesitate to talk about it around you and share
https://bbchallenge.org.\n\nIf you are a teacher and would like to engage with your students on this topic some [teaching material](https://discuss.bbchallenge.org/c/outreach-teaching/12) (which you can contribute to improve!) is available on the forum.\n\nThe
goal of the Busy Beaver Challenge can only be achieved collaboratively.\n\n
\n\n## Donate\n\nYou can help us financially through our Open Collective page: [https://opencollective.com/bbchallenge](https://opencollective.com/bbchallenge).\n\nRaised funds are used for:\n\n- Recurring costs (website server)\n- Financial support for contributors participating at conferences / events / journals where papers or talks spurred by the community have been accepted\n\t- Helping with travel costs & event participation fee\n\t- Helping with costs of publication / open access\n- Organisation of a live workshop (either independent or at an existing event) for the bbchallenge community\n\n\n
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