Mergers

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Mergers are one of the most common problems in EyeWire. These are segments that the AI has fused together that don't belong and are from separate neurons. There is no way for the player to separate or deselect (like deselecting segments on their trace with the right mouse click) these segments, so they must learn to work around them. For smaller mergers that do not exit the cube a player may ignore them and continue their trace as normal. For larger mergers and/or mergers the exit the cube, the player may leave out the segment with the merger and continue their trace as normal.

AI Mergers

For varying reasons the AI can create mergers. It can be because of a misalignment, because of a damage in the neuron that the AI navigated through wrongly or because in the parent cube players created a merger and the AI created both the correct and the merger paths in the child cube creating thus an AI merger. In that last possibility removing the merger from the parent cube may not also remove it from the child cube, so an admin needs to remove it from there as well.

Misalignment AI mergers

Sometimes misalignments in the 2D slides can cause the AI to get confused and create a seed merger.

AI merger due to a misalignment.


No-Borders AI mergers

There are spots inside the dataset that for whatever reason the neuron(s) were damaged and create "no border mergers" meaning that the borders between them are either damaged or gone and so the AI thinks that whole thing to be one single neuron when in fact its two different ones (or even possibly more than 2)

AI merger due to no-borders between the neurons. Thankfully here it doesn't create a problem so long as its not traced by players.
AI merger due to no-borders between the neurons. Here the problem is severe as the merged branch touches the cube's wall on two different sides which means that it will spawn cubes and probably create a second Cell. It was however removed by an admin.
Here a misalignment and a no-borders merger have made the AI cause one heck of a royal mess of an AI merger. Because of the no-borders the AI seed merger is one single fused segment that cannot be removed by admins. It has been traced and frozen so that only the healthy, correct branch can grow.


Player made mergers

Players can also create mergers even when there's not an AI merger that can mislead them into tracing a wrong neuron/segment(s). Be it misalignment(s), no-borders (usually shown as pure white in the 2D), fuzzy, unclear borders and so on. There have been a couple of isolated cases of players who traced everything in a cube on purpose. They were caught and "gifted" by the GrimReaper with -10.000.000 points and subsequent removal from the game.

no-borders merger on 2D that players have traced
Red line correct trace, blue line merged neuron, in this case you trace the merger, find the correct path if there's one and then deselect the merger segment leaving a gap. Leaving the blue line branch would create a merger.
Player merger