Category talk:Fictional species

Proposed deletion

Is this category useful? We already have Category:Mythological creatures which covers the same contents as this category. --Tangerineduel / talk 07:57, June 10, 2013 (UTC)

As creator of the category (cat creator?), I beg to differ. First of all, Moonites are fictional, but not mythological. In the slightest. Secondly, category:mythological creatures contains not only species, but individuals. It's pretty much a category full of every non-human species and individual in myths. And some of those speciws are mythological, bit also exist in the DWU, and thus are not fictional. This category looks at it from a slightly different angle, and has slightly different criteria to get into it.
--SOTO ☎ 11:25, June 10, 2013 (UTC)

The truth is that we'll never be able to maintain two separate categories because people argue all the time about the difference between myth, legend and simple fiction. In fact, right now this list contains only one thing I'd consider merely "fictional" and that's Moonites. Everything else is, in my opinion, "mythological", and that's why I think Tangerineduel has raised the alarm.

So we need only one category. (Well, okay, we might also need a matching FTRW cat.)

But I'm gonna go the other way on this and say that we should instead get rid of category:Mythological creatures and category:Mythological figures and category:Myths and legends. The reason is simple. If your database is about someone who has free movement in time, then there is no longer such a thing as myth, except as regards that segment of time where the protagonist cannot travel. So there are Gallifreyan myths, perhaps, but that's about it. Otherwise, things like Gorgons turn out to be real (so Gorgon (mythology) actually has a bad dab term), or they turn out to be relatively recent stories to people that the Doctor eventually encounters, or they turn out to be deities. But the distinction between mythology and fiction is so narrow — if you've got a TARDIS that will let you go back in time to investigate the truth of the matter — that it's hard for us to make it.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  14:01: Mon 10 Jun 2013

I think looking at it we need to go through Category:Myths and legends and all its sub-categories.

I'll remove the prop delete on this category, however most of the pages that are in the category need removing as they "exist" and aren't fictional. They have myths concerning them but haven't been demonstrated to be in works of fiction within the DWU.

We I think will need a FTRW category to help us tidy these categories up.

I think we similarly have to go through every page in the Category:Myths and legends and its subcats, because the question "to whom" can be asked when looking at the various myths categories applied to the pages.

Should we have an "Earth myths and legends" category to throw them all in?

Or do we need to take this to the forums to work out what to do with the whole of the Myths and legends category? --Tangerineduel / talk 15:45, June 10, 2013 (UTC)

Well, I don't want to necessarily establish a precedent whereby all changes to the category tree have to go through some sort of forum review process. But the line between myth, legend and fiction is so murky, it's possible that raising this particular issue on the forum may lead to some unexpectedly helpful responses. It's also possible that we three will be the only who are interested. So maybe we could raise it there, leave it open for a week, and if nothing happens, come back here, content in the knowledge that we tried to get greater community involvement.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  18:48: Mon 10 Jun 2013

I'm interested too, but I've been having computer issues all day (ok all weekend) and couldn't respond earlier. My problem is with the words "slightly different". If the difference between two categories is really small or nit-picky, then many of our editors won't be able or won't bother to make the distinction when adding categories. I like Czechout's idea, but it's probably best to take this to the forums, where more people can see it and weigh in. Shambala108 ☎ 19:16, June 10, 2013 (UTC)