Template talk:Infobox paranormal creature

dimensions tag?

How can the image dimensions (width/height) be specified? This infobox, used on reptilian humanoid stretches the current image. -Eερ² ^(T|C) 10:04, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, the dimensions are fixed but now I can't get the damn thing to be centered. :/ ∞Σɛ_Þ² ^(τ|c) 15:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Please leave this as a standard size, it prevent users from putting in images that are too large. If you are worried about a specific image, edit it to give it a white boarder. - perfectblue 17:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Huh? What would a border do to the size? The problem with a forced image size is that smaller images are scaled up which makes them look aliased ("blocky"). ∞Σɛ_Þ² ^(τ|c) 03:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Add a white border around an image that it smaller than 200px in order to bring it up to 200px. For example, a 100px image with 50px whitespace on either side of it. If you give users the ability to specify the image size you will often have one of two things happening.

1. The user will specify an image size that is too large. 250px is typical chosen.
2. Novice users will see that the image comes out at a fixed size even without them adding the parameter in and will leave it at that, not realizing that the size that they see is part of their individual user settings not part of Wikipedia itself. Thus meaning that the image may be the correct size as seen by them, but being too big/too small to users with different size settings.

perfectblue 17:57, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Um...yea. Just look at reptilian humanoid and see if you can fix its overscaledness please... ∞Σɛ_Þ² ^(τ|c) 11:50, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I've tried to change the code so that smaller images are not scaled up and lose their resolution. I have been unable to accomplish this, does anyone have any ideas?--NeilEvans (talk) 19:32, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok I think I've sorted it out now.--NeilEvans (talk) 19:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

POV problem

There is an inherent problem with this template. This article is inherently intended for use on articles about things that are viewed in the mainstream to not exist. On the other hand, the template describes the thing as a 'creature', which implies that it is real, and also has fields such as region, habitat, status, and last sighted, which all imply that the creature is real. As a result, the template should be used on many pages because it opens the article with a fringe view rather than with the mainstream view, which does not satisfy wikipedia policy on neutral point of view in relation to pseudoscience and related fringe theories. The template should probably be changed to eliminate or totally rename these problem categories, and the designation "creature" should probably be removed as well. I will leave this up for comment briefly to see if there is any community opinion on the matter. Locke9k (talk) 23:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I am not all that concerned with the use of creature. Locke9k, how would you describe a dragon or any other mythical creature thing you can think of. As you can tell from my near slip up, I would use creature. Of course it should be presented in such a way that makes it clear that this is not a creature in the same sense as a horse or an octopus but I can't think of anything better to call it. I do have problems with the areas for "Habitat" and "Status" as they are misleading (you can't give a habitat until you have an animal and if the status were to change from a paranormal creature to an animal, we'd then change the infobox from this to one for an animal). I nonetheless think there may be some use to this infobox. These creatures are reported in particular places and giving that information up front might be good. There also certainly are groups of these things (the Loch Ness Monster and the similar thing in Lake Champlain are closely related and both are similar to other types of sea monsters, sharing some characteristics but not others); however, unlike biology this isn't quite an objective way to group things so I'm undecided on whether providing a grouping is good to do. —Fiziker ^t c 21:14, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

There are cases where I think it isn't overwhelmingly problematic to use 'creature'. These cases are where it is clearly mythological and there is no POV dispute. Take, for example, European dragon. Since there is no debate over whether this is real, and since the very next line reads "Mythological Creature", it is very clear to the reader that 'creature' does not imply reality. However, in articles such as Bigfoot, where there is such a 'debate', the word creature can easily be read to imply that the subject is 'real'. Thus something like 'purported creature' might be better, although even that is a problem because the mainstream scientific view is so overwhelmingly in favor of the creature not existing that really instead of "purported creature" it aught to read "myth". Or, from a more balanced perspective, one might simply say that where these disputes exist its best to not try to characterize the subject's status with a single word. As far as things like 'habitat' go, I would be more comfortable with "purported habitat", but we can't really change the template that way because its not appropriate for entirely mythical subjects like European dragon because no one is purporting that they actually exist. I would also be more comfortable with "last reported" than "last sighted", and perhaps we could make that change safely. Also, I am basically in favor of deleting the 'status' category. The mainstream view on the "status" of these creatures is uniformly the same-they do not exist. I don't see any way to represent this disagreement in template form. Big picture though, I think if anything there should be separate template for undisputed mythological subjects and cryptids.Locke9k (talk) 21:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to suggest what you said in your final sentence as I was reading what you wrote. I don't think that including dragons as a paranormal creature is correct. Things like dragons are featured only in mythology and are not advanced as real even by most cryptozoologists. Cryptids, while still mythical in the sense that they have as much validity, differ in the fact that they mainly appear in the beliefs of paranormalists rather than in mythical legends. —Fiziker ^t c 21:43, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I essentially agree. I don't really know how to implement the suggestion, though. I guess it would involve making a new infobox template for mythological creatures, switching all of them over to it, and altering this infobox template to better reflect the mainstream view on the topic. Its a big project, and although I could presumably learn, I presently don't know how to make an infobox template.Locke9k (talk) 21:48, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I've made an infobox before but I'd like to get more opinions on this before hand. —Fiziker ^t c 22:53, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with "creature". I think the use of this word, rather than "animal", is sufficient indication that they are not real, and I can't think of an alternative. I also have no problem with the "Habitat" field. However, I have no idea what the "Status" field is supposed to be for. In a non-exhaustive search I have found the following values for this field: "Unsubstantiated" (Bunyip), "Unconfirmed" (Chupacabra, Dwarf (mythology)), "Uncontrolled" (Gnome), "Folklore" (Vampire pumpkins and watermelons). These seem to be all interchangeable, with the possible exception of "Uncontrolled" (which I don't understand), and I have difficulty imagining a value for this field that would not have essentially the same meaning. Except in the rare case that a mythical creature is found to exist, after all, and the biological and mythical aspects are discussed in two separate articles. Even if there should be such a case, I doubt that a parameter is needed for it. --Hans Adler (talk) 01:15, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I have created Template:Infobox mythical creature so that we can separate out creatures that only appear in mythology from the ones that interest cryptozoologists. I have also informed Wikipedia:WikiProject Paranormal about the problems with this infobox. —Fiziker ^t c 20:56, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow, fantastic work. We'll have to start separating them; it will be a big project. Locke9k (talk) 21:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I just started on the first one, Cerberus. For now I'm checking to see whether a mythical creature's article mentions it being paranormal or if a WP:CRYPTIDS banner is on the talk page. I'll leave those alone for now and wait to see if there are any problems. —Fiziker ^t c 21:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Aaaargh! Lots of new comments while I wrote the section below. I am not particularly happy with the changes. Basically mythical/legendary creatures and cryptids are all instances of the same thing: Living things (for want of a better word) that do not, or probably do not, exist, but which people like to think or write about. Can't we simply find a more neutral title for a unified infobox for all of them, rather than fork it? --Hans Adler (talk) 22:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll hold off on further changes as you requested. However, these are two separate types of things (this does not imply that one is any more real than the other). For instance, the fields should be different for the two types. So far, I have encountered a use of this infobox for mythical creatures that used a field for the parents of the creature, which is not present in this infobox. First reported and last sighted have no use for mythical creatures: they mostly say "in folklore," which doesn't provide much useful information, for the first and no one has sighted them so the second one has no use whatsoever. Mythology is generally not useful for the paranormal creatures (some my have a use for it, although I don't recall seeing an example). Paranormal creatures, which some people think exist, and mythical creatures, which even fewer people think exist, have substantial differences.

The reason why I split these infoboxes was so we could more readily deal with the problem of POV. We need to change some parts of this template that implicitely support fringe views. These problems concern the cryptids on the list but not the mythical creatures. We therefore should continue to seperate the two types of creature to fascilitate these problems with POV and to simplify the fields so we don't have two sets of fields merged together into a single infobox. —Fiziker ^t c 22:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I have seen that you added some fields; of course you could also have added them to the original template, since they are all optional anyway. If I understand you correctly you want to discourage fringe POV pushing by not even offering certain fields that make sense for legendary creatures. I would be in favour of a clear discussion about these fields.

In my opinion "status" is being abused and should be used only very rarely. It would make sense to remove it altogether, or replace it with some general purpose field. Locke9k has also mentioned region, habitat and last sighted as implying that the creature is real. OK, last sighted could be renamed to last reported, but otherwise I just don't see the problem. Of course the region is the region where people think the creature may be found, and similarly for the habitat. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:44, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

You say "of course" that is what it means, but Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written for a totally uninformed person to come in and read and clearly understand them. For NPOV, habitat should clearly say "purported habitat". If we were to represent the mainstream view in a field that read "habitat", it would universally say "none"! Same deal with "region": it should be "purported region" or else the field should universally read "none." Frankly I'm not terribly satisfied with the word 'reported', either; connotatively it seems to imply a level of reality or officialdom to the reports that they don't really possess. Perhaps "Last alleged sighting" and "First alleged sighting" would be better. Same deal with the 'creature' subheading in the infobox: these things aren't creatures; at best they are purported creatures. Even that might be stating it too strongly and giving too much weight to a fringe view. The point is that you can't just say 'this fringe material is so obviously untrue that we can just include it without explanation and trust the reader to figure out that its not true.' We have a responsibility to always make it clear when something is a fringe view. Locke9k (talk) 22:59, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I am going to sleep over this, but for the moment the claim that "habitat" and "region" are non-NPOV sounds very fundamentalist to me. It's absolutely normal to talk about properties of something that doesn't actually exist; otherwise the claim that it doesn't exist wouldn't even make sense. E.g. if you just define the Yeti as a large furry human-like creature and suppress its habitat as "fringe", then you might be confronted with the "fact" that there are plenty of Yetis living in zoos. Even if you say the "purported habitat" of the Yeti is mountain areas in the Himalayans it wouldn't technically solve the problem. (If someone finds a "Yeti" outside, then obviously the purported habitat isn't the actual habitat.) --Hans Adler (talk) 23:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't have much of a problem with "habitat" and "region". That being said, I'd have no problem with the use of "purported habitat". I think that the use of "creature" as a heading should not be a problem because it should not be there. I see no reason to have that or "data" since it doesn't provide any information. If we want to delineate the portions, we can add a line. The biggest problem to me is that status and to a lesser and latest reported sighting. I don't have a problem with the term "reported" but rather with including the latest sighting being useless for creatures like Bigfoot where sightings occur relatively often and the arbitrariness in state what the latest sighting is (are people going to continually search for new sightings? what about notability?). —Fiziker ^t c 23:37, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

My point in stating the different fields is to show that there are fundamental differences between the information needed for a mythical creature versus a cryptid. —Fiziker ^t c 23:26, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I am still not sure what the POV problems are supposed to be. Is it the appearance of the string "paranormal creature" in the source code? In that case I suggest renaming the "paranormal creature" template to "creature" and setting up redirects "paranormal creature", "purported creature" or whatever. But forking the template doesn't seem to be a particularly good idea because of the borderline cases. When I went through roughly half the uses of this template, I found several mythological creatures with reported modern sightings; there are also "extraterrestrial" cryptids, confirmed hoaxes, etc. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Based on the articles I have converted over to the new infobox I don't think there are that many creatures in the grey area. I have seen some that are about mythical creatures but with mentions of interest by cryptozoologists or a cryptozoology project banner but in comparison to the total number those instances are small. I was purposefully leaving those articles alone so that we could specifically deal with them. The advantages of splitting outweigh the disadvantages of problems with the grey areas so I think we should split these types of creature but we would still need to discuss what to do in these cases. —Fiziker ^t c 23:51, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Developing guidance for use of the template

Since infoboxes make most sense if they are used consistently, I would like to add some usage information to the documentation for this template. Here is a start:

Grouping

Normally either Cryptid or Legendary creature (or the redirect Mythological creature). Possibly both. Rarely Urban legend.

Sub_Grouping

Optional. Common values: Lake monster / Sea monster / Sea serpent, Fairy or Household fairy, Spirit / Water spirit, Hominid (or Homin), Hybrid or Therianthrope, Daemon (mythology), Extraterrestrial life, Dragon, Various biological terms such as Big cat.

Similar_Creatures

Optional. Comma-separated list of wikilinks.

Mythology

Optional. Meaning?

First_reported

Optional. Year of first report.

Last_sighted

Optional. Year of most recent report.

Country / Region

List countries and optionally regions within; or describe a larger region such as a continent (in which case do not use the country field)

Habitat

Examples include sea, lake, forest, jungle, air, city.

Status

Optional, rarely appropriate. Examples: "Myth based on fact" (e.g. Griggstown cow) or "hoax".

Does this make sense? --Hans Adler (talk) 22:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we should provide some better documentation on what these fields are. However, I suggest that we wait to add it until the POV problems are resolved. I think that the status field should be removed because of the POV problems it causes. I think we should be clear on when to use the last sighted field. In Bigfoot we got rid of that one a while ago because that would just mean that the article needs to be changed every year to the new year (or, luckily this didn't happen, every time someone claims to have seen it). This field just doesn't work for popular paranormal creatures. I think this is a good start though. —Fiziker ^t c 22:19, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Deleted "status", based on "unconfirmed" silliness at Nordic aliens. kwami (talk) 00:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I think thats a good change. I have always had a problem with this 'status' business. The mainstream scientific perspective is almost uniformly that these creatures do not exist, and so most of the 'status' statements are promoting the fringe view that their existence is even a matter of serious debate within the mainstream. "Unconfirmed", for example, is a common statement in this field, and it falsely implies that their existence is seriously suspected and is merely awaiting confirmation. Better to just cover the mainstream and fringe views fully in the article and avoid a one or two word descriptor that almost necessarily focuses on one viewpoint at the expense of another. Locke9k (talk) 21:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Along the same lines, I have changed "Last sighted" to "Last Reported" since the former implies that the sighting was real. The latter phrasing is far more NPOV since it does not make any statement about the accuracy or truthfulness of the report. Locke9k (talk) 22:01, 30 November 2009 (UTC)