A Mythos namespace?

I've been thinking: There has got to be a way for Classical Mythology and its ilk to be namespaced, and things like the Cthulhu Mythos and the Slender Man mythos don't really fit under "franchise" that much. I'm suggesting there be some sort of namespace to address this. Any input?

edited 17th Dec '12 5:04:37 PM by EarlOfSandvich

I think we have something like this under The 'Verse.

There was a thread on Classical Mythology namespacing earlier (at least, I think it was namespacing and not example sorting), and we'd decided on Literature/ for it, under the reasoning that everything we know about it is from either written or oral literature.

Well, the majority of Classical Mythology is Literature. Some is Theatre. None of it actually survives in Oral tradition.

^No oral tradition survives as oral tradition. It's oral. Even the Illiad is just someone^note probably not Homer, if he ever existed deciding to write down a longstanding oral tradition.

Well, yeah. That's why I object to labeling myths as "oral tradition," as is so common on this wiki. Real Oral Tradition is actually "dude my brother's best friend's neighbor totally heard about this guy who saw a pink hairless deer in Alaska!"

As the matter was just brought up in the Wick Migration thread, I'd like to mention that we haven't really decided on a namespace for the Mythology pages yet (the overview pages, not pages for individual works). We agreed to put fairy tales into the Literature/ namespace, but that discussion didn't cover the mythology overviews, at least not as I interpreted it.

Hmmm...mythology is a form of Oral Tradition. Something about OralTradition/?

As I commented in the other thread, the one existing namespace that would fit best currently is Franchise/. After all, those mythologies have inspired plenty of further works in various form.

Using UsefulNote/ is a bit problematic, since it would mean a change of category. Mythologies are considered "works" for now.

I wouldn't be against a specific namespace like "Myth/" or "Mythos/", though. Could be used both for generic mythologies article and for more specific myth pages, like Tanabata.

Myth/ or Mythos/ is clear and concise, but OralTradition/ has the advantage of encompassing nursery rhymes, traditional riddles, folk songs, etc. which are currently hard to place

Well, mythologies are considered works because someone set the page type to work. But if I recall correctly, some of the Mythology pages had the Useful Notes page type at one point. The way they are written, they could be both. It wouldn't be a huge change to set them to Useful Notes, and they are listed on the Useful Notes index anyway.

Isn't Tanabata a festival, not a myth? It actually looks like Useful Notes to me. It doesn't have a list of tropes found in the myth of Orihime and Hikoboshi, but a list of works which show or reference the festival.

Do we have pages for specific Nursery Rhymes, riddles or folk songs right now? The problem with Oral Tradition/: 1) The distinction from Literature/ is anything but clear, 2) Mythology does not categorically exist in, nor always derive from Oral Tradition.

edited 28th Mar '13 6:32:38 AM by LordGro

We are in the middle of a long and difficult TRS project to split the Oral Tradition the medium from Mythology and the other related genres, and give them separate pages with meaningful descriptions. Please do not reverse that decision and hard work by conflating the two again.

I went over in exhaustive detail all the many reasons why they aren't synonyms in the Oral Tradition TRS thread. In summary, lots of Oral Tradition isn't mythology at all, lots of mythology isn't at all oral even in origin, no oral work can actually be troped on the wiki anyway so the Mythology pages can't be about those, and conflating them again will promote the same confusion that I started that TRS to fix. It would be like reviving Web Original, and then merging Comic Books into it because they're "the same as Web Comics."

Mythos, Myth, and Mythology would be all fine namespaces, and not misuse.

And Lord Gro please tell me why you won't answer my PM's. I need your help in the TRS.

edited 29th Mar '13 9:42:27 AM by ArcadesSabboth

Tanabata is a festival, but derived from a specific legend, that's why I mentioned it.

I'd vote for Myth/ as a namespace. Short, to the point, and can englobe both individual legends and big mythology pages.

Also supporting the use of the Myth/ namespace

King Arthur and Robin Hood need some thought too. And I don't think we want to have both Myth/ and Legend/. :)

I'm half-inclined to think that Literature/ works just fine for all of these. But I haven't made up my mind.

edited 29th Mar '13 10:29:30 PM by Xtifr

The problem with a Myth/ namespace is its vagueness. Supporting it because it will be a lumber room for pages that have not been sorted yet does not sound like a promising start. If there isn't a clear page-to-work connection, then how do we decide what deserves a Myth/ page or what is allowed on a Myth/ page? What will prevent editors so inclined to create pages called "Myth/God", "Myth/Evolution", or "Myth/GlobalWarming"? The term "myth" is very pliable.

I can also see confusion about how it is separated from Literature/, UsefulNotes/ and plain tropes.

As for King Arthur and Robin Hood and other heroes of folklore, myth and legend, these are listed as Public Domain Characters and I recall it was at one time agreed that Public Domain Characters are tropes. I could imagine to split the current King Arthur into Main.King Arthur (the public domain character) and Arthurian Mythology (or Arthurian Universe, or Matter Of Britain, or however we want to call it).

edited 30th Mar '13 1:58:26 AM by LordGro

So then I should probably take King Arthur off the Classic Literature index?

Yes, that would be my proposal. Only specific Arthurian works (Le Morte d'Arthur, History of the Kings of Britain etc) should go/stay on the index.

But that's my opinion; I don't know if there is really a wiki consensus on these matters yet. I also don't know what to do with Robin Hood: On the understanding that Robin Hood is a Public Domain Character, he could stay in the Main/ namespace, but we would have to make some separate work type page(s) for the Robin Hood stories.

As for a new namespace, I would prefer Mythology/ (less vague than Myth/) or Verse/. Though I suppose we could cope with UsefulNotes/.

edited 10th Apr '13 5:20:11 AM by LordGro

Mythology/ would be more clear than Myth/, and could then double for legends as well as myths.

I support a Mythology/ namespace also, though I think pages that are for mythological characters should stay on Main/ or go in Characters/ (and the work pages they originate from should go in Mythology/). Myth/ is too specific and wouldn't include, as mentioned above, legends and other works that could otherwise go in Mythology/.

Agreed, characters would still belong in Characters.

A suggestion: Traditional/?

That is just an adjective for me.

The word "Traditional" has a problems with both connotations and lack of a precise reference. I don't think it's a good choice.

edited 4th Jun '13 8:09:38 AM by ArcadesSabboth