Talk:Meraxes

Move to Meraxes

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

Moved per consensus garnered below. Thanks and kudos to editors for your input; good health to all!  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;, ed.  put'r there 00:51, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Meraxes gigas → Meraxes – Meraxes is the recognized genus. There isn' t an existing article about the character from A Song Of Ice And Fire, so the genus name take precedence and should replace the disambiguation page, as "For the ASOIAF dragon, see List of A Song of Ice and Fire characters". Larrayal (talk) 15:27, 7 July 2022 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Comment: That all depends on which is the primary topic. You need to provide evidence. YorkshireExpat (talk) 18:16, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: Per above Patachonica (talk) 18:20, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support - surely the primary topic by now. FunkMonk (talk) 19:12, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Still not evidence. YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:15, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: It is evidence. Patachonica (talk) 19:29, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Saying "Surely this is the primary topic" is not evidence. YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:56, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There's more info below for evidence. Patachonica (talk) 19:57, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: Seeing as the Meraxes article is currently a redirect to a list, and not an article about the actual book character, I think it's justified to put the taxon there instead. Including a redirect sentence at the top should be enough to fix any issues that might arise.TimTheDragonRider (talk) 19:26, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: As a sidenote, I listed this exact move on the requested moves pages earlier today, as I thought it was clearly the way to proceed.TimTheDragonRider (talk) 19:26, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: I personally haven't read ASOIAF, but a quick look at the List of A Song of Ice and Fire characters page seems to imply that "Meraxes" the fictional dragon character is not a huge topic (it's mentioned a whole one time with zero details given besides that it is killed). Meanwhile, Meraxes the dinosaur was just named and described today in an academic journal. It is being featured in numerous news articles. At the time being, at least, it is certainly the primary topic. The taxon (and it's wiki page) will only increase in significance as new research is published regarding it in the future. Since the Meraxes page is currently not being used for anything but a redirect to a seemingly inconsequential character, it only makes sense to move Meraxes gigas to Meraxes. This also follows the traditional title format for pages on dinosaur genera. Keeping the dinosaur page at "Meraxes gigas" can lead to unnecessary confusion. As was mentioned above, a sentence can be included at the top of the page for anyone interested in the book character. -SlvrHwk (talk) 20:43, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: The arguments for moving are reasonable. But the question is: Is this an article about the species, or about the genus? The first sentence suggests the genus, in which case the move makes sense. But the rest of the article is about the species (and the holotype), so arguably Meraxes gigas is more appropriate. We have a similar situation at Tyrannosaurus, where I find the introductory section very confusing, because it alternatively seems to talk about the genus and the species, but is unclear about which sentence talks about which concept. We can call that precedence, but I think it's not the best precedence. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:29, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @Stephan Schulz The genus is monotypic, therefore from a Wiki point of view they're the same thing. Per WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA the genus is used as the article title, unless it's already used somewhere else, as here, in which case the species name is used for dab. After that the the discussion becomes about WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Also, for extinct taxa the genus generally takes priority unless the species is particularly notable, but that is buried in a discussion somewhere, not in policy. YorkshireExpat (talk) 07:54, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Ok. As a computer scientist, I find that guideline to be very misguided (the data model should reflect the structure of the real data, unless there are compelling arguments otherwise, because they might find e.g. Meraxas minox tomorrow), but it seems to be well established. I don't think the dragon from GoT has significant weight, at least not until GRRM writes a separate trilogy about his life to avoid finishing Winds of Winter. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:03, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment/Support: This kind of situation is not new. A similar scenario was Zuul. The page is on a dinosaur genus, but it was named directly after a fictional Ghostbusters character. The fictional monster is mentioned at List of Ghostbusters characters. If, for whatever reason, "Zuul" the monster was deemed worthy of its own page, it could be created at Zuul (fictional monster) or something similar. In this scenario, if at some point "Meraxes" the dragon is deemed worthy of a page, it could be created at Meraxes (fictional monster). -SlvrHwk (talk) 15:45, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @SlvrHwk I'm not disputing that this scenario can or cannot occur, and note I have not opposed the move. I'm asking where the evidence is that the dinosaur genus is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. No one really seems to be taking me up on that. YorkshireExpat (talk) 18:36, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The genus is still new, but it has already more coverage in both academic and regular press than the character from ASOIAF, which is anyway very minor and already dead both in the original series and in both the written and televised spin-offs created around it. Also, note that it is very likely that Meraxes, the dinosaur, will be searched in priority to Meraxes, the dragon, due to it having a broader audience and more coverage in recent medias. And finally, we do not have any page for Meraxes, the dragon, so unless you can provide enough evidences the character warrants one, it is definitely a primary topic. If there's any primary topic criteria that goes against this nomination, feel free to pinpoint them. Larrayal (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @Larrayal not having a page isn't enough on own to disallow a topic from having primary topic status. A google image search for Meraxes bring up more images of the dragon than the dinosaur. It's very possible in time that the genus will become the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, but for the moment this discussion relies a lot on 'surely' and 'should' than actual hard evidence. Of course there is more on the dinosaur recently as it's just been described. How will the situation look in five years time is a more pertinent question. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:44, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * A google image search for Meraxes will obviously give more images of the dragon, which has been published for 30 years. On my google image feed, in the 54 first images, only 34 of them covers the dragon, and 18 of them covers the dinosaur, which is already saying something since the dinosaur was published a little more than a day ago. The situation is not that there is a debate, the Zuul situation already established that, if a genus name comes from a fiction character without an existing article nor the possibility to create an article about it, the genus name takes priority. The article creator probably created, more or less accidentally, the page to Meraxes gigas, probably thinking that Meraxes was already in use, it isn't, we don't have any reason to not name this genus by its genus name for an article about a fantasy character that don't even exist. This change should be strictly bureaucratic, there is little reason to debate about it for the moment, this is a discussion we will have only when an article about the dragon pass and don't fail the notability test. Larrayal (talk) 22:20, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * |Meraxes_gigas I'm here to help. I think this is evidence enough. YorkshireExpat (talk) 06:49, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. Strongly agree with SlvrHwk. Chhandama (talk) 05:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: Not only does Meraxes the dragon not have its own page, it's also something that likely will not happen due to the shere irrelevance of said dragon from an encyclopedic POV, seeing as she is is only tangentially mentioned in ASoIaF and still minor in the lore books. Compare that to Meraxes gigas, which is of rather obvious encyclopedic and scientific importance. Armin Reindl (talk) 09:18, 9 July 2022 (UTC)