Talk:Q4271324

subclass of (P279)

This is traditional mythology, and not an author's fictional creature of 19th-21st century. --Лобачев Владимир (talk) 06:33, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

@Лобачев Владимир, Valentina.Anitnelav, Epìdosis: Please don't edit war on the classes of this item. The current state with neither character that may or may not be fictional (Q21070598) nor fictional character (Q95074) is a bad one because quite a few constraint definitions rely the subclass of (P279) statements of this item. Valentina.Anitnelav, as far as I see you already broke en:WP:3RR without time criterion, although this isn't a Wikidata policy it might be a good rule of thumb even here. Concerning the content of this issue I actually support to be humble and state mythical character (Q4271324)subclass of (P279)character that may or may not be fictional (Q21070598). Perhaps some of them aren't fictional. But that has to be discussed before. If we can't find a quick consensus I suggest to restore the status quo with mythical character (Q4271324)subclass of (P279)fictional character (Q95074). Thank you, --Marsupium (talk) 15:22, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Both, character that may or may not be fictional (Q21070598) and fictional character (Q95074) (with qualifier disputed (Q18912752)) are fine for me, even though I prefer character that may or may not be fictional (Q21070598). This edit is a consequence of another discussion at fictional organism (Q1972868) about making fictional entities and mythical entities distinct, but if there is somebody who wants this claim, I can deal with it. - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 15:47, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

The reason why I rather dislike the claim that mythical entities are a subclass of fictional entities: Fictional characters are characters from a work of fiction, with a certain author/creator. Those are entities not claimed to exist. Mythical entities are from traditions. They don't have a particular author/creator and belong to the worldview of a culture, where they appear with a certain claim of truth.

The reason why it is ok for me to keep fictional character (Q95074): The question if mythical entities are fictional entities is purely theoretical. I think it is most important to be able to query for mythical entities (without also getting entities from works of fiction into the result set). As long as the mythical-entity-tree doesn't contain any entities from works of fiction this is possible, even if it is itself a subclass of fictional entity (Q14897293) - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 16:12, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

The German National Library is classifiyng mythical character as subclass of literary character. Would that be better? Having such a relation would enormously simplify property constraints. --Pasleim (talk) 21:12, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Are there properties used for/with mythical characters which can't be allowed for character that may or may not be fictional (Q21070598)? If that's the case I'm fine with fictional character. I don't think that literary character is better (it's a subclass of fictional character, just restricted to literary works). - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 07:21, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

As said I tend to prefer character that may or may not be fictional (Q21070598), too, but fictional character (Q95074) is also OK, just none is a bad situation. Thanks in advance for changing it in some direction! --Marsupium (talk) 17:03, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

• I think we have a bit of a problem here if we use fictional character (Q95074) - deity (Q178885) is a subclass of this, so it means all deities are now eventually subclasses of fictional entity (Q14897293) rather than hypothetical entity (Q18706315). I am not very clear on how this bit of the structure tree should work, but I thought this is why we had the hierarchy under hypothetical entity (Q18706315), so we could keep the concepts separate? It feels unexpected that Baal (Q590467) or God (Q190) shows up in a search for "fictional character".

Possibly the best solution here is to remove the subclass statement on deity (Q178885) (so they're just supernatural/abstract, not mythical} but I thought I'd flag it up here first. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:36, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

User:User:Andrew Gray. I would consider it correct to call a deity a mythical character (deities are usually main characters in myths). To make mythical character a subclass of fictional character is not very accurate - even though there is a quite vague everyday use of the word "fictional" that is also applied to myths and deities. For this reason I deleted the subclass statement. - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 16:43, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

@Valentina.Anitnelav: That sounds like a good solution - thanks. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:58, 5 October 2020 (UTC)