Category talk:Films about birds

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Dinosaurs[edit]

This should not be in the dinosaur category. Birds are not dinosaurs. This is not at all about taxonimy. This is about linguistic usage, and when people speak of dinosaurs, they do not in any way mean to include birds in the term.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:03, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please read, or at least glance at, Wikipedia articles Bird, Dinosaur, Dinosaur size, etc., where birds are correctly included as dinosaurs. This same conversation is taking place on three pages. Lots of resistance to accepting birds as dinosaurs, it's almost a mind-blower for some people, but dinosaurs they be. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is lots of resistance, because the words mean different things, period. End of discussion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The words do not have different meanings, and categories should be based on scientific data. Not misconceptions of the general public. You are in no position to declare a discussion ended. 08:08, 24 February 2021 (UTC)Dimadick (talk)
  • The following source is one of many that shows that people do not use the term dionsaur to refer to birds, even in works that in some way deal with the overalp. Most of these films in 0 ways deal with the relationship of dinosaurs to birds.[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnpacklambert (talk • contribs) 2021-02-22 18:16:41 (UTC)
  • Hi William Allen Simpson. It seems that the place to discuss this would be the Bird article, where the second lead paragraph addresses the question, and the reptile page which seems contradictory in its two lead paragraphs. A category would follow the information provided in the categories main articles. I don't think of birds as reptiles either, but apparently that's a bias I have which is built upon past exposure to societal concepts and not the latest science. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:11, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • p.s. and since birds are now acknowledged to be avian dinosaurs, the only way to separate them from 'Films about dinosaurs' would seem to be to rename that category 'Films about non-avian dinosaurs' which is an untried option. If the name were changed a parent category 'Films about dinosaurs' would still be needed, to contain both the non-avian and bird film categories, but that might work better to address the concerns because it would then only contain the two categories. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:18, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As suggested elsewhere, I think a good compromise is Films about dinosaurs > Films about Aves (or Neornithes or Avialae) > Films about birds. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 16:56, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The word "dinosaur" can either mean roughly "all animals descended from the most recent common ancestor of theropods, sauropods and ornithischians" (more common in scientific usage and includes modern birds), or "a group of extinct animals like Triceratops, T. Rex and Sauropods" (more common in vernacular usage and does not include modern birds). Neither definition is incorrect (paraphyletic is not a synonym of incorrect), and which is better is a matter of opinion. On Wikipedia we have to decide which usage is more useful in any given context, and that does not necessarily mean perfect consistency across the board. For this case, it seems nearly inconceivable to me that anyone using Category:Films_about_dinosaurs will be interested in finding The Big Year, so what purpose does making that link serve? In the cultural context in which films reside, "birds" are clearly not a subcategory of "dinosaurs". Somatochlora (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a familiarity-based popular culture site, if a category is named 'Films about dinosaurs' then it seems it would automatically contain 'Films about birds' as a subcategory. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:18, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to rehash old ground here as obviously we are never going to agree, but this particular page is very explicitly about popular culture. I do not think it is appropriate to categorise films in a way that most directors, film reviewers etc. would say is incorrect. Especially as nobody has identified any particular reason why doing so would be valuable, except perhaps as a way to propagate a particularly interesting, but irrelevant, fact about the evolutionary history of birds. Somatochlora (talk) 16:56, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Any thoughts on the "Films about Aves" proposal? I think it's a reasonable compromise. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:34, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand how adding a intermediate category using obscure scientific terminology helps anything, especially as that intermediate category will not really have any members. Either alternative is better than that. But ultimately this particular instance is incredibly unimportant, almost nobody will ever notice how these categories are organised either way. What is important is that Wikipedia is NPOV in respect to linguistic word usage. And I feel the need to push back when people seem unable to recognize that a statement like "films about birds are a subset of films about dinosaurs" does not automatically follow from "birds are part of the clade that includes all dinosaurs". I'd be interested to hear arguments for why including this category under "films about dinosaurs" would make Wikipedia better than the alternative of not including it, but nobody above has made any. Instead I just see assertions that the way a majority of people use the word "dinosaur" is wrong, and that their view of the matter is irrelevant. Somatochlora (talk) 15:04, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No need, you summarized it best. I'm an editor who is "...unable to recognize that a statement like 'films about birds are a subset of films about dinosaurs' does not automatically follow from "birds are part of the clade that includes all dinosaurs". Dinosaurs means dinosaurs, the two kinds of dinosaurs being avian and non-avian. So 'films about dinosaurs' would include, encyclopedically, 'films about birds', even if no reader in a generation happens to glance at the subset category. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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