Category talk:Vampires

Since this article includes vampires that aren't undead creatures, I'm putting the undead vampires in with "corporeal undead", removing this category as a subcategory of undead, and adding "fictional vampires" to the "fictional undead" category. Sound good?--Fourthgeek 22:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

• I think there is an inaccurate system being used here of classifying any haemophagic entity into the Vampire category, as long as that entity is fictional, even if other traits vary wildly. With this system, I'd reckon, even mosquitoes or leeches would be classified as vampires, were they not real animals. For real animals, we use the term "haemophagic", rather than "vampiric", and I see no reason to treat fictional entities any differently. The term "vampiric" should return to being used explicitly for a narrow cluster of folkloric entities from the Balkans, which exhibit the trait of being haemophagic, but also exhibit several other traits, which are not shared by other creatures classified as vampires right now (such as being undead). I suggest creating a new category of "Haemophagic fictional creatures" or similar, classifying only the balkan-tradition undead vampires in the Vampire category, making the Vampire category a subcategory of "Haemophagic fictional creatures" and classifying all the non-undead, non-balkanese vampires into "Haemophagic fictional creatures". This appears to be the only way of sorting out this mess. For now, I'm going to sort out the actual articles in this category. -- Ciaraleone (talk) 14:48, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

• But you can't do OR - e.g. I recall Penanggalan being called a vampire in some folklore books, removing it not a good idea. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:35, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

• In that case, the Vampire article needs to be reworked - it references things from slavic folklore and traits unique to those vampires, such as being undead who sleep in their coffins at day, traits at odds with a lot of other blood-sucking folkloric creatures. And those traits, too, have their sources and citations. If we don't let one of the sources have precedence over the other (i.e. the sources defining "vampire" as an undead entity from slavic folklore over the sources defining it as any mythological bloodsucker), the vampire topic on wikipedia will be self-contradictory. I suggest letting references from the field of anthropological studies have precedence over ones from popular fiction, but I'm not sure how such issues are usually handled in Wikipedia. Also note that the only source in the Penanggalan article which actually mentions anything related to vampires calls it "vampire-like", which does not explicitly mean it is a vampire. This is probably splitting hairs though. -- Ciaraleone (talk) 02:00, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

• Add: I'm not sure what I'm proposing even constitutes OR - it's just a change in terminology. It's like saying putting Edward Cullen into the Category:Vampires in written fiction category is original research, because the book calls him a Vampire and not a fictional vampire. Yet he still is a fictional vampire and should properly be classed that way. I hope I'm getting my point across with this example. -- Ciaraleone (talk) 02:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)